freak show

Don’t think there are any freak shows anymore? Think all the freaks have moved from the funhouse to the idiot box? Then you haven’t been down to Venice Beach lately. There’s a bonafide freak show down there, and I’m not talking about the muscle heads.

I’m not kidding. There’s an honest-to-God freak show right there on the boardwalk. It’s called the Venice Beach Freakshow, complete with albinos, a bearded lady, half a girl, and the world’s shortest man. Quite frankly, I’m encouraged. It’s good to know there are still real people out there in the world, that they haven’t all been co-opted by reality television.

I was talking gibberish again (news of Urbach-Wiethe Disease wasn’t helping), so Fanny thought it a good idea we get out of the apartment for a while, go out for some fresh air. We decided to head down to the boardwalk on Ocean Front Avenue, where all the action is. It’s the same boardwalk where all the Big Jims hang out (Muscle Beach). Bubble Boys, Gold Guys and Stilt Men too.

I used to go down to the beach more often. It’s almost always seventy degrees with a five-mile-per-hour breeze that feels like someone’s standing right in front of you with the world’s smallest air conditioner. There’s really nowhere else like it. As dry as the climate is, and with all that salt from the ocean in the air, it’s as sterile an environment as you’ll find this side of Mars.

There’s a park where Santa Monica turns into Venice Beach and I used to sit up against the palm trees and write bad poetry there. You know the place. If you’ve ever seen the intro to the TV show Three’s Company, it’s that same exact spot where Jack Tripper falls off his bike after ogling the girls passing by. Believe me when I tell you: that intro scene was spot-on. The girls here look exactly like that.

Fanny said she hadn’t been down to the beach since she moved here, not even once. Nurses. So we made a whole week of it in just one day. We ran along the shore, played beach ball, got cotton candy, matching tattoos, squirted ketchup and mustard all over each other, saw the movie Platoon, even rode a bucking bronco.

Wait. That’s from a movie. Sometimes I get confused. Now, with a massive head injury, even more so.

But if we had been in a movie, and this was a scene from that movie, our day would have been exactly like the “I’m into Something Good” montage from The Naked Gun.

I’ve been down to the beach I don’t know how many times, watching as all the couples walk hand in hand, but this was the first time I ever went with a girl of my very own. I don’t know how to explain it, but it felt so different, almost surreal. I couldn’t really say we were a couple yet (I still hadn’t kissed her), but we were definitely together. No matter how it stacked up, it was a first time for me.

We decided to get a slice and that’s when we came across the Venice Beach Freakshow. I didn’t want to go inside. Paying to look at freaks makes me uncomfortable; but it was just five bucks so I went ahead and sprang for it. From the way Fanny was acting, she had never seen real freaks before. Sure, she had seen people with coke bottles lodged in their rectums, but nothing like this.

Like Fedor Jeftichew, the dog-face boy. No kidding. There was this kid in there with hair all over his face like the wolf man. It was bad enough when Fanny started petting him, kissing his forehead, rubbing his belly; but when she wanted him to fetch a MILK BONE too, I knew it was time for us to be moving along.

Or Morgue, the human fountain. Morgue has this thing where he drinks a shot of what looks like blood, then half a dozen bottles of water. He then proceeds to shove a garden hose down his throat and Wah Lah, the red liquid comes spewing back out like Old Faithful, shooting six feet across the room. “I can help you with that,” said Fanny, acting the nurse. I had to explain to her that it was all part of the show.

We saw this one woman swallowing fire, another guy driving nails through his nose. Fanny said while that was remarkable, it’s nothing she hadn’t seen in the ER before. I was glad when we finally left. I’m not comfortable staring at other people. At least, not when they’re staring right back.

Besides, I wasn’t looking much better than the freaks. Fanny was so captivated by the whole scene, in fact, that she didn’t even notice there was blood coming out of my ear. When she finally did, she suggested we go back to the apartment. While she was concerned mainly with my health, I was more worried someone may think I’d escaped from the freak show, and try and take me back. What a sight I must have been. I can’t stand it when people are staring at me.