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“We didn’t want it to happen this way,” Joh
For all his breathless enthusiasm, Joh
Second Half
9
The Star of the Show
Elvis came back to life in Queens. Big Man met him at the gates. For the two loudest crooners on the show—actually whiners is more like it—the great showdown finally occurred in New York when they battled each other grunt for grunt in the only ring that isn’t round. It was the brawl of the year on the blacktop lot around Shea: “Blue Suede Shoes” meets “Jailhouse Rock.”
In fairness, Sean and Big Man weren’t the only ones whose blood was boiling in New York. By late July we had reached that time of the season commonly referred to as “that time of the season.” Joh
Drenched in self-pity, the show arrived in New York at the same time as the most devastating heat wave in a decade. For most of our first week—in Forest Park and the Bronx—the seats were mostly empty as the performers struggled through a liquid assault much more deadly than mud: humidity. The temperature in the rings was well over 100 degrees: near the top of the tent it was closer to 115. Mari Quiros nearly fainted while doing a split on the high wire. Her husband, Little Pablo, nearly slipped from the trapeze when the chalk on his hands turned to milk.
The clowns, once again, probably had it the worst. With the number of shows now at seventeen a week, we were required to be in makeup nearly twelve hours a day, an exercise that is best likened to soaking in a tub of congealed perspiration consommé. Grease may be repellent to water, but greasepaint is not repellent to sweat. In fact, by the time I put on my stocking, skullcap, T-shirt, dress shirt, gym shorts, trousers, socks, shoes, bow tie, jacket, gloves, and hat, just the mere act of opening my eyes brought torrents of chalky white perspiration gushing from my powdered pores. That, of course, is when the white stays on. You can always tell a clown in heat by the rash of pink flesh peeking out of his white upper lip or the beads of red moisture dripping off his vanishing nose. Naturally the worst thing for a clown is to reveal to the world his true colors.
Besides the heat, we still had to grapple with the trials of producing a circus in the middle of the Big Apple. Arriving in New York dramatically increased the level of tension on the lot. One clown started sitting out every gag to watch over the Alley, while Sheri from concessions bought a two-way walkie-talkie system to communicate with her children, whom she kept locked in her trailer during the show. Dawnita even placed a sign next to her door that said: DANGER: BEWARE OF LIVE COBRAS. While some of this anxiety may have been misguided, much of it was well founded. Driving into Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge, crossing the Bronx on a two-lane, two-story pockmarked thoroughfare, passing into Queens over the thoroughly clogged and completely unmarked Throgs Neck Bridge, and driving down Flatbush Avenue through Little Havana, Little Haiti, and Little Sicily might be expected to produce a certain amount of stress even under ideal conditions. But imagine doing this in the middle of the night, on an empty stomach, with a child in your lap and a map on your dash, after walking on a high wire all day or playing the trombone for ten straight hours, all while driving a thirty-five-foot mobile home with a teeterboard in the kitchen, a tractor-trailer full of hungry elephants, or the world’s largest ca
When we arrived at Shea Stadium at the end of our second week in New York, the collective tension was begi
By Sunday afternoon the silliness and sordidness brought on by the City finally came to blows. It happened in front of Clown Alley.
Sean stepped out of the tent just before intermission of the 4:30 show. His ca