They say politics is a circus. I say life\u2019s a circus. Because I work in a circus.<\/p>\n
All my life has been a performance.<\/p>\n
I work with the lions and the clowns and the elephants. I work with the acrobats.\u00a0Sometimes they ask me to light the ring of fire for them. Sometimes I\u2019m asked to walk the elephants. Sometimes I end up cleaning the elephant shit.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a clown. And what I do best is juggle. Because I started as a juggler. I\u2019ve been doing it every day since I was seven. It\u2019s all I ever wanted to do. I never thought I\u2019d end up making a living doing it. And it\u2019s a good living. I get to travel with my friends. I get to entertain many different people. I get to entertain the kids.<\/p>\n
I wish I had my own kids. It\u2019s hard to date when you\u2019re a clown. You\u2019d think God would be able to make a lady clown for me. But that\u2019s not the case. I\u2019d take a goofy lady with a clown nose like mine. Or even no nose at all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After work, I sat in front of the tent after the crowd walked their way home. Olga the ringleader sat down next to me. I handed her a cold beer from the cooler.<\/p>\n
\u201cJacob, you do good today,\u201d said Olga. \u201cYou do best when you juggle the balls. No one do it as good as you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell you my life? Before I was ringmaster?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI came to America as a mail-order bride. My husband, he fucked me three times a night. It was good. But then one day, he told me he found new woman. And then we not married anymore. And so, I work in circus. And now I ringmaster of circus. You see?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHa ha. It\u2019s so funny. You like all other clowns. You happy when you perform, but you sad when you alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I turned on the TV when I got to my motel room. I heard a couple having sex through the walls. I made the TV louder to drown out the noise.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I walked into the convenience store next to the gas station. The clerk was at the front reading a newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou watched the football game last night?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNah. Haven\u2019t been watching sports too much lately.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you like to watch?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s been going on in the news?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe news is always the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. Why do they call it the news? They should call it the olds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, that\u2019s pretty good. You a comedian or something?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a clown.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHa ha.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019m serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCrazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never wanted to be a clown. I wanted to be a juggler. But my mother said I couldn\u2019t pay the bills from juggling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t always get what we want. I\u2019m a clerk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, you\u2019re a clerk. And I\u2019m a clown.\u201d<\/p>\n
I left the convenience store. I walked back to my motel room. The couple next door was done having sex. I ate my beef jerky and fell asleep.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The next morning, I awoke. My dick was hard. I reached for my clown horn on the dresser. I pressed it.<\/p>\n
Honk honk<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I was living in a walk-up in Hell\u2019s Kitchen several years ago where I knew this middle-aged guy named Vincent who constantly told me that he didn\u2019t think that life was worth living. Naturally, I was concerned for him. He lost his wife to cancer a year ago and was struggling to find work and I felt that any day he would off himself. He kept telling me about how Buddha said that all life is suffering, how we\u2019re all just souls trapped in vessels trying to get out. He told me about how all the bad in the world points to one certainty: that humanity was a mistake.<\/p>\n
“I mean, just look at all the wars\u2014all the newspapers ever talk about is wars. And unemployment, and the greedy politicians. It\u2019s not that people don\u2019t care about each other. We live in these selfish vessels that make us lustful and greedy and vain. Our souls aren\u2019t like that. Before we\u2019re born and after we die, that\u2019s our true state. This world, as we know it, is a temporary nightmare. Or maybe it\u2019s a test. But how long can we endure it? Better to kill yourself now and find out what the other side is like.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019d have these conversations late into the night. We\u2019d both get really high. I was working as an accountant and needed to be responsible at my job the following day. Vincent didn\u2019t need to be responsible for anything. He said he was working on a novel and trying to put all of his spiritual ideas together into something that a publisher might be interested in. I\u2019d come home and we\u2019d smoke more weed and I don\u2019t think he was actually making any progress on his novel.<\/p>\n
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