[Originally written on this date in 2004]
Everything started out fine and yet the result was a castastrophe, an event that has shaken me to the point where I have no idea how to even begin writing about what has happened. My hands are trembling and I am doing my best to type through my tears – so glad I am by myself because I do not want anyone to see me so broken, yet I kind of wish I had someone here to comfort me.
Yesterday I came down to spend Mischief Night and Halloween with Jon, as we had planned to conduct our annual haunting of the Pine Barrens as swampy zombies and take great joy in scaring people. He had even decided that despite the cooling weather, he was going to do a final run on the Wall of Death before packing it away for Winter. We whittled away the afternoon putting up each other’s ‘hawks, smoking blunts, doing some corpse makeup and drinking lots of whiskey. Dinner was biscuits and gravy because that was what Jon always ate the day before he was going to risk his life. It gave him a sense of comfort, reminding him of being a kid and eating it with his dad during breaks when they worked a carnival circuit down in West Virginia.
Afterwards he challenged me to several drag races and that pretty much set the tone for the type of debauchery he was into that evening. We get into the Chevy and he drives us out to this farm somewhere in South Jersey that was doing a haunted hayride, barn and walk. The lines for the hayride and barn were too long for either of us to tolerate, so we opt for the super spooky maze thing. While in line, we got cut due to snogging and not paying attention. Jon was also told to “watch the four-letter words” by a parent who had heard him cursing excessively, due to the presence of young flesh. This is not something you want to say to a man who couldn’t care less what he says around kids, and he definitely gave them a hearty sneer when I know he wanted to give them a piece of his mind. Have to say I am proud of him for showing restraint, though I did not hesitate in delivering a ‘fuck you’ to some snot-nosed brat who decided it was cute to call me scary. It’s Halloween – things are supposed to be scary.
The woods were not at all ‘haunted’, which Jon complained about loudly. Could not blame him considering we have done so much more with a lot less money. Though constructing a maze on a farm is not exactly the same as being in the Pine Barrens with strange things grabbing at you. It was not even that dark so we could see people lurking in what little shadows there were, waiting to ‘scare’ the people that came by. Maybe it was meant to be for younger children, and I could not help but wonder what the other two attractions where like. At one point I caught a ghoul messing with the ‘hawk, which was wilting due to the annoying mist that fell, and it made me laugh.
Back in the Chevy, we drink all the whiskey and possibly wind up kissing for a while. Take a momentary nap and pay no attention to the sound of the engine starting. With fresh air rushing into my face and Jon playfully poking me while repeatedly asking if I am alright, do I need to puke, am I going to stop being a lightweight and laughing the entire time. While my eyes do not want open, I am slightly coherent and can smell the blunt he is smoking. The fragrant aroma is enough to encourage me to sit up and take a few drags. Then he hands me a silver cigarette case and tells me I need to wake up before we get to our destination because he needs me. No hesitation and no questions – I know this man too well to do either. He has been doing coke all day and I can see the effect it is having on him but say nothing.
There is darkness all around us and the scent of pine is strong, almost as much as his arms are as they embrace me. Our lips meet with passion and I wonder why he chose now to do this when we had all day to fool around. This is not casual – I can feel the intensity of his actions, desires and the need to make a connection with me. He is scared though would never express it, the adrenaline and euphoria are taking over and he is loving every moment of it.
When we reach the Wall of Death, he is grinning from ear to ear and takes a minute to soak in the roar of the crowd. Even though he has done this hundreds of times before, I can still feel my heart racing in my chest. Crammed into the makeshift dressing room, Jon suits up in layers of fire retardant materials and leather to protect him in case of a crash. There have been moments in the past he had a bad spill so safety is always a priority. When he challenges me to a race, I am too intoxicated to say what is on my mind and instead drunkenly taunt him. This leads to five minutes of “just one more” because I actually manage to beat him a couple of times without trying. That is when I have to put my foot down and remind him of what he is about to do.
