Tessa Fontaine - The Electric Woman: A Memoir of Death-Defying Acts

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For Mom & Davy, and their courageous hearts

I have tried to re-create events, locales, and conversations as accurately as possible from my memories and extensive notes. In a few instances I have changed the names or identifying details of individuals in order to preserve anonymity. There are no composite characters, though I had to omit some people and events in the interest of book length. If you want some juicy stories that were left out, send me a postcard and Ill see what I can do.

We start by lighting ourselves on fire. Parts that are easier to put out than our faces. Hands, to begin. Arms outstretched, palms toward the darkening sky, I watch as a flaming torch is wiped across my hand from wrist to fingertips. For one, maybe two seconds, I am on fire. The flame trail is two inches high. My hand warms. It doesnt burn exactly, but it feels like touching black leather after it has baked in the sun, a heat I impulsively want to move away from. I close my fist around the flame and put myself out.

* * *

What sorts of acts can you do? the sideshow manager, Tommy, asked.

Before I wrote back, I googled acts in a sideshow. I culled a list of what I saw on Wikipedias sideshow page: Juggling. Fire swallowing. Poi spinning. Magic. I started feeling more brazen. What couldnt I learn in a couple of months? Bed of nails. Snake charming, I wrote. Then, All animal charming. Im good with animals.

Terrific, Tommy wrote back. See you in two months.

* * *

I decided to learn one of the many acts Id claimed to know, so now Im in an Introduction to Fire Eating class at a fire arts collective in Oakland, California, because, of course, these things exist in the Bay Area. The evening outside the fence does not notice me. Buses sigh, a kid across the street accuses another of a basketball foul, old women roll their groceries behind them. I smell slow-cooking meat and exhaust. This is not a time to pause, close my eyes, and try to remember all these sounds and smells, but I do anyway.

Id hoped some magic was involved in learning to eat fire. Something that meant you didnt really have to do the thing it appeared you were doing. Maybe you spread a flame retardant solution in your mouth, like on hotel curtains. Perhaps there was a little machine you wore behind your ear that shot fire-squelching foam onto the flame as it approached your face. Maybe it was an illusion.

But the class is a total disappointment.

There is no trick.

You eat fire by eating fire.

* * *

On the first day, Shaina, our teacher, all smiles, says: Look at my severe burns! She rolls up her sleeves and points with delight to a series of scars on her arms, like she is identifying constellations for a child. This was from Japan. This one Rio. Sometimes, you burn yourself really badly in a performance, she says.

What do you do then? I ask.

You put yourself out and keep on smiling.

* * *

The class is in a massive warehouse full of fire artists. We trudge past the welders and blacksmiths and ceramicists into an outside yard full of huge gas canisters and NO SMOKING , DANGEROUS , and FLAMMABLE signs. We light our torches. I try not to think about the waiver I signed detailing possible death and dismemberment.

The first lesson: how to put yourself out.

There is only one other student in the class, a video-game designer with small gauges in his ears. I ask him why hes in the fire-swallowing class and he tells me that he feels too ordinary at Burning Man as a stilt walker. He wants something special. To be special.

Shaina hands me a thick, damp kitchen towel, picks up a can of white gasthe kind you use to refill lanterns on a camping trip, the kind I was never allowed to touch as a kidand shakes some down both legs of her jeans. There is too much. Whole, fat droplets land on the fabric and soak right in, hundreds of them, a rainstorm from a metal canister never meant for such an offhanded joggle. She flicks a lighter and ignites herself.

Her legs, from midthigh down to ankle, are on fire. She is looking at me, smiling. Waiting. I dive toward her legs with the wet towel outstretched between my hands as shes saying, with firm encouragement, Smother, smother, smother. Im sure my hands will go up in flames the moment they near the fire. I pat the towel against her legs, up and down, and though I feel a little bit of warmth on my hands, they do not melt or blister. As I bring the towel away, I realize I have, indeed, put Shaina out. Nice, Shaina says, and I feel a greater sense of success than I have about anything in a long time. But that was way too gentle. If Id really been cooking, Id be singed by now. Youll understand the kind of force thats needed once you have to put yourself out. It is hard not to picture self-immolation, a body barely an outline inside a small cosmos of flame.

We practice again, this time with Stilt Walker and me really smacking Shainas legs with force. Were winded and flushed and ready for a break, but its time for us to get lit on fire.

Shaina tells us to reach out our hands, palms up, like bad schoolchildren in old movies readied for the switch. My heart is starting to pump fast. I havent felt any fear about running away with the sideshow until this moment. But Shaina is approaching my skin with fire. Excuses for leaving build in my throat, and though every instinct in my body encourages me to bail, I do not withdraw my palm. It is shaking. My upper lip is coated in sweat.

See yourself on fire, Shaina says. Let the flame dance. And then squelch it.

She wipes a torch across my skin. My palm is alight. I immediately close my fist and kill the flame.

She hands me the torch.

I hold it in my right hand and dab it to my left palm, but it doesnt catch. Longer, firmer, she says. I try again. I am okay getting the fire to my hand, but keeping it there, pressing it into the flesh, thats the hard part. Its also what distinguishes fire performers from children who run their fingers through candle flames. But watching fire rise from your own skin is distressing. Why shouldnt it be? Evolution has trained us to flee from fire threatening our bodies.

We move on quickly. The next step is to wipe the flame along the top of the arm. Do not wipe against the underside of the arm, she tells us, rubbing the blue-veined underbelly of her scar-crossed arm.

Stilt Walker is short and very hairy. The moment he wipes the fire against his arm with a jerky, nervous spasm, a wide swath of hairs instantly coils and blackens, then disintegrates. My hair! he yells. Its burning!

Yes, Shaina says calmly. It is.

He is wide-eyed and trying his hardest to fake a smile. I look down at my blond arm hair and imagine it growing back in thick black tendrils, like poison fairy-tale vines. I take a deep breath and wipe the torch across the top of my arm. Heat spreads as all the hairs take flame and are quickly singed.

Let it burn! Shaina yells as I suffocate the flame too quickly. I wipe my hand across my arm. Smooth as a babys.