The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(83)
*
Story goes: as a high school student in New Jersey, Tommy decided he wanted to be a circus performer, but at six foot two and possessing little grace or flexibility, his options felt limited. He didn’t come from a circus family and didn’t have the physique of a typical aerialist or tumbler. What he wanted most of all was to wrestle an alligator. When he learned about sword swallowing, he thought it could take him to the circus, the gators.
He checked out a bunch of books on swallowing swords from the library and spread them across his bed, desk, and floor. Their illustrated pages provided step-by-step how-to instructions and detailed accounts of some of history’s most famous sword swallowers. He got to work. For three years he practiced every day, sticking a folded coat hanger down his throat to replicate a sword. Though his classmates began heading toward jobs as accountants and roofers, Tommy kept shoving the metal down his throat. An angry girlfriend once screamed that she thought Tommy loved practicing for his sideshow fantasies more than he loved her. He agreed.
Tommy’s short stint in college to study biology—the closest he could get to those gators—was over after he enrolled in the Coney Island Sideshow School. He joined the World of Wonders shortly thereafter.
“I’d do anything to keep the sideshow alive,” Tommy says. “I know it’s my home.”
*
Have you ever stuck your finger deep in your mouth? Tried to make yourself puke? Touched your uvula? That’s what sword swallowing feels like when you first stick the sword in, but then, instead of heeding your body’s direction and removing the object that’s causing you to gag, you override the system. Stick it in a little deeper. Wait until you actually feel your insides rising to chase out the foreign object like townspeople chasing out a wolf, but instead of feeling grateful to your grandmothers and granddaughters for their good, safe work, you call back the wolf. Make his teeth a little sharper. Force him in.
*
Sword swallowing is one of the most iconic sideshow acts, something I thought I might see people practicing the first time I’d visited Gibsonton the way other people in other towns might practice baseball. When I pulled into Gibsonton that first time, what I first noticed was that the gas station had an amazingly long line of people buying beer. I had come down to meet Chris Christ and his partner, Ward Hall, right after I’d first learned about the World of Wonders. Just down the road a drive-through liquor barn sat next to half a dozen adult bookstores and strip clubs. Huge trucks hurtled down U.S. 41, Gibsonton’s main street, which stretched long and flat for miles, north toward Tampa, south toward beach towns like Bradenton and Sarasota with their Easter-colored vacation homes. Palm trees and swamp grass waved as truckers and tourists rushed through, always on their way somewhere else.
They say at one time the town had the world’s only postal counter designed for dwarves. That conjoined twins ran a lemonade stand on the side of the highway. That the town had permanently altered its legislation to allow for elephants and tigers in every front yard, their trainers throwing knives around unblinking women in sequins when the mosquitoes weren’t too thick.
Story goes: a few performers were on their way to Sarasota, Ringling Brothers’ Circus’s winter headquarters. In the batch were “the giant” Al Tomaini, who claimed to be eight foot four, and his wife, Jeanie, “the half-girl,” born with no legs. They noticed how peaceful a certain patch of swamp was and decided to stop right there. Not too close to cities and gawkers, not too far from the rest of their circus folks. They set up camp by the river and opened a little cookhouse. Once they and a few of their friends settled in, sideshow performers from a range of shows came quickly. It was a place for the winter months, when carnivals take a break, where the unusual would be usual. A rest stop. A retirement destination. A new home.
By the time I visited Gibtown, the town’s very small sign stood overgrown by thick vines at the base of a bridge spanning the Alafia River. Passing through, you might miss Gibtown’s history, unless you notice the Showtown Bar & Grill, a grimy brick building that once served performers amazing enough to inspire the murals coating the walls. The paint is faded and peeling, the acrobat by the door nearly invisible.
And yet, Gibtown is still the home of the real American sideshow. I forget, forget often, that these folks I’m working with, this show, are such legends. These three men teaching me to swallow swords hold various Guinness World Records, perform on all sorts of TV specials and in all sorts of movies, are the titans of the industry, even if the industry is mostly a ghost of what it was fifty years ago.
*
“Okay, me, too,” Francine, the burlesque dancer, says, walking over to us with her sword. She brought a real one with her and has been trying to learn the right technique for years.
“You’re new, right?” Chris asks her. She smiles at him, nods. “And you’re not staying the whole season?”
“I would if I could,” she says, “but no. I’m leaving after this spot.”
“Then no,” Chris says.
“No?”
“No, I won’t teach you. Only skeleton crew gets to learn. You gotta do a whole season to have free classes on everything.”
“That’s not fair!” she says.
An explosion of spit and booming sound bursts from Chris’s mouth as a laugh.
“Sorry, Francine,” Tommy says. “Tradition. For part-time performers like you, you get a discount on classes if you ever want to take one, but you can’t learn here.”