Don't Stop Now (5 page)

We drive up the winding gravel road that leads to the House on the Rock around three in the afternoon.

“What the hell is this place?” marvels Josh as we walk toward the building.

You wouldn't know it from the approach, but the House on the Rock is a glorious, never-ending collection of FREAK. I have only been here once before, when my extended family stopped during a fishing trip to Minnesota. Its grandiose grotesqueness awed me then, and I hope it doesn't disappoint now that I'm older.

The admission desk has a small line, and when we get up to the teller, a sallow teen with leftover acne, she drones, “Welcome to the House on the Rock.”

“Tough day?” Josh kibitzes, and the charm oozes a smile right out of House on the Rock girl.

“Oh, you know, tourists.” She rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, tourists.” Josh chuckles as though we're House on the Rock neighbors and we're just stopping by on our way to Sam's Club.

“So, would you like Tour One, Tour Two, Tour Three, or the Ultimate Experience?” she asks Josh, me being invisible, and all.

Josh turns to me and asks, “Do we want Tour One, Tour Two, Tour Three, or the Ultimate Experience?” in a mocking tone that's only obvious to me.

“I always want the ultimate experience, Josh,” I say in an overtly sexual way. The girl at the counter looks surprised to see me there, and then pretends to shuffle some papers. Well, she doesn't pretend to shuffle, but I'm pretty certain those papers didn't need to be shuffled.

“We'll take two for the Ultimate Experience,” Josh says and hands over the credit card.

To truly appreciate the House on the Rock, one must experience the mishegoss for themselves. But I'll try to do it justice.

We enter the first part, the House, which is an ultimate experience in itself. The story goes that some guy, Alex Jordan, found a fancy rock formation and decided he'd like to build a house around it. But not just any house. The House on the Rock has a groovalicious midget feel to it. The entire place is coated in shag carpeting, including several walls, and the ceilings were not meant for humans of my or Josh's stature. All of the weirdly winding nook-and-cranny rooms (complete with in-ground tiny round bed) lead up to the pinnacle and name inspiration for this place, a very long, narrow glass room—we're talking twenty-five feet, maybe fifty (I didn't bring my tape measure)—that juts out over the rocky nature below. The “room” ends in a tiny point, where you can look down through a small square window and see some trees. The fear factor is that the room bounces as you walk in it because it is so precariously out there. Josh makes it a point to freak out nearby small children for a good ten minutes by standing in the long room and saying things like, “Did you hear a crack? Is this thing sound?” and “I definitely felt us get lower. We should get out of here!”

I finally manage to drag him to the next segment of our Ultimate Experience when a little freckled redhead starts to cry. Once we make it through the cramped house, the place opens up into this massive compound of bizarreness. Rooms filled with giant calliope music-box things (that play themselves if you feed them money), a huge room with a giant whale blaring the Beatles' “Octopus's Garden” and other nautical nonsense, and the greatest, yet grossest, of all sights, a room filled with an enormous carousel. This is not a carousel one rides, however, but one you must watch, in horror, as it rotates in garish decadence. I need a thesaurus to find as many words as required to describe the monstrosity of the House on the Rock carousel. Everything here at the House on the Rock is BIG (except, of course, for the miniatures, of which there are many, including an entire circus recreated in tiny painted clowns).

“What the frig…?” Josh can't even complete his sentence, he's so struck by this lewd creation. One might be able to get past the thirty zillion Christmas lights (in June) strung about, or the paint chipping off the numerous mystical beasts attached to the double-decker carousel's poles. But no one can ignore the tasteless “angels” floating above. “Are those mannequins?” Josh asks, incredulous.

“Why, yes, Josh,” I answer as the House on the Rock authority. “Yes, they are.” And they are. Above the carousel hang dozens of underdressed store mannequins, suspended by obvious wires, wearing trashy wigs and all looking kind of slutty.

“This place rocks!” Josh proclaims. “House on the Rock pun intended.”

Two hours, one very large funnel cake, and way too many quarters spent on calliope music later, we've made it through the House on the Rock. Josh and I rest on a glossy log bench, when my cell phone slips out of my pocket and clatters to the floor.

“Freakin' phone,” I declare. “I bet road trips were so much cooler before people could find you whenever they wanted.”

