Parents

My parents fell in love when they were sixteen. My mother had long henna colored curls huge eyes and a wide smile. She played guitar and sang with a raspy voice that gave my father chills. She was sensitive and sheltered, could always cry at the drop of a hat and was obsessed with making her parents happy. She wanted to complete the impossible task of compensating for their experience in the concentration camps, before they came to this country and had her.  My father was angry and brooding, the product of a violently broken home. He wore bell bottoms and a ponytail. He played ultimate Frisbee and chain smoked Marlboro reds. He was popular, stoned and addicted to adrenaline. He loved the way her Contralto voice vibrated such that with only a whisper she could shake a room.

How to bind a book

you will need a stack of paper

a special whole puncher that makes wholes no more or less than a couple of millimeters in circumfrence

a needle and thread

some cardboard

glue

a pen

an exact-o knife

First separate your papers into stacks of five sheets. Place them horizontally in front of you and fold each of them in half, one by one. Place each of the folded

papers on top of each other seem to seem. Unfold the stack, thread your needle, tie a knot at the end of the thread and carefully sew the seems together

vertically from top to bottom before refolding the entire, now connected stack in half. Repeat with each stack of five pieces of paper. You should now have a

number of folded and sewn stacks of paper. Keep them folded in half and punch wholes vertically down the side of the stacked seems. Re-thread your needle, tie

a knot at the end and weave it vertically threw the punched wholes from top to bottom before tying the thread into another knot at the end of the stack of paper.

You should now have a stack of paper sewn tightly at its vertical seems. Each five sheets should be sewn and each set of five sheets sewn to one another. Place a

piece of un-sewn paper of the same size upon a flat cardboard surface. Trace its edges with a pen or pencil and proceed to trace this line with your exact- knife.

Paint a layer of glue onto just half of the paper-sized cardboard surface. Press one side of your sewn stack of paper onto the glue covered side of the cardboard

and place a weight upon it until it is dry and the paper and the cardboard are bound to one another. Fold the un-glued side of the cardboard over so that it

protects the other side of the stack of paper. Decorate your book's cardboard cover however you see fit.

In a gaudy red bar on St Claude Avenue, The Circus Sideshow is peforming. In front, next to the owner's motorcycle sits a tin trashcan by a moldy couch on which a handful of kids sit and drink, no money left over to enter. Inside, transvestites cross their legs on high stools, burly men buy drinks for young women, a group of butch lesbians sit front row on the floor. It seems everyone has knuckle tattoos but they're hard to read through the blue smoke, thick as fog. Each wall is black, the floor is black, the ceiling is black and only the stage is illuminated. Silence blankets the crowd as soon as the curtain is drawn.

    The ringleader is a clown, his face painted zombie-like; he theatrically describes the wondrous things we're about to witness. A woman takes the stage to thunderous applause; her eyes surrounded by black stars, her face a docile white, her lips painted crimson in their center alone. She has a beautiful body, perky breasts, flat abs, sculpted arms and legs, delicate hips. Her bra and underwear conceal next to nothing, striped socks decorate her calves. She swallows a six-inch knife suggestively, removes it and follows with a nine-inch spear before finally swallowing a full-length sword. Each is inserted and removed expertly. It's hard for the audience not to wince.

    During this time the DJ plays mashups hip-hop woven together with old blues and gypsy jazz. Small people in filthy leotards hang from long silk ribbons from the ceiling, rapping themselves around the strands and posing mid air. The audience dances beneath and they smile upside down at us through painted lips.

       Finally, the show continues, the ringleader takes the stage with a dramatic speech describing the next act. Apparently she is a woman at one with fire, "she is the spirit of the flame incarnate, having tamed the element so that her flesh will no longer burn with its contact. Right before your very eyes she will swallow it, breathe it, swim in it! Please welcome to the stage our lady of the flame!" She emerges, half of her face covered in black, swirls that drip to her neck and chest. A thick black line is tattooed from her widow’s peak to her cleavage down the center of her torso. She has long black dreadlocks. In each hand she holds a three pronged flaming torch. The music is low and eclectic, she moves with it, dragging the tips of the flame along her unharmed arms. She inserts a torch into her mouth closes her lips on it until it has been put out. She then looks to the ceiling and exhales a long flame. She puts the tips of her fingers around a neighboring flame, holds a bit of fire in her hand and relights the bitten prong. She continues this way for some time before bowing to the enthralled audience. The clapping is louder than one would expect for an audience of this size. The Maestro takes the stage, leads each performer to its edge and they bow theatrically in unison. 

Better late than never?

“Wouldn’t it be funny if we just ran under that horse?” I said to Carlea. We looked each other in the eyes and grinned. Bourbon street was so crowded, we were stuck in a traffic jam of bodies. “Oh my God should we?!” she let go of my arm and went for it. The cop on the creature’s back looked down as she stooped and pulled the reins as soon as she was underneath, causing animal to lift its knee right into her head. She emerged from the other side of the beast holding her head and squinting, “shit that hurt!” The cop ordered her onto the sidewalk with a “You think that was funny?! Why would you do a thing like that?!” “It was an accident officer, I tripped!” “Don’t give me that shit, keep walking, you’re going to the station. She was still rubbing her head as he steered his horse to walk directly behind her, its head nudged her in the butt, pushing her along, its huge body forced the crowd to seep off the sidewalk. I kept following behind until the officer finally told me to stay back, “Your friend might very well be going to jail ma’am” “Well I can’t leaver her, I’d be all alone!” I responded in my best damsel-in-distress tone. I waited outside of the station as she was taken inside. Our friend Kirsten had been following shortly behind and had seen the whole thing. She ran inside of the station, distraught, explaining frantically that her friend, Carlea had been falsely accused of a prank when really she had simply tripped and fallen underneath the horse. She pointed to Carlea who was in the corner of the room being questioned.  The questioning officer turned to Carlea who was putting on the performance of a lifetime, sobbing, rubbing her head, claiming to have a concussion, asking to call her mom. “Why is your friend calling you Carlea? You said your name was Brin Stevens” she stopped crying for a moment to answer, “I’m Catholic, Carlea’s just my confirmation name”. The officer agreed to call her mother who picked up on the second ring. He explained that he was calling from the N.O.P.D. and asked if Brin Stevens is her daughter. She’s not, of course, Carlea is her daughter, but luckily she recognized the name as an alias Carlea uses when in trouble. “Yes she is, what’s the problem officer?” “Well first we have to confirm that what you say is true, does your daughter have any tattoos Ms. Stevens?” “Her right arm says ‘Ink’ in black.” Carlea rolled up her sleeve and smiled.