“Chance Encounters
 of the
Close Kind”

© 2010 by Anel Viz. All rights reserved.

 

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 10.  Win Fall

You could hardly call it winning, since I’d spent more than five times the value of her prize on the thirty tennis balls I had to throw – ten sets of three at five dollars a set – to win it for my date.  I’d have given up after the first set if she hadn’t nagged.  She never came back from a fun fair without at least one stuffed animal, she insisted.

“I hope you’re pleased,” I told her, “because there’s not much money left for dinner.”

She was.  “That doesn’t matter.  You should eat hot dogs at a fair.”

I was pleased too, in spite of having blown fifty bucks on a pocket-sized teddy bear that would only disappear in the menagerie of stuffed animals I imagined decorating her bed in a frilly, pink room I’d never seen and never would.  I was pleased that I’d managed to dunk the blond, muscled jock who sat fully clothed on the platform watching me the whole time with a smirk on his face which I interpreted as “This guy is hopeless.”  I appreciated the applause too.

“So which one d’ya want?  I can’t keep waiting all day,” the fat man in a dirty tee-shirt with three days’ growth of whiskers on his face called out from the booth, and Barbie ran off to check out the display.  I knew she would take forever.

The second she left I heard a voice behind me say, “You surprised me.  Never thought you’d do it.  You throw like a girl.”

I turned and saw “Ken” in the water, leaning his forearms on the edge of the tank beside me.

“It worked, didn’t it?  How many guys dunk you in a day?”

“Not many, sometimes none, and those that do do it in first three or four throws.  The girls are better at it.”

“See?  I was right to throw like a girl.”

He laughed.  “Yeah, sure.  Give me a hand up, will ya?”

I helped pull him out.  He stood beside me dripping and shivering.  “I gotta get outta these things before I freeze.”

“To do it all over again?”

“Nah, I probably won’t fall in again today, and I get half an hour to dry off and change before I have to go back.  The ducks keep Marty busy enough.”

The fat man had a double concession, “Duck ’n’ Ducks”, the latter moving in a line across the back of the booth to dodge getting shot, the former being my wet friend Ken.

“Hey, Marty,” he called out, “let her have a big one, will ya?  Her date’s a friend o’ mine.”

I didn’t know him from Adam, but Barbie was impressed.  “You know him, Terry?  Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I’m no good at this, and I was afraid you’d think I kept missing on purpose”.  Not a very believable excuse, but the best I could think of.

“You wait here while I get cleaned up and I’ll buy you both an ice cream,” Ken said.  “My prize for you.  C’mon, Ter.”  He grabbed my elbow and nodded in the direction of the trailer.

“So you’re name is Terry, is it?” he whispered as we walked toward it.  “I’m Ken.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Why should I be kidding?”

“Because I’ve been thinking of you as a Ken, because my date’s called Barbie.”

“Well, I hope you think Ken’s cuter.”

“Which Ken?  And cuter than who?”

He winked at me.  “Barbie won’t choose that quickly now that she’s getting a big one.  It’ll give us time for big one of our own.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.  “What’s the matter?” he asked.  “I’m right, aren’t I?  Oh shit, don’t tell me I sized you up wrong.”

“Well, no,” I stammered, “you didn’t.  I’m just surprised you could tell.  Was it because I throw like a girl?”

“You don’t throw like a girl, stupid.  That was just a pick-up line.  I knew by the way you looked at me and didn’t look at her.  You know, if you looked at the target instead of me you’d have dropped me sooner.  I was hoping you would.  You saw me glaring at you?  That was to keep you from giving up.”

“So the guys look at you, and the girls look at the target.”

“I’d like to think so, but no.  Most of them have their eye on their dates because they’re busy showing off.”

“And you look at them.”  We were now inside the trailer.

“The young ones.  Always.  It’s the only good thing about this job.  The ones I think are gay get me hard, and I get a laugh out of the straights who don’t concentrate on what they’re doing and come out looking like spastics.”

“Is that what you thought I looked like?”

“No, honey, you looked determined, and that made me hard.  It went down when I hit the water, but it’s back now.  See?”

I glanced down at his bulge.  I was hard too.

“C’mon,” he said, “quit stalling.  You helped me out of the tank; now help me out of my wet clothes.  Undo my belt.  We got stuff to do.”

 

Posted: 02/12/10