The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(99)

“Oh my god!” she says as Spif comes out. “Pain-proof?” She looks to her mom.

She has on a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt, and when I ask the audience if we should add some weight on top of Spif after he’s lain down on top of the bed of nails—a question that consistently draws cheers from the audience—the little girl screams.

“No!” she says, her hands flying to her face in case she needs to keep from witnessing the bloodshed.

I sit on him anyway, too tired to add much fanfare, and when I get to the autopilot section where I ask Spif how he feels, he answers, “Not great,” his autopilot response in a comically pained voice. I tell the audience that he says he feels great, and the little girl screams again.

She pounds one flat hand onto the stage and looks me deep in the eye.

“Not great,” she says, insistent. “He said not great.”

I wake up. It’s easy to forget, after all the groans and eye rolls from the audience, that there are those who believe. There are audience members who think the headless woman illusion really is a headless woman, who trust in our deceit. And yet, the bed of nails act isn’t deceit. Spif really does lie down on a bed of nails and I really do sit on top of him, but somehow, few people seem to think it is painful or dangerous or, really, very impressive at all.

Little brown eyes are staring me down. Here I am, the monster, hurting someone, intentionally harming a person’s body. How could I? And why?

I lower myself down onto him as I do every day, every twenty minutes, pressing into his back as his body presses into the bed of nails beneath him, and the girl, who has broken eye contact with me to look at Spif, to check on his well-being and monitor him for blood, suddenly darts her eyes back to mine.

The twenty or so other people in the audience are amused. She is not.

“You’re a jerk,” she says between my sentences.

The audience giggles.

I agree with her.

*

I think about the little girl later that day, how strange and delightful it was to be forced out of my stupor while performing. How odd to live inside a carnival and be here, thinking about how to do an act, but to have my brain elsewhere much of the time. Imagining what my parents are doing, or what it will be like to go back to California without them. What my brother and I will say to each other on the plane to collect them from Italy.

I enter the long, low, dimly lit buildings that house all the state fair competitions and walk slowly among the tables, repeating what I see in my head with the “Happy Birthday” melody I’d recently heard my mom hum when we talked on the phone, happy birthday a code, I was sure, for Hello, I’m thinking of you. It was nobody’s birthday.

Duct tape apparel

Lard-based cooking

Yeast breads

Fancy cakes

Pickled goods

Jams

Jellies

Spam parent

Spam child

Novelties for a man

Flower arranging

Vegetable sculpture

Butter sculpture

I want to be present. Here, in this weird world. With tractors made of butter.

I read that to enter the miniature pony show, your pony must be shorter than thirty-four inches.

A woman outside the building, wearing a jeweled kerchief, is blow-drying her pony’s tail and mane. She spritzes it with something, hairspray maybe, and then keeps blow-drying. The pony is cool and collected.





NORMALAPHOBIA

Day 88 of 150

World of Wonders

September 2013

A large and battered asphalt parking lot separates the gas pump where the van refuels from the Subway lunch destination. We’re on a jump between Kansas and Arkansas. Short E lifts himself onto a skateboard and, using one gloved hand to balance his body on the board, uses the other to push against the rocky pavement toward the sandwiches. “I was a semipro skater for a while,” he tells me, gliding atop the board with ease and speed. “I skated with Tony Hawk before the X Games made him a douche.”

Inside Subway, a kid, three or four years old, is waiting for his mom to bring his food to the table and catches sight of Short E rolling across the asphalt toward the sandwich shop. He presses his face against the glass, mouth open and smeared on the window, his eyes never leaving the approaching man. Short E glides inside. The kid stares. The mother, a large woman with embroidered flowers on her pink T-shirt and a ruddy face, reaches her hand to her son’s cheek as fast as she can get it there and turns it in another direction. She lets go, and he swivels right back around to Short E. The mom tries again, scolding her boy. Don’t stare, she says in a loud whisper. Stop staring. Short E orders a turkey sandwich. The mom has given up, and she and the kid both stare. He doesn’t get any vegetables. Extra mayo.

“Not even lettuce or something?” I ask. “Pickles?”

He shakes his head.

“How can you get all your vitamins?”

“Thanks for your concern, Mom,” he says. Then, “Back in the day, I was sponsored and everything. Back when skateboarding was fun and full of punks.”

*

The first famous “half boy” was Johnny Eck, who performed on the sideshow circuit for much of the twentieth century and died in 1991. Born in 1911 with a truncated torso due to sacral agenesis, Eck was walking on his hands at the age of one year, long before his twin brother could walk on his feet. As a kid, he often stood atop a small box when company was over and practiced his sermons, denouncing beer and sin. It was a big hit, until he passed around his collection plate.