The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(97)

He leaves the pin in his neck for us to stare at. The part of a human most sensitive to hot and cold is the neck. As a fetus is developing, its heart is surrounded by a protective layer of dermis. As it grows larger, it sloughs off the dermis to the cranial/spinal connective growth area. That skin becomes a neck. Dr. Frankenstein’s neck, through which a piece of metal pierces, once protected his heart.

In the torture arts, you are both the creator and recipient of your pain.

In most bodies, the more metal there is inside, the more the body is failing. Imagine: needles and staples and implants and knives and pins. I see the pins entering Dr. Frankenstein and think of all the medical metal that has pierced my mom these last three years. How she has taken it and taken it and taken it. How she has been the recipient of pain and then chosen to keep moving her mouth to make sound come out, to try physical therapy month after month after month, even when progress wasn’t evident, how she is always practicing and working. And now she is in Italy, posing beside restaurant owners who love to give her free dessert.

Will this photo of her smiling above gelato be the last image I see of her alive?

This one with flushed cheeks and an empty glass of red wine beside her?

Dr. Frankenstein finishes his act, the sixth pin sliding into his skin, and tells the audience where they can find the exit. The air is thick and hot with more than weather. I can hear people whispering to one another, trying to pinpoint the secret. Even though he has told them, they don’t understand the secret is that he can take it and take it and take it.

*

“All right, Tess,” Spif says a few nights later. “I’m going to play poker in carnietown. You can come, if you want.”

I jump up from the backstage chair I’d been slumped in and change into a black T-shirt and black pants, something that will make me look a bit tougher and cooler than I am. As we’re walking out of the tent, Lola sees us and asks if she can come, too.

“Whatever, sure,” he says. “Just, don’t be offended, any of you. And keep your mouth closed if you are. These aren’t fuckers you can disagree with.”

We agree, and march into the night.

*

“Peace, love, and titty-fucking, who says that? Ho’s a calling,” a man is chanting at a picnic table. We’ve woven our way through a few layers of trailers and are in the heart of carnietown. There are a cluster of tables with lots of men all around, and scattered chairs and open beers on the table. Next to the tables is the carnie commissary, the first I’ve encountered, which sells everything from snacks to razors to laundry services, only for the carnies.

The man leading the chant stops when we get close and stands up to give Spif a hello handshake, then introduces himself as Jack to Lola and me. He’s in a clean, crisp basketball jersey with a backward hat, gold chains stacked around his neck, and skin sunned to the color of graham crackers. His arms are covered in tattoos, with swastikas sprinkled through the naked women lounging across his forearms. White Power runs across his biceps.

“You look good, man,” he says to Spif as he sits down at the table and pulls money out to buy into the poker game. “You got nice shoes. Gotta have nice shoes. When I was locked up, I knew the exact right kind of shoe polish to buy to keep my shoes shiny for visits. You gotta get an old oil rag, and you gotta buff your shoes with this polish, like in little circles, and that’s how you keep them looking nice. You girls want a beer?” he asks Lola and me. “On the house.”

“Sure,” we say, cracking open the Budweisers one of the guys behind Jack hands us. We’re the only females in sight.

It’s hard not to stare at his swastika tattoos, because I keep thinking that they’re something else. Maybe I’ve misinterpreted them. Stars, perhaps, or Chinese characters. Or that Sanskrit symbol for luck. But, no. They are swastikas. I wonder if I should walk back. I wonder if Lola wants to walk back. I wonder if it is more rude or less rude to ask her if she is okay here, if she wants to be here. She’s twenty-two, and at twenty-two I was usually too uncomfortable to ever say I was uncomfortable. Even though I’m thirty, only eight years older, I feel oddly motherly toward her in this moment. Also, a little nervous. I lean over, quietly make small talk to try to gauge her comfort by the tone of her voice. She makes some snarky joke and takes a big lug of her beer, sits down. She’s got more spine than I do. I take this as a decision to stay.

“Let me introduce you around,” Jack says to us. He calls the names of each of the guys at the table, and as he turns his head I watch his long, straight ponytail sway against his jersey, notice the shaved sides of his head, his gold rings, and wonder what kind of friendship Spif has with him, and why.

“This is Beyoncé,” Jack says, pointing to a big guy with penciled-in eyebrows and a spaghetti strap tank top whom I recognize from the carnietown food truck—not for fairgoers—from the day before, when Spif had brought me here to buy a walking taco: a small bag of Doritos split open on the side with ground beef, lettuce, and cheese on top of the chips. They’re heaven. Beyoncé wriggles his fingers at Lola and me in a wave. Next we say hello to a guy who looks just like a young Dan Aykroyd, but with a smashed-in face and blond buzz cut, then a bunch of juggalos gathered beside one another with Insane Clown Posse T-shirts and hats and tattoos. Spif whoop-whoops and they whoop-whoop back. One of them is, predictably, drinking Faygo. There’s an older guy at the end of the table with wide plastic-frame glasses who says he’s leaving next weekend to go get him some pussy, pussy pussy pussy pussy pusssssssssy, he says, rubbing his chest hair beneath his orange T-shirt, and we smile politely, happy for him. There’s a Latino marine with a spiderweb tattoo running down the length of his arm and a handsome guy next to him in a Ferrari T-shirt who never opens his mouth, and beside him, one black guy sitting in a lounge chair with a beer in his lap and another open in his hand, and he’s providing a continual stream of commentary on everything that everyone says. Sitting beside Jack is a young white guy with a sweaty face who keeps sitting up and turning completely around to look at Lola and me. Staring, he starts to make some sounds, the beginnings of words, a gargle or a sort of hum, but never finishes any of the sounds, gives up, and turns back around. He has RIP LUCY written in huge cursive letters across the back of his neck, and when the conversation turns to a fair in Texas this crew plays that is just six miles from the Mexican border, this guy nods vigorously as Jack gestures with two full hands to the size of the bag of weed you can get for ten dollars, and this one special strip club where the girls don’t speak any English and call everyone Papi.