The Circus
“I think really what it is is that people are just too fickle. No one knows anything at all, except for maybe some scientists but then again they are wise enough to know that what laymen consider fact is merely theoretical. And so how can you expect someone that stupid to be smart enough to know what they want. Because no one does. And I’ve had this conversation before, and I don’t want you to get a chip on your shoulder and think that you knew– or know– what you wanted. So don’t think about it like you’re some passionate genius in an age of capricious dunces. And I don’t say that to put you down, just as like a warning, to not get a chip on your shoulder, don’t romanticize yourself into a hopeless-romantic-movie-archetype type personality. Just accept that no one really knows what they want, and most things aren’t done out of malice. But don’t necessarily forgive.”
I appreciated Moon’s monologue, but really I just wanted to watch the circus. I asked them, I went up to them and said “Moon can we go to the circus, I want to see the world. I want to be amongst people and to see the physically deformed and gifted,” and they begrudgingly agreed. Of course I have no money, so they bought our tickets. The utterly noseless woman did a backflip with a twist off of a trapeze, to be caught by four little men in orange striped overalls.
“Thank you, you’re right,” I said. I wanted them to stop talking. I wanted to see the world, not hear Moon.
“You get what I mean though? I can see your leg bobbing. Think useful, pragmatic thoughts.”
“For sure.”
The circus was interesting but nothing to write about. Recently I’ve become very unenamored by the prospect of writing prose. I will be famous on Threads one day. But essentially we were in the upper balcony, under us was a sea of people all looking at the stage. There were several acts, some animals, yadda yadda. The show started with the noseless woman doing backflips into different crowds of little men, then a woman with mis-matched prosthetics came out and did backflips off of a trapeze strung opposite the noseless one, and then another woman who was maxillofacially swollen came out and did more backflips into more little men, only perpendicular to the other set of women. Then they left the stage and the elephants and boars came, and I really didn’t like that. I wanted to see people, not animals. Not the point. It was the third act that interested me.
“But seriously, –––––, stop with the leg. One must immerse oneself in the moment if one wishes to survive such trying times,” Moon said. They spoke at normal volume, rather than a whisper, which I found unbecoming for a person at a showing. “Look at the magician. Isn’t his hat cute? And don’t crash out.”
I wasn’t planning on it. I was already looking at the magician. “I’m watching,” I said, not without snark.
The magician was doing magician things, I don’t know. He was pulling rabbits out of hats, he escaped from a block of ice, he made a woman’s tongue disappear, he did mentalist tricks where he discerned audience members’ credit card numbers. But it was the kid. There was this kid sitting up front, maybe two rows from the stage, who wanted to get up there. So bad. He was throwing everything he had to catch the magician’s attention. Shoes, hat, socks, toys and cetera, he threw on stage. He screamed. I can tell he wanted to get on stage very badly. To be the center of attention, to be with the magician is every little boy’s dream.
Maybe twenty minutes into the magician’s act, the boy left. He made a big show of it, as at that point the magician had made note of him and had made comments about the boy to the audience, so the boy gave a yelp and crawled over his mother, declaring that he had more important places to be. The magician became a comedian and called the boy, as he was exiting the theater, a sorry twat that can’t stand to sit in the dark.
He continued his set and I remember very little. I have found that, after watching many magicians work, they become less and less interesting. The ability to pull the wool over so many eyes is impressive, but over time it is really all the same. As in the trick. It is almost all slight of hand, and I have given up on trying to spot it. Let them fool me, I say. I simply do not believe in magic. So I watched as he locked himself into a cage, was prodded with spears and lowered into a pool of water, only to reveal himself later as one of the spear bearers. Show me something I haven’t seen, wizard. I wish I was a child again. Moon was wowed by all of it. And I am forever jealous of them.
The magician left as quickly as he appeared. The fourth, and final set, was a medley. It was a mix of gymnastics: trapeze work and trampoline work, animal displays: the aforementioned elephants and some new giant lizards, and a dance show: dancing. I have not much to report. I came to see people, to see the world and take it all in. In my seat, I told Moon I was watching diligently. But really I was thinking about nothing. I was not thinking about what they wanted so badly to talk to me about, I wasn’t thinking about the deformed or the gymnasts or the music or the kid. I was just in my world. Sitting, humanly.
Then, the doors opened. They opened so loudly and dramatically, I knew that they opened without being able to see them. And in marched some burly yet fatally pulchritudinous men, dragging that same small child that had so rudely interrupted the show earlier. He was being dragged in by his wrists and feet, his mother nowhere to be found, and he was screaming and kicking, calling out that he really meant nothing and that he wanted to go home. He was too young to realize what he had done. I wanted him dead. To interrupt such a show is to bring death upon oneself. Row by row the crowd looked back at him, realizing that we were in the presence of a devil. God I’m so tired I can hardly make this up. No. I lied, everyone was jeering at him, but as soon as they realized that he was ten or eleven, they stopped. I wanted him dead for longer, though. until they brought him on stage, that is. For when they brought him on stage, they stripped him naked and dipped him in a pot full of white liquid, which I now know is glue. They dipped him and took him out of the glue and made him stand still while, in front of a silent audience, the crowd of little men threw hair on him. Of what species I do not know, but they glued and haired him. Then they attached, in front of everyone, a large snout that stretched from his mouth to the ground, and one of the little men struck the boy hardly on the small of his back, and the boy fell, and the little men sprinkled black, ovaline objects over the stage, and they prodded the boy until, through his snout, he picked up and ate every one of the little things, all this happening while a crowd of silent faces watched, gawking at the sight of such a small child, barely eleven, being forced to humiliate himself in such a way. Most of the audience members did not even realize his interruption. But that is the way of life.