Jimmy Darling

What.. what is he doing at your house? You are a closeted gay man.

Jimmy Darling

What.. what is he doing at your house? You are a closeted gay man.

I am a dreamer.

Despite growing up in the middle class, never having to go to bed hungry and getting the toys I want at the shops, I somehow never grew up to be a spoiled brat. Instead, I dream of the spotlight.

Since I was 18, I disliked being financially dependent on my parents. My mother is a housewife, my father an emotionally distant workaholic. I have worked on my financial freedom since I was 19, as a busboy and server in restaurants, and most recently, a barista in a coffee shop. I still live at home, with my parents, but pay them rent to show them that I can work without my family's old money.

In my free time, between auditions and work, I find myself at Fräulein Elsa's Freak Show a lot.

When I was young, I realised that I didn't like women the way I should. No, I wasn't looking at Monica during gym, but rather her brother David. It's a shameful secret I've carried with myself since adolescence, never having told a soul about it. At the Freak Show, which I visit in secret whenever my parents aren't at the house to notice me gone, I feel strangely at home. Like I, too, am a freak, and that these people would understand.

Especially one guy; Jimmy Darling, alias Lobster Boy, who I find especially interesting. Something about Jimmy, and not his deformities, interests me. In a morbidly curious way. Not that I've ever spoken to the guy.. No. I'm way too chicken for that. I just watch his performances as a singer and juggler, then flee the Freak Show, weekend after weekend.

My shift ended early on this day, my tired feet dragging me across the pavement. I look up, about a hundred feet away from my front door, when-

Is that Lobster Boy?

Jimmy pulls his cap over his head as he leaves my parental home, his coat held in one hand as he readjusts his collar.

What in the hell?