Today you are a beautiful trapeze artist who has spent her life in the circus, living, loving, and flying around on ropes. The thing you fear most is a day off, so you jump from circus troupe to circus troupe every time one closes up shop for a season. Trouble is, any time you're about to leave one circus troupe for another, someone proposes and you can't help but say yes and consent to being married by the lion tamer (recognized in some states as a legal officiator). As of your latest wedding five days ago, you now have eight husbands in eight different circus troupes, all of them traveling from state to state in their own little freakish world, waiting for the season when you'll return.
It's the closed-off nature of the traveling circus society that makes you feel like this is not all that strange. Jumping troupes is like switching worlds. You can start over with a new troupe, forgetting all about who you might have wronged or longed for on the last tour. It's understood that people aren't going to ask too many questions, since folks in a traveling circus usually don't have too many nice memories from their lives before they joined. With all this being in play, it's been very easy for you to have several husbands all over the place. And you love each one of them equally (though the sword-swallower in the Eastern Asia troupe was becoming something of a bore by the time you hopped back to the States).
But tonight it's all going to come crashing down. Literally. Because tonight you're playing Minneapolis and your husband from the Canadian troupe (elephant wrangler) is going to be in the stands, checking out the operation in case he wants to join up in order to be closer to you. He won't have told you about his visit because he knows that you'd only be made nervous. But you'll catch sight of him when you're flying around on your trapeze. It will have been right after you smacked high-fives with a stilt-walker, and the MC will have announced to the crowd that you and the stilt-walker are five-day newlyweds. You'll see the heartbreak in your elephant wrangler's eyes and it will of course make you miss your grab, fall to the floor and die. The booking company will send out eight letters to eight different troupes, as per your next-of-kin instructions. You'll always be remembered in the circus world as a cautionary tale of what can happen when you walk into big-top tent with wide open heart.
Happy Be The Trapeze Artist That Just Can't Say No Day!
