A Return to the Fair
Our return trip to the fair was to see the larger demolition derby and to revisit the things we most enjoyed. We arrived to find the animals were all done and gone. Rain soaked the area and the start time was delayed an hour and a half. We wandered a bit and played quarters, found J some fair food. We saw my ex and his band prepping on the fair stage and waved, then went to claim a seat in the rapidly filling arena.
Fair food-- def not vegan
It was fun, but not. The races weren’t as exciting as I remember them to be. The crashes less vivid when the cars are made of plastic parts. There were still some older models in competition, but there seemed to be little danger or adventure to it.
The crowd was fun for people watching– at first. We live among freaks. I have to say it. There were shapes and sizes of people I didn’t recognize and I live here. I love an interesting person, prefer unusual forms of beauty to the accepted model any day, but my god. It isn’t that they aren’t nice looking; they are sort of horrible as humans.
Look! It's Britney! Not this woman, the one over there in blue and white who looks like she's wearing a cat on her head.
Nearly everyone had some version of a misbehaving child attached to their body. The children were all demanding, rude, and screaming or kicking the seats. One spent the entire series walking up my back, lifting my shirt, and sitting on me.
People hollered and talked until the action started and then, en masse, got up to go get food. WHY WHEN THE RACE STARTS AND NOT DURING THE TWO HOURS OF NOTHING HAPPENING?!?! WHY!?! They waded past with great heaping armloads of food. Over and over. Often they would stand directly in front of me or the camera or want to climb the bleachers right beside us. They seemed oblivious to the reason for the gathering- the derby- often standing three feet from crashing cars to check their cell phones.
I live in a poor community and these people were not wealthy. How can they afford these phones?? Also, wtf is that important?? Who is trying to reach them that they must be in constant contact?
After the food and phone calls, the smoking began. It seemed as if no one around us could sit for more than two minutes without shoving something in their mouth or having something in their hands to fiddle with. Children were ignored, left to torture me, hang off of the safety fence, or stand and purposefully block the flow of pedestrian traffic on the walkway in front of the bleachers.
Pregnant girls with their bellies escaping their clothing, these two emo girls with green florescent tape who crossed in front of us about two hundred times over a three hour period, filthy dirty guys in torn shirts, women with gargantuan breasts, fat kids, mouthy brats, a couple of cowboys, a soldier or two in uniform, and a million guys with the same face, haircut, and ballcap.
See, I didn't plan this. Count the hats and haircuts in one shot!
Oh, yes, I cannot leave out the percentage who wore smartassed t-shirts with witty slogans, usually about how great they are and how fortunate you are to be reading their shirt. Several of these featured animals with large male genitalia. One kid went all out and wore a naked woman over the Confederate flag with marijuana leaves barely covering her choicest bits.
I’m sorry, but being this close to this many people, I begin to focus my thoughts again on how overcrowded the world is and how much in need we are of a hot, firey virus to run amok and take out a chunk, carve a wide swath. Maybe an enormous natural disaster to sweep a few into a pit or the ocean. There are too many people and I don’t think most of them deserve to be here.
Which isn’t to say I believe I deserve to be either, but at least I’m doing what I can to justify my existence. I hope, if I can be said to pray at all, I pray, there is no One to which we all return. Because I don’t want to be associated with these people. Not only them, but a long list which includes a majority of the others currently alive. There had better be a path which meanders off through the weeds and scrub of the afterlife and the infinite, because I am not going to willfully rejoin this pointless, quivering mass.
Then we went out to the midway to play the quarters game, one way I get to look at quirks in my behavior. I like to gamble. In very small increments. I lost at quarters this time. But I was hassled by the crowd of scary looking men, the drunk guy there with his kid- the one whose whiskey breath I could smell from several feet away, and the annoying urchins looking to dash in and steal from other players.
The bunnies were caged and the carnie wasn’t even bothering to talk people into more rings that night. Somehow, that says a lot, right there.
Is it just me, or is this the dirtiest thing you've ever seen?
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