Circus

Amber sees a post from a friend or relation of someone with whom they went to circus camp--Amber is the sort of person who, of course, went to circus camp. According to this digital gossip, this camp friends might be performing at a circus within an hour and a half from us.

I have heard this old friend's name a few times, though I have never become acquainted. How can such certainty matter when the offer boils down to "Hey, Thomm, buy us tickets to the circus?"

It had been years since I attended one, and that one was being protested by PETA, who objected to the use of elephants. I will not arbitrate if they were right--though I cannot imagine an elephant's life is improved by performing for me--only that their adamant waving of bloody brochures provoked me into speaking Spanish so they would give up on trying to convert me.

This is not that sort of circus. There will not be a spare monkey, let alone a solitary pachyderm. This is the sort of affair where the only animals being abused and overworked are human and, for the most part, related.

The drive isn't much, not justifying that Amber labels this a day trip. I do not contradict, especially as they say how much they like this and how we ought to go on more of these. They live by their schedules and schooling, so any suggestion that we break free of these so they can clap at trapeze artists is welcome.

I do like the idea of day trips. It is grating to me that we are homebodies in the service of cats, independent beings who mostly sleep. They will not care that dinner is at nine instead of six. When I feel penned in, my mental wobbliness becomes more exaggerated.

I began suggesting other options in the area but quickly came up short. I promise them I will look into this, though. Better to indulge them now so we do not feel we have missed anything if we must move from the Hudson Valley.

Amber's immediate day trip suggestion is the Ikea in Paramus, New Jersey.

"You are going to have to sweeten that deal a bit," I tell them.

"I don't know anything else in Paramus," they say. "But you can spend a full day there. They have a food court. Then I can see the bookcase I want in person."

Given that they are already downsizing our apartment in preparation for a potential move to Ithaca should Cornell accept them (and Cornell should accept them), this might not be the right time.

"You are testing our relationship," I assure them.

The massive red and blue tent is staked into the pavement of the parking lot. When I was small, my parents would take me to ones like this, set up at our nearest mall. Those were more complete affairs, with parades of elephants befouling the ground in front of excited children. It would not have occurred to me that it took steel and broken parking spots to effect this transformation into The Greatest Show on Earth. With my overly practical adult brain, I wonder how much the mall charges the circus for this damage and what each performer earns per show.

A woman in a black leotard scans the QR code on my phone to allow us admission, and I know then how much of a family affair this must be. There are no people in this show that do only one thing, and the secondary duty for some is taking tickets and hawking concessions during the intermission.

I wonder if I have ever *not* contemplated what it would be like to join the circus. I won't because none of my talents lie in that direction, and I am a boring adult who looks daily at his net worth increase in his high-yield savings account. I do not expect many circus performers to be in that position. Still, I fantasize about being the sort of writer who goes undercover beneath the big tent for a few months to absorb enough of the popcorn and cotton candy flavor for a book. I would be a clown, better able to engage the patrons this way. Let me stay relatively earthbound, even in this fantasy. There is no lack of women in this circus, though none would appeal to me as I am. I might feel differently after months on the road together. There must be high-wire office romances if not outright marriages. The men--some conspicuously related--have muscles and charm enough that some woman or other likely performed the quick change routine with the minor modification that she ended up naked and wanting.

I have taken few risks to this point in my life. Friends spent semesters abroad or WWOOFed away a summer. They visited two weeks' worth of strangers' beds. They have abandoned the life they had established so they could do something that seemed to me hasty and stupid (and was, to my credit, hasty and stupid).

I was born in the wrong era to hitchhike America, ride the rails, and sleep under the stars to find my destiny and pad my future oeuvre. I would never have run away with the circus, however much I let it run away with me as speakers play "The Greatest Show"--a song Amber states has been a blessing and curse to anyone running such a spectacle.

Amber feels somewhat the same, at least regarding a circus. They were closer to this life, having practiced the lira and *tissu* when they were young. I do not know if there is a thread of fate where they were spinning one-handed from thirty feet in the air for the fifteenth crowd of rubes this month, but perhaps. They remember the nylon gripped in their fists, something foreign to me.

How does one endeavor to spend one's life this way? Surely, it is passed down through generations, some of whom rebel. They must have daughters and cousins who ran away *from* the circus and became elementary school art teachers or long-haul truckers. The life of a performer has its glories, but there will always be someone so fatigued from it being their childhood that they would rather sling coffees in a Starbucks than feel the spotlight again.

I cannot find the arrogance that those riding motorbikes in the Sphere of Death would rather be in the seat next to me. Who would trade a life with me? I wouldn't rather breathe these fumes every night and twice on Sundays.

Amber's friend is not here, which we might have known had Amber contacted them. It hardly matters. I need no excuse to go to the circus with my wife.

The circus is imperfect, which charms me more. Performers drop juggling pins and fall from the trapeze (safely into a net, of course, since we signed up for a parking lot circus and not a snuff show). If they were more polished, they would have been unremarkable but are instead real and human. Their foibles draw me in like I became a part of the show in clapping for their recovery.

last watched: Fargo
reading: Why Buffy Matters