In the midst of the passion, the anger, and the emotional instability of these teenaged years, Roger Frankenstein dragged his son across the circus grounds with his wife bringing up the rear complete with a loaded pie in her hands. The row they had over his attire was a big one: all black, form fitting, plus a cape with red silk on the underside. Victor's indecision when it came to top hats and black walking sticks with silver points was obvious, as he was trying various poses in the funhouse mirror with them when the baggy, rainbow themed jumpsuit makeover came. Victor's continued protests were currently echoing out as he and his family kept nearing the rear entrance to the largest tent on the grounds.
"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not demeaning myself like this!
Clowns aren't evil! And I'm evil!"
Roger Frankenstein stopped in his tracks, letting his son go. He turned to him and quivered, possibly on the edge of something resembling anger, but whatever it was it was serious because all notions of airborne desserts and fizzy drink weapons had been forgotten.
"You're going do it, and you're damn well going to enjoy it!"
"I won't! And you can't make me!"
Becky Frankenstein put the safety on her loaded pie and aimed it towards the
ground. Patience, she felt, would likely be the best way to ensure her son's innate destiny
took its necessary course. "Look, whether or not you want to admit it, performance is in
your blood. You've always wanted to be the center of attention. You're always trying to
make an ass out of yourself, just to get people to look at you."
"No offense mom, but that's bull."
"Is it? Proclaiming your intentions of world domination? Cackling like a madman
at the night sky?"
"I will rule the world!" he proclaimed, striking the traditional pose.
"See, there you go again."
"I will! I'm evil and I will rule over this planet with an iron fist!"
Becky Frankenstein's patience was well forged and shimmered in the sunlight, but
sometimes even such things are in danger of breaking from pressure and wear. "You talk
to him, I'm going to see Sally." She turned and began to walk away.
"You can't see Sally! She's invisible! And possibly evil!"
"You don't know that, Victor."
"If I was invisible, I'd be evil! Well, even more evil than I already am!"
For a moment, Roger Frankenstein shared an unspoken thought with his wife, as
she looked at father and son, and resumed her path to see Sally, the Invisible Woman.
Roger, meanwhile, adopted his wife's less confrontational method to see if he'd have any
more success with it than she.
"Son, look. Just try this once, and see if you like it."
"And if I don't?"
There are often moments where people talk about how time begins to slow. An
eternity passed in the seconds after Victor asked the ultimate question. What if he doesn't
enjoy it? Did Adolph Hitler's father have to face such a moment? That keen clown brain
in Roger Frankenstein's head began to consider things a happier man never had to
consider. Did Mr. Hitler encourage painting in his young son? Was there hope for a
normal, happy life and did it reside in the brushstrokes a young man who would one day
become Fuehrer? Victor was an extrovert, to be certain, just like his parents. But those he
sought to emulate weren't part of the Happy Fun Brigade -- he'd began watching Fox
News. He started to dress like Dracula and found the soulless kisses of Ann Coulter's collective works to be maniacally exciting.
Roger contemplated it all. Here the bet would be made. In his next few words,
Roger Frankenstein would shake and roll the dice. There would be no going back.
"Tell you what, Victor, if you make the honest attempt, and make no
proclamations of world domination, mind you, and then if you still don't like it, we'll find
something else for you to do. Okay?"
"You promise? No more juggling lessons? No more seltzers or banana peels?"
"And no more balloon animals."
"Not even naughty ones?" It might've just been his imagination, but Victor's dad
thought he detected the slightest molecule of disappointment in Victor's question. His son
was resolved to live his life his way...but, possibly, Victor himself knew that such a
happening would force to him to truly turn away from what was really giving him
pleasure: standing in the spotlight by means of rebellion.
"Deal!"
Victor and his father shook hands, both hoping for the best. Little did they both
know their hopes had been planted in the same fertile ground.
"Now, get in there. You're on in five."
