blurring_the_edges_18_big_wheel_generator birdmad Only but for the grace of your ever increasing bouts of self-medication do you even manage to cope, or manage even the pretense of being remotely social. Elena's return has caused you to distance yourself yet again from the usual crowd, your partners in crime. You are starting to lose patience with Zoe and her practiced manipulations. It is beginning to dawn on you how right Michelle was about her. Doesn't usually cause you to say no to her, though, does it, now? You make a couple of calls to a temp agency to keep a few jobs on the lookout for you. Strangely enough, as you are getting closer to the Holiday season, it strikes you as odd that there don't seem to be too terribly many jobs laying around for you to land in. Medicating the guilt away, you decide to take your mom's advice and go to the Fair with Elena. You are dressed in solid black, your recently aquired brand new leather biker jacket and your tight black jeans to go with the ensemble. The way you are currently built in spite of your status as a junkie makes you look both fairly wild and fairly formidable. When you go to pick up Elena, she is dressed in black as well. The snug black off-the-shoulder top, and tight black jeans of her own cling to her figure in a way that makes your imagination run wild the whole evening. Tonight, she looks like a dark-skinned version of Audrey Hepburn in those old black-and-white flicks they sometimes run on Sunday afternoons on TV. Dipping into your cash reserve, you decide that tonight, unemployed or not, you are going to spare as little expense as possible to entertain her. Bryan tried to argue that you are just trying to get her into bed, but you blew him off. Something about her is clearly different from the way things are with Zoe. You want Elena, to be sure, but you want to make it clear that there is more to your interest in her than the purely animal motivations that frequently see you out into the night. You stick to a light dinner, knowing that you both plan to use the fair as an excuse to indulge in a lot of the wildly unhealthful fare from the food vendors. You end up dropping just over $425 for the privilege of entertaining and spending time with her. You feel lucky just being around her and it manifests itself in the form of a number of stuffed animals won from the game booths, including one rather large specimen that looks like an only slightly scaled down version of a polar bear. Before the games however you had a moment of amused panic as your ride on something called the Super-Loop emptied about three dollars in loose change from an unsecured pocket in your coat. Elena lost another couple of bucks and an eyeliner pencil and all you could do as the two of you hung there upside down looking up at the machinery on the ground, was to laugh as the breeze carried it into the people waiting in line who scooped it up and pocketed it all as it came clattering down like shiny rain. You felt the tingle of a jones coming on at one point, but not badly enough that you would consider tearing yourself away from the night. She seems happy tonight, you seem happy tonight. This is good. It would be better, you think, if your mom was not in the spot she was in, or at the very least hadn't been booked in for an additional surgery this afternoon. You protested to her that there was no way you could feel like anything but a piece of crap if you went out tonight while she was going to be under the knife again, but again she insisted that there really wasn't anything you could do about it so you might as well just enjoy a night out with Elena. The argument went on until the nurse shooed you all out so she could prep your mother for surgery. It stunned you like a car-battery jolt to see your sisters agreeing with your mother's assessment, you had been so certain that they would see you in this as you've been seeing yourself. You stash the pile of animals in the car and go back, taking in the last bit of the night before the fairl closes riding the skyway chairs over from the entrance gate to the giant ferris wheel at the other side of the fairgrounds. It surprises you to find Elena clasping your hand as you both marvel at the view of both the city lights and the mad kaleidescope of colored lights of the fair surrounding you. You respond in kind, closing your fingers around hers, careful not to grip too tightly, but firmly enough to convey some measure of the contents of your heart back to her. From the ferris wheel, you deliberately sit across from each other, stealing glances into each others eyes. Everytime she smiles at you you feel that radiant warmth in your chest, shooting out at light-speed to your fingertips. Tell her. Tell her now, damn you. What the fuck are you waiting for? 030422 what's it to you? who go blather from