Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

Redhead: “Story I got is that Al, the boss, has a thing against red hair and Crystal Lil makes sure he doesn’t fool around on her by making every girl on the lot wear this damned torch color. I’m a honey blonde naturally. You can probably tell ’cause of my golden complexion. No blotchy redhead skin on me.”

“The truth is always an insult or a joke. Lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone’s comfort.”

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Arturo Binewski to N.S

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“I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique.”

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Arturo Binewski to N.S

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Excerpts from transcript of conversation with Lillian Binewski — mother — taping unknown to the subject:

“Of course I remember, Mr. Sanderson. It started with a card from my mother. I forget what holiday it was. Easter, maybe. It was a sweet card with a little poem in it. Arty had been talking to his audience from the beginning but — oh, he must have been six or so — he saw that card and he read it over and looked at me in this wise little way he always had and he pipes up, ‘The norms will eat this up, Lil.’ He used to call me Lil like his Papa. And that night in his last show, when he was on the rim of the tank near the end, he smiled so sweetly and came out with this little poem. They loved it. They went wild. Then, of course, nothing would do but I must scour the card racks for him in every town we came to. And he was

PARTICULAR

! I’ll say this for him, he was nearly always right. Knew his crowd

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“Why, there have been times, when I’d slip in at the back during his show and stand watching, that he’d even make

ME

cry, the clever way he had

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“Wait! The change you’re talking about! How could I? It was this ghastly town on the coast. Oregon. Just before Chick was born. It was a terrible thing and I always felt that it must have scarred the children. A madman shot at us in the town. It was terrifying. You can’t imagine what it is to realize that there are people at large whose first reaction to the sight of your children is to reach for a gun. But offstage Arty was withdrawn after that. Quiet. Chick was an infant, too, and we were totally taken up with him. He caused a furor in our lives, that Chick

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“My teeth had been giving me trouble. Chick was three or four months old and we were in Oklahoma. One week we were in the same town with a faith-healing dentist and he was getting our crowds. The midway was just dead until his services were over every evening. Then we’d get the runoff but there wasn’t much. The faith-healing dentist was pumping them dry. They just went home and stared at the wall when he was finished with them. Well, the third night in a row of standing around looking at each other over the sawdust had us all pretty peeved. And I’d been having these teeth pains again so I decided to sneak over to this auction barn where Dr.… I forget his name, was having his healing service

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“Arty had finished for the night. It was only eight o’clock, but he had about seven people in his tent for the early show and we decided it wasn’t worth the gas to run the lights for another set like that. So I took Arty with me in his chair. Of course I took guards. We didn’t breathe without guards. They were brothers, big boys who had both dropped out of college. I forget their names. But these were nice boys. One of them wanted to geek for us. There was trouble with some women’s clubs at about that time over cruelty to chickens. But they were nasty white Leghorns anyway. Stupid things. Now, I’d never give a Plymouth Rock or a nice Rhodie to a geek. I love a nice Rhode Island Red. They are the finest breed of chicken. They have character. We used turkeys for a while, too, and they’re even stupider than a Leghorn. Albinos they were, blue and red wattles. Al tried out the turkeys because their size made them easier to see in the pit. And white, naturally. The albinos. They take a spotlight so well, and the blood shows so vividly. Now that I think of it, that boy had already been geeking. That’s why he wanted to come along. He’d broken a tooth on one of the turkey necks. The bones are so much bigger than a chicken’s, you know. He was the younger boy. He’d dropped out of Yale, I think, and got Al to take him on. Then his older brother came to get him to come back to college. They both stayed on as boys will at that age. Especially the clean, well-bred boys

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“And they always want to strip down and crawl into the blood and mud in the geek pit and scream around, chasing the birds and tearing them to pieces. You could say, well, that’s the quickest route. Any other act would take so much time to learn, and that’s true. But those boys just get such a kick out of it, you have to laugh. This boy, what was his name …? He was good. He had long blond hair and a beard and he’d bury his face in the guts and then snatch his face up and snarl and chatter his teeth at the crowd with gore dripping from his beard. Oh, he had a style about him. But he’d broken a tooth. Got carried away, I dare say

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“And poor little Arty had been so downcast since the shooting I thought it would be a treat for Arty and I’d be with him by himself. He always just flowered with individual attention, Arty did

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“So we set out. One of the boys pushed Arty’s chair and I walked on one side and the brother walked on the other side of Arty. We weren’t far from the main street. It was a small town but a lot of farms in the area. Actually had sidewalks as I recall. We haven’t been back there. I can ask Al what town that was. He’ll remember. But you know those small prairie towns. Not much paint on the houses, not much grass in the yards. The wind just blisters it off. But the folks are nice, with soft drawls. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of blocks to the auction barn. Summer evening you know, and most folks were up at the dentist’s show. A few stayed out rocking on their porches. I remember the geek boy laughing — we none of us believed in this prayer dentistry — that he hoped it worked because his dad was so sore about him quitting school that he’d cancelled his medical and dental insurance

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“I always liked the cattle smells, hay and milk and dung. We knew the place by the flies. And there was a crowd

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“That dentist had ten little boys in a white-voice choir. Very sweet and eerie. Remind me to let you listen to the twins’ tapes when they were doing white voice. The transition was hard on them, getting the tremolo after their blood flowed. They’re still good but their mature voices just don’t have the purity and control that their white voices did. Arty can still white voice if he wants to, but Oly never did have a white time. I swear that child cried for titty in a full-throated contralto. Chick still has a pure little white voice. Sometimes I pass where he’s sitting or hear him in his shower and I think for a moment that he’s still a toddler and I should go make sure he isn’t drinking ammonia or something. Isn’t it odd that the girls should lose their white voice and both the boys can still use it? Sometimes I say to Al, ‘Why is that …?’

“Oh no, Arty didn’t sing at the dentist. It was the choir and a few witnesses. Older folks, big jolly men with guts over their belts standing up next to the dentist showing big gold smiles. It seems God doesn’t use porcelain or amalgam or fancy plastic. He fills strictly with gold. And some big old farm women who should have known better