Circus for Satan Circus for Satan Spring of ...

Spring of 1996 was a season of fits and starts. On the one hand, my friend Darius James had introduced me to John Strausbaugh, who thought it might be interesting to have a resident Satanist contributing to New York Press, and I was in a moderately successful rock 'n' roll band called White Courtesy Telephone. I did my geek act onstage at various venues around town and took a lot of fun drugs.

On the other hand, the band was becoming increasingly annoying as the possibility of actually getting signed to a label began to strip the effort of any real levity, and my wife and I were trapped in an illegal lease arrangement with the worst landlord I've ever had or heard of in an uninsulated firetrap of a loft in what's now called DUMBO. To top it all off, I was still totally infatuated with my demented bitch of a shrink, whom I'd been seeing for four years in a misguided and ultimately doomed attempt to quit drinking.

That whole season had the feeling of the very beginning of an LSD experience: that twitchy, anxious period in which you know you're committed to some kind of wild ride, but you aren't quite sure how far the thing might go or whether you even really want to go there. Spring is like that. The word is psychotomimetic: mimicking psychosis. Spring weather makes no sense, and it's been my observation over the years that very little else does between the months of March and June. I was hydroplaning, steering into the skid.

By late April, I was itching to get out of town. I'd been working circuses off and on since 1988. It's very addictive work, and as the days get longer and the weather warms, the body begins to lust for popcorn and diesel, serious physical duress, outrageous risk, all-night jumps in rattletrap trucks, the mud, the blood and the beer. It's not a job; it's a lifestyle. Imagine Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run filtered through the Butthole Surfers. It's like that. You will never know until you try.

One night in late May, my wife and I were sitting around under our severely leaking roof, smoking pot and watching Return of the Jedi?yet again?out of sheer boredom and frustration. For us, at the time, that particular movie was a form of comfort food, like tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I was ranting about circus life, explaining to Bonnie how it was that certain of us who had worked with David LeBlanc had taken to calling him "Vader," behind his back, of course. At the very moment that Darth Vader made his first appearance, the phone rang.

No shit, it was David LeBlanc.

Two weeks later I was in Utica, having scammed my way on to an Amtrak staffed by needy retards incapable of perceiving that I had no ticket. David picked me up at the station, and I joined up with Billy Martin's Big Top Circus in the sixth week of its one and only tour.

David ran the lot and the crew, everything outside the ring and anything technical enough inside as to involve human life. Of the seven of us, five (plus David) had come out of the Big Apple Circus, and those who'd worked there had an appropriate sort of Vaderesque attitude toward moving a show. That is to say: It moved regardless of weather or circumstances. The Big Apple crew had the immediate bond. We were already nuts, and we knew it.

Una Mimnagh ran sound and lights, 24 weeks with three days off; if she got sick, she horked into the bucket next to her workstation. She was full-blooded Irish and everything that suggests?all four grandparents came over on the boat. She was working up an act of her own (trapeze), and she was the only one on the crew who could drink me under the table.

Jay Klein was the tent boss; his old lady, Nancy Felker, was his strong right arm. They were like Manson hippies: He'd been a parks department-type dude in Wisconsin, and she'd been raised in the hills of Kentucky by authentic hardcore backwoods Christians (not to say hillbillies). Jay doubled as the cook and collected black powder pistols. Jay and Nancy always stopped for roadkill, taking the pelts and bones if they were still good. I never inquired about the meat. They had a great collection of interesting bugs preserved in tubes of vodka.

Denny Pinson was a real piece of work. He'd been with us at Big Apple, where a young bull elephant by the name of Ned had had the prescience and presence of mind to discreetly crush his foot one night during an interlude between acts. Denny was in some kind of recovery, forever presenting himself as cleansed and redeemed, and then forever betraying any newfound trust.

That was the Big Apple crew. Adam Spencer was the new guy, a recent refugee from Vidbel's Olde Tyme Circus who took to terrifying me with high-speed jumps in his pickup. He looked like some prep kid then. Now he runs maintenance for Big Apple, and he looks like a fucking Klingon.

Dale was a leftover curse from the carnies who wore spandex, and had an evil rash on his gut. He perspired heavily and jerked off in the bunkhouse, which caused all the guys to sleep in the big rigs that hauled the show around. Ultimately, I think it was all for the better, except in the case of Brian, whom we all called "Brain." Brain had absolutely nothing going for him. He was pure, upstate white trash, his only saving grace being his commercial driver's license. He was extremely and unnaturally white, with forearms greatly exceeding his biceps just as his calves exceeded his thighs. He had an appetite for weird David Lynch-type crackwhores of the white persuasion.

Billy Martin himself was a ball of light, an angelic being in a self-effacing, Liberace-worshipping ringmaster. Billy had run away from a less-than-satisfactory childhood environment and hooked up with Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus back when he was 14 years old, signing on as a prop guy and working his way up to ringmaster. He was one of the most beloved ringmasters of all time in American circus.

The way things panned out, I found out about the financing some ways in. Apparently a couple of carnies whom we shall call Steve and Kevin had promised to back Billy for the two to three years it takes to get a tented circus off the ground. They reneged on the promise halfway through the first tour?it was all a scam to get depreciation on rock equipment?but we stuck together anyway. Billy and David financed the thing out of their own pockets through half the season, and for the tail of the tour, the crew, except for Dale and Brain, worked without salary.

Maybe this all sounds rough and weird, but it's nowhere near as rough and weird as things have become, and if it lacks in detail, chalk it off to an attempt at brevity. David always said, "It doesn't matter what you make, or even what you do. It's all about who you're with."