reading response

Last night I read at Rachel Kramer Bussel's very jam-packed In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series. I always find it very hard to tell how things like that go, because I'm very hard on myself, and I'm really very nervous, and the crowd always seems so far away, even if they're pressing right up against the mike stand as they were last night. I'm hoping it went all right. And with any luck you will have a chance to judge for yourself because there is very likely a podcast in the works.

Today I feel only slightly like I'd had public open-heart surgery, which was pretty much exactly how I felt after last year's reading, only for days and days. I felt hollowed, scooped out like a canteloupe. It was deeply disconcerting. Knowing that I'd felt that way the last time I'd read, and recognizing how little I liked feeling it, I chose a piece for last night's reading that didn't seem so raw, so naked and trembling in the cold hard spotlight and piteously yowling in the eerie amplification of a microphone.

When I read last year, I chose "feral," a story about the first time I'd had menstrual sex and how I discovered I liked it. I think the story was a bit too close to my surprisingly fragile bones. For last night's reading,  I picked a story I call "night at the circus," and if you're so inclined, you can read it in its newly edited state, below the fold.

I only saw the first half of the readers last night, and they were really good. My friends left during intermission, and I had every intention of staying for the second half, but I couldn't find a seat, and I felt so all alone and somewhat forlorn in the post-partum depression of actually reading, so I admit I left. I apologize to the other writers. I am no good in bars.

Thank you to those of you who came to hear me and to show your support. Thanks especially to Rachel, who has been incredibly generous to me, and to Viviane, who taped the reading and who, if it all the small gods of technology line up, will be the source of the podcast.

"night at the circus"

This story takes place a year before I moved to Gotham, the year I was living in the condo in Vermont, the summer the circus came to town.

This is the story of when I did a clown.

I didn’t know he was a clown when I met him. When I met him he just looked like your average black-haired, black-eyed walking hotness of indefinable ethnic origin.

When I met him, the first time, he was having lunch. I was serving him. I brought him and his table some kind of pasta, some sort of wine. Jokes were made. Banter was bandied. Extreme flirtage was experienced. The possibility of seduction was created.

I recognized his lunchmates. They were the Ringmaster of the Big Apple Circus, his wife the Horse Mistress, and the man who played the star clown, Grandma. I recognized them from having seen the circus before and having a pretty good eye for celebrity, however minor. And while I would have been extra special charming for them anyway, it was for my then unbeknownst clown that I dialed the charm rheostat up to eleven.

I twinkled.

I was 26. I was a part-time waitress, part-time aerobics instructor. I had ass-length blonde hair and a caramel tan. I was cute as all get out and cocky as hell. I had a boyfriend, but he lived here in Gotham and I lived there in Vermont, and while we were planning on living together neither of us had any immediate interest in fidelity.

I don’t remember the clown’s name. He is just The Clown, being that he is the only man I’ve fucked who carries that distinction in a literal sense. The clown was Greek. He was from New York, I think, and I am fairly certain his father was a man of the Greek Orthodox cloth.

You know when you meet those people and you get that sudden flash of erotic heat, when you would throw the patio furniture through the glass wall to get to them if you were in a situation that required you to do so? You know when you meet those people and the air is charged with positive pheromone ions? You know when you meet a person and your eyes meet and you know down to the tips of your tingling loins with unshakeable certitude that you are going to fuck?

That was me and the clown. I met him and I knew I would fuck him.

He was not dressed as a clown. There was nothing clowny about him. No rubber noses, no snapping overwide suspenders, no giant squeaking shoes. Not a rubber haddock in sight. Not even the faintest tinge of greasepaint.

He was, actually, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and he was mighty fine, my unknown clown.

He was a stunt clown. He was the man who leapt from horse to horse, surefooted and fake-tottering until his footing slipped and he fell to the ground, dragged around and around from hand, from foot, from mouth behind the horses, and you held your breath in your amusement until he reappeared, magically almost, triumphant and horse-akimbo once more.

He was a stuntman in a clown suit and he was mighty, mighty fine. Fine, fine ropy hard arms and a fine, fine chocolate bar abdomen. Fine, fine muscular legs and a fine, fine sculpty ass that I would find out was carpeted with fine, fine tiny black hairs.

The week that I met my clown, my boyfriend was in town and we had a date to see the circus together. I went with him, and I watched for my Greek god clown, and after I chatted with the Ringmaster and introduced him to my boyfriend. The next day, I kissed my boyfriend good-bye on both cheeks, and I went again to the circus alone.

I went to the circus and after it finished, I found my clown. He gave me a tour of the circus folk. I saw their trailers and their tents. I saw them playing cards and strumming guitars. I smelled the food they cooked for themselves. I saw the honeytrucks for the hoi polloi who did not have their own trailers.  I met the elephants and the horses. I met the camels too, though I am allergic to camels, so I didn’t stay long patting them. I waved at the tigers through their cages.

