Throwbacks:
HEY! HO! LET’S ROLL!

On a recent Saturday, a faint waft of Concept drifted up from under the BQE in Williamsburg. The underpass parking lot is usually a lazy, loud, burnt-oil-smelling place, consisting of a perimeter lined with parked cars, two driving lanes, and a line of support beams down the center. Towards late afternoon, a dozen girls on roller skates appeared on the heat-smudged horizon. One girl wrapped yellow caution tape around two support beams; another chalked two words on the sidewalk, START and FINISH.

A Williamsburg crowd gathered at one end zone: several vanity dogs, girls in housedresses and striped socks, boys in trucker caps and mock-Mohawks. One rooster-ish young man in a fedora and waxed mustache stood with his foot on a briefcase, waving a cigar and jabbering. Next to him, a couple cradled their tiny dogs to their chests. The woman chastised her wriggling Chihuahua, “No, Finn . It’s nothing but garbage and drug bags down there.” She sniffed. “Maybe there’s less dope-doo on the other side.” One could almost imagine a genie traveling from bar to bar the night before, breathing the words “all-girl roller derby” into the necks of countless Pabst Blue Ribbons. Now they blocked both driving lanes and shouted matter-of-factly over traffic, their expressions flickering between hopefulness and boredom.

A fanfare of mechanized trumpets chirped from a bullhorn. Four girls took their places for the first race:   “Margaret Thrasher” (Ashley, an actor), “Little Red Terror” (Kelly, a nurse), “Chassis Crass” (Karin, a sweater designer), and “CC Bullets” (Cecilia, another fashion designer). According to the betting sheet--it was $5 per girl, per race--Margaret is “faster than your momma on rent day (and as good as a government check).” At the bullhorn’s call Margaret strapped on her helmet, noting, “Last week my neighbor gave up roller blading for heroin. Lucky for one of us.” The girls huddled, tapped their wristbands together, and then shouted over a crescendo of car honks, “Hey! Ho! Let’s roll!”

Four girls streaked off madly in a circle around the caution tape. What began as a tight pack loosened as CC Bullets trailed behind, rubbing her dirty thighs and smiling. The other three girls shoved when aerobically possible, rolled carefully when not. Their legs wobbled on the turns, like colts.

Suddenly Little Red Terror plunged knees-first in an alarming, and ill-fated, bid for the finish line. For a full minute Red lay prone on the asphalt. An SUV saw its chance and nipped out of its parking space. On the street, an Italian ice cart driver bleated his horn sympathetically.

The girls helped her clamber to her feet. Little Red Terror is diminutive and red-haired, in a white tennis skirt, a yellow t-shirt and fishnets. Margaret—who had beaten Red by inches, mainly by not throwing herself at a diagonal at the asphalt—remarked, “That was your match, Red; you just slid too early.”

Red nodded. “I totally slid too early. I made up the plan right there in the middle, but I screwed up. That’s just because we’re still new at this.” She adjusted her skirt. “We practice falling. The best way is double knee, or on the meat of your ass.” She grabbed one shank to illustrate.

Margaret set her mouth in a knowledgeable moue . “Avoid the tailbone at all costs.”

CC Bullets rolled by to check on Red, looking distracted. Her left upper arm was generously inked in a tattoo of a woman with beehive hair. CC read out the motto: “'Too fast to live, too young to die’. It’s my mom. She died a few months ago.”   She laughed and blinked, an edge of hurt in her voice that seemed to startle her. “What did I say 'live fast’ for?”  

Between races, the crowd shambled in and out of attention, electrified briefly by a girl-on-girl spat in the third race. Still, a hundred kids pointing their hopes in one direction make their own energy. By the final race, that energy reverbed back. Margaret Thrasher, Rosie Knuckles, Red, and Baby Ruthless lined up for the race-off. Bookies tensed with bettors; drowsy dogs cocked their ears. The girls burst forth in a pack, legs splaying furiously. Rosie Knuckles grabbed Margaret’s waistband; Margaret wrenched herself free. Red bumped into a van but recovered valiantly. Finally Margaret broke through and finished first, to rowdy applause and the honking of two eighteen-wheelers.

Margaret’s breath came hard. “I felt like I was going to hurl my entire insides out--from being amazed, and just tired. I smoked a cigarette before my races, though, to paralyze my bronchials. They didn’t know what was going on.” She gulped. Two of her teammates came forward to award her a medal, tiara and a bouquet. Engulfed in whoops and horn blasts, Margaret’s face seemed to soften, as if hearing music audible only to victors. She cupped her right palm as if to cradle a light bulb, gave a queenly wave, and then rolled silently, grandly, down Meeker Avenue.

—by Jude Stewart

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