* * * * *
Igor's bedroom was, one might suspect, a beautiful testament to the madcap means
of decorating only brilliant, dedicated minds can achieve: it was an organized mess of technical papers and trade magazines that revealed the innermost secrets of biology, geology, medicine, physics, quantum mechanics, and string theory.
Predictably, Poppa Igor hated every inch of it. His influence could only be seen in an ever growing pile of baseball gloves that were ceremoniously forgotten behind his bedroom door. Spiders were the only thing keeping the sporting gloves company.
Momma Igor had managed to have an impact on Igor's upstairs room: the sheets on his bed were satin, the towels in his personal bathroom were exceptionally plush, his clothes were damn near designer labels, and the exotic shampoos and body soaps were to keep Igor's often not entirely fresh skin reasonably moist to help prevent deterioration, as the skin grafts from Aunt Lou didn't always take properly to Igor's physiology.
Given the soft, gentle influences Momma Igor had accomplished, and when you considered there were no posters featuring girls with big chest humps in various states of undress on his walls, it's easy to understand why Poppa Igor felt he was losing his son to those who swore allegiance to big, strong men with soft hands who, quite possibly, shared Igor's apparent lack of interest in girls with bouncy chest humps.
Poppa Igor kicked open the unlocked door to Igor's room and found him in the tastefully designed lighting scheme that was both posh and expensive to recreate and pushed the right amount of light in just the perfect way to illuminate the circuit board Igor was currently considering.
"Put that down, boy! Got something for you!"
Igor looked up from his work to see his dad carrying a large cardboard box into
his room.
"What is it?" Poppa Igor sat the box down on Igor's exquisitely made bed and
turned it over, revealing its contents: girly magazines.
"Playboys! Igor should be making whoopee with pretty girls, not building
doodads." Poppa Igor quickly handed his son an issue featuring the latest batch of
Hawaiian Tropic ladies and set about gathering up all the trade magazines and scientific
journals that littered the room.
"But those Igor's technical manuals!"
"These Igor's technical manuals now! Science books going to city dump!"
"Those belong to Igor! Why can't Poppa leave Igor's stuff alone?"
"Igor no study science while he live under my roof! What Igor going to do now,
cry like pansy? Ha! Cry like girl with chest humps, it do you no good!" Poppa Igor then
gathered the rest of Igor's beloved journals into the box and headed out the door, into the
hallway, and down the stairs where we was met by Momma Igor who, it must said, was not the picture of happiness that her husband was. It wasn't the sneer or the Go-To-Hell
look in her eyes, it was the fact that she was carrying the largest, not to mention the
heaviest, skillet that was available in the von Igor kitchen.
"Put those back. They're Igor's."
"Not anymore! Igor learn how to masturbate to pictures of pretty girls! Now he
give up science!"
Although its design was the antithesis of anything aerodynamic, the skillet
perfectly angled its way upwards and across the back of Poppa Igor's head, with a
resulting CLLLAAAANNNGGGG that could only be caused by its impacting the steel plates holding Poppa Igor's skull intact after a disastrous night in his wild youth of playing chicken with a locomotive.*
*Oddly enough, said locomotive was stationary and out of service. Young men throughout history have found many curious, and painful, ways of filling their leisure hours with all manner of activities that invariably cause them some form of injury.
To say such a blunt instrument would cause brain damage at the very least, and death at the very worst, was an understatement. And attempted murder in a family built on the long, proud tradition of organ trading and electrical regeneration was no more serious than, say stepping on a bag of cotton candy in the hopes of squishing all the life out of it. Poppa Igor fell forward into the box of technical manuals, but was picked up by his shirt collar and allowed to fall over backwards as Momma Igor took the box of Igor's magazines and hid them in a safe spot. When the time was right (say, when Poppa Igor's immobile form started attracting flies) she would hook him up to the Prius and, after a quick jump from the battery, Poppa Igor would resume life as if nothing had happened.
