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.

Sweet!

Thanks!