MONKEYS MUCKING IN THE MUD

I have just returned from what was, decidedly, the worst vacation I have ever had the misfortune to experience.

Every year, my partner and I attend two back to back outdoor festivals. Both of us teach multiple workshops, which we very much enjoy, and which also ensure our free entry to said festivals. Usually, this is a fun event…obviously, or we wouldn’t attend every year. Both of us have a great time presenting workshops, having the opportunity to discuss things which are of great interest to us, and we meet up with friends who live all over the country and who come together at these festivals.

This year, it sucked.

First of all, for the first time, my partner and I were vending. Since there are LOTS of people at these festivals (especially the second one), there is also a lot of opportunity to sell any number of items. What I had forgotten is that I HATE RETAIL, which is more or less what vending is. For several years, I worked in a small, independent health food store, and though I loved the work, the hours, and the relative privacy (I had no co-workers and was alone all day), I had forgotten the one thing about it that I didn’t like – customers. I am more or less a Hermit Monkey, and though I have impeccable and sometimes internally oppressive social skills, it is often all that I can do to keep from yelling “Either buy something or get the f**k out.” It is not generally considered a good attitude to greet each customer with a warm smile which covers much more intense resentment and dread as I set down my already cold lunch for the fifth time as a potential customer (though much more likely a browser) walks in.

It is being trapped with the other monkeys that I can’t stand. In normal situations, I can leave, walk away, excuse myself, make vague mumblings about seeing a man about a horse, etc., but in a retail situation, I’M TRAPPED. I have to talk to them, have to smile at them, have to be charming and I HATE IT.

So, lesson learned. Next year (if there is a next year), I am happy to make and construct the products, but I’d rather sit in the corner and hit myself in the head with a hammer than deal with the unwashed masses.

And speaking of unwashed… did I mention the mud? This year, it rained. And rained. And rained some more. Soak. Rinse. Repeat. With thousands of monkeys mucking about, the entire place turned into a not-so-nice smelling swamp with six inches of mud everywhere. And, due to the unprecedented precipitation, very few were out walking around, wallet in hand just begging to throw money at me. Which, perhaps, was a good thing – I could barely stand the sight of the few who did walk into our pavilion to hand me cash, and might very well have run mad if there had been more.

There was mud in the showers, mud in the already nasty port-O-lets, mud on all of my clothes, mud, mud, mud. If I never hear the sickening sucking “Squeech” of mud suctioning to my boots again, it will be too soon.

Really, though, I kept up a pretty good attitude through most of the inclement weather. Generally, I like rain, and I had the World’s Best Waterproof Boots to keep me warm and dry. They’re black rubber, they’re lined with fake fur, they’re ugly as hell, but they do a great job of keeping my feet impervious to the weather.

Then, they got wet. For two weeks, the wonderful lashing and tarping skills of my partner had kept our camp dry while everyone around us flooded. But alas… on the next to last day there, the weight of the water combined with gravity to stretch out the S-hook on a bungee and the whole contraption came down on our camp, along with several gallons of water. It had been anchored about fifteen feet up a tree and I, being short, could not figure out how to simultaneously climb the tree and hold onto the tarp without falling face first into the already pooling water below.

So, for the next forty-five minutes, I squooshed around the camp in my boots and rain poncho searching for my much taller, more adept at tree climbing monkey as the rain poured down my poncho and straight into the tops of my boots. I remember having the odd déjà vu feeling that this had been the picture in my head when I was a child hearing about Purgatory for the first time from the Roman Catholic perspective. I vaguely hoped that someone somewhere would light a pretty red votive candle for me so that I could magically leave this place and float somewhere devoid of mud and wet, sticky feet.

That was it. My positive “but at least my feet are still dry” attitude had been crushed. After that, the only positive thing that I could find to say was “at least it doesn’t stink quite as bad as it did yesterday,” which sounded pathetic, even to me.

My partner is…how should I say it?… well-grounded, stable, and highly knowledgeable about a wide variety of topics. Many of the people who go to these festivals are… how should I say it?… not. Because of this, waaaaay too many people feel the need to share their deepest, darkest spiritual secrets with him at all hours of the day and night. It was, in a word, like being married to Jesus. They followed him to the bathroom, to dinner, to our camp, etc., thus ensuring that we rarely had a moment to ourselves during the entirety of the hell that was “vacation.” Between these folks and the customers (though often the two categories overlapped), I was ready to confirm myself a Born Again Misanthrope by the time it was all over.

There is only one good thing that I can think to say about my vacation this year – eventually, it ended. I am now home, dry, and blessedly alone. It will be a while before I’m ready to venture out into the Wide World of Monkeys again – frankly, I’ve had enough of them to last me for a bit.

Once upon a time, I actually enjoyed large groups of them – I found it exciting, stimulating. Now, I just find it draining. I’m not sure what changed… perhaps it is because I come from a long line of Hermit Monkeys (it shocks me sometimes that they were able to interact enough to breed successfully) and my genetic programming is just now kicking in. Perhaps too much of any good thing will turn it into a bad thing. Perhaps I’ve developed some kind of bizarre psychic allergy to my own species. Perhaps…

But, I suppose that the reasons themselves aren’t really all that important. The important thing is that I realize what makes me miserable and what makes me happy. And I, for one, I am a happy, dry, alone little monkey right now. Now THIS is vacation.