On the day before Halloween, one final summer wind blew in with the last of the cherry tomatoes, and I thought back on this year’s carnival.
Just before the fourth of July, it pulls into our neighborhood with a bang, a bump, and a holler. The big rigs unfold their rides like giant butterfly wings, the workers raise the tents, and the carnies open their joints on the midway.
The carny’s joint: how I love it! I love it with the heart of a 12-year-old boy, his pocket stuffed with dollar bills. I love it with a fool’s love, like the love of the village idiot for the village slut.
Every joint takes me back to my first. I am 9, and the carnival is a most marvelous madhouse. My cousin Ricky spins the Wheel of Fortune. We all put our dimes on a number, Ricky spins the wheel, and if it stops on my number, I win a prize. If it doesn’t, Ricky takes the dimes. But Ricky lets my dime ride on number 9 again and again until I win.
Hail, Mary! The miracle of a rigged game broke in upon my innocent head with all the force of a divine revelation.
I went home with a stuffed orange dog.
The next Saturday I slept on that dog’s neck so that I’d have a stiff neck of my own and get out of my catechism class without technically having to lie. Forcing a nine-year-old to spend even one glorious Saturday morning of his boyhood with a nun is a crime. I felt no guilt in deceiving my parents in order to escape.
The carny’s joint still mesmerizes me: the game, the prizes, the carny, the loud cartoon graphics. To me it’s a little stage, and the drama is about innocence struggling in the clutches of experience.
Hanging helpless by their cartoon heads, the stuffed animals seem to me like children held captive by a flimflam man. He runs a rigged game. The suckers lay down their hard-earned cash for a chance to own one of his imprisoned little pretties.
The innocent creatures look down on the midway helplessly hoping for a miracle release, some child to take them home and love them until they become real, like the Velveteen Rabbit.
I identify with the stuffed animals. Being a big dopey friend for a kid or a booby prize for the parent: anything is better than the clutches of a carney, his sales pitch running thick as oil in a corn dog.
Don’t we all feel our innocence trapped in the clutches of a cynical world, fingering its filthy lucre? Don’t we all yearn to be released?
…free the stuffies!!!…