Chimera
The posters for Circus Chimera started popping up around town about a month ago. I should have known this circus was trouble because one of the sponsors was a grotesque local death-trap indoor "playscape" called Rad-I-Jazz, which appears determined to blind half of Austin's children with stray foam from its "lava pit." But my wife Regina has a lot to do with the move coming up, and she's commanded me to keep Elijah out of the house as often as possible. So to the circus we went, on Saturday at 4:30 PM.
It was held in the former long-term-parking lot of the now-abandoned Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, a truly charming setting if you're a fan of ghost airplanes. This circus was inexpensive, as such things go, though they charged you extra to allow your kids to ride on the creakiest, lamest little train I've ever seen, on a track that I could have built myself. Also, though the circus claims to be animal-free, they do offer pony rides, and there's a stinkhole of a trailer that features tarantulas, turtles, and several enormous, depressed-looking pythons behind glass. We were admitted into that trailer, at the cost of a dollar each, by a man who had two fingers on his right hand, between which he snatched the money. This guy looked like he'd been sniffing glue every day for the last ten years.
Elijah seemed to enjoy that feature well enough, but then we went into the circus. He was attracted to the cotton candy, though he informed me that it was not, in fact, cotton candy, but rather "cotton candy on a stick," which was, technically, true. He also liked the "toys" that were being sold by some local hires, who looked annoyed, possibly because they'd been forced to buy the toys, barely functional light-up tops and light-saber ripoffs, out of their salaries at a nearby dollar store.
It was hot and damp inside the tent. We looked out at the arena: The floor was covered by a rubber tarp with some sort of star design in the center, which was, I think, supposed to have been white, but it looked soiled in places. This would have been forgivable in a low-rent circus that featured animals, but I found myself wondering from whence that dirt had come. Elijah kept asking me when the "pretend monsters" were going to "come out and juggle the clowns," so I could have guessed that we weren't going to make it to the second act.
After we endured Muzak renditions of the themes from The Rose, Dr. Zhivago, and Love Story, played over the PA at coccyx-splitting volume, an announcer came on to tell us that the Circus Chimera had recently signed a deal with a company from Cincinnati, Ohio, "to be the exclusive vendor of their delcious peanuts." This was one of the craziest things I'd ever heard, but then it got crazier, because apparently, there were prize tags in various bags, and if people bought peanuts in the next five minutes at the reduced price of one dollar, there was a chance, but only a chance, that they could get a piece of paper telling them that they'd won a balloon. Wow. A whole balloon. The woman sitting next to Elijah was, as far as I could see, the only winner in the crowd of 120, though to be fair, only about a dozen people took advantage of the special offer. While she was claiming her prize, Elijah attempted to steal her peanuts, but I stopped him even though I was tempted to do the same thing.
The show began with a dance number of sorts, featuring five short women who seemed to be from an Asian country (perhaps Thailand), and three who appeared to be from one of the Baltic States. They walked down Astroturf-covered steps while dressed in white bodysuits and white feathered head-dresses that looked like they'd been sewn together at the last minute backstage. I suspected that these women had been kidnapped by some kind of circus slavery ring and forced to tour Texas with the Circus Chimera, because they were not attractive and they also couldn't dance, which generally are requirements for circus dancing. I said to Elijah, "ooh, look at that." But he was already shuffling restlessly in his seat.
The general unappealingness of the Chimera dancers was immediately balanced out by a super-hot former Soviet gymnast who appeared wearing a pink leotard excavated from a Danskin outlet store in the early 1980s. She swung around on a ring quite athletically, which was a special treat for the dads in the audience, because the outfit left nothing to the imagination. You could see the contours of her ass quite clearly, and when she stretched forward, you could also see her nipples, and I don't just mean the shapes of her nipples. They had thick brown aureoles and were obviously in the primes of their nipple lives. I've seen less titty at a strip club in Vegas. Elijah, in the meantime, asked about the monsters some more.
Next, in case there were any gay men in the audience, Chimera threw them some candy in the form of a lithe fellow in a black jumpsuit who twirled rings quite seductively. He was followed, in short order, by two hideously unfunny clowns who danced the can-can while wearing tutus, a family of lipstick-weraing Ecuadorian acrobats who flipped one another around, and a slightly better clown who teased a 12-year-old audience member by making her figure out where he was hiding a roll of toilet paper.
By the time the hot gymnast reappeared, wearing what appeared to be a half-satin, half-leather fetish suit, Elijah was begging to leave. So, as this woman did something unbelievable like throw her legs over her head and then perch her chin on her overturned shins, I was forced out of the tent by my child, who was crafting the whimpering beginnings of a public tantrum. I couldn't say to my three-year-old, "Please let's stay. I want to see if the slutty gymnast shoots a banana out of her hooch." He probably wouldn't have understood, though his mother would have, which is one of the main reasons I married her.
There's something gratifying about taking your kid to a small, seedy circus, particularly if he didn't like it, as he later told me, because "The Aquabats weren't there." Now, for those of you who don't know the Aquabats, they are grown men from Southern California who wear superhero costumes and fight monsters like Dr. Space Mummy and Powdered Milk Man on stage, while also playing dorky, science-fiction themed ska rock. When I saw them about a year and a half ago, I knew that, one day, they'd be my son's favorite band. So I bought their video collection, Serious Awesomeness, and went about teaching my son about comedy costume rock. They are now his favorite band, and we have to watch at least part of the video twice a week.
I'd told Elijah that there would be acrobats in the circus, but he'd heard what he wanted to hear. Later, Regina said, "You're turning him into a total indie snob, and he's only three."
"What are you talking about?" I said. "The Aquabats are awesome."
"But now he hates the circus. You can't make him think all mainstream things suck."
"His favorite TV shows are Little Einsteins and Go Diego Go!" I said. "He gets his share of corporate entertainment brainwashing. And I let him like what he likes, because I love him."
"That's very generous of you."
"Wouldn't it be cool, though, if The Aquabats were in the circus?"
Elijah took time out from a particularly gripping episode of The Backyardigans, possibly the "Soccer Monster" one, to exclaim "Yeah, daddy! It would be cool!"
"God help me," said Regina.