The Swivelers.
The title given to performers known for their over-the-top performances that were all about the spectacle, and the spectacle was making the audience go “Wow!” while nearly killing themselves.
Live little but live a little—the motto of Swivelers worldwide.
Mireh and Retta walked into the middle of a performance where a troupe of Swivelers was busy constructing a brick tenement. Not very exciting at first blush, but if you've ever seen that photograph Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, the one with the eleven guys sitting on a steel girder 260 meters off the ground, the performance was kinda like that. Except instead of eating lunch, the performers were dancing to electro swing. On steel girders. While throwing giant bricks at each other. And dodging the occasional falling hammer. Now, mind you, the tenement was only fifteen meters high, but still. Falling hammers. Oh, and there was a buzzsaw, too, because why not? Not even the guys playing instruments were safe from danger, because what point was there to playing a piano if you couldn't do it while suspended eighteen meters from the ground as a crane swung you around the set?
While Mireh enjoyed a good spectacle, she didn't have the same twinkle in her eye as Retta, who was dancing to the music and recording the performance on her phone. She invited Mireh to have this dance, but Mireh was perfectly fine not dancing, thanks. It also didn't seem right to, you know, go swinging when a buzzsaw—which, you should be reminded, reader, are very, very sharp objects—was on a one-way trip to a performer's neckline and
Dodged it.
After the crowd was done gasping, they started cheering, because nothing got a crowd rowdier than a guy sacrificing his eyebrows so that his head didn't go flying. Rule No. 1 of being a Swiveler: a performance is no good unless someone almost dies.
And if someone does die, well...
Plenty joined the Swivelers because they needed excitement in life. A desk job at the corner of First Flare Street and East Pilgrims Ave. wasn't going to cut it.
But plenty more joined the Swivelers because when they looked up, they knew their moon was coming down on them faster than it should.
A Swiveler laid the last brick, and the tenement that wasn't even as wide as Mireh's bedroom was complete. But it would've been no fun if the show ended there, so they set about laying down blocks of TNT all while avoiding that bloodthirsty buzzsaw nobody thought to flip the switch on.
Now, Mireh was no demolitions expert, but she was pretty sure the distribution of the TNT blocks was a disaster waiting to happen. But again, where's the fun in having a safe demolition, right? And how much safer could a controlled demolition be than lighting the fuse while half your crew was still occupying the top half of the structure?
It's important to note that those weren't real blocks of TNT, but when that tiny, little spark eating up the fuse connected with the first one, the fake blocks of TNT acted like real blocks of TNT. They vanished in puffs of smoke, one right after the other, and the tenement the Swivelers worked so hard to build up came tumbling down. It was like watching a monolith made of dominoes cave in on itself. The Swivelers trapped on top hopped onto some passing girders and rode them to safety, and then all that was left of their hard work was this pillar of dust and a pile of rubble. Not even the buzzsaw made it out.
And with that, the show was over.
The Swivelers all took a bow as the crowd went nuts, Retta included. Mireh clapped because it should've been illegal not to clap for a bunch of men and women whose day jobs were dancing to electro swing from swinging girders.
With the show over, the crowd dispersed, and Retta and Mireh made their way for the EDM tent while Retta gushed about other Swiveler acts she had seen, especially the ones she had showed Mireh after strapping her to a chair and peeling her eyelids back with a lid speculum.
This troupe was called the Swinging Contours.
The act was a 7/10.
Her favorite part was when the Swivelers started leaping for the girders after the TNT went off.
It reminded her of this one act where a bunch of Swivelers ran through a city set that was being destroyed by extraterrestrial invaders.
Which reminded her of another act where a couple of Swivelers were abducted by aliens and then they fight to make it off the ship.
Which also reminded her of the “World's Highest Act” where the Swivelers walked and swung around on tightropes strung between 400 meter high skyscrapers without harnesses or safety equipment or a net to catch them should a foot slip.
And then the entire troupe was arrested afterwards because the city didn't construct the city's tallest office buildings so that a bunch of college dropouts could make a circus act with them.
They faced numerous charges such as trespassing and generally being insane, but it was all right, because the judge dropped the case and punished them by having them perform for children in a public park.
She wondered what song they were playing, because she really liked it.
She was going to need to look it up when she got home.
That was a teeny sample of what Mireh had to endure. She didn't understand what it was about Swivelers that Retta was so in love with them, but she didn't need to understand. Everybody had that one band or movie or celebrity or video game or whatever that they were borderline obsessed with.
En route from Retta's obsession to Mireh's obsession, Retta spotted a prize wheel from the corner of her eye, and she flashed over to it like she were a kid running into a candy shop.