“That's why I don't have a cell phone. If I want people to find me, I'll let them find me. Cell phones are like tracking devices. And if I need to know the time, I'll just ask someone. Why don't we just get rid of it,” Josh suggests. “Toss it out the window in the long H-O-R room, over the rocks of H-O-R.” We have officially shortened House on the Rock to the shorter and funnier HOR.

“I don't think I'm ready for that kind of freedom.” I shake my head. “What if my mom calls?” My mom! I haven't yet told her about the impromptu road trip. She should be OK with it, since I already took a short road trip over spring break with Josh and some friends to the Wisconsin Dells. But just to be safe, I call her before we leave the HOR and explain, “Josh has commandeered me, Mom, to take me on one last road trip before I leave him and go away to college.” She laughs, knowing full well that she can trust Josh (to keep his hands to himself, sadly, plus the financial aspect of the whole thing). She's a pretty great mom as far as moms go; she gave me a card a few months ago for my eighteenth birthday telling me that I'm finally free but to stop by for coffee and a hug every once in a while. It was her mom way of telling me that I'm an adult who still has a mommy. I love her so much for that.

“Just keep me posted on how you're doing. I suppose this can be your substitution for backpacking across Europe?” she asks, hopeful. Mom always used to talk about
her
backpacking trip before she went off to college, which sounded amazing to me. But, really, I couldn't ever be bothered to sit down and plan something like that. Mom doesn't know that, though, so—voilà!—perfect excuse for this trip instead.

“Do you want to call your dad?” I offer the phone to Josh.

“I don't want to waste the batteries. Besides, what's the point? He probably won't even notice I'm gone. If he comes home at all while we're away.” The mood is darkened just a bit, so I don't press it. He probably wouldn't share much more even if I did.

 

Josh and I hang out in the HOR entrance, looking over the plentiful pamphlet displays for nearby tourist attractions. When I was a kid, I used to collect the pamphlets, plucking out ones that looked interesting and might be worth visiting someday, when I was grown-up enough to make those kinds of decisions. I'd gather pamphlets of natural formations, water shows, outlet malls, and doll museums. Most of them ended up on the floor of our car to dissolve under the muck of winter boots.

We decide to spend the night somewhere nearby, so we can head out early the next morning. Scanning the lodging section, I spot the hilariously named “Don Q Inn.” “Like
Don Quixote
?” I ask, referring to the wacked-out movie (based on a book, of course) we watched in Spanish class, which inspired my Spanish class name, Dulcinea. Even better, the Don Q Inn is a FantaSuite Hotel in a nearby town.

“FantaSuite?!” Josh and I yell in unison, and I note a couple of grannies glaring at us from a table cut from a great redwood tree. “Sorry.” I shrug at them. Don't want to upset the grannies.

The Don Q Inn is one of those hotels in which each room has its own theme. “‘Let our FantaSuite suites transport you to the world of your dreams. Each is a unique experience, an adventure, a romantic retreat designed to completely immerse you in the getaway of your choice,'” Josh reads.

“I want to be immersed!” I yell, too excited at the doofosity to contain myself. We proceed to read the room themes to each other: Arabian Nights (Aladdin!), the Blue Room (complete with three-hundred-gallon copper cheese vat tub!), Casino Royale (Vegas!), the Cave (Caveman!), the Float (a Viking ship!), Indian Summer (a wigwam!), Mid-Evil (a poorly spelled room with shackles on the bed!), Northern Lights (full-size igloo!), the Swinger (a hanging bed!), and Shotgun (hunting theme!). Josh and I both zero in on one, and we don't even have to ask.

“Tranquility Base, baby. That's where we're headed,” Josh informs me.

“You took the spacey words right out of my mouth.” The room choice is a no-brainer: a recreation of a Gemini space capsule, complete with moon crater whirl pool. “But wait. Wasn't Tranquility Base part of the Apollo 11 mission?”

“I suppose,” Josh muses.

“So wouldn't that make this suite historically inaccurate?”

“Right. They're very concerned with historical accuracy at the Don Q Inn. That's why they plopped a heart-shaped bed in the middle of a cave.”

“You never know. That could be historically accurate. I have heard of cave paintings with heart-shaped beds in them. Right next to the wooly mammoth wearing a Snuggie.” Josh smiles at me out of the corner of his eye.

