After work, I returned to the shack and the blues boys were still playing, only this time, they were shut up in a room next to where they were playing before, and people who wanted to hear their set had to gather outside the door to listen. I asked why they were plaing inside the small room, and one of the WoW girls said it was because the lead singer had stagefright. I found this very endearing since I get stagefright at rock shows too. After the set, the boys emerged from the room and we all applauded, then the crowd dispersed and the WoW girls left to cook dinner. I was going to join them but the hot lead singer came over to me and asked me to stay. I had never spoken to him before, but the first words out of his mouth were “I love you and I want to marry you.” I blushed and giggled. He pulled me towards him and deeply inhaled the scent of my neck. He said I smelled good, and I said he smelled good too. There in the middle of the room, he pulled me down onto the floor and started alternately hugging me and smelling me. In a flash, I remembered LCF, and knew I shouldn’t be on the floor, letting this boy hug and smell me. I looked over his shoulder through the window and started laughing. He jumped off me and asked if I was laughing at him. I said I wasn’t and pointed out the window. Through the window, we could see two tilt-a-whirls in the amusement park going simultaneously. In one, a bunch of pink-cheeked fat families were spinning around and screaming together. In the other, the same thing was going on, except everyone on the ride was dressed in a big fluffy panda costume. It was so funny I couldn’t stop laughing, and the singer took this as a sign I didn’t want to make out, which I actually didn’t because of LCF, so he took off.
I walked outside and saw a little baby girl toddling by on the dirt path in front of our hut. She was wearing only a diaper, and I was afraid she would step on something sharp, so I picked her up. When I first picked her up I was aware of having seen her with her mom before, and felt confident I would recognize her mom if I saw her so I could give the baby back, but I didn’t see anyone around, and the more I walked around, the less sure I was that I had actually seen this baby’s mother at all. The baby was pink and warm and soft, and smelled better than anything I’ve ever smelled in my life. I kept cuddling her closer, and smelling her little neck, just like the singer had been doing to me, only that was sorta sexual and this was clearly not. At first when I passed people, I would ask if they knew who the girl’s mom was, but they would always shake their heads no. I stopped at a tree stump, because sitting on the tree stump was an elaborate black box with a crystal pyramid mounted on top of it. The bottom of the box said “Vinnie’s Tampon Case” on it, and inside the pyramid were a few tampons made out of black velvet, some silver ball bearings, and some highly polished black stones. When I shook he case, eveything rolled around and sometimes an object would settle into a little circular groove cut out of the floor of the box, like in those cardboard pinball games I would sometimes get as a kid. I wondered if the case belonged to the baby’s mom, because the baby seemed to recognize it, but when she saw it, she grabbed on to me tighter and turned her head away from the box like it frightened her. I held her tighter too, smelled her some more, and walked away from the box towards the smell of food.
I carried the baby over to the park’s concession area where a guy who looked like Alec Baldwin was grilling buffalo wings. The smell was so spicy it made my eyes water, and I was about to walk away when the guy called out, “Hey! Do you know Edward Norton?” I said I didn’t know him personally, but I really liked Fight Club. The guy shouted to me over the sound of sizzling chicken that Edward was the love of his life, and sex with Edward was the best sex he ever had. Another guy who was waiting for chicken heard this, and shouted that the guy cooking was full of shit because everyone knew Edward Norton wasn’t gay. A red-haired lady who was also working the buffalo wing stand chimed in that she had also had sex with Edward Norton, and that it was also the best sex she had ever had. I pulled the baby closer and covered her head with my hands, because I didn’t want the spice to burn her eyes and I wasn’t sure she should be hearing this conversation. I told the skeptical guy waiting that I didn’t know Edward Norton at all, but if he had slept with both the guy and the lady working the buffalo wing stand that he might just be bi or experimental or whatever. The skeptical guy walked away, disgusted, without any chicken, and I woke up holding my pillow like it was a baby.
