THE PANCAKE CIRCUS
Trebor Healey
Clown Daddy bused dishes at the Pancake Circus, a tacky breakfast joint on Broadway in Sacramento. I only went there when I was depressed and, in my half-baked noncommittal self-destruction, craving food that would kill me if I ingested enough of it. I wanted a steamy stack of buttermilk pancakes with that whipped butter they use that melts slowly and thoroughly, sort of like my psyche does when it’s heading south. (It does not have the same effect on your arteries, however, which slowly harden like dog shit in the sun.) And I wanted that diabetes-inducing syrup, of course. Two or three shots of it—lethal as sour mash—surreptitious, sticky and sweet as it vanishes into the spongy cake, absorbed like a criminal into the social fabric.
Clown Daddy began as a tattoo of a tiger jumping through a ring of fire—a tiger with a pacifier in his mouth. A tiger caged in a mess of plump blue veins—veins like the roots that buckle sidewalks. Straining as they held the pot poised over my cup; straining like my throat suddenly was; like my cock caged in my drawers.
“Coffee?” It was Josh Hartnett’s voice.
In an effort to compose myself, I drew a breath and followed those veins up that forearm, down through the dimple of its elbow and up across the creamy white bicep, firm and round as a young athlete’s buttcheek, before the blood-swollen tubes vanished into his white polyester shirt, reappearing at the neck and passing the Adam’s apple, which was nothing less than a mushroom head pushing boy-boisterously out of his neck-skin like a go-go dancer in Tommies. God have mercy, my soul muttered, as my eyes, having lost his veins somewhere under his chin (and damn, what a beautiful charcoal-shadowed chin), proceeded with anticipation up his clean-shaven cheek, savoring the pheromonal (and I mean “moan”-al) beauty of him, dead set for his eyes like a junkie tightening the belt. And bingo, like apples and oranges lining up in a slot—oh my god, I won!
I’m a homo and you know where I’d look for the coins. I felt my sphincter dilate, and my buttcheeks were suddenly like open-cupped palms, holding themselves out to him.
I came in my pants. And then, a bit unnerved to say the least, cleared my throat. I’m not sure I would have been able to even answer him if I hadn’t relieved the pressure somewhere. Fortunately, God had mercy after all.
I whimpered, “Yes, please.” I couldn’t even look at him, so I watched the cup as he filled it to the top, and then some. It crested the brim and ran down onto the saucer—and then I watched the pot move away, off to the next table.
Jesus H. go-go-dancing Christ. My drawers were soaked and cooling. I felt like a kid who’d wet his pants. This had happened to me only once before, in junior high, when Greg Vandersee had stretched, lifting up his arms and revealing a divine cunt of underarm hair that made me lurch forward as my cock emptied its boy-fresh copious fluids into my little BVDs.
Fortunately, Clown Daddy was a busboy and not my waiter. I could handle yes and no, but the buttermilk stack, with sausage and one egg over easy wouldn’t have been pretty—or perhaps even possible.
“Hi, I’m Edna. What’ll you have?” She smiled.
A bed, some lube, and an hour with your busboy would have been the honest answer. Or a fresh pair of undergarments. But this wasn’t about honesty, this was about self-destruction. Wasn’t it? I ordered the low-cholesterol eggbeaters in a vegetable omelet with whole wheat toast. Say what you will—lust leads to healthy choices. Doesn’t it?
What I hadn’t realized as I sat back gloating, my penis clammy in my damp, semen-soaked briefs, was that when I’d looked in Clown Daddy’s eyes my days as a law-abiding citizen had abruptly ended. Choices? Choices had nothing to do with it.
But ignorance is bliss. While it lasts. And while it lasted, my head wobbled like one of those big-headed spring-loaded dolls that resemble Nancy Reagan, swinging this way and that, watching for him, rolling up and down and around like an amusement park ride, taking in the Pancake Circus as I did so, its paint-by-number clowns adorning the walls, its circus tent decor, its uncanny ambience of a sick crime waiting to happen.