I toured the backstage of the circus, hand in hand with my clown and then I kissed my clown good-bye. I went home and I slept the sleep of the just.

The next night I went back, after the show was over. I remember  with mathematic precision what I wore. It was this little 1950’s ecru eye-lit shirt with a Peter Pan collar that came just below my ribcage and a pair of jeans. I rode my motorcycle to the back entrance of the circus, and I convinced the lax security to let me in.

I parked and I wended my way through the caravan of tents and trailers and trucks and vans and animal pens and people smoking in half-spangled outfits to the clown’s trailer.

I knocked on the door, unbidden.

His German Shepherd barked once. My breath caught a bit, for it was not as if I’d asked him if I could come. It was not as if I knew he had not someone else, someone perhaps spangled and leotarded, perhaps suspended batlike from the low ceiling of his trailer.

He opened the door, looked at me, looked at me again, and said, “Nice shirt you’re almost wearing. Come in.”

And we went to bed.

My clown was hot. He was hot as Paris in his Greek altogether. His body was ropy strong and thick about the shoulders, thin about the waist. His skin was tawny and almond smooth, except his hands. His hands, from holding on to the rope that pulled him day after day behind the horses, from wrangling elephants and tents, from lassoing and gearing and rigging and pulling day after day, night after night, his hands were rough as an emery board.

But his hair smelled like man. And his skin was smooth as almonds. His voice was deep and dark, like I like it, burring in my ear, telling me stories of circus life and kidding me about moving to New York.

“Only one in a million makes it in New York,” he said.

I assured him I could meet those odds. (I wish I had now the confidence I had then.)

He laughed at my jokes. He kissed me hard with his generous mouth. He appreciated my aerobicized ass with his ravaged ostler’s hands. He gave me head and I could smell his thick masculine musk even when he was submerged below my waist. There wasn’t a tremendous amount of bathing in the circus.

When it was my turn,  I found his cock was thick and long and covered in a generous hood like a monk’s cowl. I found it interesting, but at 26, I was not the lover I am today. I wonder now what fun I could have with my knowing mouth and muscular pussy with that un-nipped dick. I can only hope my fumbling was appreciated for its fervor.

Under a thin, worn comforter, I fucked him. Outside us were the sounds of late summer in Vermont—cicadas and owls—mixed with the occasional trumpet of an elephant or the lazy growl of a tiger. We fucked to this mixed symphony, and then I slept the night, or most of it anyway, with him under the thin cotton comforter in his trailer. It smelled like meadows. In the small, thin-lit hours of the morning, I got up and rode my motorcycle the 3/4 of a mile home to my condo.

The next day I rode an hour to a country store to buy him some Bag Balm for his hands. I once more talked my way past the lax security. I went to my clown’s trailer, he wasn’t home, so I patted the German Shepherd on the head and left the balm for him with a short note.

I thanked him, I think. I wished him luck, and I told him to keep on clowning.

Be a clown, I said. All the world loves a clown.

I did.

Comments

[alizinha]

CG, I was there last night but didn't get to say hello. I came out specifically to hear (and see!) you and it was most definitely worth it. Thanks for reading.

[M]

Your nerves are for naught. Well, not for naught as anyone stepping up to the microphone would be more than justified in their nervousness. Your reading was wonderfully engaging. Now with your your voice/inflection/emphasis codified in my mind it adds a new and interesting facet to your writings. The only regret is on my part for not seeing you afterwards and introducing myself.

Cheers Chelsea, you were brilliant.

[Viviane]

I thought you looked great and read really well. You could've heard a pin drop in that room.

I know how difficult for us to to be 'public.' It takes so much courage to do what you did, and do. I'm not any good in bars either.

kissykiss

[Chris]

The reading was fabulous, CG. You were one of the high points of the evening, even among a really strong bunch of readers. There's really no need for you to be doubting yourself in retrospect. (Of course, I'd be doing the same thing, if it was me.) Viva clown sex!

[sweat shop sissy]

you make me think. i like that. the thing i've been thinking about since reading this post yesterday is how surprised i was that you felt exposed at the reading and that you're no good in bars. i never would have expected that from a former stripper.
i to am no good at bars and i really shake when i read in public.
cheers,
sss

[Alana]

Hi CG,

Sorry I wasn't there to hear and see you. Now that would have been a treat, since you're my girl crush and all. Congratulations! The story rocks!

Peace,
A

[furtive]

oh! a podcast would be divine! could it be a podcast with pictures? i'd love that x

[MT]

I saw you speak for the first time last year. And you were the reason I came back last week. I'm ashamed I didn't have the courage to share with you my name after you stood in front of the faceless, expecting crowd and shared your soul.