Crawl Space Monkey by Matthew Dexter - Everyday Weirdness (May ...

“A Mexican circus is a festive excursion into the unknown.”

I didn’t know what this meant but decided to follow him through the velvet curtain nonetheless. He splashed his face with a cloudy tsunami of pancake makeup so vast and caustic that I could hardly help but start coughing as the powder entered my lungs. When the growing cloud finally subsided and my nostrils confided that the air was probably safe enough to slowly reopen my eyes, I noticed his face painted white as a ghost—obviously in preparation for the colorful clown makeup customarily applied afterwards.

The musty smell of Tijuana circus animals is overwhelming. We encounter camels, monkeys, zebras, a rusty spray-painted hot dog stand full of flamingos and peacocks, a broken-down nacho wagon with three wheels missing—nothing lavish. This was the underbelly of the beast, a secret room beneath the floorboards of the stage.

“ ”

The children smile as I duck my head underneath a wood-rotted doorway designed for dwarfs and underage circus workers. Sharing the blanket on the floor staring into my eyes they whisper with hollow thoughtful expressions. I enter. The young senorita sitting in the center launches upward like a torpedo—wrapping her elfish arms around my legs. The dank clandestine lair smells like a kitchen. An old bearded lady is chewing pieces of chicken from an enormous smoking burrito with her mouth half open to let out the heat. The meat smells delicious.

“You a tourist?”

I turn toward the clown. He pushes past me deeper into the already cramped crawlspace. I hunch my head into an awkward position, cracking my neck—which inspires the stoic children to break into an orgy of laughter while pointing at me.

“All I wanted was to buy a monkey,” I said, rubbing my neck.

Their convivial voices echo through the room as if it were a vast cosmic cave extending infinitely beyond my vision. In fact the farthest darkest corner from the door concealed what was the largest of impenetrable shadows. It was here where he led us, the girl attached to my ankle like an orangutan, neck and shoulders hunched lower and lower until the darkness engulfed the grayness and he told her in Spanish to let go, and slow down, “ ”

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