I checked my lipstick in the rear-view mirror, then took note of my odometer so I could expense the mileage. "Ready to roll?" I asked.
"Ready!" Jovie was my intern, here to learn from me and work for free. Despite this burden, she was irrationally enthusiastic about everything and I loved her for it.
We got out of the car and walked toward the midway, tottering on our heels across the gravel parking lot. It was pitch dark under our feet, but ahead the lights were bright and the rides were moving. Squeals of laughter floated toward us over the sounds of calliope music.
I couldn't help but smile. When I was a little girl, the carnival was a magical place. The lights, the rides, the smells, the sounds, even the feel of the crushed grass on the midway combined to make it an enchanting world. At that age, the view from atop a Ferris Wheel was the most exotic sight I could imagine.
Growing up diminished the magic, as it does with most things. I now noticed the peeling paint, the sagging safety rails, the rough-looking carnies. The smells had a little more grease in them, the sounds a little more harshness. But even now, there's magic. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder. And that's why we were here.
"So what's our plan?" Jovie asked. She was a cute little thing, Filipina by ancestry, petite and perky. She was a full five or six inches shorter than me, barely over five feet tall and bouncing with energy. She was a sophomore at the local college, studying English, and I couldn't turn her down for the internship.
I nodded sagely, per my mentor role. "We're looking for a good interview story. Something that's fun and engaging and edgy."
"Okay." She looked ahead, scanning the scene as if there might be a big neon arrow pointing to our good story. I had to smile at her exuberance.
The lights got brighter as we reached the midway, the merry go round on one side and a row of funnel cake and snow cone booths on the other. Inside a cotton candy stand, a rough-looking carnie scanned me up and down.
"Oh, I love me a hot redhead," he chortled through rotten teeth. "Are you red everywhere, honey?"
I gave him a condescending smile that was worse than ignoring him. Yes, my dress was probably too short. Yes, I was doing it to draw attention to myself. But I'll admit it; I like being checked out by the guys, even if they don't have all their teeth. It's fun to torture and tease them. And it's easier to get interviews when you're showing some thigh and a lot of cleavage. That's one of the first things you learn as a magazine writer, particularly when you're working for a local mag with no name recognition.
"We want to find someone with an interesting story," I said to Jovie. "Most likely, it'll be someone who works at the carnival because they're new blood, but it could be someone just wandering around. We'll just meet people and chat them up and if they seem interesting we'll go further."
Jovie nodded eagerly, her dark eyes alight with anticipation. This was the first field assignment of her career and she clearly wanted to knock it out of the park. To me, it was just another gig, but to her, it was Chapter 1, her opening act.
I bought us each a lemonade and we started strolling. It was your typical roadside carnival, though this one was much bigger than most. Kids ran from ride to ride, young couples pushed strollers, and men impressed their women by throwing baseballs at milk cans. Music and popcorn and conversation filled the air.
"How about those people?" Jovie nodded. She nodded stealthily toward a young man with a big beard and his toddler-carrying wife. She was a blonde with big braless breasts, swinging loosely under a wife beater t-shirt.
"Why?"
"They just look interesting. I like his beard."
"Maybe. But the kid will start crying at some point, and it gets annoying."
After a half-hour, we'd met carnies, teenagers, parents, and one darling old couple that had met on a tilt-a-whirl sixty years earlier. People are always friendly to me for some reason; it's just a natural talent of mine. But their various stories had all been done a million times. I wanted something fresh, something that wasn't your normal Parade Magazine interview.
"They still have freak shows?" Jovie saw it first.
We'd wandered toward the back of the fair, and instead of a fence, the rear area was a large curved stage, easily a hundred feet long. It was cleverly designed, with a caravan of carnival trailers forming the back wall and large platforms folding down and interconnecting from their sides to form the stage. There were five different acts along its radius, the nearest of which was Stella the Strong Woman. She was a gorgeous platinum blonde, tall and sleek and muscular with a fitness instructor's build. She was lifting a set of barbells that were labeled as 400 pounds.
"Wow, she's strong," Jovie observed.
The woman then challenged two men from the audience to come up. One was a young college guy, fit and in shape, and the other was a redneck, complete with tobacco chaw. She pointed them to each end of the barbells and dared them to lift it. Each man grabbed an end and tried to lift.
Nothing.
"Whoooa," Jovie exclaimed.
"It's a trick," I explained. "I'm sure she's strong, but I bet they've got a magnet under the stage. She lifts the weight - and it's nowhere near 400 pounds, by the way - and then when she sets it down they electrify the magnet and lock the barbells to the stage."
The men gave up, scratching their heads and shrugging. Stella the Strong Woman dismissed them and picked up the weight again. The crowd laughed.
The next act was a tall man and a short man, labeled as 8 feet and 2 feet respectively. Both of those were exaggerated and not really that interesting. Then we had a fire eater and a person balancing spinning plates. All your usual fare.
Then we got to the fifth one, and it was different.
Very, very different.
"Orgasma, the Erotic Goddess", the large overhead sign said. Underneath, in smaller red letters, was the mysterious explanation of her powers. "The Queen of Female Pleasure." This part of the stage was covered with a tent, and a female barker was outside, calling people in with some ribald comments.
Okay, this had my interest.
"Show in five minutes!" the barker called. She was a short, curvaceous blonde, her hair more highlighted than golden, and it tucked around her ears in a cute gypsy shag. More notably, she was wearing the smallest bikini I'd ever seen, little more than three small bits of strategically based cloth. In our little town, she was taking no small risk with the conservative police. "Women, come in and have the best carnival experience ever! Men, bring your women in and see what they REALLY look like when they cum!"
Couples were milling about, laughing and daring each other to attend. Men were cajoling women, and women were playing coy, and the whole scene itself was worth a story. No one knew quite what to make of it.
"We have to check this out," I said.
Entry was $20, which was ludicrously expensive, but cost matters less when you can file expense reports. I coaxed Jovie up with me, her young eyes wide with wonder and fear, and dug $40 out of my pocket. The semi-naked barker eyed me up and down happily. "Yes!" she shouted to the crowd. "These beautiful women wish to experience the secret powers of the Great Orgasma!"
Seriously, that was a tiny bikini. The woman was small, only about Jovie's height, but with a more fulsome American build. Whereas Jovie was small and slender and built like a gymnast, this woman was filled out, with nice C or D cup breasts and proportional hips stacked onto her small frame. She appeared to be a few years younger than me, maybe her mid-20s, though her green eyes betrayed a lot of life experience.
She looked at Jovie. "I'm going to need to see your ID." She pointed to a prominent sign that said, "21 or Older - Strictly Enforced".
