A street performer
December 20, 2008
"Gagging, sneezing, and tickling." He says, counting out the three dangers on his gnarled hands. His hands are shaky and his demeanor is fidgety. His words whistle out from where his front teeth used to be.
"I can teach anyone to do it, if they want to make the effort anyway. Anyone can do it, you just have to watch out for the big three. Gagging, sneezing and tickling." He claws at his green beanie, pulling it first down over his face and then back up so that he can see. His eyes are wet and deep, retreating back into his head as if scared or embarrassed or both.
"Anyone could do it, anyone who's got the guts and wants to learn, you know?"
I nod.
There are some fifteen people loitering outside the front of the bar, smoking cigarettes and talking and laughing. The man with the green beanie is small, skin wrapped tight and parched around his brittle frame. He's wearing soiled baggy pants with a few holes and permanent stains, a few shirts and a hooded sweatshirt, and a coat several sizes too big for him: a duffel bag on a broomstick. His green beanie is thick and folded double or triple around the bottom. Even his head seems small and fragile. He's an entertainer.
It's loud out in the street. Patrons are shuffling in and out of the bar, carrying on and hollering as the night runs longer. The bouncers are holding their private sober conversations; just the two of them somehow managing to stand in a little circle, their backs to the world save the moments they are checking ID's and nodding people towards the door.
The entertainer's companion is crumpled up cold in a little recessed doorway I'm standing next too, covered with a coat acting as a blanket and with one hand on his wiry black and brown dog. There's an upside down hat on the sidewalk, with a few dollars and some coins in it. The guy in the beanie is scoping for an audience.
"What kind of dog is that? A mut?" I ask the one sitting down.
He looks up at me with his grab bag of teeth smiling.
"It's a lab and collie mix. You got a cigarette?"
I hand him a cigarette.
"It's pretty."
"Thanks." He says ambiguously, taking the cigarette.
A few girls walk out of the bar with plain faces and low cut dresses, their conversation leaking and splashing about with mock surprise and mock sympathy and mock excitement and other cheap chatter. The entertainer leans in close to me suddenly, and I try not to recoil.
"Here we go," he says in a lowered voice, "I bet we got some right here, now you just watch."
He steps into the presence of the three girls with his broad hit and miss smile, his sunken face and glimmering eyes all after-the-fire charm like something out of a circus.
"Ladies! Ladies! Ladies!" He belts out grandly, arms wide and beckoning. He doesn't give them much of a chance to object.
"If I can have your attention for just one minute, you won't regret it I guarantee!" His voice is tinny and nasal, but comes out trumpeting and clear.
With the girls looking at him somewhat blankly, he abruptly takes a step back to make some space, then gets down on his knees and plants his palms, fingers spread out and thumbs pointing in at each other, flat down on the sidewalk. He hunches his shoulders up so that his arms are perpendicular to the sidewalk, looking kind of like someone pretending to be a horse or something, on all fours like that. His companion, behind him and huddled next to the dog and under a thick jacket, extends his foot and nudges the money hat next to his partner, in plain view. The entertainer doesn't let off talking, loud and clear, craning his neck now to present his smiling, mostly toothless face to his audience.
"Now! Keep your eyes on my hand here, this right hand right here!" He bellows, revolving his right hand leftward and keeping it flat on the pavement. In the first moment his entire right hand has revolved 180 degrees, so that his fanned out fingers are pointing exactly backwards towards the wall and the dog and recessed doorway.
"Keep your eyes on it now! No tricks! This is not an illusion now!"
The girls are lighting cigarettes and paying attention in a sort of forced, bored way, as if waiting for the boldest of their group to disengage this stranger. Then, the light of intention blinks on bright above the head of one of the girls, a blond wearing clothing ridiculously scant for the twenty degree weather. Her eyes turn suddenly bright as she stares down at his hand, now pushing past 180 degrees with his fingers pointing out to his right side. Her smile turns tense, and little lines appear in her face.
"Oh my god! Jenny! Look at this!" She points down with her cigarette hand and both her friends chime in with tense exclamation.
"Oh my god!" Their voice doesn't loose it's cheap synthetic quality, and I muse that they must be that way permanently.
"Now keep on looking!" He says loud, still craning his neck up and now relishing in their rising horror, "this is no illusion!" His left arm and hand, sitting still so far, reaches over and pulls the coat and sweatshirt sleeve of his right arm up, revealing twisted wiry flesh - looking tangled and accosting in its unnaturalness. His right hand keeps rotating, almost back to its original position, pushing to 360 degrees, with his palm still flat on the sidewalk.
"Oh my god! Oh my god!" One of the girls grabs at the sleeve of another man, round, dark haired and well dressed, without taking her eyes off of the performers twisted hand and arm.