The buzz of HOR and the prospect of Tranquility Base are enough to get any human jazzed, but in the back of my mind (OK, more like really close to the front) is the fact that Josh and I are going to be staying in a hotel room together. Alone. With a whirl pool and a round bed. The Penny Quest has just taken a very interesting turn, and I'm not talking about the one aiming us at Portland.

Let me back up to the History of Me and Josh to explain the platonicity of the situation.

It all started freshman year, study hall (as most things do). Josh had on these insanely huge, chain-bedraggled purple pants, and I had on these really skinny jeans, also in purple. We ended up alphabetically next to each other (yes, they gave us assigned seating in study hall so that they could easily spot the ditchers by the holes in the grid). Josh leaned over my desk and asked, “Excuse me. Do you have a purple pen I could borrow?” Hilarious, right? Turned out he had some friends who were dating some of my friends they met at DQ while I was away being a junior counselor at overnight camp. At the time he was dating a friend of a friend (the first in a long list of dullards who never interested me, or him, enough to make much of an impression). We started as friends, so I guess we just kind of
continued
that way. I think guys—some, maybe most, but hopefully not all—are incapable of liking girls in a girlfriend way if they like them in a friend way first. Because Josh has never even attempted to be physical with me beyond hugging (nonsexual), kissing (on the cheek or forehead), or smacking my butt (football player manner). He still sometimes says things in flirty ways (using names like
sweetheart, baby, cutie
), but I think that's more out of habit than due to the fact that I could possibly be an attractive female if he'd just screw in his eyeballs correctly. I just grossed myself out.

I, on the other eyeball, have had a crush on him from purple day one. Since before we met, actually, when I saw him play guitar at Lizzy Rubin's junior high graduation party. I'm such a sucker for guys in bands, even more of a sucker when it comes to guitarists who also sing harmony parts (So supportive! Yet, what do we really know about them?). I'm very good at playing it cool around guys (which probably accounts for the very small, count them on one hand, not every finger, number of boyfriends I've had in my life), which makes me, well, very cool to have as a girl friend.

Fast-forward to the end of senior year, exactly four weeks before prom. I'm embarrassed, ashamed, hitting-myself-in-the-head pathetic because I wanted, no
needed
, to go to the prom. Who can explain why? Was it all the movies and TV shows and books that glorify the crap out of this ritual? Did I really believe that I'd be the girl, so common and blendy until my glorious, glam debut in some bud get hotel's ballroom that everyone would whisper, “Who's that?” “Don't you know? That's Lillian Erlich.” “But she's so beautiful…” And then Josh would swoop in, my date in powder blue, and say, “I didn't need a prom dress to tell me how hot you are,” and he'd grab me, dip me, and kiss me passionately while balloons and sparkles fell from the ceiling and the whole room applauded.

Not how it happened. Four weeks before prom, neither Josh nor I had dates. Josh could not have cared less, but I had a countdown in my head that said if no one asked either of us by four weeks prior to prom, I would ask Josh. As a friend. So I did. And he answered, “Why not?” Six hours of dress shopping later, I was ready for my close-up in, what else, a skimpy little purple dress. Only one week later, I got a call from Josh.

“Yeah. About prom…,” he started.

Of course like a douche I had to interrupt with “Do you think we should try to match? Like in a kind of funny way? But so we look good in pictures? Or is that stupid? Or is that funny stupid? Do I have to get you a corsage? What do you call a guy corsage? A boutonniere?”

“Lil.” Josh caught a break between my pathetic desperations and said, “Look, I've been thinking. This is our senior prom and all, and maybe I want to go with, you know, someone I like more than a friend?” No response from me except in my stomach, which initially jumped up to my lungs but quickly plummeted to near bathroom floor horror. “I kind of just asked Liza Bell.”

I know, I know. It makes him sound like the biggest prick when I tell that story, but when I put myself in his shoes, I mean,
I
wanted to go with someone I liked more than a friend.

I ended up spending prom night on the couch, watching prom-themed horror movies (
Carrie, Prom Night, Prom Night 2
) with several boxes of stale Girl Scout Cookies I found in the pantry and a bottomless bowl of popcorn I whipped up in the Whirley Pop. Not exactly a memory for the keepsake book.

Tonight, now, it's just us. No boyfriends. No girlfriends. No external crushes who may sneak their way into the lunar module. One bed—one round, somewhat hysterical, space-themed bed. And the two of us. Heading west. However we get there.