The Unavoidable Circus

The Unavoidable Circus.

He caught my eye. A monkey, chewed and tattered. An ex-loved one, lying
on the flattened long grasses, a nest for a final resting-place. I
thought it unfair that this should be the way to go for such a pretty
one-eyed thing, and bent over to pick him up. He winked with his one
eye, and I smiled inside at my unstoppable imagination.

He wore a sticker, criss-crossed with roads of wear and tear, and
probably rain - his fur was slightly damp, and felt like what I
imagined a beaver, or otter's fur to feel like, the fur of a nasty,
elusive creature that no human knew well. The sticker simply showed a
beckoning hand, the hand of a policeman, perhaps - of someone to tell
you off. And below that, an arrow. Pointing across the field, to a
large barn. This coincidence struck me, as I saw there were not really
any other lumps on the horizon, looking around, so I sat down on the
long grass at the other side of the path, still holding the monkey, to
ponder my next move. A nice coincidence for me to exploit, lying on the
floor on this pale, fresh day for walking by the fields. Should it be a
day for adventurin' too? Could it be?

At this thought, my mind went awol with thoughts of bacon and eggs in
my warm dry kitchen, sitting on cushions to soften the hard wooden
floor in front of the fire, Joni Mitchell records crackling away, just
as the bacon would have done with such ferocious gusto previously. I
grasped this thought firmly, hooking a finger in the back of its frilly
pink long johns, and yanked my previous train of thought back with its
legs a-flailing. A coincidence. It was in my nature to deliberately
gather experiences, ever since in my precocious childhood I had begun
to disobey my parents, sneaking off to Coldblow woods to spy on the
gypsies that lived there in caravans, and an old coach with 'Gillies'
peeling from its sides. This certainly had the makings of an
interesting experience, for I had never walked the way of the barn
before. Who else might say they had followed a winking stuffed monkey
to an isolated barn, because the limb of a possible policeman had
instructed them to? This decided me. I awkwardly got to my feet,
inwardly cursing the grasses for slightly wetting my tush, so that I
waddled unsurely towards the barn, like the naughty swan who has been
transformed back into the ugly duckling.

It looked like any other barn. I could imagine romping with a lover
inside in the hay, on a blustery, rainy day. It would be cold, but we,
my lover and I, we would be warm. I looked around. No-one. Nothing. The
monkey seemed to squirm impatiently in my hand. I dropped it without
thinking, glanced down to where he lay next to the wall. One arm was
lying under his backside, the other flung, outstretched, and pointing
to the large, closed door a couple of metres to my left. I grinned at
the monkey. His expression said 'I'm learning from your mistakes kind
missus, my arse will remain dry from now on. Now, go.' I put both my
hands together and shook them in his direction. It seemed like the
right thing to do. I wrenched open the door and marched into the
barn.

It took a while, probably about a minute, for my eyes to adjust to the
change in light, and my stomach to the change in atmosphere. This place
seemed far from the fields of fresh mischievety, perhaps in both
distance and time. There was an unidentifiable smell in the air. I
struggled in my mind to link it, even very vaguely, to anything I had
ever smelt before. It was kind of sour, very potent, soapy and bitter,
and also treacly, velveteen, all at the same time. But, casting back,
it was none of these and nothing like any of them. The smell alone made
me confused. My confusion extended like a pregnant belly when I
realised intuitively that I was not by myself in the barn. At this
point, a voice of rationality started booming rational statements in my
mind. I dealt with this as I always do - very firmly in my mindseye, I
made a picture of the person the voice came from. The majority of the
time it was a tall and fat man with ruddy cheeks and a ruddy voice. In
my head, I knelt down piously before the voice of rationality and bit
him hard on the ankle, spitting his rational blood in his rational
face. He very rationally usually fucked off after that.

