Lost In The Monkey Maze

For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers? - John Barth

Aug 31, 2023

For whom is the Monkey Maze fun? (all photos are by the author)

Summer is over. I’ve biked to work in the rain twice this week. Put on my new rain jacket and biked without my glasses because they were too wet to see through. Pedalpalooza is ending. I heard someone make a Gen X comedian-style “Pumpkin Spice” joke at the bar last night. And the emails from the Department of Education are back again. October 1 is coming fast. It’s time to collect! These few years off felt like nothing. To be honest I’ve thought about my debt very little, confidently ignoring the calls from Nelnet the same way I would a call about my extended warranty.

When I was voluntold to phonebank for Biden for my job a little part of me thought it might be worth it—he’d promised $10k of forgiveness on the campaign trail, that would be just under half of what I’d owe. This could be an investment. But for real, this is the United States, COVID-19 proved to be America’s little vacation into European social democracy and now we're back to the only government programs being military investments in foreign wars to bolster our last remaining manufacturing center and debt collection. It’s maddening. Sickening. I’m lost. Stuck looking at how I will pay my low-income plan payments and watch as the amount I owe stays the same. Debt is distortion. What seemed like a full proof idea, going to a small liberal arts private school cause they offered $35k a year in scholarship, proved things are not as they seemed. But what should I have expected walking into a funhouse?

I’m running away from it all. Going on a mini solo backpacking trip through Mexico from September 2-16. I don’t have the money to do this really, but I had to use my vacation time at work. Mexico was relatively cheap, I had some airline miles, and I’m going to stay with my Spanish teacher Suri for a good chunk of it to celebrate Mexican Independence Day. I once took a Recreation 101 class at Cal State Eastbay1 and the professor told a story about how he took out student loans to take his crush on a weekend trip to Switzerland, they got married, and a few years later, divorced. Honestly, Mexico was an impulse trip that hopefully won’t leave me in economic ruin. In Spring I had a pretty depressing break up. I spent gray rainy days in my cold basement listening to “No Me Queda Mas.” Real weepy sad sack hours. I thought that things will never change even though I had friends around me assure me it was for the best, it will get better, blah, blah, blah. But also I thought maybe the only way it would change would be if I finally up and did it—moved to Mexico.

They have this in every 101 writing class.

Last night I read John Barth’s short story “Lost in the Funhouse.” It’s one of those postmodern stories where the author is getting off on being annoying:2 hyper stylized and commenting on what it means to write something hyper stylized, super referential to other stories and telling you why an author might make a reference to another story, quoting a book “on writing” about how one must use italics sparingly and using italics throughout. It tells the reader how to write a story. Strips things down to the nuts-and-bolts, even drawing Freytag’s Triangle in the text itself. Ambrose, the protagonist, goes to an amusement park on the Fourth of July and gets stuck in a funhouse. He’s trapped forever, seeing distorted images of himself reflected into oblivion, he even dies three quarters through the story.3 And Barth lets us know that while the story is in third person, Ambrose is the character he identifies with the most.4 It concludes that his (the writer’s) job is both being stuck in the funhouse AND making the funhouse for others to enjoy. The Funhouse is for lovers, but the writer sees it for what it is, a prison of creation and distortions of their own creations. The writer wants to be a lover but can’t. Someone who reads the New Yorker every week might say this is both “joyful and critical,” but only in the way something overly academic is.

Between scam calls about our car’s extended warranty and calls from “collections agencies” asking if “____ is there”5 I thought about the last time I was at a funhouse. This summer I went to the Clark County Fair with my new crush and some friends. We rode the Ferris wheel, played rigged games, ate oversized-deep-fried foods, drank milk shakes from the Clark County Dairy Women, and saw the Demolition Derby and Tuff Trucks. For $12 admission I could see our neighbors take those same cars the debt collector was trying to repossess and slam them into rubble. Come and take it. It was damn cathartic, and like so much that is cathartic, painfully stupid tributes to suburban excess.6

At the Demolition Derby everyone stood for the national anthem. Afterwards the announcer rattled off thanks to first responders, while the crowd shouted back: fire fighters, EMS, the troops, police, Washington State Teachers.7 Then the crowd hooted and hollered for a Confederate Flag truck racing through an obstacle course, kicking up mud with reckless abandon, only for it to flip over on its side and get completely demolished. My friends and I stood up and cheered, and a woman asked my friend Corbin, “Do you not like Chevy’s?”