There was a kid spinning the wheel already, so while he was doing that and hoping to win himself enough candy that he was going to make his dentist one very wealthy woman, Retta took the time to examine the wall of prizes.
It was your typical selection of goodies: rubber duckies, bouncy balls, kazoos, stuffed animals, blowup little green men, blowup little purple men, stuffed [insert copyrighted character here], lava lamps. You know, stuff it'd be easier to buy online than spinning a wheel hoping you'd get enough points so that you can get that giant stuffed teddy bear that may or may not move around at night. But there were a few actual good prizes, too, mostly electronics which required lots and lots of points. Lots and lots of points.
“What do you think of those headphones there?” Retta asked, pointing out a box worth 50,000 points.
“They're all right,” Mireh said.
“I'm gonna win those for you.”
“Don't bother. I can find a better pair online.”
“And just how much does a better pair online cost?”
“Around 90 menos.”
“But which is more satisfying? Simply buying a pair of headphones or earning those headphones, winning them with your very own blood, sweat, and tears?”
“It's plenty satisfying opening up the package when they come in the mail.”
“Mireh, you're missing the point here.”
“You're making a point?”
Retta shook her head, like she had had enough of trying to explain things to this ignorant fool of a human being. “You'll see what I mean.” The boy finished playing and walked away with an inflatable baseball bat. Retta stepped forward.
“How many spins'll it be, young ma'am?”
“How much is one?”
“A bank-breaking 2 menos,” the vendor said. “But for 5 menos, you can have yourself three spins. What'll ya say?”
“Just take the three spins,” Mireh suggested.
“I'll take the three spins,” Retta decided.
“Three spins it'll be,” the vendor announced.
Retta stepped up to the wheel, which was large enough that you could've fastened her to it and spun her around. She grabbed hold of the edge and gave it a spin.
With Retta's luck with games tonight, there was no way—let's repeat that—no way that arrow was going to land on the three centimeter wide slice of wheel that would earn her 1, 000,000 points, enough to net her a ninety centimeter flat screen t.v. No way. Most likely, she was going to land on the 1 point slice all three times and earn herself enough points to net her three slices of gum.
“We have ourselves tonight's first grand prize winnerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!”
…..
We can edit out that last paragraph, right?
“.....”
It's okay, Mireh, we can't believe it, either.
“Young ma'am, you've currently got 1,000,000 points under your belt, and you've still got two more spins to go. Tell me, how good are you feeling about your luck? Think you can make it 3,000,000 points?”
“Probably not, but I'll never know unless I try.”
Long story short, she didn't hit the million again. She ended up with 1,000,375 points total, 50,000 of which was spent on a pair of those headphones Mireh had rejected as being beneath her standards.
“See? I told you I'd win them for you,” Retta said as she handed a dazed Mireh a box of headphones whose market value was 50 menos.
Mireh looked down at the headphones. Everything she knew about tonight to be the truth had been shattered. Next she was going to discover that the Baldrics were holograms or that her parents were little hamsters operating androids.
“Do you get the point I was trying to make?” Retta asked her.
“...Yeah...” She wasn't getting anything at the moment.
“As long as you understand me.” She turned back to the prize wall. “Now, what to get next...”
After several moments of intense contemplation, Retta got numerous plushies, little green and purple men, light-up swords, a large assortment of miscellaneous toys, a wagon to hold everything in, and some sticks of gum.
“I couldn't do that again if I tried,” Retta commented as she pulled the wagon behind her.
“I didn't think you could do it once even if you played a million times.” Mireh was still recovering from her shock. “By the way, are you planning on dragging that stuff around all night?”
Pop! went Retta's bubblegum. “Not at all. I'm planning on giving it all away. Speaking of, might I interest you in a giant stuffed fish?”
“No thanks.”
“How about a monkey-shaped hat.”
“I hate monkies.”
“Funny-looking glasses?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Stick of gum?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“You're a difficult woman to work with, you know that?” Retta grumbled. “Hey! You there!”she called to a guy in his early twenties who happened to be passing by with his friend. “Excuse me, sir, but you look like you could use a little green man in your life,” she said, pulling a little green man from her assorted pile of foreign-made goods.
“Um, what?”
“Not 'Um, what?' 'Yes! This is exactly what I needed in my life. Thank you!'” And then she shoved a little green man into the guy's hands.
Little Green Man's New Daddy looked at his friend. “Did I win a competition or something?”
“If you wanna count having the fortune of crossing paths with me as a competition, then yes! You've won, and that blowup alien is your prize!”
LGM's Daddy tried fathoming out what was going on, but his life experiences so far didn't allow him to comprehend a situation where he would become the parent to an inflatable extraterritorial. His friend was also unequipped in the life experiences department.
