The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(100)

Eck was an acrobat, painter, illusionist, musician, business owner, photographer, actor, and expert model-maker. He signed a management contract with a magician and went on the road with his brother. He was billed for years as the “half boy,” or “the amazing half boy,” and later as the “king of the freaks,” and then finally, “the most remarkable man alive.” For most of his career it was boy, though, not man. For many freak performers, there was a certain fear that ran alongside the audience’s curiosity, and to stabilize some of that fear, the performers were emasculated. Presented not as men, but as boys. Or as part animals—Eck was cast as a bird-man in the Tarzan films. The relationship between sexuality and perceived monstrosity is complicated, and from what I saw on the road with Short E, involved both extreme attraction and repulsion. Some people left a wider berth around him than they might another person when they passed, but for many others, for many women we met on the road, the opposite was true. Short E met a lot of women. A. Lot. Of. Women. Many nights, one of their faces appeared like a little floating ghost in the darkness once the show closed. Short E would light a cigarette, put on his cowboy hat, and sit at the top of the steps, chatting with them. Often, within a few minutes, the woman and Short E would be gone. He’d appear the next morning with the chipper grin of a good night and indoor heating/plumbing.

“How the fuck you make that work, Short E?” Spif asked one morning just after Short E rolled in.

“Ha,” Short E said. “You gotta learn some fucking lady skills, man. Plus, I can do things that you can’t do. I can do things that no other man can do. Think about it,” he said, lifting himself up on his hands and swinging his torso between his arms. He looked over at me, where I was obviously calculating some angles. “Tess, I can tell you’re thinking about it. You wanna give it a test run? Free of charge.”

“Very kind offer,” I said. “I’ll consider it.”

“No customers are disappointed.”

“That’s a bold testimony.”

“I do bold things,” he said. “And whatever, man, you get pussy sometimes. I seen it,” Short E said to Spif.

“Never as much as I could use,” Spif said.

“Amen to that,” said Short E.

*

In the Subway, Short E and I are sitting across from each other, eating our sandwiches. The little kid at the table next to us is sitting backward on his seat, still staring at Short E. Finally, his mom picks the kid up and they leave. Short E walks over to the soda machine and starts to reach up with one hand to refill his coke, but a teenager nearby asks if he can help.

“Nah, man, I got it,” Short E says, filling up his cup. All eyes in the restaurant watch him doing this very boring thing. Me, too. I watch him. I watch him a lot. This is the hard part. I both recognize the ridiculousness and sometimes total insult of the way Short E is ogled all the time, and yet he is fascinating to watch. It’s so simple—he’s very good at getting around in the world in a way that most folks wouldn’t know how to do.

“People treat me like they’re wearing kid gloves,” Short E says. Last season, he tells me, a man in line behind him at McDonald’s insisted on paying for Short E’s meal, then handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

“Did you take it?” I ask, thinking of the injustice.

“Shit yeah, I did,” he says. “People always hand me money. Pay for my meals in restaurants, or hand me tips. Like I’m my own charity. And I always take it. If they’re going to be jackasses enough to just hand me their money, I’m going to take it. It takes away the insult. Then it’s just another version of GTFM.”

“GTFM,” I parrot back.

“Does it bother you that you look so normal?” he asks. I ponder this, the years I spent trying to look as much like everyone around me as I could.

“Kind of.”

“It would bother the shit out of me.”

“People don’t usually believe me when I say I’m with the show. They think I’m the stagehand or something,” I say.

“You do have to do more work because of it.”

“To prove myself, you mean?”

“No. You ever notice who always gets sent in to reserve rooms at hotels, or talk to bosses, that kind of shit?”

“Oh,” I say. I hadn’t considered why it was always me.

“People are comfortable around you, because you look like their dentist or their kid’s teacher. You wear cardigans and shit. That’s why you sell so many Bibles and turn so many people on the blade box. They trust you and your weirdly normal whitey female self.”

“Shit’s not fair.”

“If only they could have seen you dumping their money out of your underwear backstage. You’re as crooked as the rest of us,” he says, giving me what I’m sure is a nod of approval.

*

It is evening, still an hour or two before the darkness that brings twinkling lights, still five hours until we’ll close for the night. We are backstage at the Arkansas-Oklahoma combined state fairs. Moments between acts. I am staring out the truck’s back end, pretending I’m inside a moment of peace and quiet when I hear Cassie say, “Well, Tessa’s a shitty performer anyway.”

This kind of playful teasing is usually easy to ignore, laugh away, stick my middle finger at, and move on from.