Big Butler Fair Part 2: Kirk vs Andrew + awkward soup slurping
[This may have been written by someone drunk off wine.]
Alisha and I had just bought ourselves awesome rings (she got one that sparkled so she could pretend it was made from Edward’s vampiric flesh) when a husky man clad in the native threads of Holland summoned us over to his booth.
“Have you ever heard of poffertjes?” he asked, his ruddy cheeks giving him the sort of farm boy naivete that makes me immediately want to step up to the challenge of behind-the-silo corruption.
I looked at Alisha, thinking that it might be some weird Bible collectors cards from her home planet of Arkansas, but she looked just as blank as I look 389 days of the year.
“They’re little Dutch pancakes,” he went on to explain, gesticulating to the HOT GRILL and Dutch-chapeau’d broad behind him, who was chatting on a cell phone, a decidedly non-Dutch thing to do, in my opinion. But then he noticed Alisha’s hate/love tattoo and broke character, telling us of his brother’s obscene chest-piece and announcing several times that he had just relocated to Philly from Tucson.
“So, do you want to try some of these?” he asked hungrily. “We’re on a mission to make people aware of these delicacies!”
I did, really. I wanted to try at least fifty of them. There was little else I wanted to stuff down my gullet that day, except maybe ice cream and elephant ears and tornado chips and grape leaves and pizza and fried mushrooms and deep-fried Oreos and 34 heaping ladles of cheese sauce. But I just wasn’t feeling it right then, and I was also a little turned off that he hadn’t offered us a sample.
“I’ll tell you what,” I propositioned, because everything comes down to a proposition with me. “We’ll be back for some of those, and you have to let me take your picture.”
He jovially agreed and Alisha and I walked away, straight into the arms of the BEST SOUP SLINGER in the WORLD. He was from Long Island, which I never knew was known for their lobster bisque and dizzying array of chowder, but why would a banner at a county fair of all places lie to me? Everything at the fair is built on TRUTH, right down to the safety certificates of the rides and the inhabitants of the freak show tent.
This guy knew how to play the game and immediately offered us samples.
I chose a plastic thimble full of lobster bisque and awkwardly tongued it while he watched me with slobbering anticipation.
“OOOOH! LOOK AT HER FACE! THIS GIRL IS LOVING IT!” he shouted to the younger guy toiling around behind the row of soup pots. People passing by had slowed their pace to see if I was female-ejaculating.
That wasn’t awkward at all. It felt like the first time I masturbated in front of your WoW guild back in 2004.
I assume the public consumption of hot soup from Tinkerbell’s Diva Cup gets just as easy after time.
Alisha opted for the cajun corn chowder.
“OK now that one is spicy, just so you know,” the maniacal soup slinger warned. “It’s because it’s CAJUN.”
Here is a fun fact about Alisha! She doesn’t like being told things she already knows!
“Yeah, I got that,” she said dryly.
He really wanted to fill our bellies with an entire bowl of the shit, but it was like, NINETY DEGREES that day. Yes, let me drink down some steaming hot chowder right before I go on the Claw, you mother fucker. I told him we would be back. And we were at one point! Except we all but walked sideways so he wouldn’t recognize us.
Leaving the soup chamber, we continued our prowl along Clogged Artery Alley.
“I think we Imprinted,” I blurted.
“Huh?” Alisha asked, with a coating of surprise and impatience, which she has perfected through years of dealing with me.
“Andrew,” I sighed dreamily, before adding, “The Dutch pancake guy.” You know, in case her mind hadn’t been infected with his exotic Dutchness like mine had.
“SHUT UP,” she demanded.
***
A few minutes later, we found ourselves strapped into the Fireball, a mini rollercoaster that does nothing but cycle across a loop relentlessly to the tune of popping bolts and squealing metal.
“Am I going to die?” I asked the carnie.
He laughed. “No, you won’t die. Not yet anyway. But you probably only got another 40 years…”
I considered this; dying at 70 didn’t seem too bad.
“…you’ll live to be 60,” he continued, laughing harder at his brilliance.
HE ONLY THOUGHT I WAS 20, YOU GUYS!
“I like you!” I blurted, and then the ride started and I screamed bloody murder and lobster bisque in Alisha’s face the entire time.
After the ride, he teased us some more and I decided he was the best carnie ever, which was why I called him over a little bit later and shouted, “CAN I TAKE YOUR PICTURE?” because I can’t ever just ask things in a normal tone. Alisha hung back, wanting no part of this.
“What’s your name, anyway?” he asked. “I’m Kirk.”
I made a point of waving in Alisha’s direction and telling him her name too, but unless “Alisha” was my bra size, I don’t think he much cared.
We chatted for a few more seconds, and then I pranced back over to Alisha.
“I snagged myself a SUPERVISOR,” I bragged.
“Oh, yay,” Alisha patronized.
Later, we were on this really awkward hang-glider ride which requires you to board it by laying on your stomach and scooting up until this plastic wedge separates your legs. It was located right next to the Fireball ride.
So we’re just hanging there on our stomachs, like we’re ready to be mounted, when Kirk turns around and spots us. “Hey!” he shouted. “Come ride this again!”
Alisha pointed out that I was giving him a prime boob shot with the way I was squashed down on my stomach. “And he’s totally checking that out too,” she mumbled.
Later still, we ran into him when he was manning another ride, and we totally held up the line as he came down to the gate to chide me some more.
“And again, he was totally looking at your boobs,” Alisha told me, and I think she was jealous because hello, she thought I wore that shirt for her!
I remembered Andrew and started to feel guilty. Surely, since we’d Imprinted, my flirtations with Kirk must have been stabbing his soul with plastic carnival cutlery. I decided it was time to go back for those fucking pancake things.
***
“WE’RE HERE!” I announced, after we found our way back across the herds of prison-tattooed wife beaters and stench of diesel. ” I told you we would be back!” I said proudly to Andrew.
Before I handed over any money, I made sure he and Henrika made good on their promise of a photographical keepsake.
(Have I mentioned yet that I was stuck with the hideous point-and-shoot? Fuck that camera with the Devil’s dick.)
While Hendrika griddled up my pancakes, Andrew talked to us about how the wind kept blowing out the flame under the grill! And that poffertjes date all the way back to the 1400s! And they’re traditionally served with powdered sugar and either grenadine, amaretto, or cassis! And he tried to teach us how to say poffertjes but I forgot before the last syllable had a chance to gyrate off his tongue because I couldn’t stop staring dreamily at him and wondering when he was going to take me behind that piping hot griddle and impregnate me with his Tucson lineage.
Then these fucking fat fair queens came clomping over in their stupid country dresses and tiaras (no really, they were the official fair queens) and Andrew turned his attention on them so I pretended to be wildly interested in Hendrika’s precise placement of pancakes atop the river of cassis. (Andrew said that was the best choice. DEEP SIGH.)
I handed Hendrika the money and walked away with Alisha and my Dutch fuckcakes. “I’m trying to play it coy,” I explained as we turned a corner.
“Yeah, I noticed,” she said sarcastically.
I can’t believe I know how to spell “poffertjes.”
“They’re really hot, you might want to —-” Alisha started to warn. “Or you could just shove the whole thing in your mouth,” she said sardonically, as I winced in open-mouthed agony.
They were good, those little pancakes! Real doughy and soft in the middle, like I imagine Andrew is post-coitus. I’d totally make him keep those wooden shoes on, by the way.
“I feel like Bella,” I said later. “Are you Team Kirk or Team Andrew?” I asked Alisha.
She was pretty much OVER IT by that point.
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