"Michael! Oh my god you have to see this!" She's pulling him out of a different circle of people, until now indifferent of this sidewalk carnival.
I'm leaning against the wall, looking at a bit of a distance, grimacing.
"Now that's all the way around! See! That's three hundred and sixty degrees! See!?" He's talking to his growing audience, discomfort and pleasure pressing out of the pores on his face.
"Now you think I can do more than that? More than all the way around?" His elbow looks dislocated, and the skin around the joint is white and bloodless.
"I think I can! Let's have a try shall we!" Two more guys have stepped into the circle, disgust and surprise flash frozen on their faces.
His rand rotates, leftward, another few inches, then another, past 90 degrees and all the way back so that his fingers, flat on the ground, are pointing behind him again.
540 degrees.
His arm is white and the tendons show through his skin vivid and wiry, stretched and tensed and looking like they're about to snap. The crowd looks on in horror, mostly silent save some shrieking noises from the girls.
"A whole time and a half around!" He yells up to his audience, "Now that's a lot of twisting! But wait! that's not all I got!" He takes pressure off of his palm as he begins to stand up, and his forearm swivels around like a greasy rubber band that's been coiled too tight. It only takes a second, and while his forearm spins and his tendons unwind, his fingers spread and fan out spinning with the centrifugal force.
The round guy with the black hair, his mouth being opened this whole time, finally puts some words together.
"Oh my god! How the hell!?" He's reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet, and in a second he's putting a five dollar note in the hat upturned on the ground. The performers eyes dart at the money, but just for a second between sentences. The show must go on.
"But that's not all!" He says with his big smile and his little face and his greasy clothes. He's reaching behind him and into a backpack, and he's pulling out two 16 penny nails, almost as wide as your pinkie and some four inches long, easily longer than a mans middle finger. The audience has swelled a bit, and some more change and another dollar has made its way into the hat. A few more people gather around, trying not to look too interested.
"That's not all! Now here's the big one! You see these nails? These are regular, big ass nails. Can't bend 'em, can't break 'em, not telescoping, make a clang when you drop 'em!" Throughout this sentence he attempts to bend, break, and collapse the nails, then tosses them on the ground for the "clang" in his sentence.
"Regular 'ol nails! Right!?" He puts one nail in his mouth as he says this, and a few faces frown and grimace in anticipation.
"Regular old nails!" He says, his voice a bit awkward with one of the nails in his mouth, then promptly puts the nailing end of the other one into his left nostril, bending his head back as he does. He reaches into his backpack and produces a framing hammer.
"And this!" He says, his nasal voice coming out in one channel so to speak, "This! This is a regular 'ol hammer!"
One of the girls turns around and pushes her face into her boyfriends shoulder. Another dollar drops into the hat.
"Now this!" He says, as he begins lightly tapping the nail in his nose, "this is no joke!"
The hammer makes a metal ringing with each tap of the nail. And inch by long inch, the nail disappears into his head. Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Now that's about four inches of nail!" He smiles, with the head of the nail flush against the rim of his nostril, and puts the second nail into his other nostril.
Disgust and awe in frowns and knit brows all around in his audience. Everyone stares on, save the one girl grasping at her boyfriend, with unwavering eyes and open mouths.
I'm still grimacing, and still leaning against the wall.
Tap. Tap. Tap. The other nail disappears down his nostril. One inch, then two, then, with gasps of surprise and disgust from the audience, three inches and four.
Everyone's eyebrows seem to have been unconsciously rising, bit by bit, throughout the entire performance, with the end result being some twelve people in a semi-cirlce looking as if they're staring at a train wreck. Some of them are aware enough to put a hand over their open mouths and quivering lips, but most aren't.
"Now!" Booms the little performer. "As I take these out, you'll notice," he starts to draw one nail back out of his head, bit by dramatic bit, "you'll notice that on this nail, is no blood," another inch or so slides out, "no brains", another inch, "and most importantly, no snot and no goobers." He smiles when the first nail is successfully drawn out, clean as a whistle. The second one comes out quickly, with less drama, also clean.
"Thank you!" He bows low, nails in hand, and a few more dollars and some change fall into his hat. The crowd dissipates much more quickly than it gathered, maybe embarrassed a little, with utterances of "Awful!" and "Disgusting!" and "Oh my god!"
As everyone shuffles around, either just a safe distance away or back into the bar or whatever, the performer grabs most of the cash out of the hat, leaving a dollar and some coins, and stuffs it into his jacket.
I'm surprised. Surprised at the whole thing I guess, but mainly that people gave him money. There must have been ten dollars in that hat, which isn't half bad for a five or ten minute performance in front of a greasy bar.
Tags for this piece: nonfiction denver city bar carney