I slowly swivelled around in a full circle, calmly noting that the
noises I had just heard came from a small tent, probably of 2 or 3 man
size, which was positioned just out of my line of vision when looking
straight ahead, to my right hand side, near the wall of the barn. I
swallowed back my phlegmy confusion and tiptoed towards the tent, very
quietly. Quiet as a butterfly in a breeze. I stopped. The tent was, by
now, about five or six metres in front of me. I could hear very strange
sounds. I listened hard. The person in occupation of the tent - there
seemed to only be one - was repeating 'roll up, roll up', over and
over. Sometimes this mantra was slightly strangled, almost squawking,
other times very assured, enticing, authoritative. I had no idea what I
had stumbled upon. After, maybe, five minutes, I twigged that what
appeared to be ritualistic lunacy or nu-age new-age was in fact, very
possibly, a person, having a very weird kind of wank. I let this new
information sink into me, almost rationally, I hate to say. I thought
about leaving, quiet as a butterfly again, tiptoeing back into familiar
happenings, the fields, eggs and bacon, but I had an inkling. I had an
inkling that the monkey I had left spreadangled outside would be
leaning against the wall of the barn, smoking a cigarette and
tut-tutting at me. Or worse, crying, monkey tears made of cloth or
polystyrene balls. So I silently fairy-stepped over to the tent opening
at one end, peeking in with half - no, say a quarter - of one eyeball.
A man. A man who suddenly leant forward, so he could see me better,
still saying 'roll up, roll up', but this time, quieter, although still
assuredly. I could see the blissful whizz of his hand. He was wanking.
I didn't feel disgusted, simply returned the unassuming smile he gave
me, and sat down outside the tent, out of his eyesight, to let him
finish.

Seconds passed by, floating away and leaving me feeling like I was in
a dream, a blanched place with no narrative and no constraints. A
throat was cleared briskly. I felt like I should go inside the tent and
meet this person who seemed to be waiting for me. I brushed hay from my
legs and bottom, and stooped to enter. It was quite dimly lit, a small
but dangerous tea-light lantern providing the means for me to examine -
what I hesitate to call - the mysterious wanker. He was a small
gentleman, sitting up on his knees, looking at me quizzically and with
a trace of a smile on his face. He seemed to be of an age between 45
and 55, although I remember thinking he was probably 60 or thereabouts.
His chin was slightly pointed, with a small but obviously cultivated
beard. His eyes were strong, and brighter than the candlelight we
surveyed each other by. He wore a patched velvet jacket, mustard
necktie and beige coloured corduroy trousers. He did not speak, but
looked me over, making sense of me in a similar way as I of him. I
never formulate ideas about people based on their appearance if I can
help it, having trained myself to do so in my later teenage years, but
his silence left me no choice. I decided he was a tramp, a peddler, a
mad lecturer whose cold, statue-like wife left him no choice but to
masturbate in empty barns, and still he made no sound, just stared at
me like a small canary patiently waiting to be fed. I shifted a little,
crossing my legs, and tried to think of something appropriate to say.
There was nothing, this my first experience where I was completely
confounded, no familiar ground in sight. Just this curiously content
stranger.

"Well", I said. "Well&;#8230;" my voice trailed off as he blew the
candle out. I didn't want to ask what he was doing, or why, anymore.
Now there was dark, the smell of hay, and the sound of his quiet
breathing. I felt safe though. All the million ghastly things he could
possibly do to me flashed through my head, mutilation, blood, broken
pictures out of sequence, concerning my own demise, and I just inhaled
slowly, regulating my breathing to match the timing of his. Then he
spoke:
"My name is See. I have a proposition for you. First,
this&;#8230;"
I heard him moving, coming towards me in the darkness, and still I sat
in unruffled ease, waiting for him. He took my face very delicately in
one hand, gently manoeuvring my mouth open with the other. Inside I
felt like a butterfly in a breeze. I waited. He breathed into my mouth
the taste of incense, of spilled wine on linen, of pigs making love and
peasants fighting over bread. It was like everything. He was
everything, himself, his breath. I breathed in, and felt water move
through my lungs, wings sprouting on my heart, gentle fingers rub round
the inside of my skull. He drew back suddenly, and I sensed him
smiling, soft in the black. "That is what I am made of, and where I am
from", he said. His voice sounded both wise and wistful. "What is your
proposition, the one you spoke of before - before-". I sounded absurdly
na?ve next to the centuries that slid smoothly off his words, and I did
not care. When he had leaned over and whispered in my ear what he
wanted me to do, he gave me some bread, where from I don't know, and I
slipped backwards out of the tent as if I was not there, to eat it and
think.