* * * * *
The big top of the circus was stuffed with all the things one might expect to see in such a tent based operation: great dancing bears that, somehow, had been trained by Victor's old science teacher, Dr. Dipsy, to do the Watusie and the occasional Old Soft Shoe. The grizzlies wore spats on their hind paws as they stood upright and tipped their top hats at the pretty ladies. Dipsy, obviously, was a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment industry.
Off to the side sat a big blue and gold cannon, which was placed in such a trajectory as to shoot its human shaped ammunition towards the net at the far side of the tent on a nightly basis, plus members of Victor's extended clown family that performed aerial death defying acts on unicycles amongst the highest supports of the tent which often ended with a clown falling fast into a large bowl of pudding.
How a young man could stay inconspicuous in this environment wasn't difficult to pull off, as he was just another collection of primary color splotches in an ever changing wash of streaks of rainbows and the shimmering lights of sequins and rhinestones that made up the wardrobe choices for most of those of the female entertainers. The bears finished their review, the girls finished up their routine with the elephants, and the novelty of the cannon was forgotten as the lights began to dim and spotlights swiveled around to shine upon the Ringleader as he stepped into the center ring with a microphone in his hand.
"Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, give a great big welcome to our very own Victor, The Clown!"
Those that were there talk of that day with great affection. Those that knew Victor and his parents best say, when the spotlights were shining down on Victor, all his intentions of world domination melted away like cotton candy dipped in water.
* * * * *
Momma Igor stood outside the door to Igor's bedroom, and gently knocked upon the door. From the other side, Igor managed a distraught "Go away," but it wouldn't keep a devoted mother away.
"Can momma come in, Igor?"
"Igor guess."
Momma Igor stepped inside, a basket of freshly cleaned clothes making up its
contents. She placed the basket down on Igor's bed as he sat down in the floor, leaning up
against it and continued to stare out the window, paying no attention to his mother's
actions.
"Momma have your silk shirts cleaned. You want to try them on?"
"Igor no care."
"Igor like girls, right?"
"Yes."
"Well, girls like sharp dressed boys. If Igor snappy dresser, he get attention from
pretty girls."
"Igor no care."
"Well, Momma care. Be good boy and try them on. You will like them,
momma promise."
"Fine."
Igor got up and reluctantly turned his attention to the laundry basket. Momma Igor
gently kissed him on the head and out she went.
"Igor good boy."
As the door closed shut behind Momma Igor, Igor began digging through the
fresh shirts and found, to his surprise, a brand new issue of Popular Mechanics fell out onto his bed. Igor picked up the magazine, looked at the closed doorway his mother just
vacated, and smiled.
"Igor love Momma." He then sat down upon his bed and quickly began thumbing
forward to the table of contents.
* * * * *
Victor's act was, it must be said, an unpolished mess that was comprised of Victor
singing his interpretation of the Beach Boy's rendition of the classic tune "Sloop John B," while launching himself off of see saws, into the vats of pudding, and even an impromptu dance with one of the overly sequined girls. When he reached the end of the song, he grabbed a large, yellow accordion from a props table and started up a sing along of famous fast food jingles with the audience.
And, at the edge of the tent, Roger Frankenstein was wiping away large crocodile
tears of joy with his hanky. Becky Frankenstein, having heard the swell of laughter and
applause from across the circus grounds, came running to see what was the cause of such
caterwauling. She arrived just in time to find her husband grinning ear to ear as she asked
"What's going on in there?"
"It's Victor."
Momentarily stunned, she leaned in to see for herself. Victor was finishing up a
pseudo serious rendition of "Send In The Clowns" that was constantly being destroyed by
the antics of his clown brothers and sisters behind him.
"That's Victor?"
"Amazing, isn't it?"
"Hey, hey, let's all give Victor a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen!"
The applause was deafening, and Victor found himself lost in a moment of
eternity which threatened to shatter his face from the strain of smiling too hard for the
very first time in years. To become lost in the thrill of this moment was a serious one, but
hearing the adulation from his parents coming from behind him shook him back to reality.
