Bad Girls
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A dry whir, zooming and rolling and urgent, almost earthquaking. You know before looking that it is 3:38am because you are somehow always waking up exactly now, but never to this sound and this sound, by the way, is getting nothing but louder. Familiar, thrumming, you feel it in your chest and your hands and your lungs, your breathing getting quick, quick, quick, turning you on and up and screaming go, go now, and run—and so you do.
Down the stairs and out the front door and onto the front lawn in your underwear and t-shirt, dizzy glee filling your entire body as the first of them rolls past, a blur of striped pajamas and speed, the rest of the women not far behind, silent but for the hard constant of rubber on asphalt. You run alongside them, barefoot across night-wet grass to the long formica rental counter at the edge of your yard. A disaffected teen—leaning, bored—hands you a pair of size 8 roller skates in a cloud of sanitizer spray.
Catching up quickly, you pass houses in a suburb you don’t live in but somehow still know like the back of your hand, women flinging open front doors and joining the throng at nearly every address, your numbers approaching legion. Strobing pools of street lights illuminate nighties and undies and shorts sets, baby monitors clipped to sports bras and hastily thrown-on tees, a late-summer sheen forming on thighs and bellies and breasts, muscle and cellulite taut and jiggling and busting loose and hot-hot-hot. Collectively, you begin to sweep out towards the supermarket.
The automatic door dings open, flickering fluorescent lights making each of you more beautiful, more feral, and now that the office has been commandeered Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” is turned up so loud it almost drowns out your wheels. You're such a naughty bad girl, beep beep as you tear en masse through the aisles, cereal and cake mix flying so it looks like Holi but smells like Betty Crocker, a Funfetti-strewn cacophony of volcanic f-cking release. Choreography breaks out, one your personal sense of rhythm would normally never allow but holy sh-t you’re doing it, you’re all doing it, every single one of you is shaking your ass, no ass left behind, toot toot, heyyyy, beep beep. You notice the night manager, glasses askew, wrapped head to toe in the spiral cord of the intercom walkie, nevertheless calling for clean up on Aisle Everywhere, oh you’re bad, bad girls. His nametag reads “Nerman” which you feel must be a typo, but now is not the time to ask as you rejoin the parade on the way out the door.
"Rainbow in the Dark" screams from a speaker tower in the parking lot, thick tire streaks and smoke clouds form around the perimeter as a handful of your crew rip donuts in wood-paneled station wagons, skate wheels slipping precariously between gas and brake. The store’s supply of Bics and Aqua Net arcs flames overhead as the speed-skate begins, fists are pumping and there's talk of going to kick Steve's ass but that gets abandoned pretty quickly; no one’s actually in the mood for minor violence, which works out as Steve was more of a concept than anything else and besides, you’re all suddenly very aware that the movie is about to start. Wagons are left abandoned and idling, discarded aerosol cans are pinging, rolling, and Nerman is waving goodbye as you once again take to the streets.
The ancient light-up marquee advertises just one film as you roll in to lay waste to the snack bar, grabbing Diet Cokes as big as your torsos, monster-truck popcorns, KitKats and hot dogs and Skittles. Legs of every shape and size and vein and scar are flung over seats, wheels still whirring, scream-laughter echoing from the ceiling. The applause when Edna Turnblad emerges from the Eldorado Beauty Academy with a fresh beehive is so loud that she almost blushes but would never, instead accepting the multitude of hands held towards the screen, stepping out to join the adulating mob. Her ample behind is hoisted into the air and onto a collective set of shoulders, the official Divine-bearers requiring a bit of a push to make it up the incline of the movie theater aisle and out onto the street where Nerman is idling the parade float—a giant paper-mache roller skate-slash-chaise, pink and red and white, sparklers shooting and crackling stardust, fancy, fancy—onto which you deposit the new Grand Marshal of the Mayhem Parade.
You're not entirely sure what an arabesque is, but you're pretty sure those are happening as silence once again takes over, skate wheels lowered to a whisper to better allow for Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” to float out into the night air, an occasional coo from a baby monitor complementing the sensory landscape of a slow-skate so soothing that you all of a sudden realize how tired you are, how tired you all are, and the horde starts to winnow as women hand in skates at their respective rental counters, eye-rolling teens finally able to close up shop, Nerman slowing slightly before each front door to make sure everyone gets in safely. You are the last one to peel off. Divine mouths good night as you brush the last of the cake mix from your hair, a little sore but entirely satisfied, sleep rolling in mere moments before the sun considers tingeing the sky with its creamsicle technicolor dreamcoat.
“Bad Girls” emailed out 8.4.2026 with newsletter-exclusive extras. Subscribe for free here.