I Hate Carnies

I had a rough night last night.

I've been in a sort of reflective state, trying to figure out how to survive this bout of unemployment - trying to figure out whether it's worth it or not to pursue more education to get where I want to go in life, trying to figure everything out, and feeling that, in a lot of ways, I am more confused now than before I started finding answers to all of my questions.

Last night started off weird. My stomach already felt a little uneasy, and I'm not sure why. I think I ate some bad ham. I don't even like ham. Between the bad ham and this disgusting "Sleepy Hollow" weather where little spurts of rain kept spitting out of the charcoal sky, I notice that one of my ex's movies was on TV. Maybe one of the worst movies of all time, and it just happens to be on TV, broadcasting when I'm already feeling melancholy and mildly ill because of that bad ham. That's what sucks about dating people who are in "the business" who are marginally successful. You can't ever really get away from them. Someone will write a song or star in TV show or in a movie and then they just pop up unexpectedly when you least want to be reminded of them. I kept hoping that his scenes wouldn't come up. I didn't want to see his stupid arrogant face. I got that really mad feeling like I wanted to punch my fist through something sheet rock. But instead, I just changed the channel.

So after being reminded of the worst human I've ever met, I headed off to the Delta Fair. The fair is always sort of a big kick off to fall. I haven't been in a few years. Probably not since college. The fair always smells delicious, like funnel cake and farm animals and pronto pups. I didn't smell all of that homey deliciousness, though. I could only remember the bad ham and think that the fair smelled like busted ass.

We started to ride rides. What was I thinking? I've watched all of these documentaries about county fairs and how the people who run them will hire hobos and pedophiles off the streets to run all of the rides and to be weight guessers and all of that, so the fair has sort of an evil flavor in my mind.

Then I got really sick.

Really, really sick.

It's like I had some sort of inner ear thing going on, where I couldn't really see straight, and I kept feeling like I was going to fall down.

So, my boyfriend bought me a Sprite, and I turned into the "Purse Holder" while everyone else road rides, and I felt a little better.

As the night went on, I had fun, once my stomach left my brain and settled back into its normal position.

We went to the petting zoo and I pet a bunch of goats and a big old water buffalo and some sheep. I love the petting zoo. Animals are hilarious. I also snuck away and saw a whole bunch of pigs spooning with each other in the pig pen, snoring away, happy as could be. That was fun.

Then something happened that made me feel incredibly guilty.

Maybe I should preface this by saying that I LOVE FREAK SHOWS. I love them. I used to frequent the Freak Show on Venice Beach, even though I knew everything in it was fake and dumb, and I'd still spend five bucks to see the two-headed turtle and the pig with the brain on top of its head.

So there was this sign that said, "Smallest lady in the world!" and you could pay a dollar to go see her.

For some reason, I thought this would be one of those fake things, like when the sign says "SPIDER LADY!" and you go behind the curtain and there's a lady with her head stuck through a hole in a plywood plank with a bunch of fake hairy spider legs painted on it, and it's really dumb, but funny, too.

Well. I paid my dollar.

And there was this lady, this REAL lady, sitting on this tiny little sofa, and she sat there with the saddest look on her face, and I felt like I'd just walked into a strip club, like I'd just thrown a dollar at a person just to make her my entertainment.

I felt so guilty.

Her name was Linda. She was from Haiti.

I felt so guilty that she was a real person and I just paid ONE DOLLAR to stare at her.

Ugh.

Makes me feel sick just thinking about how guilty I still feel.

Maybe it's all those papers you have to write about social justice in graduate school, or how you study human rights, or how I went to the Civil Rights Museum the other day, and it has nothing to do with politics or agendas or right wing this or left wing that, it just has to do with what's right and wrong, and I felt so wrong.

So. Maybe you could think of it as great that she has a job or something. But I didn't think of it like that because her face was so sad.

After I felt like a dirty cheap freak show pimp, we rode on one last ride, but the lights kept going out, and my anxiety sky rocketed, and I just imagined myself being thrown from the carnie pedophile assembled "Fire Ball" ride and my body just combusting in mid air, and all of my limp body parts just sort of scattering all over Cordova into suburban front yards.

So the carnies started to stop the ride, and start it, and stop it, and start it. And by about the 5th time that we were up in the air, my ovaries were in my throat, and I felt so incredibly sick that I was positive I'd reenact "Squints" in "The Sandlot," puking all over the place.

By the time we finally were released from Carnie Purgatory, all of the carnies were laughing and mocking us, and my whole body felt clammy and cold and hot all at once, and I wobbled to solid ground, and I felt like I had the worst hangover of my life. One of those heinous tequila hangovers, or a hangover after you haven't eaten in a couple of days and you've just been on some crazy binge drinking shot fest where your brain feels like it's hemorrhaging and you're just begging God to help you wake up the next day.

I was riding in my boyfriend's car on the way back to his house with my eyes closed and the cold air on full blast in my face and I was death gripping the sides of my seat. I kept putting my finger on the window button. My stomach was in my thyroid.

By the time we got back to his house, I walked slowly to his couch and stiffly laid on it. I tried so hard not to move. He got me another Sprite. Then he came over and pulled my shoes off and put a pillow under my head, which felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. And then, the worst part of the whole night happened.

I started to cry.

I'm a huge cry baby when I feel bad.

I was so humiliated. I think the whole day just took a dump on me at once. My bad ham and my stupid ex's movie and the pervert carnies with Meth Mouth and the one-dollar wee lady and the smell of pigs and my swimming head and my inner ear and desperate craving for Dramamine and the pure humiliation of crying over feeling sick. It was just too much.

So. I'm not trying to say that the fair sucks. And when I think back on the fair a long time from now, hopefully I'll think back on all of those cute little pigs sleeping side by side like little jelly beans, and I'll think about hanging out with my sister's friends and how nice they were, or I'll think back on how sweet it was for my boyfriend to buy me Sprites and take my shoes off...But right now, all I can think of is that I hate carnies, and just the thought of last night makes me feel like total hell.