Eventually, The Butterfly Man himself becomes the "volunteer" victim. He gives nine clubs to nine audience members and yells, "IT'S KILL THE CLOWN TIME." Everyone throws their clubs at him, but by the show's end it's money they're throwing and the clown is making the killing.

That Sunday, I wander over to a section of Golden Gate Park where swift-wristed masters and ball-chasing beginners meet weekly to pass and play at the biggest juggling singles scene in San Francisco. The Butterfly Man is sitting in the midst of it all on a blanket with his one­year-old son Koleman. He notices I have a camera.

"OKAY, NOW I'LL HOLD KOLEMAN BY ONE FOOT, AND YOU (he points to my friend) THROW THESE TWO AXES AT HIM, WHILE YOU (he points to me) TAKE THE PICTURE. IT'LL LOOK GREAT - LIKE I'M JUGGLING TWO AXES AND A KID."  Now I see where The Butterfly Man gets his motto: "Kids are for Tricks."

This trick doesn't work, however. My friend refuses to throw two axes at a helpless child, and Koleman bursts into tears when his dad picks him up by one foot.  Disgusted, The Butterfly Man "flies away." In his place is Robert Nelson, a nice, sensitive, nearly normal sort of guy who would never insult anybody. Actually, Robert Nelson would still be a chemist in Tennessee (as he was three years ago) if it wasn't for the fact that he shares a body with this powerful, talented, and thoroughly obnoxious creature, The Butterfly Man.

The Butterfly Man doesn't like interviews.  They bore him. So I interview Robert Nelson.

Nelson started juggling when he was still a chemist in Nashville, He'd met so many musicians who were devoted to their music that he wanted to do something that he could feel strongly about. Being an acute introvert, he chose juggling, since it was something he could do alone.

He taught himself to juggle to music and became "The Music City Juggler." At his first IJA convention in 1973 in Youngstown, OH, he became inspired by Carter Andrews, Bobby May and the Fantasy Jugglers - Don and Lana Reed. He also became very depressed. Here were jugglers throwing five and seven balls, and he was just playing around with three. After he "cried for three days," Lana Reed came over to him and said, "Listen. Don't worry. You have something special. Just keep practicing."

He practiced for two years until he could get five balls in the air. Then, in 1976, he went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It was there in the midst of plastic beads and hurricanes, that the persona of The Butterfly Man was born.

"I jumped headfirst into a pool of hecklers," he recalls. "There I was, a very sensitive, shy person in front of a bunch of rowdy, drunken Mardi Gras people throwing abuse at me. So I had to throw what they were throwing at me right back at them. I'm still throwing it, and they love it. Face it: people love to get abused. "

Nelson ogles the elliptical orbit of balls and clubs spinning around the figures of the other Golden Gate Park jugglers. His long face twists into a scowl, and he turns abruptly toward me: The Butterfly Man. "THIS IS BORING," he complains. "CAN'T YOU THINK OF ANYTHING INTERESTING TO ASK ME? It doesn't matter anyway. I'm boring. I'M BORED! I'M BORED WITH ROBERT NELSON WHO IS BORING!"

He said it, I didn't. Robert Nelson is a nice guy. Somewhat shy, yet a gentleman. But The Butterfly Man is a Star! Thrilling, glamorous, invulnerable. And, though they share the same body, they are not the same person.

Right now, Robert Nelson wants something to drink.

"Okay," I agree, "let's go." We pack up the clubs and the kid and head off to his house in the Haight-Ashbury section of the city.

"Listen," he says in earnest. "I want people to know Robert Nelson. But he's not interesting. And in this business, you have to be interesting. All the time... To tell you the truth, I'm tired of expectations. Now that I'm famous, everybody expects me to be brilliant every show. It's exhausting. But I have to be brilliant. I have to be nasty. I have to be funny. Not just funny. I have to be very, very funny."

When we get to his house (filled with butterflies - on the towels, the walls, the cutting board), he opens a box and pours its glittering contents on his bed: francs, marks, pesos, yen, poker chips, food stamps, Mardi Gras doubloons, A Tennessee State Prison coin, a Minneapolis subway token, a certificate for five percent off the price of a casket from the California Funeral Service, and an impressive collection of $2 bills.

The Butterfly Man's face seems to reflect the gleam of the coins on his bed, dropped by his fans into his hat for an hour of perfect hilarity.

Yes, after three years and hundreds of performances on Pier 39, The Butterfly Man has got that show polished to perfection. Not that he doesn't improvise - he does that all the time - but he now knows exactly how to get an audience laughing and keep them laughing, louder and louder, until they're just about ready to put their Swiss bank accounts into his old fedora.

He's eliminated a few extra bits from his show that just weren't funny enough, including an exquisite juggling interpretation of the William Tell Overture, in which he alternated juggling two, three, four and five gold balls in synchronized rhythm to the music. The Lone Ranger would have been proud. Then one night, after he'd been doing the William Tell for two years, his tape recorder broke, and he had to skip it. He found that the show was funnier, and his hat heavier, without it.

I tell him I miss the musical juggling. It turns out that he - Nelson - does also. So much that on a recent evening he was inspired to try another outlet for his musical love: stripping.

Wednesday night is male strip night at The Club in downtown Monterrey. When the manager asked Nelson, who had been performing at The Club's comedy nights, to fill in on a strip night, Nelson balked... at first.

"Then I thought - my body's good enough. I'll just grease it up and do it." In nothing but a swim suit, he did a club swinging act to the music, and the ladies loved him. "Musical juggling is very sensual," he said. "It's pure sex."

I ask for a demonstration. He take's another sip of chablis, turns off the music and takes off his shirt. The lights are down, his hat is on, the silver butterfly pendant sparkles on his chest.

He picks up two fluorescent clubs and starts swinging them to the music. He looks gorgeous, possessed, in a trance, and yes, sexy. His eyes close, his mouth droops open slightly, but the clubs keep swinging like neon pinwheels in the half-lit room. He stops before the music ends, drops the clubs and turns off the stereo.

"I CAN'T BE FUNNY AFTER THAT!" The Butterfly Man complains. He can barely look at me.

"No," I agree. "You can't do that act on Pier 39. "

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