Daily Archives: October 19, 2007

So you’re sitting in a bar…

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Unique and interesting. They’re not a bunch you wouldn’t expect to find hanging out together. Except…

The circus is in town, just up the road. Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s my romantic idea of the SHOW fed by my friendship with a guy who spent a few years in the biz, but the pull of the four-mast big top of Cirkus Berousek would be a siren song of disaster but for one sobering fact. While I would sell my soul to the circus, in return I have nothing to offer. Well, almost nothing…

CIRCUS HR REPRESENTATIVE: So… (she flips though papers, not finding what she is looking for. She folds her fingers in front of her and regards me. We are not in an office, but a crowded and humid trailer where my request for tea was answered with diluted coffee.) …you want to be in the circus.

JERRY: Yes.

CIRC HR REP: And what can you do?

What can I do? That’s always the catch. To be in the circus you need more than a wandering frame of mind, you need either a physique that says ‘the big top will rise despite the snow’, or you need some sort of reason that strangers might want throw down a buck to keep you alive. The whole “what do you do” question is tough for those of us who don’t do much of anything.

JERRY: Well, I speak with the Voice of Authority.

C. HR. R.: Explain.

JERRY: I can say the most ridiculous nonsense and people will believe me.

C. HR. R.: For example?

JERRY: I can bench-press forty-seven times my own weight.

C. HR. R.: Really?!? That’s amazing! When can you start?

Sadly, that’s the best-case scenario, and it just leads to total humiliation later, when I am killed trying to bench-press a mere four times my weight. The Voice of Authority is like a gun with a backwards barrel.

Thanks!

Double Whammy

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The bartender asks, “You want another?”

“Nah. I’ve gotta go home.”

He nods knowingly. “You seem sad tonight.”

Shit. Am I that obvious? And where the hell does a pimple-faced beer slinger get off even tiptoeing over the surface of sadness? Where in your world of primal teenage lust have you ever had the chance to understand deep, permanent, sorrow? If the cure to a broken heart is a new thang, what happens when there are no more thangs? Take your whole ‘there’s always tomorrow’ platitude and choke on it.

Still, the little bastard was right. I was sad tonight. Am. Women shined me on not one but twice, chopped-liverificating me to the harshest degree. The second shine was from my favorite bartender in this country. She was intoxicated and in a hurry to get back to the party downstairs, so I will cut myself some slack. Still, there was a big hole where “it’s great to see you again” might have fit.

I probably would have passed that over with a chuckle were I not already feeling raw from a previous shine. I suspect I have only myself to blame in the end, but I wrote in these pages a while back about a woman (name rhymes with feevah!) who out of the blue started talking to me. Perhaps it was my public expression of joy over this event, or perhaps I cashed in on another opportunity to make a complete ass of myself, but she doesn’t talk to me any longer. She doesn’t even look at me. She would be more comfortable if I didn’t exist at all. Which, overall, pretty much sucks.

Thanks!