You have to get to know people before they embrace you as one of their own, so after unpacking and setting up my cot I looked the room over for an approachable face. A young, overweight woman was sitting alone nearby; I tentatively went up to her and said, "You must be the Fat Lady."
She shook her head. "Fat Lady having a Baby." She sighed. "Every night. Twice on Sundays."
Different. "That's a lot of birthdays to remember."
A little midget poked his head out. "Wrong, dip-shit. We just use the same freakin' baby every night. Hey! Someone torch me a fag!"
The lady introduced him. "That's Adult Smoking Baby." But he was gone again.
As I listened to her talk about life in the circus and so on, I thought: when I start getting laid ... and if it turns out to be with her ... I really hope he's not in there.
Other freaks came around. I made small talk with them for a few minutes, and they quietly embraced me as one of their own before leaving. Felt good. And I quickly discovered that the family of Freaks is really the most unusual family ever to embrace me as one of their own. The Puddler; The Startling Mr. Cacophony; Gargantina, the tiny giant. Man of Braille, who could communicate with the blind using no more than his problem complexion. Cushion Eater; Naughty Hands; Bad Boobella, who was born with a bad boob job. There were the Siamese Friends, the Siamese Twins who were not related to each other (an act I later discovered was based on a little falsehood: they were not friends at all and in fact didn't get along). And Pussy Face ... the name says it all. The most attractive man I have ever met.
These qualities, the things that made them different ... were they disfigurements? Disorders? Or would it be kinder, really, to call them entertaining gifts?

Over the months, as I came to know this traveling troupe, I found that a lot of people don't really understand freaks. I'll give you an example. One day the kid in charge of setting up the net for wheelchair trapeze got hopelessly entangled in it. Well, Boy in a Bubble had died (couldn't breathe), so Mr. Rose said hey, Boy in a Net. It was a big hit. And for a couple of weeks I fed and maintained him with mixed feelings of awe and envy. Until one day a total bystander comes along and cuts him loose. And the kid just stands there for a second. And his words say, "Thanks, mister." But his expression says, "For destroying my dream."
So you can see it's complex. And there are negative things about being a freak, too. Sad things, that touch your soul. Imagine that you are Mr. Regurgo. And you would like to spend the evening quietly sucking motor oil up your nose, which then passes into your stomach and back out your mouth into a small cup, no worse for the wear, and you would like to do this in a brightly-lit public place, like a pub, or a library, and you would like to do it uninterrupted by comments, queries or glances. A simple thing to ask.
But you know it's just a pipedream. And you shake your head sadly. You put away the motor oil. And replace it with bourbon.
Now imagine that it's not imaginary. Imagine that it's real.

To Death's Door and Back. At last my big break, and it came by accident. I was giving The Boar his back-waxing and I looked up to notice that I'm completely covered in animal dander. Covered, like I'd been rolled in flour. And The Boar sort of turns over and grunts that, because he's a polymorph, there was more than just boar dander in there -- thanks for the warning, Boar! -- but also kitten dander, monkey dander, all the nastiest danders. And, as sometimes happens, I went into anaphylactic shock. Puffy, wheezing, arrhythmia. Well, Mr. Rose and his crew see this and hurriedly bundle me up and hustle me on stage to see if I croak. A potential showstopper like no other; and wildly popularly although I did not croak. So every night for the next week, and twice on Sunday, "The Croaker?" had his fifteen minutes. Until one afternoon I'm sweeping up in the rain, and -- poof! -- the dander washed off. Just like that, it was over. Probably the most exciting week of my life.
Helping Hand. That was so successful I was allowed to be Mr. Lifto's Assistant. My job was to go out on stage with him, put a hook through his penis and attach the other end of the hook to a roaring chainsaw, so that he could then pick that up using his penis. He used to just use his hands back when he was called Mr. Accident. Anyway, the first night I go out there, unsheathe the hook, look at it and pass out. Awkward. So they rush out on stage and gather me up and -- quick thinking here -- christen me Human Teething Toy, and pass me into the audience to help comfort teething babies. It saved the moment, and proved so popular they made it part of the act for the next three months. I would wake up sore, but refreshed.
Glass Artist. It used to be that a guy could get steady work in a freak circus by chewing up and swallowing flashbulbs. A staple of old-style freak circuses that wowed freak fans for generations. Well, flashbulb-eating had a great run, but it isn't enough to impress today's freak-savvy teens. But Mr. Rose said just be patient. And sure enough, after about a week I was magically transformed from boring Bulbman to the much more remarkable Male Menstruator when I started peeing blood.
Damp Days. Mr. Rose asked me if I could be The Human Condom. You know, a man so limber he can tie himself into a knot and drop himself into the trash. The previous Human Condom had died because he wasn't thinking one day and went down the toilet. I explained that no, I did not have those skills. Well, the team put on their thinking caps and came up with: The Human Spittoon. Close enough, they figured. So that was my gig for the next four months. And I must say ... of the freaks they had me be, this was perhaps my least favorite. If you think about it, spittoons do not have the overall appeal that condoms do. Not as compelling. As The Human Spittoon, I felt treated less than respectfully.
My First Endangered Species. I was draining The Boil one day and I tripped over the mop and fell right on my ass. Pretty embarrassing. Now, when I'm embarrassed I turn a bright pink. Really pink, so pink my tattoos are completely obscured. Mr. Rose and the rest of the crew were impressed. So that night they had me walk out on stage completely naked (embarrassing!). And when the audience saw my bright pink, hairless body, eerily devoid of tattoos, at first they thought I was a giant hairless pink tree shrew. So for about three months I was the Giant Hairless Pink Tree Shrew. A big hit because teens love animals.
Kazoo Boy. Then I was Kazoo Boy. The thing they had me do with the kazoo is too involved to adequately describe here [ed. note: according to Jim Rose, Mr. Harr was caused to consume great quantities of 7-11 corn dogs, after which he was led on stage to perform "The Theme from Howard's End" using nothing more than expelled intestinal gases and a kazoo], but I would like to say that it was during my time as Kazoo Boy that I really felt the electricity of interacting with an audience, and not just "performing" for them.
Finally, after a year, I was born into my final incarnation: Unpaid Intern Man. I would simply walk out on stage and receive five minutes of uproarious applause. And you're probably wondering: why would crowd cheer a guy with -- let's face it -- no freak skills whatsoever, who had come out on stage (unpaid) every night for a year, bringing little more than his passionate, focused and unquenchable commitment to becoming the very best freaks he could be, all this while sweeping out the cages and giving Mr. Rose his daily foot massage?
Answer? That is why. You shoulda heard the applause. Felt good to be best at something.

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