Bring on the clowns

It was after 8:30 on Saturday night and with no good bands in town we decided to go slumming at the redneck dance hall a few miles down the road. It’s like spending the night at the circus, but with beer and cigarettes instead of popcorn and soda pop. All the cowboy posers in our little suburb go there to show off their hats and their beer guts, hoping to get lucky. We’re early and the hats haven’t arrived yet, but a sea of corpulent women spill over tiny bar stools oblivious to the fat that rolls and pours from every gap in their skimpy clothing. Their expectations low, they come in groups of three or four and order tall sweet lethal drinks in pastel colors. We watch a single slim middle age couple circling the edge of the dance floor in a fast loop, and I struggle to figure out what is so strangely familiar about their performance. The music swings wildly from hip hop to country to alternative, but the couple dances the same routine to each number. My husband starts anticipating their moves, “Dip” he says as they round the corner near the bar and they dip, “Spin” he says as they pass in front of the bandstand, and they spin. I am sorting through my brain trying to categorize their style and it suddenly comes to me. The skating rink about a mile from here closed a year ago and they are frustrated holdovers.

The lesbian midgets distracted me so much I didn’t even notice when the skaters went home. The taller girl came out first, dancing some version of an electric slide/boot scoot to some really bad country rock hybrid beat. In contrast to most of the women in the room, she was trim and toned, well proportioned and very short. The top of her tall cowboy hat was no more than 5 feet off the ground, if that, and she had to have bought those tight jeans and midriff baring top in the children’s department. She did have some moves though, like her body was put together with springs instead of bones. When she did a knee bending dip that put her caboose no more than an inch off the ground I noticed she was being watched from the sidelines by what I assumed was a child. I was alarmed that they had let an 8 year old in a place like this, but then the girl turned around. The baby had boobs! She was a miniature scale model of a woman, not even coming up to the armpit of the average size guy standing nearby and only a half a head taller than the bar rail. I had been thinking we might leave, but I told my husband to order me another beer. It was hard to watch anything else when the two of them started dancing together cheek to cheek and belly to belly, and trust me; I wasn’t the only one whose eyes were riveted to the dance floor.

A new influx of younger men, sans hats, gathered around the bar rail staring in astonishment as the girls gyrated and stroked each other’s long blond hair. I wonder why I’ve never seen any of these people before even though I’ve lived in this area for 30 years and have been to this very bar four or five times in the last six months. In fact, as popular as this spot seems, there aren’t ever any recognizable regulars. I really want to stay all evening and see which strange combinations of humanity go home together, but my husband catches me in the fourth or fifth yawn and suggests we call it a day. I reluctantly tear myself away from the sideshow a little before midnight, leaving the midgets, the fat ladies, all the assembled pot bellied strong men, and the host of spectators to their own separate fates. As we drift out to the parking lot I make a mental note to myself to find out if the circus really is in town