Bill Richardson as Freddie Mercury

I once walked the boardwalk at Asbury Park, New Jersey, in the middle of January, hands thrust into my black, greaser, three-quarter-length coat, sleet raking sidewise through a gunmetal sky. My breath lingered for a second in front of my face and then was whipped inland with the sleet, but not before providing a soft-focus lens for the hellish clown face at the end of the deserted boardwalk. It seemed 50 feet high, topped with the words FUN HOUSE, its nose a sun-bleached and wind-ravaged red, a color repeated by a once-crimson ring around its lips; ten gallons of faded blood paint smeared by winters of decadence and summers devouring children. It seemed I was the only soul for miles and the clown knew it.

I seemed alone again in the darkness this Friday night, though I could hear tjie screams of those restrained and confined as I was. It was pitch black, the only sounds: metal grinding on metal like the chewing of some vast automaton and the roaring of some hell-bound train. My spine was being wracked sideways, then back, my neck whipping brutally into sudden, unnatural movements that brought sharp pain. The screams of the others were hoarse, incomprehensible gibberish.

I sensed the presence once again of that long-ago winter clown — as I had come to think of him.

The first day of autumn. The first night. Friday night at Belmont Park. The garish chain lighting from the Big Dipper roller coaster and the chemical paste fluorescence from the Tilt-a-Whirl (or “Spin-and-Hurl” as the attendants and security guard call it) stain the troubled cloud cover overhead like a subliminal, visual preview of the Christmas horror to come. Indecisive winds whip off of the ocean, up from Mexico and down from the north carrying urban spells from Los Angeles streets, the curses of Baja curanderos and the ghosts of drowned men at sea. Rain spatters in fits, dampening the last-ditch pilgrims clutching at a die-hard memory of summer.

The roller coaster emerges from the track’s mouth of darkness and climbs toward the ash and neon sky. The clouds are coal and filthy cotton.

Pausing at the top, a brief reprieve, I turn in my seat at the very front car and see a half-dozen passengers behind me, their faces manic masks of glee. I spot a presence among them, a black man neither young nor old, gray in his beard, calm in his eyes. Next to him is a beautiful woman with a whimsical folded hat. She is smiling up into the sky. In the space of three heartbeats before the plunge, I know their presence is protective, shamanistic. Nonetheless, as we hurtle toward precipitous death someone screams, wWE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” And I know that it is me.

The ride lasts an eternity, its nauseous and wrenching disregard for human life signals the onset of days of Ben-Gay, nights of fitful sleep.

On the ground, walking past a smattering of families, necking teenagers, or roving bands of feral youth seeking mischief, I see two boys poring over the wares of a merchant selling tiny figurines to be strung together like beads. The boys are 10 and 9, they tell me, and are intent on the little skulls, soldiers, and animals on display. Joined by their mother, she helps them select items for what might be a talismanic necklace. Soon a man, weaving and reeking of beer, joins them. He puts his arm around the woman, announces himself as “her lover,” and is ignored by the woman and her sons. He begins to babble at me about his artwork, his writing of unpublished genius, his Web page, his this, his that. I move away and thank him, my tape recorder now full of his self-indulgent madness.

A girl named Rachel, 11, seated eating ice cream, says of the roller coaster, “It was kind of slow compared to other roller coasters I’ve been on.”

“You’ve been on a lot of them?”

“Not really, I’m not a big fan of roller coasters.”

Her eight-year-old sister, Sara, however, “...thought it was really cool. I was really scared at the top ’cause my dad said once it broke down at the top and it was stuck. So I was scared, but then it was fun.” I wanted to chuck Dad lightly on the shoulder and say, “Way to go, Pop. Keep ’em terrified.”

The merry-go-round is still and harshly illuminated, its lacquered panthers and tigers, horses and mutely snarling beasts seem somehow more animated than the shadows of children passing it by. It is a Ray Bradbury night.

The Dipper is letting out another retinue of passengers, shaken, stirred, some of them touched by something in the night at the crest of the ride. Young men with close-cropped hair roughhouse on their way down the ramp. I ask one of them about his experience and he fixes me with a dizzy, possessed look. “I wet my pants,” he said grinning proudly, then indicating his friend he added, “and I got a boner when he touched me.” He ran off into the parking lot cackling.

I see the couple I had noticed during our ride. I approach them. The man’s name is E.J. Wilson. He is a poet, a philosopher, and musician. The woman he is with is Renee Smith. “It wasn’t deep enough,” he says of the Dipper. “I used to cut school in junior high and go to the roller coaster on the boardwalk at San Francisco Beach. You used to go into this big fat lady laughin’. It was cool.” He was describing, possibly, the sister of the clown in Asbury Park. Renee says the last time she was on a roller coaster was with E.J. and her kids, two and a half years ago in Santa Cruz. She recalls it was “a traumatic experience.” E.J. adds that “there is one in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that is the ultimate roller coaster.”

I have a sudden image of E.J. traveling around the country riding roller coasters with Renee, keeping children safe like the catcher in the rye. “You’re a poet?” I ask. “Can you give me an example?”

“Okay, this is my philosophy of life: Do what you gotta do to make it happen / Say what you gotta say to make it right / Cuz when you feel good inside about what you say and do / Nobody can take that peace of mind from you / Don’t let the changes of life get you down / You see, it’s time for new beginnings, to let the old endings go / It’s time for you to see the real beauty life has to show / Always look up, you never look back / Cuz there’s a brighter day up ahead for you / when life serves you lemons, you turn it to lemonade / Ask for what you want / Take what you can get / You make out with what you have / but then you hold what you got / Above all, don’t let the changes of life get you down.

“That’s what I live by,” E.J. Wilson says. “That’s what God give me.” And then he and Renee walk off into the amusement park, unmindful of the Winter Clown...or the Fat Lady.