Animal Parade

You miss it. The turn down safer streets to the circus lot. This is bad because your cousin Sharon doesn’t do well with last minute directions. She’s a planner, one-track, you know this, but “You’re So Vain” is on the radio and you ask Sharon about Mick Jagger, and she says it’s Warren Beatty, and that one crucial exit ramp is already behind you, so you pull out the crumpled map from the glove box, and there it sits, more bloated than it has any right to be, because you just don’t have the patience. Maps aren’t like towels, or even letters, where it’s all about thirds, both of which you can fold just fine. No, maps have a back-and-forth thing going on, and, well, you get a little flustered. So quick as you can, and with only one elbow in Sharon’s eye as you spread the Potomac west of DC, as Sharon’s yelling at you Where do we go, you say take the next exit. And this is exactly the wrong thing to do, because now you are in a bad part of town, in an old VW beetle, bright orange, the streets deserted except for hubcaps and cardboard boxes, and burned-out cars, and the man who spits on your windshield, and Sharon’s starting to hyperventilate, although she’s trying to hide it, you can hear the hunh, hunh that makes you sad you’re missing the animal parade, especially the elephants, so you pat Sharon on the back, pretty hard really, because your hands feel like they do on Jimmy’s bongos, and that’s not a euphemism, he really does have drums down in his basement where you hang out sometimes and once drank vodka in the little airline bottles his dad brings home, and Sharon snaps Cut that out moron, where are we? And it’s been maybe 45 minutes or two days you’ve been stuck in this car with a total nut case and you see the glow like another car on fire, but it’s just the lights in the summer haze and there is the tent and Sharon has gone all Cuckoo’s Nest and parks right there on the animal lot. You’re so glad to be out of the car and arm’s reach of Sharon that you stomp across the field with turds as big as Sharon’s head. And the caretaker with the long hook says hey girlie want a ride which sounds just like what the flasher at the mall said the first time you ever saw a real penis, but then you see the most gorgeous thing ever—ribbed like crazy corduroy, toenails like burnished apples, and eyelashes you could macrame, and you nod yes, and up you go, on her bended knee. And this is when you know things can be big and tough and beautiful all at once. You smell hay and spun sugar and wet grass as you throw your hands wide, look at the sky, the earth spinning.