It was up to Mireh, a rare individual with the proper comprehension of Retta and how her brain operated, to explain the situation. “She won a bunch of prizes and is giving them away.”
“Way to make it sound boring,” Retta moaned.
“But he understands now, doesn't he?”
“Ugh! Fine. I'll do this the boring way.” Retta cleared her throat, then, like a stewardess who really wanted to slap a parent who wouldn't shut their screaming kid up, said, “Excuse me, sir, but I won too many prizes and don't need all of them. Therefore, I would like to give at least one of them away to you, such as that blowup alien already in your hands. Do you understand?”
“Uh, yeah, I get it now.”
Retta shot Mireh a look and then turned back to LGM's Daddy. “Oh, good. Then would you be happy to take that alien off my hands for me?”
LGM's Daddy looked at Retta's mountain of miscellany. “Is it all right if I see what else you have?”
“Of course! Go right on ahead.” Retta stepped aside for them to sort through the pyramid of products, and she shot Mireh another one of those looks, whose closest translation was glare, though a new word might need to be coined to properly describe its effect.
“I think you found your calling in life,” Mireh said to Retta as the two pals sorted through the stack of stock.
“Oh? You think wanting to blow you up with TNT is my calling of life, too? What a coincidence! But you know what they say: great minds think alike and sometimes want to murder each other, am I right?”
“You mind if we take these?” LGM's Daddy asked as he and his buddy picked out two lightup swords from the stockpile of stuff.
“Of course not! Go right on ahead. Take what you like,” Retta said to them.
“Sweet. Thanks again,” LGM's Daddy said as they resumed their previous travels.
“Yup, appreciate it,” his BFF said. “You're really keeping the alien?”
“Why not? He's pretty cool, isn't he?”
“My aunt has like twenty of those things that she hangs up for the holidays.”
They disappeared in one direction, and Retta and Mireh disappeared in another. Mireh checked the specs on her new headphones now that she'd recovered from her shock, and Retta kept giving away the paraphernalia from her prominence in her stewardess-who-can-only-vent-by-banging-her-head-into-a-wall tone. By the time they reached the EDM tent, the sierra was down to a hillside, and boys and girls everywhere ran free with toys and plushies given to them by a kindly high school girl whose tone seemed inviting yet horrifying at the same time.
Walking by the outside of the tent was like walking by a neighbor who was throwing a party where the music was too loud, and stepping inside was kind of like stepping into a rave. Colorful lights replaced your boring white lights, the rapid fire beats of an electronic drum filled the area, and the center of the room was this mass of human beings flailing their limbs about in movements some referred to as “dancing.” Around the perimeter were tables with snacks and beverages for those less inclined to “dance” and a few CDs for sales. Retta grabbed hold of Mireh and tried getting her to dance, but she was still fine not dancing, thanks.
“You're no fun,” Retta said with a pouty face after Mireh wiggled herself free.
“I don't know if you're aware of this, but dancing and embarrassing yourself are synonyms,” she said as she headed for a table selling CDs.
“If you're not supposed to dance to music, then what are you supposed to do?”
“Uh, listen to it?”
“It's that kinda attitude that's gonna make you grow into one of those old ladies who yells at kids to get off her lawn.”
“I do that already,” she said, picking up a CD and looking at the song list on the back. “The brats next door don't know how to stay in their own lawn. And then their mom get mad when I yell at them. It's like, if you'd keep an eye on your kids, lady, we wouldn't have to have this conversation.”
“I feel sorry for your kids,”Retta said as she browsed the CDs herself. “You're gonna lock 'em up in the basement and force them to study night and day.”
“I am not!”
“It's true. I read it in the stars: Miriam Summers is going to raise her kids in a dank, dark basement with barely any light, and they'll be forced to eat nothing but scraps of bread.”
“Go back to preschool. You need to relearn how to read.”
“Hehe,” the vendor, a black man, chuckled. “The way you two talk, it reminds me of how I used to bust on my cousin all the time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Whenever I got the chance, I'd make a joke like, if his lawnmower was broke, he'd make his kids cut the grass with scissors.”
“So that's where you got your parenting skills?” Retta said to Mireh.
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” Mireh said, laughing at Retta's hilarious joke.
“But for real, though, I only made those jokes because I knew he was going to be a good father. The best father. No contenders,” Vendor said. “I mean, the guy worked at a daycare and volunteered at the pediatrics section of the hospital. He was in love with kids. It's just a damn shame that he never got to have none.”
“I'm sorry to hear that,” Mireh said.