I watched him move about while my fly tightened like a glove over a fist. A wet fist, sticky and greedy for whatever it had just crushed to sticky pulp. My mind played the sideshow song as I imagined Clown Daddy behind the curtain, Edna up front barking for him: “Step right up, see the man who makes you cum in your drawers!”
I gulped the coffee down, which drew him back to my table like a shark to wet, red, bleeding bait.
He didn’t look at me until I thanked him, and then it was just a shy, straightboy grin. God, but his features were sharp, angled, and clean. His dark, deep-set eyes, the long lashes, the wide mouth with its full lips, the arresting pale blue-white of his skin and the night-black hair—that goddamn shadowed chin. And his eyes: dark as crude oil, raw out of the ground. He was undeniably, painfully handsome. Prozac handsome because he cheered me up. Wellbutrin handsome because one saw one’s sadness disappear like a wisp of smoke—and those pesky sexual side effects? Gone. Every woman in the place blushed when he cleared their plates. I probably wasn’t the only one stuck to the vinyl seat in my booth. Thank God my cock has no voice or it would have been barking like a dog.
But I felt the letdown all the same. He’s probably straight. Though he ignored the blushing dames. He seemed even a little annoyed by their attention. But we knew who each other were, the girls and I. I eyed them and they me. Did I look as greedy as them? Like there was one cabbage patch doll left and they’d kill to wrest it from whatever fellow shopper had his or her eye on it. Fact was, we all had holes we wanted his cock in. Simple as that. It was like there was one tree left in the world and the ditches yelped like graves to be the chosen one.
I gulped my food like a scat queen falling off the wagon. Delirious, my diaper soiled, I paid my check and left, one glance over the shoulder to see him bend to pick up a fallen fork. Damn, Clown Daddy had a butt like a stallion. My dog leapt, knocking over the milk dish again. Jesus H. cock-hungry Christ. I lurched out the door as my piss slit opened like a flume on a dam.
Clown Daddy sent me home in a frenzy, is what he did.
I rushed home, needing to get naked. Onto my back on my bed, my legs kicking like an upended insect as I pulled like a madman, again and again, on my slot handle, hitting jackpot after jackpot until my bed was plain lousy with change.
From then on, he filled my nights and days like a cup, brimming over.
I went for more pancakes two days later, but he wasn’t there. On the third day, he was, with a beautiful zit on his cheek. Clown Daddy looked right through me when he recognized me, and then he pulled himself back out.
I lurched. Shit—I came again.
“Coffee?”
“Uh, yeah,” I half-coughed.
“Cream?”
I nodded. The greed. My shorts were already full of it.
“Sugar?” He’s talkative today.
I regained my composure. “No sugar—sugar’s for kids,” I answered flirtatiously.
I don’t know why I said it. I had to say something. I wanted to hold him there, even if for only a few seconds.
He smiled the brightest smile, and walked away.
My head swiveled. What was that? Had he flirted back?
While I waited for my waitress, I read the ads urethaned into the tabletop: vacuum repair, van conversions, derogatory credit, body shops, auto detailing, furniture, appliances, and bail bonds. The clues were everywhere. It occurred to me then that he was the only white busboy in the place. The rest were illegal Latin guys who didn’t have a choice. What would a citizen take a job like this for? Maybe he was Rumanian or something. But he had no accent. What could he be making?—four, five bucks an hour? Hell, his looks alone could get him ten doing nothing for the right boss. He could hustle at two hundred an hour, do porn for a few thousand a feature; he could wait tables and fuck up and they’d still forgive him because the doyennes of Sacramento would return for the way he made them feel against their se
at cushions. What was he doing here?
Who cares. Just let me fuck him. Shoot first, ask questions later.
He was as aloof as ever when he came back with the coffee. Three cups later, I asked for sugar. He smiled again. “Sugar’s for kids. You like kids?”
“Sure, kids are all right.”
He nodded and raised his brows with just a hint of a grin as he said, sort of stoned-like, “Kids are all right.” And he walked away.
Go figure. I scribbled my phone number on the coffee coaster, with a little cartoon kid, waving.
And he called. But he never left his name.
“This is the guy who likes kids, down at the Circus. I can’t leave a number, but meet me at the Circus at three Wednesday.”
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