“Getting High at Great Wolf Lodge” by Kim Rapoport

Photo Credit: Matthew Brodeur

You didn’t want to waste a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge, but your son is friends with Tryntynn (pronounced “Trenton”) and he got the golden ticket to Tryntynn’s eighth birthday party at Great Wolf Lodge. You can’t stand Tryntyn or his parents, Madeighsyn (pronounced exactly as it sounds) and Chasyn, the local social media influencers nobody likes. When your neighbor accidentally hit Chasyn with her car during school drop-off last year, everyone in the PTA partied in the streets like their favorite team won the Super Bowl. Social climbing is required to achieve the American Dream, but, sadly, it rewards influencers like Madeighsyn and Chasyn.

You want out of your marriage. Your husband adores Madeighsyn and wishes you could be like her, hoping a friendship with her could bring you to “sun-swept poolside riches” like the Glass Animals song you adore. You saw them live once when you were young and wild and screamed the lyrics to The Other Side of Paradise until your throat bled from hoarseness. One of the bassists threw his pick at you and you caught it. That night, you were unaware you’d be living the story of The Other Side of Paradise, being compared to Madeighsyn at every turn – In the school drop-off lanes, at Whole Foods, at fucking Build-a-Bear.

You pack clothes to last from Friday night until Sunday afternoon or evening, the requisite toiletries, the slutty bikini from Nordstrom Rack that’s been faded with time and use, noise-cancelling Airpods, the latest self-help book from your favorite milquetoast neoliberal NPR host, and enough weed to open a walk-up dispensary. You hide the weed in a tampon box, your rolling papers in the cup of your bra, and the Bic lighters in a hollowed-out Big Sexy Hair conditioner bottle. You leave the munchies at home; you have your pick of munchies on the room service menu.

The three-hour sojourn to Great Wolf Lodge is uneventful. Halfway there, you pass an exit for an Indian Gaming casino, and you wish you could go there, shut yourself in your room, meet a Tinder hookup or three, and blow some money at baccarat. But no. You have to take your kid to Great Wolf Lodge to maintain some arbitrary social capital with your fellow moms. And to maintain that stupid social capital with Madeighsyn, who will be filming all weekend and post the events to her Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, and Truth Social pages, and you must sign her asinine NDAs. Why do you need to sign an NDA at Great Wolf Lodge? Is nothing sacred anymore?

You think about sneaking off and getting high tomorrow, the day of Tryntynn’s party. You change your mind at the welcome party Madeighsyn and Chasyn throw for the parents who arrive on that strange, cloudy Friday night. They fob all the kids onto an underpaid teenage babysitter who is pregnant with her own child. Madeighsyn sets up a ring light and a professional videography setup just to film parents milling about a humid pool, drinking tepid Coca-Cola, and eating pizza that tastes like an incoming bout of food poisoning. You don’t bother putting the slutty bikini on, too tired and fine with your average T-shirt and shorts from Gap. Your husband ogles Madeighsyn and makes a crass, out of pocket comment about how her body “offends liberals because it’s so beautiful”. You know your husband has two things he brought to Great Wolf Lodge in secret – A flask filled with Maker’s Mark and a hard drive filled with porn. You will file divorce papers after you pay off this trip to Great Wolf Lodge.

Chasyn is nowhere to be seen. You are relieved until Madeighsyn insists on taking a selfie with you, calling you “my favorite mama”. You hate being called “mama”; you have a life and hobbies beyond motherhood. Does anyone give a fuck about your photography or your beer league hockey team? Madeighsyn doesn’t give a fuck about your hobbies; her only mode is “mama”. It takes twenty frustrating, boring minutes for Madeighsyn to take her stupid selfie because it needed to be “just right”. You space out for most of the twenty minutes, thinking about what happened to Mark Brendanowicz on Parks and Rec. Why did he just disappear after Ben and Chris came to town? Did he die or disappear under mysterious circumstances?

As soon as Madeighsyn takes the selfie, you fake a migraine and go back to your room. You dig through your suitcase and grab your weed and your favorite Bic lighter, a plain, teal-colored doodad that could burn this place down. You take your bra off and pull your rolling paper out of the cup. You roll the weed into the rolling paper and lick it shut like a burrito. Before you flick the lighter on, you think about everything that’s wrong with your life that’s led you to this point – Madeighsyn and Chasyn. Your husband that would rather play video games and work a seasonal job installing and fixing below-ground pools instead of doing something meaningful with his life. The art of social climbing. How much needless social capital you had to pay for anything good or notable in your life. This entire trip to Great Wolf Lodge, which will greatly set your finances back and tighten the purse strings to the point of suffocation.

You hold the orange flames of the lighter up to your joint and set it ablaze. You put the joint to your lips and inhale. You don’t give a shit about the $250 fee Great Wolf Lodge will charge you if you smoke in their rooms.

Artist Statement

I saw a commercial for Great Wolf Lodge and wondered if any overwhelmed parent got high on the premises of Great Wolf Lodge. I love the undercurrent of dread and fear in this piece, like something bad and fucked-up is about to go down. May this life never find me.

Three songs that would describe Kim Rapoport are “Star Treatment “by Arctic Monkeys, “The Other Side of Paradise” by Glass Animals, and “Same Town, New Story” by Interpol. The first two songs would describe her life as a writer on the rise, and the third song is just a hell of a song. Catch her other work in Behemoth Biennial, The Anti-Misogyny Club, and Juice Press.