Vendor shook his head. “Don't be. We both knew for years that by the time he was ready to have kids, he was only going to have a year or so left.” He gestured up. “That's why he ultimately decided not to have 'em. He said to me one day, he pulled me aside and he said,”—and then he leaned forward the same way his cousin probably did—“'Maurice, I can't have kids. I can't. Because if I do, they gonna grow up not knowing who they dad was, and I don't want that for 'em.'” He leaned back in his chair.' And that was that.”
“...”
“......”
“I don't mean to rain on y'alls parade. Tell you what.” He picked up a CD from a display rack on the table. “I'll sell this to you ladies at a discount for listening to my cousin's story, and we'll call ourselves even. Sound good?”
“May I see it?” Mireh asked.
“Go ahead.” Vendor passed over the album. “I made that because I've been to this festival all my life, and the one thing I notice about it is how the music always changes. Y'alls might be too young to notice this—but I'm not no fossil, neither—but whenever the festival rolls around, there's all types of new music they playing. Like tonight, they got music guys make on they computers at home; a hundred years ago, it was a bunch of guys playing saxes and pianos on stage; and a thousand years ago, people was banging on a bunch of drums. It's subtle changes with each festival, but if you go by decades, you'll see how much music's changed. Like, who knows what crazy ass music people'll be dancing to twenty, thirty, a thousand years from now, you know? And that's what I was hoping to show on that album.”
Dedicated to Dante Frye, the best father who never was.597Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0ufXgTWhGY
Mireh had been examining the songs listed on the back of the album called Eras of Progression. “Do you mean you made this album as in you selected the songs or you made the songs yourself?”597Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPzP3Ky9ikx
“I made them myself,” Vendor said.
“Oh really?” Mireh was impressed. Most of the songs she listened to were by indie artists doing what they love while also trying to keep the fridge running. That was the only selling point she needed. No sob stories required, but if listening to them netted her discounts, she'd listen to the cashier's woes every time she went to buy milk.
Mireh bought two more albums alongside the concept album, because if there was one thing in this world she couldn't resist, it was an overabundance of EDM albums.
“If you brought any more friends, tell 'em to come over and buy some albums, 'kay?” Vendor said as Mireh and Retta left his table.
“Sure thing,” Mireh said and made no promise to do so. Temera seemed more a classical type of girl than a trancy one, anyway.
They hung around for a bit longer, perusing the tables and munching on what looked good. Several more vendors convinced Mireh to purchase their indie albums, and Retta had to peel her away when it came to the point where she looked at her finances and went, “Hmmm...Should I?”
All in all, Mireh left the tent with six new albums, and Retta managed to convince a bunch of strangers that dancing with glasses that made your vision worse was not just a good idea, but an excellent one.
The poetry reading should've been ending in a few minutes, so they made their way over to reunite with Temera and hopefully not have to pry her away with a crowbar.
Decisions, decisions... Mireh thought as she looked through her plastic bag brimming with new albums, undecided as to which one she should listen to first tomorrow morning.
While Mireh couldn't make a decision to save her life, Retta decided on the next thing they were going to do after seeing how late it was getting. “We still haven't made our Aims, so we gotta do that next.”
“That's fine. Do you know which Fount you want to visit?”
“Where's the one for happiness?”
“Hold on a sec.” Mireh stacked all her things under her armpit—which was an awkward storage place for six albums and a set of headphones—and fished the festival map from her pocket. She opened it up and took a gander at the Founts dotting the grounds. “Love, career, animals...Here: the happiness one is at the top of the hill.” She found it on the map, then pointed to it in the southeastern corner of the park.
Retta followed her finger, then said, “Do you mind fetching Temera and then meeting me back over there?”
“...” Mireh felt like she was being thrown into a cage with a rabid animal. “Why? Having one of your personal emergencies again?”
“If you wanna call it that. I need to get rid of this stuff or else it's gonna be a pain to drag up the hill,” she said, gesturing at her knob of knickknacks.
“...” Mireh had a feeling that was just an excuse. After all, this was Retta, for whom books were pillows and not things you read. “Fiiiiineee,” she groaned. “I'll go get Temera while you go play with your toys.”
“Thanks, Mireh, you're the best,” and then she ran off before Mireh had the chance to change her mind.
See that I only eat one of your chicken tenders next time...
Oh, Mireh, how could one girl be so wicked?
And so, Mireh begrudgingly lumbered on over to the poetry reading, begrudgingly risking her sanity to begrudgingly retrieve Temera (begrudgingly). She felt like she were walking her last kilometer in prison, but she bet not even inmates felt this degree of sorrow and self-loathing as they faced the electric chair.
Should Mireh perish from this experience, never forget her for the good life she lived, dear reader.
Never forget.
ns 18.68.41.141da2