“But I’m the Daredevil, baby,” he says to me as a hand slips through his ‘hawk. “Death chases me, but I am too smart to be caught so don’t you worry about a thing.”
When he kisses me I feel like I am the luckiest woman in the whole world.
Standing in the bleachers with the rest of the gathered crowd, the nervousness subsides and I am completely tuned in, shouting and cheering to pump up the energy. When Jon comes into sight, helmet hanging on his wrist as he walks out the motorcycle, thunderous applause echoes into the evening. He has arrived.
The engine roars, the crowd cheers and the Death Defying Daredevil rides that metallic machine round the Wall of Death. It is an incredible scene and if you have never witnessed this amazing feat, you are truly missing out on something fantastic. For the longest time I thought it was only something which existed in movies, and then I met Jon. His showmanship is on a level one does not expect from a man covered in tattoos and piercings who looks like he just got in from traveling the rails most of the time. That is what feeds him though, because he loves to prove people wrong and do things that are perceived as impossible.
He is pulling out every trick and executes them flawlessly. This might be the best run he has ever had and I am grinning so hard my face hurts. Then it happened – I did not see what made him pitch forward over the handlebars, but it was horrible and for a few moments the crowd had no idea what was going on. The impact of his body against the wooden boards shattered my nerves, I cried out for help while pushing my way through the mass of useless flesh around me. Was there even any kind of emergency response team there? All I could think of was that my best friend was lying motionless a few yards in front of me and no one was helping him.
It felt as though an eternity passed before the medics showed up – I had no idea who was doing crowd control, and by now they had fallen silent because they realized something had gone wrong. Apparently it was only a few minutes but it definitely felt much longer, especially when I saw them doing CPR and reaching for the defibulator. My mind was consumed with the thought that I had just watched my best friend die and I had no shame in crying. Then I saw him gasp for breath and the medic yelled for someone to call an ambulance. Relief should have been sweet, but I wanted to be with Jon – there were people holding me back and I watched helplessly as he was hauled onto a stretcher.
That is the last thing I remember. How I got back to his house is a mystery – the Chevy is parked outside and I have been wallowing in whiskey and chocolate, waiting to hear something, anything, about how Jon is doing. Suffice to say that my Halloween is quite somber this year and I have no one to talk to about my feelings. My best friend almost died. No, he was clinically dead for a few minutes and I am alone in his house, too overwhelmed by everything to write any more.
Six years ago on this date, I had done something which was said to be impossible and left New Jersey, the state I had been born in and spent 24 years of my life in, to settle in Philadelphia – a city that had been visited when I was a child and became drawn to again as an adult. The main reason for such a move was the end of a relationship combined with an awkward living situation. There were no friends or relatives I could stay with, and I had just returned from traveling with the carnival, so trying to find a job with limited skills was rather difficult. Searching for a place to live was even worse, and having remembered my recent trip to Philadelphia [
The other reason for living the Garden State was due to harassment, which is something I kept from pretty much everyone I knew because I did not think anyone would take me seriously if I explained the details. Instead I took all of the money I had earned working the previous Summer, packed my belongings into a car and made an attempt to separate myself from unwanted drama. A few months later I moved again because the first situation had been temporary, and then I found myself being kicked out in May, the day after attending my best friend’s funeral. One of the guys I rented from insisted that someone was threatening them online who said they knew me, so I had to leave. Spent three night’s sleeping on a couch and then settled into a room in West Philly where I pretty much became a hermit and had no contact with anyone for about a month. Aside from a communal television, I had a radio as my entertainment, and eventually I got a phone because I realized there were people I needed to talk to every once in a while. It was still a very hard time, as I spent many hours mourning the loss of someone who meant the world to me, which manifested in ways I have only discussed with a few people. While I have come to terms with those things, they are not something I wish to put on display, despite the content that may appear elsewhere among these archives.
