The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 87. Robert Peters "Fights and Carnivals"

.

from Crunching Gravel

events from the summer between

the author’s 8th and 9th grades

Part 2 – Fights and the Carnival

Fights

To stifle the numerous quarrels [my sister] Margie and I had that summer, my mother would declare, “Just wait till you get to high school. Those guys are tough. They’ll knock your block off.”

My worst quarrel with Margie occurred a week before high school, the week after the county fair. To play pig family we formed a circle of kitchen chairs on the grass. Our conflict was over which of us would play the sow. Margie felt that a male should always play the boar, lingering at the back of the pen digging up roots while the lucky sow lay on her side squirting forth piglets. For a convincing porcine look, we wore Dad’s heavy winter coats.

I would, for once, be the sow! I grabbed the coat my sister preferred, put it on, and flopped down in birth throes. I loved the delicious sensation of birthing. Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. When I turned to lick the piglets, Margie kicked at me and yelled. I fought back, spraining her hand. She announced she would drown herself in the lake.

I called her bluff, waved good-bye, and took the coats and chairs back into the house. Half an hour later, I began to worry, filling in time with some desultory hoeing in the flower garden. I started for the lake, near panic. No signs near shore of her shoes or clothes, no footprints, no evidence of a drowned person in the water. If she had indeed jumped, she had drifted into the cranberry marsh, out of sight.

I returned home. As I passed a hayrick, crying, Margie jumped out laughing. “Served you right,” she said. I felt both angry and relieved.

From this point on, we played few childhood games. Within a few days, her menstrual cycles began. Mom was in the Rhinelander Hospital having her goiter removed. Dad sent Margie to Aunt Kate to explain the facts of life and chose the occasion for my own sex education – or, at least he tried. He explained “monthlies” and said it was time I “fucked” a girl. I should cross the road and take Celia Kula into the woods and “do it.”

I was shocked. The paradox of women as both citadels of purity – this is how I saw my mother, and was how my father conditioned me to see her – and licentious whores was painful.

Carnival

The carnival took place in a field at the junction of Sundsteen Road and Highway 17. I walked there before opening day to help erect tents and booths. Brightly painted vans were arranged in a row at the back of the field. Barred wagons, badly in need of paint, held a lion and a gorilla. Some booths were already up. There would be a ferris wheel and a merry-go-round. The carnies looked rough, most of them unshaven, some stripped to the waist. The women among them dressed like men.

A large tent was splayed over the dirt, ready for hoisting. Half a dozen men were driving stakes into the ground and tying guy ropes. “Don’t just stand there!” a voice shouted. “Get to work.” The man, in his mid-twenties, wore red trunks and was tanned a savage brown. His biceps were huge and flexed as he stood before me. His accent was strange. “He’d get this tent up and you’ll earn a silver dollar.”

I held the guy wires taut while he secured them to stakes. The crew raised the tent, working a large center pole upright. We erected shorter poles. The pungent odor of crushed grass blended with the snake-like smell of canvas.

We set up platforms for a trapeze and surrounded an area of painted boxes and hoops with a circle of wire, where the lion and gorilla would perform. Near the center pole stood an ornate calliope, which received power from a noisy generator.

When we broke for lunch, the carnival man invited me to his wagon. His name was Brik. He was from Georgia, and traveled with the show for half the year, moving north during the warm season and moving south when it got cold. He bossed the crew.

The interior of his wagon was set up like a living room, complete with small sofa and an embroidered, brightly colored pillow saying “I LUV U MOM.” A small dinette contained a couple of chairs and an icebox, and a mattress and blankets were on the floor. “Like liverwurst?” he asked. “Sure,” I said, sitting at the table. He brought out milk and pop. “Milk keeps my muscles big,” he said. “I suppose you noticed.”

“I want to look like you,” I said, feeling stupid as soon as my words were out.

“You’ve got height, lad. Here, stand with your back against mine. You’ll see.”

His buttocks flared against mine. He tightened the muscles of his back.

“I was right. You’re taller.” He faced me. His chest was covered with curly black hair. “You’ll have hair, and it’ll be as black as mine.” He laughed. “And you’ll get muscles.” He had grown up on a farm. “I like ramblin’,” he said. “I could never be like my dad, married to some woman, with kids tying me down.”

He smeared liverwurst on slabs of soft A&P white bread, piling the sandwiches on a paper plate. “Two’s plenty,” I said. His bare knees touched mine. He spread his legs. I felt giddy, swallowed milk, and finished my sandwich. A magnetic current from his knee jolted me. There was sweat on my lip.

“Well, let’s get on. There’s more work to do.” If I stayed, in addition to the silver dollar, he’d see that I got a pass for the big tent show. “I wish you was older,” he said. “I’d ask you to join this here carnival, and live with me.”

Later, I went to his wagon to collect my pay and found him on his couch stark naked. “Don’t get upset, lad. You’ve seen a man naked before. I have to wear my ‘public duds’ for tonight.” I stole a look at his penis: It had an enormous foreskin. He pulled some dress pants on, felt in his pockets, and withdrew a silver dollar. “Don’t see many of these around,” he said. “Plenty in Colorado, though.” He gave me a piece of paper saying “Tent Show: Admit One.”

I thanked him. He told me that if I helped tear down the tents the next night, I’d earn another dollar.

All the way home, I heard his accent. In a trance, I milked the cow. I’d go anywhere he wanted, do anything he asked. […]

I did not return to Brik the next evening. I stayed in the field all afternoon gathering and husking corn. I chopped wood. After supper, I lay in bed praying for Christ to quiet my turbulence. He approached with palms extended, the wounds visible. He smiled, His robes wafted by an aromatic breeze.

As He neared, I saw that His face was the carnival man’s!

—Robert Peters,

writing of events from

the summer of 1936

_