The Daredevil of Prospect Park

He sat on the stoop of his father’s brownstone eating Hellmann’s mayonnaise with a spoon. The spoon was from Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, Utah; his family had road tripped through the west when he was six. The mayonnaise was from D’Agostino. He approached his task with rhythmic dedication, first removing a layer of mayonnaise from the jar half a teaspoon at a time, then letting his tongue flick itself around the egg white covered concavity until the embossed T-Rex reappeared. He would use the handle of the spoon to flatten what remained in the jar, before scraping the interior wall with the edge, clearing out any residue left by a given layer. He repeated this process until he was two thirds of the way through a jar and could no longer reach the mayonnaise easily, at which point he would wait for his father to finish the jar and purchase more.
His dad had gone up to Westchester to play a quick eighteen with the partners, and he was supposed to have hopped on the Manhattan bound B train when he woke up. His frame was slight, he did not look all of his thirteen years, and the mayonnaise habit was part of a larger scheme to make himself older by force. He did not shave the shadow of a mustache resting on his upper lip. He practiced furrowing his brow in front of his bathroom mirror, engraining wrinkles into his smooth forehead. He once dusted his hair with talcum powder before school, but that only started a lice scare.
He masturbated like a teenager. He froze individual frames of family films, some girl’s thong provocatively visible or a glimpse of cleavage, and spilled himself into his sheets after school, his mind focusing on implausible sex acts. He would experiment with tempo, duration, and architecture. He had a list of personal records (speed: thirteen seconds, quantity: 4 times in an hour, etc.) that he recorded on a piece of looseleaf, college ruled paper. When he had captured his data, he would fold the sheet seven times for security, and tuck it behind the ID card window in his LL Bean backpack. He took no pride in his accomplishments, though he suspected such data would apply nicely to future, hypothetical love making.
This morning, after an unremarkable masturbation session, he walked southwest towards Prospect Park. He knew boys who frequented the park, boys who were encouraged to play sports. They would gather at the soccer fields or baseball diamonds with their orange slices and Kudos bars. Shuttling between boroughs on the weekends left little time for organized athletics. He hadn’t been a member of a league since he was nine; he played soccer for the Terminator’s [sic], and his disinterest and sloth led his coach to slot him as backup goalie. His father forgot to register him the following year.
The athletic fields were on the way to his destination. His knowledge of his city was unimpeachable, as he had studied maps when he was first forced to navigate the New York underground as an undersized ten year old. On his laminated map of South Brooklyn there were three waterfalls: Binnen, Fallkill, and Ambergill. He was determined to see all three.
There would be a daredevil in a one piece swimsuit atop each of the falls, each of whom with his own barrel. The barrels were stocked with stunt necessities: granola bars, feather pillows, copies of pornographic magazines. Crowds of supporters dressed in turn-of-the-century garb would cheer these men’s collective daring. The daredevils would wave to the crowds pull their novelty sized goggles over their steely eyes. They would step into their barrels, clapping the lids on top of themselves in rhythm. Sealing themselves off from the world. And then? Someone would have to push the daredevils he supposed, but his fantasy petered out before any spectacular acts had been accomplished.
He decided to start out at the southern most point in the park’s waterway and work his way back up. He barreled past the Brooklyn Zoo. His mother frequently took him to the Zoo in Central Park, but he had never been to this one. His father had assured him that all the good animals were in Manhattan. He plowed through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He had no interest in flowers this afternoon. The May air was cold enough to suggest that summer might not come this year, and the chill propelled him towards his destination.
He moved west across the Terrace Bridge by the boathouse, up a bike path to the Binnen Falls’ viewing platform. He found himself alone. No crowd, no barrels. A small information plaque, bronze, had information on elevation (63 feet) and the history of the falls. They were not named for a Mr. Binnen, but instead after the Dutch word meaning within. He peered over the edge of the platform, to the river below. No one would take a barrel off these falls, as it would little qualify as a feat of daring.
He stared down to gauge the depth of the water below. He longed for a nautical breakdown of the park’s water, but figured that no cartographer would waste his time with Prospect Park. He could tell it was no more than a couple feet deep. As he stared down he let his eyes freeze on a rock sticking out of the spray. The falls had weathered the features of an elderly woman into the rocks.
No one noticed when he peeled off his beat up Adidas, middle school sweatshirt, white t-shirt, and Levi’s he had yet to grow into. No one noticed him walk slowly back from the railing, counting his steps as he had learned to do in his elementary school diving class. No one noticed when he sprinted forward, his bare feet pushing him high enough to clear the barrier. No one saw his dive towards the rocks below. When his wrists collided with the riverbed two feet below the surface of the water, his bones bent back, splintering. They wanted to burst through his skin. No one noticed as he stood upright and stepped onto that old lady’s chin.
Fifteen minutes would pass before a park ranger pulled him out of the water and called his mother. He did not hear the ranger chastise him. When his mother met him at the orthopedists, he would not stop grinning. His wrists would be set in matching black casts. His father was furious at his disobedience and worried this would be used against him by the boy’s mother. But that anger would dissipate soon after he noticed that his mayonnaise was no longer disappearing.