The amount of things that have happened in those years make me feel as though I have been here for a long time. The good came with the bad, but I also found myself in situations that created life-long memories. My first birthday celebrated after moving to Philly was my 25th, at which time I had created Alive On the Inside, a magazine dedicated to preserving American circus and sideshow history through articles and photographs that covered a wide variety of topics. Two years later I had my neck tattooed the day before my 27th birthday because I knew that being a sideshow performer was something I planned on doing for as long as I could, and felt paying tribute to the act in a place where the tattoo would be constantly seen was rather appropriate. The day after my birthday, with the skin still feeling tight, I performed on New Year’s Even in a massive warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn, where there had to be at least one thousand people trying to watch. There 
During the six years that I constantly moved throughout Philadelphia, I moved out of the city twice for a period of less than six months. Which I considered a vacation, though the first time I found myself in Knoxville and was glad I managed to come back from that. The second time, ironically enough, I made a brief return to New Jersey and lived in Haddonfield, which is exactly where I was around this time last year. It was a nice separation from a city which had exhausted me on several levels, and frequent trips to a small town outside of Vineland to visit future in-laws were a nice way to find the relaxation I needed. Oh, and of course I can’t leave out the fact that I became engaged, which really is not as big as a deal as people usually make it to be. Putting labels on relationships has never been my style, and while I can admit faults, mistakes and being guilty of doing this in the past, I learned from those things and focused on myself for once.
Meeting someone you don’t exactly remember meeting is kind of awkward – I remembered his face but not his name and apparently not the fact that he had approached me and tried initiating conversation on a few occasions. It was Halloween weekend and we just kept running into each other, which made being among large rooms full of drunken strangers less intimidating. A few weeks later I had an invitation to lunch, which had to be one the most polite gestures I had experienced in a long time. There has always been something so satisfying about sitting and enjoying hours of conversation with someone who makes me feel good that is hard to explain – you just know when it’s there. Once a week we met to eat and talk, which lasted for several hours and always left me with a smile on my face.
Anyway, as mentioned earlier, I am now in a position where I have complete control over my own life and it is fantastic. There are always things I feel could be improved, because life is never perfect and I see challenges as ways of making myself stronger instead of impossible obstacles. Otherwise I am quite content and could not ask for anything more than what I have. It feels good to be appreciated, to know I can pursue what makes me happy and that there will always be support, which is something that comes at no cost. My partner [a term I feel is most appropriate being an adult in such an amazing relationship] is someone I am extremely proud of, who holds position of sous chef at a notable local restaurant that is currently undertaking an expansion. He recently brought home the menu that he created which was served as a special this past week. Without sounding pretentious, it just feels good to know that I have put my trust in someone who has their shit together and has a clear goal in mind for themselves. Not that our time together hasn’t been without spontaneous adventures, like getting caught in a blizzard because I wanted hair dye or being introduced to a part of Jersey I had not previously explored. The point is that there is a nice balance without being caught up in aesthetics or the wrong things and there is eagerness in pursuit of a future together.
To say that I still miss Jon would be a severe understatement, and while his absence in my life does not plague me as it once did, it still remains relevant as a reminder of many things. After I moved to Philly, we had the opportunity to hang out and not have any lingering paranoia on his part interrupt having good times. This is a man I had admired and loved for six long years, who admitted his passion and then disappeared to straighten out his life. The last image I have is of his smiling face, eyes tinged with tears while he held my hands and simply cherished the moment. Jon will always have a special place in my life, just as no matter where I go, I will always be from New Jersey. For the time being I am still finding my purpose in Philly and currently consider it my home.
Of course I have outlived the Death Defying Daredevil, which is not an amazing feat but something that had never been considered when Jon was still alive. He sure put effort into being self-destructive, both for entertainment and because he was always at war with himself. To say he was a proud man who did not have a habit of asking for help does not begin to describe how stubborn he could be when it came to reaching out. At this moment a piece of his wisdom comes to mind – when something doesn’t go your way, it’s easier to let it get you down than to fight, but the harder battle yields a greater reward. Accepting defeat takes less effort and that was something Jon never did – perhaps in doing so he put himself in danger more times than was necessary. That was just a part of who he was and something that has always stuck with me.
