An adventure of the best sort

Real­iz­ing it was Tues­day, Dave decid­ed an adven­ture was long over due. As a result his web log looked a lit­tle bare. The last true adven­ture he had had had been so long ago that he had trou­ble remem­ber­ing exact­ly what it was (strange notions of zoo ani­mals was all he could remem­ber). So he decid­ed to do some­thing, and not just any some­thing, this had to be some­thing new, some­thing dif­fer­ent and some­thing just a lit­tle bit scary.
Not being able to think of any­thing he launched his web brows­er and loaded up his favorite search engine. He ran a search on the key­words “inter­est­ing things to do in Syd­ney” and got 12,443 results, which did­n’t help very much. He thought for a moment, decid­ed if he real­ly want­ed to nar­row the search in such a way and then added “gay” to the key­word list, the results shrank to 1,910. Scratch­ing his head fur­ther he also added “for under 20 bucks” to the search. The list dropped to 93. Still not want­i­ng to look through all 93 options Dave added “not sex” to the search cri­te­ria and the list final­ly reached a rea­son­able 4.
He scanned the four options and dis­re­gard­ed three as he had actu­al­ly done those before, that left just one choice, the thing to do, yet he was­n’t con­vinced. After all every time he had made this sug­ges­tion to his friends in the past he had not got­ten the most encour­ag­ing of reac­tions (the reac­tions had ranged from “not now, not ever” through to falling off the chair laugh­ter).
Balling up all of his courage Dave decid­ed to go for it any­way, there was no point wait­ing around for com­pa­ny on this adven­ture, they clear­ly were not inter­est­ed.
So this is how Dave found him­self walk­ing through the doors of the Majes­tic Rol­lerink and into the world of GaySkate.
At the tick­et counter Dave asked where to go to hire skates and the old man point­ed up stairs, so that was where Dave went. He walked up the stairs in a semi-dream, the feel­ing of hav­ing been here before washed over him and he knew what he would find at the top of the stairs. Anoth­er old man behind the counter glad­ly took Dav­e’s smelly boots and hand­ed back equal­ly smelly roller-skates.
Dave walked back down the stairs in his socks and then down more stairs to the main rink area, he head­ed over to find a chair in which to site while putting the skates on and caught his first glimpse of the rink. He noticed many nice­ly dressed guy (and some girls) all hav­ing a good time, it was imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous that there was a wide vari­ety of skill lev­els on the rink rang­ing from a few on the edges that weren’t will­ing to let go of the rail, to the over­ly con­fi­dant ones near then cen­ter. The crowd seemed hap­py and wel­com­ing.
After hav­ing mas­tered the art of tying up a pair of gen­uine 1970’s roller-skates Dave tried them out on the car­pet and skat­ed his way wob­bly over to the can­dy bar. He ordered a bot­tle of water, and then skat­ed over to some­where with a bet­ter view of the rink. The water of course was a cov­er, a ‘some­thing to do while I sus the place out’ ali­bi. He sat and watched for a while, check­ing out all the real­ly cute boys. But final­ly the time came to set skate on the rink.
Dave threw the emp­ty water bot­tle in a near­by bin and real­ized sud­den­ly that he need­ed to pee. He head­ed for the men’s. Now the men’s toi­lets at the Majes­tic Rol­lerink are much like any oth­er men’s toi­lets, with the big dif­fer­ence being that you are on wheels. This makes deal­ing with the tiled steps more dif­fi­cult. As a rite of pas­sage to those that wish to join the rest of the pack on the rink, the toi­lets must be nego­ti­at­ed. The first chal­lenge is the step up from the car­pet­ed area into the tiled vestibule while try­ing to push open a door and not fall on your arse. But things to not get sim­pler just because you’ve actu­al­ly made it into the toi­lets. Now you are faced with the big choice, the uri­nals or the stalls? But don’t be fooled, nei­ther option is sim­ple. The uri­nals pro­vide a con­ve­nient bar at shoul­der height to hold on to so as to stop your­self falling or skat­ing into the trough, but to be suc­cess­ful you must bal­ance on skates, hold your­self steady and got about your busi­ness (with only one hand remem­ber). The stalls on the oth­er had require you to climb a tiles stair­case, they offer the pro­tec­tion of being able to lock your­self in once you get there so as to lim­it just how far you might acci­dent­ly roll.
Dave chose the stalls and thanked his stars that he had cho­sen to hire skates tonight instead of bring­ing his (much unused) blades. For roller-skates have a stop of the front of both skate that can be used to walk on, blades have no such device and require pure skill. So Dave lit­er­al­ly tip-toed his way in and back out of the toi­lets.
Back at rink side, hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly sur­vived the chal­lenge of the toi­lets, Dave was ready to make his debut. With a wob­ble and a few fran­tic regain­ings of bal­ance Dave was skat­ing his way to the far side of the rink. After a few close calls he was lap­ping the place like a, well, like a guy that was skat­ing for the first time in years.
After a good few min­utes the DJ announced boot scoot­ing time. Dave head­ed for the side lines and watched in owe as the pros boot scoot­ed in the cen­ter of the rink, all whilst wear­ing skates.
Then it was back to the rink for some reg­u­lar skat­ing. This is where things get a lit­tle bit strange, you see Dave decid­ed that since he had­n’t actu­al­ly fall­en over yet he must be a nat­ur­al and so the thing to do was to try to go faster. Tight turns at each end of the rink, faster and faster. It did­n’t take long before he crashed head first into, and right over the side rail.
As he stood up the world was spin­ning just a lit­tle faster than usu­al for that time of night, he looked out at the rink and saw a strange sight. Every­thing was the same, yet also dif­fer­ent. There seemed to be a large num­ber of boys in school uni­forms sud­den­ly on the rink along with every­one else. After blink­ing a few time the school uni­formed kids dis­ap­peared and Dave real­ized that he had been watch­ing the events of twelve years hence, the last time he had been in this place. But he was back in the present, and tak­ing it a lit­tle more care­ful­ly he head­ed back onto the rink yet again.
The night went on and many oth­er mag­i­cal things hap­pened there that night, but they are sto­ries that only the Majes­tic Rol­lerink knows. After hav­ing claimed his shoes back Dave walked out the front door and into the real world, the last thing he heard was the tune of “Hey Mick­ie”. And if it had­n’t been for his aching shines he might have believed it had nev­er hap­pened.
[Note: your will­ing­ness to believe any or all of the above is no guar­an­tee of its authen­tic­i­ty]