killerville:
THE IMPERTINENCE OF YOUTH, MOSTLY. I’ll warn you now, this story doesn’t portray me in a particularly good light, but I was a kid. I grew up better.
The year was 2006. I was seventeen, my coconut juggling career was in full swing, and I hadn’t met my fifth love yet. I was between championships, and due to some jealousy problems (my coworker Billy had paid an undercover police officer to stab me on the tiltawhirl), I was on temporary unpaid leave from the carnival.
I was a minor celebrity at this point, with endorsements from ADIDAJ (a little-known sporting goods store that specialized in juggling equipment, like balls, fire sticks, and shortsitards) and Sacks Filth Revenue (an upscale hackey sack superstore owned by hardcore conservatives and marketed exclusively toward hippies and hipsters), and my own line of coconut waffles at Waffle House (“These’ll Juggle Your Insides Right Up!” the poster said, not bothering to mention how redundant that was, since every trip to Waffle House in the history of mankind has ended in dysentery).
I also had a pivotal role in the biggest blockbuster of the summer, Michael Bay’s Fuckbot Rodeo. I played the president’s estranged robot daughter Synthia, a troubled rodeo clown who ends up karated into a nuclear reactor during a fight with the fuckbot leader, who is very sad about robot mistreatment. That noble sacrifice allowed time for a battalion of rugged Marines, including Synthia’s penpal boyfriend, to retake the country, and I got a happy ending when my AI programming was uploaded into a new body, played by the bra model who was number 11 on Maxim's Hot 100 list the year before. My performance was praised as “robotic” and “unemotional,” and I was nominated for Best/Most Deserving Death at the Scream Awards.
But I was still a minor and still needed a place to live, and Skagbert’s Home for Displaced Carny Children in Idaho was where I ended up. It wasn’t a nice place, or even a particularly safe place, but it was definitely a place.
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