William Vollmann - The Royal Family

DEBTOR: Feminine Circus Co., Inc.

The public record items contained in this report may have been paid, terminated, vacated or released prior to the date this report was printed.

BANKING 08/96

Borrowing account. Now owing medium six figures.

HISTORY 08/96

JONAS A. BRADY, PRESIDENT

DIRECTOR(S): THE OFFICER(S)

CORPORATE AND BUSINESS REGISTRATIONS REPORTED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE OR OTHER OFFICIAL SOURCE AS OF 08/96.

Business started 1995 by Jonas A. Brady. 51 % of capital stock is owned by Jonas A. Brady.

OPERATION 08/96

Entertainment.

ADDITIONAL TELEPHONE NUMBER(S)/CONTACT INFORMATION:

c/o John Tyler, Rapp & Singer, San Francisco.

TERMS: Net 30 days.

TERRITORY: Western United States.

EMPLOYEES: 7 which includes officer(s).

Full display complete.

And the upshot of this investigation?

Brady was Brady. Brady had committed no crimes. Brady was an upstanding citizen.

The next day more than sixty thousand people went between the outspread legs of the fallen angel of Feminine Circus, which from street level could be apprehended only as an asymmetrical polygon, blue and green, with so many angles bulking, sprawling, stretching and towering, but it did have a feminine head (again, à la Sphinx, like a construction paper cutout); it possessed sapphire blue triangular eyes beneath which people streamed slowly in like H. G. Wells’s Eloi going down to be eaten by the Morlocks. That was the day Feminine Circus was officially open, so they’d turned the sky on over the Sea of Love, filling it with multiple rainbow sunsets. Yes, the heat was on, pipesmoke swirled around the phony trees, and the passionless attended with big change cups between their thighs, watching the whirling oranges and BARs, scarcely looking at whatever money came out, but not unhappy. One man bantered: I put a nickel in, but it’s her machine, so she gets the winnings! — The robot angel Valentina waved goodbye in her pink rocket, curtseyed, and ascended a cable, hung there between sun and moon until people forgot her, and crept inconspicuously back down to repeat the performance another billion times. Another crescent moon crossed the sky slowly, and stars came out. Slot machines sang all around.

Oh, that’s kinda neat, a girl said.

Tyler had made a mistake. He’d judged by the Thursday night crowd. They were not sleepwalkers after all; this was the weekend now and this hotel, this incredible jungle, was alive with gambling monkeys and tigers! He could not believe how many people were passing so quickly in so many directions, drinks and cigarettes in hand; at all times cleaning ladies swept that carpet of phosphorescent flowers, combing the litter into their mouths-on-sticks; one told him: I seen Robinson Crusoe’s and I seen the Sphinx and all them others, but this is the greatest! It’s the biggest, it’s the best, it’s so beautiful! — and Tyler looked around me and saw that it was! — especially after a few drinks. The waitresses in short black skirts wiping tables with one hand, holding round trays of drinks in the other, families marching down the glowing carpet toward the elevators, some with cocktail glasses in hand; the calm, happy heads of the resting gamblers sitting around tables, lights slopping and lushing around, were all so busy that they reminded Tyler of the brochure with Egyptian symbols on it at the Luxor which read: Keno While You Sleep — Play More, Win More! Meanwhile the girl on the loudspeaker was as happy and amazed as if she’d just given birth to Jesus, crying out: Mrs. R. D. Winkler, Mrs. R. D. Winkler, you have a feminine phone call! I have a feminine phone call for Mrs. R. D. Winkler! — for, just as the gorgeous black waitress who used to work at the Horseshoe downtown said: After being down there with all those gamblers, you get used to it. You have to perform. — No doubt that was what Mr. Slapper, the P.R. guy, had in mind when, escorting Mr. and Mrs. Rapp, Mr. and Mrs. Singer, John and Celia, Roland and Amanda into the very spacious and bright cafeteria (where an off-duty Greek goddess picked up a tray and stepped into line), he said (with a smile like the long crack between a cocktail waitress’s puffed-up breasts): First of all, we call all of our employees ringleaders. Feminine Circus was connected with the Big Top until 1969. When you’re onstage, always delivering, you put on your best performance. — Passing couples upturned their heads, looking at everything; nothing in any one part of Feminine Circus was quite the same; that was a triumph in which the little Cupid in the American Girl Lounge seemed to delight, for he moved and twisted in his chair, convulsed his hairy arms, threw back his head and laughed at the stars on the ceiling.

Then a woman screamed: Ohhhhh! — She’d hit a big jackpot. The coins began to patter out. Crowds clotted behind her and watched as the coins kept coming.

Suddenly an arrow comprised of neon lights began to shimmer on the floor, and a siren went off. A melodious female voice said: Ladies and gentlemen, the adult area of Feminine Circus is now open for play. Adults only, please!

The woman who’d won the jackpot looked around, and found herself husbandless. Masculine Circus, Brady’s playland for heterosexual women, remained a mere blueprint.

Following the long line of men, Tyler passed through a glowing pink door…

In addition to his cottonwood business, Mr. Brady was, as we see, an impressario. Why should I beat around some whore’s bush? He was the founder, chief executive officer, and fifty-one percent owner of Feminine Circus Enterprises, dedicated to the philosophy that love is the first and final cause. When I looked him up in Who’s Who in Retail Management, I read a competitor’s description of his face: “as vividly ugly as a fast food parking lot at night when a security light glares down on the pitted asphalt.” But the competitor, who was bankrupted by Feminine Circus, was hardly handsomer. Let’s not get in the way of love; let’s not halt love’s caravans, sexual traffickings. Love’s poison makes us strut like birds; then a woman’s ten outstretched fingers slide slowly down a man’s back. What comes of it? Wait nine months, till the baby sits serene on its mother’s lap, utterly contented by the writhing of its fingers. Is that love? Now the creature walks; again and again the mother bends faithfully down to the child whose hand she holds. Not much longer, and the child pulls away to be swallowed up in child armies. In the playground love marches with little boys stalking birds slyly, to pelt them with sand; when the birds scatter, little boys throw sand in little girls’ eyes instead, loving their screams. As soon as the weeping’s over, back come the boys, grinning, sand dribbling between clenched fingers, and the girls suspect no evil; being only at the beginning of life’s tortures, they haven’t yet learned to read the malignancy of other faces. Some never do. We call them retarded. This is the story of Brady, Tyler, and the Queen; but first it’s the story of a man who loved retarded girls, loved them with the tranquil smile and faraway glance of a doctor, not the other way at first, the way people leap up to watch a car accident, and I will tell you what happened on his journey for dear love when the world divided into armies.