Kathleen Cremonesi - Love in the Elephant Tent: How Running Away with the Circus Brought Me Home

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To anyone who has ever felt like

a square peg in a round world.

For all the girls with turbulent minds

and untamed hearts who danced by

themselves when no one asked.

And with great respect for the animals,

men, and women who sacrificed their

freedom, health, happiness, or lives for

the show that must go on.

Some names and personal details have been changed to protect privacy. The names of public figures have not been changed, excluding one that would have caused confusion with another person in the book. Individuals who were not instrumental to the story have been left out. On occasion, time has been condensed. While some quotes are verbatim, other portions of dialogue have been recreated to help the reader share my experiences as I remember them.

Memory, in my opinion, is like a sunset. We see it so clearly from our vantage point at the time, and the most striking ones seem to sear themselves into our minds. But view that same sunset from another angle, a few moments later, or through the lenses of our individual lives, and it will likely appear, and be remembered, differently.

I cannot speak for the memory of others; I cannot know their truths. I know only my own, and the following pages represent my truth.

The trouble is,

if you dont risk anything,

you risk even more.

Erica Jong

A PROLOGUE B

NoMadS

W

Spain, 1988

Come, he said, reaching for my hand as we ducked under the wall of canvas.

Sunlight penetrated the white roof of the elephant tent, illuminating the interior with a warm, peaceful glow. Down the line of swinging trunks and bobbing heads, animals shifted their weight from foot to foot, swaying rhythmically as if dream-marching in place. I inhaled the musky animal scent and felt far away from the chaotic realm of the traveling circus.

The tip of an elephant trunk, pink and moist as a pigs snout, appeared in front of my eyes. With the finger-like protrusion on the end of her trunk, the elephant studied me. She inhaled, and it felt like someone turned a vacuum cleaner on in my face. She exhaled. Wet fermented air whooshed past me. Her trunk brushed over my ear and tickled its way along my neck, leaving a wake of goosebumps. I giggled and stepped into her touch. The elephant sniffed my clothing, paused at my waist, and then continued on to my shoes before swinging her trunk away.

Stefano, the handsome Italian elephant keeper Id met just hours earlier, towed me along as he worked his way down the line greeting each animal in a deep, gentle voice. Ciao , Raya. Hello, Mary. You been good girl today, Lola? And how about you, Gooli? Hola, Bambi. Yes, and hello to you too, Kama. How my beautiful girls are doing?

A flap of pink-edged ears, a tractor-like grumble, a mousy squeal, the lowering of a knobby head each of the six animals returned his greeting in her own way. The troupe of Asian elephants loosely filled one long side of the tent; their presence overwhelmed the entire space.

I stood wide-eyed, transfixed by their swaying. Why do they all move that way, I asked, rocking back and forth?

Elephants are nomads. They supposed to keep moving. To roam free. Get what they need and move on, not be chained to a circus. Stefanos green eyes revealed his distress. Whether I am here or not, these animals will be, so I do what I can to see they are cared for, he said, stepping toward an elephant.

Mary, her head the size of an armchair, towered eight feet in the air. Her eyes were pools of mahogany, her skin cracked, desert earth. I touched it. Stiff whiskers raked my palm as I stroked her jaw. Next to Marys ear, coarse gray skin softened to a freckled pink. Stefano watched from over my shoulder as the elephant sniffed my clothing, my hair. Her huge pupil followed me while I caressed her jowl and traced the furrows beneath her eye. When I let my hand fall to my side, Mary looped her trunk under my wrist. I stiffened. Stefano, his hands on my hips, his warm breath on my neck, reassured me from behind. My bracelets tinkled as Mary raised my arm to her eye. From behind thick-lashed lids, she stared not at my hand, but at my face. I heard her whooshing breath, smelled her animal scent, felt her craggy skin against my own. Mary held onto my wrist, moving with me as I drew my fingertip up past her eye and then down to her mouth. I leaned back against Stefano. His touch aroused me. Hers thrilled me. Between the two, I could barely breathe.

A CHAPTER ONE B

Out tHe DooR

W

I grew up in the wing of an old motel. Rooms five, six, seven, and eight had been lifted from their foundation in Eugene, Oregon, transplanted into the nearby woods, and modified barely enough to be called a house. The previous owners had turned one bathroom into a kitchen, leaving the plastic-curtained shower stall intact to serve as the pantry, and walled over a second bathroom to hide the toilet in the living room. I can still see the little red plaque nailed to my parents bedroom door. Checkout time is 12 noon. Please be sure to remove all belongings.

There are times when I wonder if spending my teenage years within walls that had once rattled with thousands of comings and goings contributed to the transience that consumed my young adult life. In a home with four front doors, how could a family plant roots and allow them to grow?

My father checked out first, in some ways years before he actually packed his cigarettes and his tools and walked out the door.

My siblings didnt last long, either. At seventeen, my sister began her trek up and down the West Coast, seeking stability in a handful of boyfriends and husbands. One of my brothers abandoned college to travel the Midwest, living out of a car, selling Bibles to believers, earning meals by memorizing random excerpts of a book hed never read. My other brother spread his twenties across the worlds military bases. He found home in a helmet and a gun.

Brothers and sister gone, father remarried, mother working by my senior year in high school, our motel-home felt hollow, and I spent 1983 filling that void. More. Farther. Wilder. Higher. Fast paces and far-flung places. I chased the anticipation of what comes next? And each exercise in excess took me another step further away from everything Id ever known.

College in California saved me from small-town Oregon, but school sufficed only until I discovered Grateful Deadstyle emancipation. Hopscotching across the States in my Volkswagen bus, I followed the music, followed the fun. The kaleidoscope of the Dead was as much about becoming one with the music and one with each other as it was about being different from everyone else. Tour after tour, we traveled thousands of miles by bus, car, plane, or thumb until we reached the next concert and let out one big home - again sigh. Home, where everything we needed meals, tickets to the show, customers to purchase our goods seemed to be ready and waiting, and a few hours of selling my hand-woven beaded jewelry usually provided enough for me to live on and travel. Within days, wed be back on the road, like some psychedelic gumball rally, prodding our jalopies toward the next town.

Seeing the same faces over and over around the country built a sense of community that drew me into the Grateful Dead experience; it is also what pushed me away. After eighteen months, tie-dyed dreadlocks and glow-in-the-dark leggings became predictable and ordinary, satiated became saturated, marvelous became monotonous. I had to move on. So I traded my fringed leather vest and paisley silk gauchos for a button-down blouse and navy linen skirt to earn traveling money working at a bank. These werent blind costume changes. I was running as if my future depended on it. Underneath that button-down blouse, I was giddy. Intoxicated with possibility, intoxicated with life. And then, in the fall of 1988, I loaded my backpack, bought an open-ended plane ticket to Amsterdam, and lit out in search of destiny and a damn good time.

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