“No, it's that the Confederate Truck got destroyed?”

This was met with an uncomfortable silence.

The Clark County Fair “Funhouse” was actually called the Monkey Maze. I stood in line with my new crush. At the entrance were two bottles of Cherry Coke, I asked the worker if those were his.

“Nah, people just left them here cause you can’t bring food or drink on the ride then just forgot,” he said, it was a ride that took all of two minutes and the bottles were unopened. “I got my beverages right here.”

The guy showed us a NOS Energy Drink in one hand and a pint of tequila in the other. Do-it-yourself 4Loko.

We went through it and took pictures in front of the mirrors that made us look tall, squat, big headed, etc. Then we rode down a slide to get out. For who is the monkey maze fun? Perhaps for lovers? Really less for “lovers” and more for toddlers, though we enjoyed it and laughed together the whole way. Fried corn dog batter mixed with straw from the 4-H animals section filled the summer air and we were surrounded by the libidinal candy colored lights of the carnival.

Maybe it’s my own pretentious inner self that would find an activity like the Fair incredibly fun and then still try and write something critical because that’s what a writer does. In Barth’s world there are writers (suffering to create) and lovers (enjoying creations). In my world my lover is also a writer. I’m sort of borderline obsessed with reading old stuff she wrote. Stuff she probably mostly forgot about or remembers with a critical self-reflection. I enjoy it.

It’s my own greedy mind, my American hubris, and my need for excess to think that I can be both a writer and a lover. I’m obviously not a pro in the same way Barth is,8 but also this is a dialectic of self-importance. Of holding onto the kind of condescending self image of being a writer. Yet, my lover actually is a pro writer. She gets self-conscious after sending me something she wrote and was proud of.9 But, to me it’s an honor seeing someone share their talent with me. Clearly being a writer doesn’t mean you have to be pretentious. And I’ll be content with being a lover who writes, as long as she’s a writer who loves.

And also, I shouldn’t have to pay student loans—I’m in love!

Honestly, the summer has been good to me. I spent a lot of time writing,10 biking around town, playing basketball with friends, and even kissing. Therapy has been fine too. I sort of fell in love with Portland again, maybe as I started to just fall in love again in general. A part of me wondered if my feelings just change with the seasons. That love and feeling inspired are fleeting feelings which I’d lose, then try to remember through the nostalgic reflections as the leaves die off and fall. “That Summer Feeling is Going to Haunt You One Day In Your Life.” Who knows? I’m clinging to it now. There certainly is the jolt of energy in a new relationship, but now I also feel at my most independent. My feelings aren’t just tied to someone else. I share time with someone when we both want to. I’m not in a cycle of giving support, being too needy, and wondering if anything I’m feeling is true. For a while I “rewarded” myself for getting up out of my bed in the morning by laying back down on the couch. Every little task felt hard. It's nice that things have started to feel easy again. Love can be like getting back on a bike.

I never rode my bike in the winter with consistency. I tried a few years when I was in college. When I rode to the school shuttle stop downtown every morning I’d get completely soaked. Despite living in Portland, I was too vain to wear a raincoat because they made me look like a seal. Or I’d pass one of those White Bikes memorials with its flowers wilting and cardboard messages bleeding into the street. Without being surrounded by flowers, green leaf canopies, fruit trees, and new life I wondered how anyone survived biking. Each attempt I quit about a week in, resigning to get up a half hour earlier to take the longer multi-bus commute.

This season is different though. I see someone getting excited for the weather to get cold and damp again—to bike in it no less. It’s interesting. Just about the opposite of past me. But I’ve been biking much more these days. Love is getting back on a bike and staying on a bike. It’s the same act as before, but it’s also different. And I think I’ll make it through another winter in the Monkey Maze.

(In)Action

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