I had this nightmare last night that left me in a cold sweat. It was the next County Fair, and I was to sell sponges, but not mops. (As I am to sell sponges, but not mops.) The guy with the mops was giving away a free sponge with every mop–just like they do in Canada–and I couldn’t even pay for my hotel accomodation.

The Nail Jazz booth was always happening during the last fair. Happening!! It’d be eleven thirty and the whole place would be empty except for the female purses opening in front of the three to five girls who had just drawn a dot flower in nail polish on an unsuspecting forefinger. And the smiles on their faces!!

No one comes to the fair looking for sponges. But everyone wants a set of Nail Jazz!!

When I started randomly bitching about the sponges to the Nail Jazz manager and she offered me a job, I figured it was fate. She had bought some sponges from me earlier that week.

Little did I know that the Solano County Fair, for which the Nail Jazz booth was destined, was on that infamous list titled “Worst Fairs in the Country.”

And so I spent my brief interleave between fairs day dreaming. I imagined all the smiles I would bring to little girls and widows and every woman in between by offering them the chance to draw little polish flowers* on their nails in the comfort of their own home. And even if they didn’t buy a set–how wonderful that they have a nail polish flower to remember us by!

The sponges wouldn’t let me sleep, however; they invaded my dreams in apparent retribution for the upcoming betrayal–or, perhaps, in warning. But heed no warning did I! I faithfully attended the first weekend of the Solano County Fair. I made an even hundred dollars, a modest wage. It works out to about $3.33 an hour–tax free! I’m working for Canadians. One of the only perks.

Everyone in Solano County gets their nails done. Either that or they just got their fake nails taken off and they’re ashamed of their nails. Either way, no one actually wants a nail polish flower demo, let alone a set of nail polish pens. Except for those little brats in the next booth over. They’re always hanging around and I’ll go and give them a happy face right when some potential money walks by!! Bollucks.

It turns out that the little dotted polish flower is not that easy. It’s a circle of five dots, but sometimes six, and sometimes two combine so there’s four. Those are some sad looking flowers, and a lady definitely doesn’t buy a set if she’s looking at a lopsided flower.

Last year the Solano County Fair was plagued by car bombings and shootings. What a riot!

Or a rot. Three vendors had packed up and left by the fifth day. No one’s making any money this year, either.

It has been a hard lesson. But I needed to learn first hand just how precarious this business is. My next gig should be better. I’m kinda nervous, though. I’m supposed to sell blue sponges. Blue sponges! The bright side: they won’t look like cheese.

*And other designs! Your imagination is the limit!

Every time I awake during the night I sit up and look around for people to ask if they’d decided whether to get a set of sponges.

I am thankful I can sleep without the image of some woman torn apart by the Underground on my eyelids. The future certainly uncertain; I realize we have no idea the extent of the pain we individually shall incur.

Is that it’s really hard to hate them when they’re actually nice people. It turns out with that Super Chamois guy is actually a nice guy.

I was telling him today about how tired I was of people telling me my sponges look like cheese. He told me this story today about how one Christmas he was selling some sort of snack-maker at the mall. The demo involved making a little snack out of raw pie dough and a mixture of moldy potatoes and Tang. Apparently the Tang looked really cheesy, and you couldn’t tell the potatoes were moldy. He would make piles of these little treat things as the day went on and as the pile grew, kids became more and more likely to just run up and take a bite. It turns out that not only were the snack things not tasty, but that the whole situation turned out to be really bad for business.

So yesterday this couple comes up to me and says, “The Super Chamois Guy wants to go on a date with you!”

I can’t really process this; I’m in the middle of the beginning of my demo, and I have a good four or five onlookers. I keep going with the demo.

By the end, I know what to say. “The Super Chamois Guy is married!” I protest. Besides being at least forty-five. Forty’s my limit.

The husband looks shocked. “You know him?!”

Duh. “Yeah. We were just having a conversation about camping in Ventura.”

That shut them up for a good eight or nine hours. Then they were back. They had to pick up a lamp from the vendor across the way.

“You really should go on a date with the Super Chamois Guy. You’d have so much to talk about!”

“Like what?”

“Like what?! Like absorption!” He suggested how one such conversation might go. “Have you tried apple juice? Yeah, I’ve tried apple juice!”

They really thought that was funny. I guess I do too, in retrospect. What isn’t funny is that women actually wear those bras with plastic straps. Especially with tube tops.

I’ve begun having paranoid delusions about meeting the people I sell sponges to later in life.

In my fantasies, they’re always wielding some sort of weapon. Most often it’s a rock hard Super Sponge.

“You didn’t tell me they dried rock hard!” they yell as they deal a great quantity of blunt force trauma to my poor exhausted head. This is in sixteen years, and the sponge business is my livelihood. This isn’t the first time this has happened.

You see, it turns out, I just might not be very good at selling sponges. I know, it’s hard to believe. So, from the ripe old age of twenty-three, I made it my only goal in life to sell five thousand dollars worth in one day. I’ve spent every day since trying, and the money really isn’t bad. My Carpal Tunnel is though.

But I’m only thirty-nine now, and pregnant. I’m sure my head can take it.

In other paranoid fantasies, they’re just mad cause they never used the sponges, and it was the waste of twenty-one big ones. Not much, I know. But I bet it matters to some people. I really don’t understand why half the people actually shell out the money.

I really wish I weren’t obsessed with the ethics of my current venture. Tis a hell of a lot of baggage for one just trying to make a buck.