After a quick a grandiose bow before the amassed peoples, Victor offered a farewell wave
and returned to the arms of his joyous parents.
"That's my boy!"
"I'm so proud of you Victor!"
And, for possibly the first time in Victor's life, he felt as if he both affirmed himself, and attained the appreciation of his parents.
* * * * *
The falling of the sun had been met with smiles shared all around the circus
grounds, while Dr. Dipsy shared a cold brew with Victor's dad. Sally, of course, was
shamelessly praising her son over tea in Sally the Invisible Woman's tent, and Victor
himself was laying out in the fields just beyond the circus grounds staring up at the full
moon. It was the perfect end to a good day at the circus.
* * * * *
Miles away in suburbia, however, the falling of the sun had been met with 50,000
jolts of life sustaining electricity to Poppa Igor via the family hybrid. Once shocked back
into the mortal coil, Momma Igor kicked the alligator clamps off Poppa Igor's shoulders.
"What happened?"
Momma Igor's only reply was a cold, "I'm going to bed." She headed back inside
leaving her confused husband on the driveway silently rubbing the back of his head.
"What did I do wrong this time?"
The door slammed in the style that only a woman can make it. As an answer to his
question, the sensation of "You Know What You Did" dripped off the reverberating wooden noise like honey. Poppa Igor's mind, being a one way cerebral street, didn't catch on to the subtleties of a door slamming shut.
Though it was arguably his bed time, Igor was still awake in bed. He had pulled
the sheets over his head and a soft light came from underneath the sheets to reveal a
blurry silhouetted figure who was obviously reading something under the covers. The
sounds of the occasional page turning was muffled by the sheets, but light couldn't be so
easily restrained. As Poppa Igor walked the darkened hall that lead to his bedroom, the
light streaming out from under Igor's door cut the darkness away. Poppa Igor shuffled to
the door and listened intently for the sounds of science, but heard none. He then gently
touched the handle, turned it ever so softly, and pushed it open with all the force he could
muster, sending it into the wall behind it and damn near shaking the hinges free.
The silhouette of Igor under the sheets shuffled quickly and the flashlight went
dead. "What are you still doing up?"
"Nothing, Poppa."
"I'll see about that." And he rushed over to the bed wear his shaken son sat, and
pulled back the covers to reveal one of the girly magazines he'd given Igor earlier that
day.
"Igor reading Playboys?"
"Yes, Poppa."
"Let me see."
Igor handed his dad the magazine, which was open to the centerfold spread of a sexy young woman whose only ambition in life was to serve as a living pillow to an entire
football team. Poppa Igor beamed, and handed the magazine back as it was to Igor.
"Poppa was right, huh? Girls more fun than circuit diagrams?"
"Igor guess."
"Igor guess? Girls will want to rub Igor's hump! Circuit diagrams can't rub Igor's
hump! You do want girls to rub Igor's hump, right?"
"Igor thought Igor should wait for marriage."
"Marriage? Igor been listening to those Mormons next door again. Stay away from
them. They crazy. And you keep reading Playboys. Be sure to masturbate, too. You do know how to masturbate, right?"
Igor, shocked at the stern intensity of his dad's questioning, remained immobile in horrified silence. Poppa Igor frowned, shook his head, and began to unzip his blue jeans.
"Why is it I have to do everything around here?" Poppa asked as he started undressing, which managed to bring Igor's voice back.
"Igor know how to masturbate!"
"You'd better. Your Grandpa Igor knew how to masturbate. He was world class chicken choker! That's why when he died you got his hands! Now do your Grandpa's hands an honor and whack away, instead of dirtying them by building doodads!"
Poppa Igor then got up and left Igor's bedroom, with a faint "Good night" that came from behind him and went unanswered. When the bedroom door to closed shut, Igor returned to his bed sheets, flashlight, and girly magazine that was actually stapled to the center of the Popular Mechanics magazine his mother had placed in his laundry.
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