The Savage Sideshow

Book excerpt

UPI Photo December 27, 1960.

Oh this spectacle is worth every penny. Heathens, matrons, gawkers, savages, intruders, rascals all, stuff themselves in sideways and try to grab a seat in the courtroom. The promise of scandal is in the air, and the jackals and hyenas have come a hunting. It’s always mating season in Hollywood, and the smell of sweet sex has set their mouths drooling. The big-breasted women have shoved their fleshy selves into girdles like sausage casings trying to fit into their boucle knits. Their magpie eyes and powdered beaks make them look ashen until their pursed red lips begin to smack, signaling their bloodlust. The men want to see how the other half lives, like this silver-spooned Vegas boy whose Daddy is paying for it all. It’s a large swarm of locusts this morning, buzzing and wiggling to get a look at and hear this comedy/tragedy being performed downtown in L.A Superior Court. Our cast of men will perform acts of such grand fabrications and improbable scenes that only the most expert of jugglers and fornicators could possibly breathe life into these offerings. Certainly not my mother, though she was long-limbed and beautiful, and didn’t shy away from the male gaze, she was limited in her travels in that she didn’t drive, and as long as I knew her, she was never in two separate places at once. She did possess tender maternal tricks, but this circus called for a different kind of magic if we were to return to Paradise. I will twirl and swirl and skip and laugh. I’ll wear costumes and smile at the cameras. I’ll sing nice girl songs all for the sake of the story. And at the end of the week, the jury will decide I’m legitimate, justified, legally begotten by the man who sits before them drowning in disgusting luxury and wonder why they were even here.