the bearded lady

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported this blog: all my readers, fellow writers, commenters and passers by. And to those of you who have link pimped me about the place, special thanks. Lots more stories coming in the new year so please hang around. Hope 2009 is a spectacular year for all of us, and – oh yes – lots of LOVE.

eldood evol

TBL

There were two fake Russians in the pub, trying to buy us drinks half the night. We knew they were fake because we said ‘dosvedanya’ to them, and they didn’t know it was Polish. Real Russians would have known that. Besides, since when were Russians from Moscow hanging around in dingy pubs in Smethwick?

Their names, or so they would have us believe, were Vladimir and Vasso. Vasso had a big red face with tiny dark mean eyes. Vladimir was sleek, like a seal, with a round smiling face and a flat nose.

“I’m sorry I broke your conversation,” he said, moving his chair over to our table. “You have good talk, I break?”

“Yes,” said my friend.

“OK, I go now,” said Vladimir, pulling his chair up next to mine and gesturing at Vasso to join us.

“I understand true friendship,” said Vladimir. “I don’t want to break your talk, so I leave you.”

“Thanks,” said my friend.

Vladimir put his drink on the table and budged over for Vasso. The fake Russians had good strong fake Russian accents, but we weren’t convinced.

“Dosvedanya,” said my friend.

“Yeah, dosvedanya,” I said.

The fake Russians looked at each other and shrugged, turning down the corners of their mouths.

They weren’t even drinking vodka. Like I said: fake.

This man speaks with forked tongue. Becoming a snake, I slide around his body; skin slithering on skin and his mouth hissing into mine, his tongue flickering over mine. Some words are spoken with his hands and fingers, the sounds of vowels riding on our breath and the rasping of our bodies together. We are writing something, an old story, and we know the ending already. Tomorrow we will break open like the morning, cold and brave, smiling kindly. It is not love.

There were white and black horses, and girls who stood on the horses’ backs, nearly naked, in glittered paint. There was the flying trapeze and the cannon. Elephants with jewels pasted on to their heads. Tigers and lions, jungle fevered beasts. There were athletes and fire eaters, magicians and clowns. And there was us, the others. Mermaids, giants, dwarves, monsters, and bearded ladies.

I grew my beard at seventeen. It was soft and black, and curled down under my chin. I couldn’t help stroking it, winding the curls around my fingers. It made the boys jealous, embarrassed of their own smooth faces. But they knew it was just the circus in my blood. My beard had to grow, the same way the giant had to get taller, and the mermaid had to take her baths.

At sunset I dressed in sequins and pearls, a green and silver dress of stars falling into grass. I climbed onto my podium and locked myself in my cage, and there I stayed until midnight, until the circus closed. I posed. I reclined. Sometimes I read a book.

I’ll tell you something about the circus. We others, we the freaks, we were it. Tricks on horseback and flying through the air are only simple acrobatics. We were the real thing: the rude, secret, magic, unclean, sexy, freakish, horrifying thing. The people came, they paid their money. They stared. They said how awful! and my god! and they laughed and clutched at one anothers arms and put their hands over their mouths. And we watched them, their clothes and their expressions, the coins they chinked in their pockets, their drunken forays in the dark. They were strange to us, unreal and exotic. They lived in houses. They rode on the bus. They didn’t think anything about elephants and sequins and the smell of paste, the smell of fried doughnuts.

Of course, I was young — I was romantic. I fell in love. He came with his friends, three of them: brave, drunk, thrilled. They stood around my cage, laughing and pushing each other. Fancy some of that, do you Henry? She’s got a better one than you have! Imagine what the rest of her is like. I was seventeen. I guessed how badly they feared and wanted me. But the boy said nothing, only smiled.

He came back the next night, alone, and every night for a week. He stood by the side of the cage and watched me make up poses. He watched me read my book. He sat on the edge of the stage and smiled up at me with big eyes. One night, he waited until everyone had gone and then he held out his hand and helped me step out of the cage. We kissed at the back of the caravans. He pushed his hand inside my dress.

When he finished, I asked him for money. He didn’t believe me at first, and he laughed, his fingers entwined in my own. He told me he loved me. Ah. He threw possibilities at me like a handful of sequins. Would I live in a house, ride the bus, forget about the tigers and the glitter? I could learn to type, read the newspaper, have babies. I could shave. I said please pay what you owe me. This is a circus and I have friends here.

I think you must know that love is impossible for us.

A few days later the circus moved on. I made myself a new dress, a red one with thigh high slashes up both legs. I washed my hair and mended my shoes. I ate my meals with the others outside, took my turns cooking and cleaning. I learned to sing and put my prices up. I was popular, they even put me on the poster for a time. You see, they come, and they look at us, and they feel so human. It makes them tender. They want us to be the beasts, so that they can be princesses.

The boy didn’t come back, and one night I stopped waiting. I took the money from its hiding place underneath my bed and spent it on a bottle of good champagne. I drank it on the steps of my caravan, listening to the elephants singing, and the girls laughing as they swept the floor of the big top and fed the black and white horses.

Now you know about love, I told myself.

Well, that was a long time ago.