The Night I Joined the "Cirkus"

I am not making any of this up, and it wasn't a dream.

Last night, my Significant Other and I journeyed into Manhattan to attend a photographer friend's exhibit at a Midtown gallery. Afterward, we had dinner at a cafeteria-style steak restaurant, then decided to stroll down 42nd Street. Amid the Disneyfied tourist traps and neon-encrusted marquees, we came across the supremely tacky Palace of Variety, also known as the Free Museum of Times Square. The museum includes a theater, whose mission is to preserve the vaudeville and burlesque atmosphere of the "old" 42nd Street -- where peep shows and prostitutes were as common as today's plasma screens and Mickey Mouse tchotchkes.

We wandered inside to look at the museum exhibits, which were all of the Ripley's Believe It or Not variety: a stuffed, four-legged duck under a bell jar; the upholstered chair that a side-show fat lady used to sit on; a picture of a two-headed baby; etc. We noticed that the current show in the museum's theater was a performance by the "Bindlestiff Family Cirkus." We'd never heard of it, but, having time on our hands, we decided to buy two tickets (which were quite cheap by Broadway standards) and attend.

While we were waiting in line for the theater's doors to open, someone in a gorilla costume appeared and began to accost us. He/she kissed my spouse's shoe and gave me a short back rub. Okaaayy . . . . Then, just before we entered the theater, we were frisked and closely examined with a large magnifying glass by two men in clown-face.

I was beginning to realize that this would be no ordinary circus. (The "Cirkus" spelling should have been my first clue, I guess.) The inside of the small theater presented a distinctly seamy milieu -- black walls, worn bits of scenery and somewhat tattered red velvet curtains that rose up almost two stories from the floor-level "stage" to form the "big top." Steep banks of seats, some of which were covered with "leopard skin," accommodated an audience of about 100. It looked like a theater in a David Lynch movie –- think of the Red Room in Twin Peaks or the Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive.

My spouse insisted on sitting in the front row, which I knew could be trouble. I had a strong premonition that this was going to be one of those audience-participation spectacles.

Much of the show consisted of tawdry clowning and more or less conventional juggling and acrobatic stunts, all of which featured a high dose of sexual innuendo. The performers also worked in a number of political comments about the gentrification of 42nd Street and the current color-coded terrorism hysteria. It was entertaining and funny, but I had a nervous feeling that my moment was coming.

My time came with the arrival of Svetlana, an attractive blonde in a lizard-skin unitard who looked like someone out of an early James Bond movie. The MC introduced her as being from a part of the former Soviet Union that is now an independent country: "Tear-you-a-new-crack-istan." Her talent was spinning a dozen sequined hula-hoops around her undulating body as the live band played new-age bump-and-grind music.

After a minute or so of spinning, she announced, in a heavy Russian accent, that she needed help from a member of the audience. Guess who she picked?

Svetlana pulled me onto the stage and instructed me to spank her if any of the hula-hoops dropped to the floor. Eventually one did, of course, and she bent over. And, well, I spanked her, just once. The audience -- including my spouse -- found this hilarious. (You had to be there.) She did another dance, in which none of the hoops fell, and it was now my turn to be spanked. I bent over, facing the audience. "No, no, no," Svetlana said, shaking her finger. "You must turn around this way." So I pointed my posterior at the audience and she gave it a whack. Ha, ha, ha.

Next, Svetlana asked me to twirl one of her hoops around my arm while she had a brief conference with her assistant, Sylvia. She and Sylvia then went behind the curtain and began a loud, screaming argument while I continued to spin the hoop, alone on stage, for about a minute as the audience giggled. "You are so talented," Svetlana told me when she re-emerged.

She then handed me a dozen hoops and instructed me to throw them to her as she danced. If she managed to complete the dance without any of them dropping to the floor, I would be allowed to kiss her "on the ass." If any of them fell, she would kiss my butt. What did I think of that, she wanted to know. "That sounds fair," I said.

I did as I was told, good sport that I am, tossing each hoop as she gyrated to some pulsating Euro-disco. The hoops stayed up, and she bent over. There was a drum roll, and I looked over at my spouse, who was laughing hysterically. Then I planted a kiss on Svetlana's rear, to the accompaniment of a loud cymbal crash. She straightened up, grabbed my hand and we took a bow as the audience cheered.

Such was my moment in the spotlight. I know I will never hear the end of it.