On a Sunday amble through Chapultapec park, I decided to stop and watch a street clown performance. I have oft seen these acts in the city but have never stayed for more than a few minutes. With nothing pressing on the agenda for the day, I staked out a place in the back of the crowd. No more than one minute in, the clown, one Pepino Dicaprio, spotted me. "Hola güera."
Oh shit.
I said hello back. He asked me where I was from. I said Georgia (my first mistake, as I should have just said the States or maybe Canada). Pepino signaled for me to leave the crowd and come speak with him. I ducked behind a nearby Mexican. This did not trick my clown friend, who came for me, microphone in hand and speaking a mile a minute. Before I could make a quick get away, before I even realized what was happening, I was center stage facing a crowd of laughing Mexicans and their children, sucking on lollies and playing with toys purchased in the park that magically break the second you pass over the cash to the vendor.
After asking me my name and making fun of me a bit for saying a State rather than a country, ("Eres de Georgia. Soy de Xochimilco") he parted the crowd on the permanent concrete benches and escorted me to what would be my seat for the next hour or so. To assure that I would stay put, he took my bag with him, meaning I would have to make a scene if I wanted to leave. I looked longingly at the brown leather, cooking in the sun of his street theater, and thought about my camera, thought of making a run for it, but soon I became too distracted by the entertainment to care.
Children, ranging age 8 to 10 (though I am shit at telling the ages of kids, and for all I know they may have well been from ages 4 to 13) were dancing. I was sitting next to the mother of two of the stars, a young girl and boy. The little girl desperately wanted to stand by her older brother, who, as any older brother would do, perpetually forced her from his side to that of a nearby child in the line of young volunteers. The same little boy was soon to be seen dancing to Michael Jackson. Well, I do not know if it was dancing so much as thrusting his groin towards the crowd a few times, resulting in loud, full-bodied laughter from onlookers. The dancing was mediocre. Logically. That being said, one young boy, whom I seriously suspect to be part of the show, did take me by surprise as he threw his hat at Pepino and stripped off his shirt to wave it above his head as his body gyrated in ways unimaginable to me at his age of what could not have been more than 9(though again, who can really tell these things?).
I expected the show to continue with the child-centric focus but little by little more adults entered the stage. Having faded into the background for a bit, I assumed I was free to watch the show from my seat. But alas, the clown would call on me again. He would chuckle to himself as he said he had forgotten about me and that it was time to dance. He had already paired up the adults with partners so who was I to dance with...wait a minute. He dislodged me from my seat and again I was in front of more eyes than I dared make contact with. He took my left hand and placed it on his shoulder while putting my right hand in his. "Yo tengo miedo," I told him and the crowd and that, further, I did not know how to dance. "I will teach you." I was relieved that the moves were not so complicated; a few basic steps that I had, indeed, picked up during my time here. "Eso," he said but this time with the microphone in his pocket.
After each dance, when Pepino was done with me, he would yell at those who had filled my seat while I was away. The people would promptly move, provoking the crowd's laughter. Once in my seat, he would pause, look at me silently and then tell me and the crowd of my beauty and how he had fallen madly in love with me. This continued off and on from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm.
"Ah, mi amor ¿En qué idioma prefieres hablar?," he asked before one of our dances.
"No me importa," I said back, not so much to illustrate a preference but to show I could speak (some) Spanish.
To this he said something too fast for me to understand and probably for the best, judging from the crowd's reaction.
Everyone who participated in the show - the Germans, the Mexicans, the children, the man from Thailand who Pepino kept telling to open his eyes - received balloons shaped like flowers, except the top was not adorned with a tulip- or rose-shaped balloon but that of a heart. Pepino did not give me a balloon. "No te vayas," he said as he explained there was a change (of what sort I did not know but I assume in the show?) and that he was not through with me. I waited for a moment hoping for one of the red noses I had seen him handing out, the kind that projects water at the wearer's will, but then I got kind of scared of what this special gift might actually be or that maybe I was a weirdo for waiting around.
The classic Mexican middle schooler approached me, crumpled piece of paper in hand, and asked for an interview in English. I am so very tired of doing these interviews (how like you parts Mexico?) but I agreed and absconded empty-handed.