The man - See - had offered me a child. A child. A small person to
teach, to covet and hug in my warm lonely home. A presence to cook for,
to feed, to play with. A person I could call mine. All my life I had
longed for a person I could call mine, an olive skinned, longhaired boy
to share grapes and poetry with, a plump blonde girl to paint and
after, eat chicken with. Most of all, a small, earnest person, scrubbed
and tucked in, holding my hand and smiling into sleep. I wanted the
child he offered me. I wanted it so badly my heart hurt in my rib cage,
repeatedly beating 'child, child, child'. But I had to give in
return.

He wanted us to have sex - "make love?" I had breathlessly ventured.
His reply shocked me, confirming my lifelong belief held inside for so
long. When he said it, my chest felt freer. "Love is not real."
Murmured, but with the brawny ring of clarity, of truth. His next
words, however, had truly scared me. Made me realise, as they stood in
the air between us, ringed around and around in red pen. "Death is the
only real. I want to give you death. I want rid of it. We do not want
it anymore. This is the only way. And we've waited for someone like you
for so long now&;#8230;"

I chewed the bread. It tasted of curry, of yellow. I wondered if See's
'roll up, roll up' had been directed through the walls of the barn at
me, but pushed that thought away because I didn't want it there in my
head, interfering with here and now. I decided I had no choice. See had
explained to me that I wouldn't die as a consequence, that I could
nurture my child until I died of old age. I wouldn't have to live with
the experience - if I found it particularly harrowing I could easily
consign it to the depths of my consciousness, alongside memories of my
parents messy divorce. I would simply have the knowledge of death. I
would know what it felt like to die, be dead, and I would understand
what came after death, something I had always wondered. In my teens I
had relentlessly studied all the representations of the afterlife I
could get my nicotine stained fingers on. The festivals in Mexico -
plaster tableaux involving skeletons, always skeletons. Angels, limbo,
bright white light, suffocating blackness, fiery red hell,
reincarnation. I could use my knowledge how I liked. Sell it, package
it, siphon it out gradually, leave it in a musty book in the attic for
future generations to find. Keep it till my deathbed, take it to the
grave. I wanted that child. I wondered what it would be like though.
Would it look like its father, with the eyes of an age-old robin? Be
haunted and harangued through childhood with images of moaning wraiths
and waxy cadavers? And what would I tell it as it asked questions about
where it came from? I wanted the child. I wanted my child.

I crawled inside the tent. See had relit the tiny candle, and sat
patiently cross-legged as I had been, with something wearily hopeful
jumping behind his eyes. I noticed his hair was grey. I didn't care. I
wanted my child.

This story is not pornography. I have no need to tell everything. It
is simply the facts of life, as they say. But I will say what is
important. His tongue was the proboscis of an insect, inspecting before
gorging. It was necessary. For the child. And it was wonderful too. But
all things are bad and good at the same time, like life itself. My head
was splitting. Death is colours, all mixed together on a messy palette.
I licked the palette. To feel dead is to feel love. Death is
paradoxical. You exist, but are not existing. And you are waxy. You
move very slowly in death, like running underwater. There is no pain -
you do slip away. You never stop slipping. You do not meet any others;
death is all things lonesome. All this, and more, was cramming into my
head as I lay with this creature named See.

I sit, wrapped in a red blanket in a rocking chair. Red, the colour of
blood, which is life and death. I have never been so happy. My child is
on the floor. I named him David, after the singer from Talking Heads. I
still live alone, walk the fields, recoil from human contact. But these
things I do with David, who is six. He draws trees and life and love. I
won't ever tell properly, to others I mean, but I tell him the story
every day, of where he came from. His favourite part is when See walked
out of the tent, and was very small, and stooped over, and patted my
belly, which felt full of butterflies. I don't mean for this to sound
sentimental. It is purely how it was, and is. I never saw See again. I
never wondered where, or why, or how. I am thankful. Today I am telling
the story to David, but he is not listening, drawing a circus tent,
complete with monkeys and a ringmaster. So I am telling it for myself,
savouring it and remembering it all again. And for anybody else who
might be listening in the perfect air. Joni Mitchell sings -

Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you, darling
And I would still be on my feet

I silently agree, leaning back and thanking See. Death is not so bad.
My life has been like death for as long as I can remember. David helps
now. And nobody else needs to know.