This is an edited version of the original submission. I took all my stories down in January of this year. I plan to extensively revise some of them and edit the better stories.
When I published this story before, a reader chided me for the way I portrayed blind people. One of my best friends from college had Macular Degeneration. At the time I knew him, he could see somewhat out of the sides of his eyes but not straight ahead. He had been classified as legally blind for years.
He was a great piano player with perfect pitch. In protest against many blind people learning how to tune pianos, he became a medical transcriptionist. He had a wicked sense of humor that he used to make people at ease around him. To know him was to instantly like him.
I fell in love instantly.
The first problem? I was a mime. There was no way I could tell her without breaking character and that would end my dream.
The second and even greater problem? She was far too young for me at the time. I watched as she got three cups of beer from a vendor near our stage. Since the minimum alcohol drinking age in our state is eighteen, I was sure she was older than that because our venders were picky about ID. I was twenty-nine, a huge gap at our ages, and an aspiring actor who was good at being a mime, but little else on stage.
After many arguments, my ultra-rich parents agreed to allow me to join a traveling circus/sideshow for four months each summer. If it hadn't been for my mother taking my side, I wouldn't have gotten that. My stepfather had other plans. In return, I agreed to complete law school. I already should have graduated from college, but wouldn't until next year. But I didn't care. I loved the stage and I loved being a mime.
Scholarships and my parents covered the basic tuition. Money earned during the summers paid for my living expenses. That was important to me. After seeing the effect limitless money had on my older stepbrother and stepsister, I wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible.
Back to my dream girl. I saw her at Hillsdale first. This girl certainly caught my eye. Blonde hair that turned golden in the sunlight flowed down to her shoulder blades. Piercing deep, blue - almost purple - eyes. A charming face. And a smile that instantly captured my heart. She had a killer body already and both her parents standing nearby made me think she would get more beautiful even though I knew she was too young for me. She brought a cup holder with three cups of beer back with her, gave one to each of her parents and sipped on the other.
We were performing outdoors. It was an interlude act to help keep the crowd from wandering away. At the time, I was presenting one of the longer segments of my set. The mountain climbing routine included music I'd composed and played, putting everything on a tape for the show's sound system.
Up the mountain. Teeter on the top. Realize I'm over my head, literally. Reverse everything, including the music, so it looked like a film running backward. Big fall at the end. Bounce to my feet triumphantly and take a bow. That was my segment.
Over the din of the murmuring, inattentive crowd, I watched as she drilled her gaze into me, totally enraptured, crowding as close to the stage as she could. When our eyes met, it was like an electric current blazed between us. I almost forgot my stoicism at those times.
Along with learning to be a mime, I had learned to read lips. During a break in the noise, I watched her mouth say to her friends how much she liked watching mimes in general, but this mime the most.
Eventually, her friends dragged her away because of their boredom, Her parents wandered away during one of the acts.
She attended every show in the area I did that year and for several years thereafter. She completely captured me. Between going to school and my heart's devotion to my golden angel, I had little desire to date anyone else.
Hillsdale became the highlight of my performance schedule from that point onward. Each year, her companions changed. The next year, the group was smaller and she was just one of them. No parents in sight. Her friends giggled and made fun of the mime. She stood quietly, focused on watching, trying to keep them quiet. Finally, they grouped up on her and dragged her away. I cried as only a mime can. The third year, it was only her and a boyfriend.
Each year her looks and companions changed. Now her beauty included her entire body. She always dressed down, but I could tell. Before the first of three shows that year in Hillsdale, I put on a bigger, thicker gaff to hide my constant erection.
At the same time, I'd seen the handwriting on the wall with the circus and sideshow. Harder and harder to sustain, the parent company was cutting performers. Show dates were being canceled or merged.
The final year I saw her, the show set up in a large tent midway between Adrian and Hillsdale. She was there, this time with a large diamond on her left ring finger. I had lost her without a word being spoken. Her eyes were sad as she made sure I saw the engagement ring. She still watched me as keenly as ever and when our eyes met, it was like nothing else in the world existed.
She shielded her face from her boyfriend and mouthed the words, "I love you, my mime. Sorry."
The next year the joint show between Adrian and Hillsdale was canceled for lack of a venue. I was already through school at the time, and I worked only a few shows to concentrate on my work for a law firm. I would already be older than the average person when I sat for my bar exams.
When I was 33, the circus for which I had worked, decided to put on one last performance at Adrian-Hillsdale. I eagerly committed. She wasn't there. My heart utterly broke.
Silly? Perhaps. But my daydreaming introspective desires had led me into acting and being a mime because I could be anyone I wanted. Dating women was scary, especially as I grew older, because women wanted marriage and children which I did not.
Perhaps the sorrow of her absences contributed to my unhappiness. Six years of general discontent with my life and everything in it led me to pass up a promised junior partnership, leave the large law firm of Grantham, Endicott and Cronin in Cleveland and purchase a small practice along the shores of Lake Erie in Michigan. I wanted to get away from the big city to somewhere near Hillsdale and grieve.
At least that's what I told people. My grief at losing my golden angel drove me into multiple women's beds.
