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My old man was no clown but maybe that skips a generation. The first time I saw you I was alone behind the big top adjusting the nicks in the confetti buckets. Most of the others were still in bed nursing hangovers or aching limbs asking themselves for the ten thousandth time what it was going to take to get them to get moving today. Me I was up early because I knew no one else would be. Right away I knew you were no first of meno circus Rocky 5 foot nothing barefoot in a leotard. You strutted like you own not just the big top but the fairgrounds it stood on like the rest of us better get your say so before we turned a single somersault. You the new girl on the flying trapeze I said although I knew without asking you smelled like chalk dust and hairspray. You the old clown you said eyeing my tattered plaid pants in my flat collared shirt my white face and painted on smile. I danced a little jig letting my head lower from side to side and ended with a prat fall straight down on my keester the one and only immediately I wished I hadn't said that. Still you smiled. It wasn't a tooth the whole face blooming into a laugh sort of smile but it was a smile. And then without

another word you made tracks for the big top. That confetti wasn't going to mix itself but how can I take my eyes off you with your legs like cables of braided silk. It wasn't just that you were beautiful. There are a lot of pretty ladies in the circus tattooed and otherwise. It was that strut. I followed you into the tent and by the time my eyes adjusted to the light filtering through the canvas you were already halfway up the ladder to the highwire. Well I said myself. A double threat. The tight rope and the trap piece. The wire and the string the roust about it started to hoist the net into place cursing at the lines and jabbering about this broad who shows up out of nowhere and puts him to work right in the middle of a union mandated coffee break. They were ornery that morning still grousing about the case of Jonah's luck they'd had that morning still grousing with the case of Joe and his luck they'd had with the blow off in Sandusky. The skies had opened the canvas became cement heavy and the fists of soaked rope that gripped the tent pegs couldn't be pulled apart. Two days later they were still looking for someone to piss on and a green horn tumbler was just the ticket. Hey down there

you said your voice knifing through the morning haze. I don't want the net. They kept hoisting the lines because it's one thing to perform without a net but no one practices for that one unless you want your first mistake to be your last. So this time you shouted gentleman and that stopped them in their tracks because no one ever called them gentleman. I said no net. The net flopped to the floor kicking up a fog of sawdust. One of them called you a crazy bitch but I swear the words were tinge with respect and even a little awe. You were at the top of the ladder and although you could have stepped lightly on to the tight rope testing its thickness and tension you raised your arms above your head and cart wheeled to the middle of the wire. I heard one of the Razorbacks gasp another mumbled something that might have been a curse but could have been a prayer. And me. My heart burst like a child's balloon right then and there I knew I loved you. Thank you.

OK so this is the first that I'm going to ask a few questions and then we can open it up and you guys can ask some to my first question would be for you to down here. What prompted you to write this story. Let me love the circus. OK. Well my dad is a psychoanalyst to place poker. So it's kind of like an unauthorized biography. And I actually and I've spent a fair amount of time in analysis on the couch lying down thinking and talking and feeling guilty and blaming people mostly. And one point at some point I thought about the perversity of that relationship and but also its beauty that yours totally revealing yourself to somebody who is initially a stranger and then is kind of everybody

in your life of real importance and how strange that relationship is. And I also started to think about how I just basically in this almost really never happens to me I just envisioned what the plot of the story was. My sense of plot is caveman you know push character into danger make character scared don't let the character go you know it's very simple. Now a character have sex. And those of you who read my work will say that's a great description of my work. But.