My Own Private J.T. LeRoy

So this morning around 6am, as I am sitting in front of my computer in my unspeakably filthy flannel nightgown, blearily catching up on the latest international news ("Wow! Sharon can move one arm and one eyelid! He's ready to assume control of Israel!"), my phone rings and who should it be but the ringmaster and operational manager of the fabulous Cirque de Méprise, Ray Perdu.

Babbling even more incoherently than usual.

"Okay, Pat! I need you to get me a reporter from the Harlingen newspaper to come out and cover this painter. He's real famous! He was on the Dupont paint calendar. We're having some problems with the permits so I figure if we tell everyone that Harlingen is our winter headquarters, that we're part of the community, that we support the community so they should support us, that'll grease the wheels –"

Nobody has enough money for actual bribes, see. They changed the immigration regulations without alerting JDK so he's stuck in Tijuana redoing the H2B paperwork for 950 Mexicans. Cash is tight until he's done which means we have to rely on the always undependable twin resources of competence and human good will.

"But Ray," I say. "Harlingen is not our winter headquarters. Hugo, Oklahoma is our winter headquarters."

"Well, we're opening there."

"No, we're not. We're opening in Brownsville."

"So? It's all the Rio Grande Valley."

"Ray, you're asking me to feed misinformation to a reporter."

"So? What's the problem?"

Now is clearly not the time to deliver Ray a little sermon on journalistic ethics.

So I just sigh. "I suppose I could say something like, 'After wintering in Harlingen, Texas, the Hugo, Oklahoma-based Cirque de Méprise opens its season in Brownsville –'"

"That's the ticket!" Ray agrees.

Then the subject of the Chinese acrobats came up.

Chinese acrobats are part of the show this season. I'm supposed to write a press release.

"Nobody has told me anything about these Chinese acrobats," I say. "Where do they come from?"

"Las Vegas."

"So they're American acrobats of Chinese descent."

"No. They were born in China."

"What part of China? Did they go to school there? Do they have names?"

"Well, I don't know, Pat," says Ray peevishly. "They have Chinese names. I can't remember them all. They rhyme with Bing. Make something up."

Ray is really psyched about my powers of invention because he loves the official biography I made up for him:

Ringmaster extraordinaire Ray Perdu may be the only performer in the history of the circus to have earned a Masters Degree in Animal Husbandry from Texas A&M University. The son of a prominent dairy farmer in Buttfuck, Arizona, he set out to become a dairy farmer himself.

But he couldn't help teaching his cows how to dance.

"Cows are not the best performers," he laughs. "Or the best learners either. Fortunately nobody was paying to see us play."

Ray soon discovered he liked training the cows more than milking them. When his friend the legendary animal trainer Yada Yada asked him to help set up a circus fifteen hundred miles away, Ray jumped at the chance and never looked back.

He's been with Cirque de Méprise for three years both as master of ceremonies and associate producer.

"My goal is to give the audience magic," he says. "To make it all seem effortless. Behind every act, there's a lot of sweat, a lot of strain, a lot of nuts and bolts that need tightening. I make sure the audience sees none of that. For two full hours the audience gets to live in the land of pure imagination. My job is to make their travel arrangements."

In other news, a small resurgence in sales yesterday put the Little Store within shooting distance of its revenue targets. This is January, after all, and we must keep our expectations modest. MB and Kim dropped by. Bozo was playing.

"You have to listen to this for eight hours?" said MB. "You poor dear."

"It is a little like being trapped inside a Pam Grier movie," I said. "I keep looking for Camarros to jump out of."

Also Barbara Angell sent me a late Christmas card. The sight of her handwriting plus the photo – herself, Michael, the two gorgeous daughters – did something to my heart. But I'm not sure what.