A fashion article that appeared in an issue of Auxiliary Magazine offered insight to ‘circus punk’, accompanied with a hodgepodge of striped clothing that was wasn’t very appealing and looked quite cheap. The accessories could be considered kitschy, but even that lends itself to being overdone. In fact, the only items I even considered wearing were the shoes, though I would certainly find an alternative to the expensive ones suggested. My main beef with the article was the description of the aesthetic, which I personally define as mixture between the two cultures. Refined Victorian inspired statement garments can be juxtaposed with rustic DIY pieces to create a truly progressive look that has nothing to do with music. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that such a genre existed, because I know circus punks as these funny looking stuffed guys with wild fur that you knock down at the carnival for a prize.
The author says “take Victorian vaudeville, mix with punk rock, throw in lots of stripes and Voila! you have circus punk!” A novel idea no doubt, except 
Once and for all, I present evidence that early circus tents never had stripes. If one is to be more accurate, before there even were tents, circuses were held in enclosed buildings that were nothing short of amazing. The desire for travel and evolution of the acts moved circus under the protection of a canvas tent held aloft by towering steel poles. As can be seen in the photo on the right, this canvas was one solid color. Certainly they would have to be patched over time as wear and tear set in, an example of which can be seen on the HBO series Carnivale, but I feel that’s definitely not the same as being striped. Modern circuses that stay true to their heritage still use plain canvas tents, but even I have to admit that some opt for the more eye-catching striped variety.
Well then, certainly something had to influence this idea. Perhaps it was the costumes? They are ostentatious, brilliantly hued and usually have an insane amount of sparkle – after all, the whole point is to draw attention from the crowd towards whatever act is happening at the moment. One cannot expect to do this in blue jeans and a T-shirt, but even costuming has standards so that it retains that air of fantasy and doesn’t slip in the realm of tacky. However, those worn by trapeze artists and other aerialists were form-fitting to show off their physique while performing tricks that required flexibility of the body, where as animal tamers have been shown wearing leather boots and looser garments for easier mobility. Of course we all know the ringmaster had a flashy costume and the parade of beauties were not without their own charming frocks. Circus thrived on its lavish presentation even though it may have suffered financially, and I often wonder what happened to this pride. It seems to have been replaced with competition to be as ‘tacky’ and ‘trashy’ as possible, which could be charming in small doses or paired with the right situation, but those are certainly not words that I want people constantly associating with my image.
With a decent sense of security, I can say that the one place I have found stripes among any kind of circus wardrobe are within images of clowns. Their depictions often display a number of emboldened patterns on their humorously sized clothes, which also includes polka dots, diamonds and plaid. Each type of clown has its own specific type of dress, and the inclusion of stripes seems to be something that just happened, perhaps in recycling an old prison uniform. A pattern can be used on any number of objects, and I do not understand where this knee-jerk reaction came from associating stripes with circus. If one wants to look like a clown [and I am sorry, but often times striped fashion achieves just that, but not in a good way], that is their decision. Stripes are also related to goth, burlesque, raver, cyber, steam punk and other scenes, so using circus or carnival as a buzzword to describe an outfit, piece of clothing or even an accessory simply because it has stripes comes across as pretty unenlightened.
It might sound like a ridiculous concept, but the idea of swagger goes hand-in-hand with having confidence [not cockiness] and is something many desire though few actually master. Presentation encompasses everything about a person, especially when they want to fill the role of a particular characterization. The brilliant film noir Freaks comes to mind at this moment, because many of the sideshow performers did not have elaborate costuming, and those who did certainly held an undeniable position of power among the others. This hierarchy of sorts is a 
Decadence and Deviance 