The truth was I had been sleeping with Rachel, the wife of the primary partner in the law firm, and her nineteen-year-old adopted daughter, Melody, in a threesome. Her husband decided that since Melody wasn't a blood relative, she was fair game getting her drunk and fucking her in the marital bed. Our affair was Rachel's method of getting back at her husband.
After I left, she divorced him and wanted to live with me. I told her the truth. I was still in love with my golden angel. She understood and went elsewhere. Last I heard she had married the girl's birth father who was her first love.
My stepfather called me stupid for downgrading. He threatened to cut off my inheritance which would be substantial when he died. I didn't care. I made enough money in my small practice and lived frugally.
I had received a trust fund when I turned twenty-five, set up by my maternal grandfather. My first act had been to withdraw all the money and put the funds where only I could access them. I guess my stepdad figured I'd spent it all like my stepbrother and stepsister would have. I prided myself on leaving the money untouched. The interest and earnings alone would have sustained me for six months with no other income.
In my free time, I searched towns near Hillsdale for my golden angel with no positive results. People started shaking their heads and avoiding me on the streets and in the taverns and restaurants. "Obsessed" was a word I frequently heard. "Tetched in the head," was a phrase heard as well. People in our small town pretty much had to use my services because my rates were so cheap.
This continued until one day I saw an ad in the regional newspaper asking for mimes to audition. "Must have background music." I periodically remained active as a mine. I had the music I'd recorded. I still longed for the stage.
I especially loved doing a mime act in the square near my old office and watching the harried employees I once worked with scurry by like worker bees. Saw the principal in the firm stride by more than once with a worried unhappy expression on his face.
Details of the auditions aren't important except they lasted over three days and included Toledo, Grand Rapids, and Detroit, moving up a level each time. In Detroit, we appeared in front of a late-night audience at a bistro in one of the nearby resorts and got to stay overnight.
I became one of three finalists. Only then were we told where and for what event we were auditioning. It was a private party in the countryside of northern Michigan. Why we traveled to all those other cities wasn't evident, at least at the time.
The final audition promised to be another strange event in an already bizarre string of auditions. We were transported individually to a large house -- almost a castle -- near Houghton on a Saturday. None of us would see the other two performers. None of us were told what to anticipate except an overnight stay might be possible so we should pack a small bag accordingly. We'd be told the results soon after we got home.
I arrived inside a blacked-out van at ten AM, the prescribed time. Once inside, I was shown to a small room. I was told by a woman, short and stout, wearing a nurse's uniform, that I had seven minutes to prepare. With only a small hand mirror, I put on my white face and highlighted my eyebrows. I also took off my outer shirt, pulled up the suspenders I'd tucked into my pants and tied a bright blue scarf around my neck. I had suspected we won't have dressing areas and I'd been prepared. I pulled out my digital recorder and performed the basic parts of my routine. As I continued to practice a door on the other side of the room opened.
Exactly seven minutes after she left, the nurse came in with another woman who was dressed plainly in a dull gray housedress. Her coal-black hair barely reached the top of her neck and was stringy and un-styled. She wore large, black-framed sunglasses which struck me as odd. The whole effect was like someone trying to look ugly.
She had one hand resting on the arm of the nurse and I began to understand. She was probably blind, which made the situation even odder. If she was in charge of the auditions, all this secrecy, all this expense, was worthless for obvious reasons.
By now they were standing in front of me. The nurse stepped away slightly and the woman raised one hand to hold it near my face.
The nurse startled me when she spoke. "She wants to know if it's okay to touch you." Staying in mime mode, I nodded approval. "You need to speak. She can't see you," the nurse said.
I said, "Hello. I'm a mime." Stupid, I'm sure, but I was not used to speaking while in character.
The woman touched my nose, smiled slightly, and began to run all four fingers lightly over every feature of my face: Across my lips, along my jawline up to my right ear, across the top of my head, back to my eyes and down my nose. She brought her left hand up to explore the other side in the same manner. She was close enough I sometimes felt the brush of her breasts against my chest. The contact made my breath catch.
I was perfectly mystified. Why would facial features make a difference? I was a mime. I wore a white face, blackened elongated eyebrows, a red and blue horizontally striped shirt with a blue knotted scarf, red suspenders, and black pants like all mimes.
I suppose somewhere, somehow, I retained a small silver of hope that this was my golden angel. If she was, something extremely bad had happened because I couldn't make myself believe this was the same woman. While she was evaluating me, I searched her face for clues. Her makeup concealed many things. What I did not know.
Now she explored my neck and shoulders. The nurse spoke again. "She wants you to perform some of your routines while she holds your shoulders. I know mimes sometimes stay motionless, but not this time, please. Just do the best you can. If you get separated, make some noise so she can relocate you."
I did. A different act than the one I was performing the first time I'd seen my golden angel, but still one I'd done frequently.
I figured she'd lose track of me right away, but she seemed to know my moves like she'd watched me dozens of times. When we lost contact, I cleared my throat and realized the loss hadn't been her fault; in the oddity of the situation, I simply forgotten a part of the routine and left it out. Her hands were in the proper position where I should have been.
