Last night a friend of mine was stabbed several times in the face. He was also stabbed in the bicep while stripped naked. Another friend had his shirt taken from him and people–girls as young as sixteen–stapled his body with a wood stapler. And then there were the fireballs. Raging, manic clouds of flame that erupted on the stage, which sent the senses assuming the Bat Zombie Dragon Apocalypse was upon us. If we read our hearts, we see that every one of us believes a Bat Zombie Dragon Apocalypse without great balls of fire would be like claiming membership to the mile high club when the jet never left the runway.
But bedlam of the Bat Zombie Dragon Apocalypse this was not. Nor was it some outlying example of violence in the streets of New York. It was the Mystic Circus Sideshow, led by Aaron Rush Hicks. And it was what they call a typical Friday night.
“I’m completely serious. I’m a clown without jokes,” Aaron told his audience wearing a no-way-we-just-saw-what-we-just-saw-and-no-way-in-hell-this-is-actually-happening faces throughout most of the night. The mayhem unraveled in the back patio of Bushwick’s Goodbye Blue Monday–an outpost of awesomeness where the world’s a playground and recess never ends.
“This is so wrong,” Rush repeated again and again.
But if applause from the audience is how we judge the rightness of what is happening onstage, then it was as right and good as drinking kegs in Midwestern cow fields Alex Spitfire, is not a guy I would bring into my straw barn as he’d burn the place down. He spits fire like Mario would after breaking into a greenhouse of Fire Flowers. Do not bring him around children who have not mastered the art of Stop Drop and Roll.
After his first performance, which included twirling and spitting fire in hellish succession, he walked into the whooping audience and whispered to the table where I was seated, “That was the first time I have ever done that.” Alex did not know then that this was not only virginity the fire God would claim from him that night.
Alex learned of some of the other never-before-preformed feats of outrageous what-the-fuck he would be performing that night as Rush unveiled it.
Rush is one of the world’s few sword swallowers. For his first feat he swallowed a 25 inch sword, passing it through his stomach, through his intestines, and then, when it was carefully lodged in his abdomen, began exercising–dropping and doing pushups. That was the first time he had ever done that.
Rush held the microphone like a wand and declared, “Tonight you are going to see something you have never seen before and I, uh, well, we hope for the best. . . Alex is going to lie on the bed of razor sharp nails (some outfits file their nails down, the Mystic Circus Sideshow gets drunk and sharpens them), have shards of glass from broken 40s poured onto his stomach, have a cinderblock lit on fire placed atop him and then shattered with a flaming sludge hammer.”
I hoped everyone on stage had insurance.
How to describe the look on Alex’s face? It was the look I imagine Columbus had when he first looked out at the sea and said, “Totally. We’re doing that. Going to sail off the world. Fuck it. ”
Alex tapped Rush on the shoulder before laying down on the bed of nails. “Don’t worry,” Rush whispered to him, “I got you.”
Trust. That kinda trust required taking a leap of faith off a 120 foot cliff into a pool of sea monsters where the water, the cliff and the sea monsters are all on fire.
The world had one less cinderblock after the flaming sledge hammer fell. Natalie Hope, beautiful fire dancer and breather, was there to gather the flaming pieces so that the whole show didn’t burn down. The audience was so rabble aroused that it was clear that it was not just Alex, but they also who had taken this leap of flaming faith and emerged. A girl seated behind audience said at various parts of the act, “I don’t want to see someone die.”
The audience members share in these victories of the Mystic Circus Sideshow. We don’t want to see any of them die, and if we didn’t believe in their survival we wouldn’t have been there to support them. “Typically the more you pay for a show, the shittier it is,” Rush says. He’s got a point and he’s talking to you, Justine Bieber.
Natalie Hope is what you get when you take dancing, walk it through a Victoria’s Secret, set it on fire, walk it atop a Mayan temple (set it on fire too), and then to a party that the devil is throwing for Alexander the Great. I’m not convinced any of this is metaphor.
If they dance like this in hell, then there can be no doubt that everyone in heaven realizes they made a huge mistake and should have taken life’s elevator straight to the basement.
There was also music–The wild and unafraid music of Erin Kleh, which you can’t help but nod to rhythmic agreement to. The horse gods where shining on her, and for her last set, a horse, wearing jeans and a sports coat, galloped on the stage and danced. You can’t pray for a miracle like that.
For my part, I closed off and gave Rush back the human hand he left at my house. I’ve had a lot of couch surfers over the years, and many of them leave stuff. As the legend has it, Rush’s dad cut the hand off a fellow Navy officer who was stealing from people. The hand was donated to a museum, which they displayed. Rush’s dad spent four years in a military prison for the hand cutting incident. When he got out he stole the hand from the museum. He gave the hand to Rush the conversation went something like, “Rush, I cut this hand off a man. I want you to have it. Do well in school. Don’t do drugs.”
I wrote a song for the occasion off the standard “Lord I Lift Your Name On High”
It seemed like the right thing to say:
Rush lift your sword on high / Tell us again about all the times you’ve been laid
We’re all so glad you haven’t died / But if you did we would all laugh and not cry.
Rush, don’t die.
PhotoCredits: Natalie Hope Fire Dancing by Jennifer Aardvark Valdes.
Other Photos: Mystic Circus Sideshow Facebook Page.
