“State law prohibits smoking in a public tented area. For your safety, and the health of our children, thank you for not smoking. Throughout the presentation of all animal acts, and through frequent blackouts, please remain seated. Thank you for your cooperation, and have a healthy, fun day at the circus…”

With a quick wave to the veterans and an encouraging nod to me, Jimmy slides through the back-door flaps and steps into the darkened tent. As he does, the three dozen or so performers slip off their bathrobes, snap on their remaining spandex accessories, and ease their way toward the mouth of the tent. Finally, at precisely 4:30 P.M., Jimmy blows his silver-plated ringmaster’s whistle and a bass drumroll hushes the crowd.

“Circus producers John W. Pugh and E. Douglas Holwadel welcome you to the Clyde Beatty—Cole Bros. Circus, entertaining generations of American families since 1884. Your overture, under the direction of James Haverstrom…”

As I move into place my heart beats faster. I try to conceal my trembling hands. For several weeks I had been preparing for this moment, lurching between a feeling of suave bravado and a sense of utter fear. When I first told my friends I was joining a circus they had greeted my news with hollow stares, then disbelief. “You’re kidding.” “You’re doing what?” “No, really?” “And where did you go to school?” I got smiles. Rolled eyes. Squinched noses. Nervous laughter. And more than a few snide asides: “Grow up.” After a while their attitude would often take a turn. “The circus, huh?” “How fascinating.” “I had an aunt who joined a carnival.” “My uncle used to swallow swords.” But in the end they usually delivered the kicker. “So what are you going to do, be a clown?”

The circus, I soon realized, has an image problem. Many people have fond images of seeing one as a child, but they still think of circuses—and circus people in particular—as dirty, degenerate, and downright depraved. “Watch out for the lion trainer,” people told me. “Beware the bearded lady.” Even my mother recalled taking me to a one-ring show when I was a boy that was so filthy and stinking that she took me home at intermission and vowed never to let me return.

At first I scoffed at these concerns. How dirty could it be? I said. I’d done a lot of traveling. I’d slept on a lot of floors. I’d met a lot of greasy con artists on overcrowded Third World trains. In fact I secretly prided myself on my ability to get along with people who were not only vastly different from me but often out to rip me off. Still, as the time came closer for me to leave my apartment, my telephone, my cozy group of urbane, Ivy League, vegetarian friends, I began to have doubts. Maybe this world really would be dangerous. Maybe I was getting in over my head. Talking my way onto a show had been a challenge. Now, after I had done it, the circus seemed less and less like a game and more like a world full of professionals and artists into which I was plunging headfirst with a swagger matched only by my gall. Dear Diary: What the hell am I doing?

More than the mud, it was these petty concerns about the people (Will I make friends? Will I be accepted? Will I get invited to play on any teams?) that cluttered my mind that Thursday afternoon as I looked around at the host of performers preparing to enter the tent. On one side of me an aerialist was bending over to stretch her back. On the other a trapeze artist was reaching down to untwist his tights. One of the clowns was playing a game with the king and queen of the opening parade.

“One, two, three,” cry the boy and girl picked at random from the audience, “start the parade…”

As if by magic the ringmaster responds.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, come with us to the days of yesteryear when children of all ages eagerly awaited the summertime fun of an old-fashioned circus street parade. With a little sawdust, greasepaint, and imagination you can consider yourself part of the Cole Bros. Circus family…”

With this cue the band strikes up a peppy version of “Consider Yourself at Home,” the man they call Slow Motion slowly tugs open the back flap of the tent, and the opening spectacle, or “spec,” begins. The first person into the spotlight is Jerry, a four-foot-seven-inch dwarf in clown makeup, who just before the back door opens kisses one of the Royal Arabian horses and blesses himself with the sign of the cross before skipping out onto the hippodrome track that encircles the three rings. Jerry is wearing yellow-checked pants, a blue-striped shirt, and an impish red, white, and black face. The adults applaud. The children jump to their feet. As he parades around the track the overhead lights are kindled at each step until finally the entire floating ship of a tent is awash in a glow of light, color, and secret desire.

Indeed, from the moment the performers start streaming into the tent, some wearing headdresses, others waving capes, the circus begins to emerge as the living embodiment of illusion: dangerous, daring, tempting, taboo. A woman glides through in an impossibly tight bikini. A man marches past with impossibly plump biceps. Two clowns amble by, and most impossibly of all, they always seem to be smiling. Even the horses, tigers, and bears seem to be part of this world without constraint.

Approaching the moment of my first entrance, I, too, was caught up in this illusion, by the gloss of romance and the undercurrent of titillation. This feeling would never go away. Indeed, before I could walk out of the tent after our last finale—thirty-four weeks, ninety-nine cities, and five hundred and one shows later—I would be forced to confront two seemingly contradictory truths about the circus: one, the sins were more exotic than I would have expected, and two, the people were more wholesome than I could have anticipated. On the one hand, in the course of one nine-month season in the circus I encountered an array of sins so extensive I had to rethink whether I had ever truly known my own country. These sins, which I nicknamed the Seven Circus Sins, included: murder, rape, arson, bigamy, bestiality, group sex, and organized crime. If you find it in America, I found it in the circus.

On the other hand, even as I encountered this range of illicit activity, I was continually overwhelmed by an even stronger pattern of compassion as performers from thirteen different countries, speaking half a dozen languages and practicing almost twice as many religions, struggled to live together in one community with no means of privacy or escape. This was the family Johnny had told me about. In fact, when I stepped through the back door for the first time, dragging behind me the portable throne containing the king and queen, I became forever a part of this family. I wasn’t prepared for it to happen so quickly. Inside my costume I still felt like an outsider—looking up at the lights, looking down at the grass. But from the outside I already looked like an insider. On my feet I wore eighteen-inch floppy red-and-white clown shoes. On my body, to accent my tall, thin frame, I wore bright red pants that reached to my chest, a short white tailcoat that stopped at my waist, and an oversized shimmering gold lamé bow tie. And on my face, underneath a white skullcap and pointy hat, I wore a milky coat of white greasepaint, highlighted by arching black eyebrows on my forehead and bass clefs on my cheeks, a red bubble-gum smile around my lips, and in the middle of this cartoon face, a crisp red nose.

Once inside the tent, a childish thrill rose in my stomach. Cameras flashed in my eyes. Hundreds of nameless fingers waved enthusiastically from their seats. “Hey, Mr. Clown,” a girl called from the front row, and it took a moment to realize she was talking to me. “Keep waving,” I called out to the king and queen behind me. “Smile!” The energy seemed to grow as we rounded the track. Kids hurried down to the railing and reached out to touch us. My arms started getting tired from waving. The music was wailing and Jimmy was singing, “Be a clown, be a clown. All the world loves a clown…,” when suddenly I looked back and noticed that the little girl in the cart with the brightly striped cape—the queen of the opening circus parade—was crying. Was it the excitement? I wondered. Was it the din? Was it the natural reaction, the inevitable sadness, of having a dream come true?