The Thing About Clowns

MAY 23, 2018 By LEN KUNTZ

 

A long time ago, I had an imaginary friend who was a clown.

Then he shape-shifted into a ghost, then into my parents, then into a gaggle of coiled cobras that happened to look and act a lot like my parents.

But first he was a clown.

His makeup ran and his tongue tended to loll, but he was a happy clown with high cheekbones painted in scarlet circles.  His ears were elephant-huge, like LBJ’s, like his floppy, upturned shoes.

He and I used to talk about things that mattered, or didn’t, like why does the moon always turn its back on us?  Why are there forest fires in some people’s eyes, crushed ice in others?  Why do my aunts and uncles call me a skinny drink of water, then later do that thing to me?  Why do my parents?

As I say, this was a long time ago.

The clown had a name—Ezra.  I gave it to him.  Ezra didn’t like his moniker, said it sounded itchy, biblical, or like a pharmaceutical for elderly people with bowel issues.

Ezra resembled me in many ways.  He was in touch with his feminine side.  He didn’t have a problem with pink.  He cried at Folger’s Coffee commercials.  He had trouble tying knots on blown up balloons and sometimes wet the bed, waking up before dawn to wash the sheets and huff huff huff his breath on them so they’d be kind of dried before the parents woke.

Ezra said he was my best friend and I believed him.  I had to.  I had no other friends.

The thing is he disappeared about the time I turned nine, when the dam broke for the final time, when the lights went out in Georgia, or Spokane, Washington.

I told myself Ezra had been hit by a car, that a landslide had crushed him, a train had run him over, he’d committed suicide.  I told myself every kind of lie because I didn’t want to believe I’d been dumped again, left stranded and all alone again.

It’s hard to lose something you trust that much, something you rely on so fervently.  I could liken it to death, but it’s worse than that, because when it happens, you’re still alive, carrying that gigantic cavity around with you like a ghost that weighs too much.

So maybe it was more like betrayal.

A few years ago, at a resort in Mexico, a trio of clowns unexpectedly appeared out of nowhere while everyone was eating dinner.  One clown juggled plates, one bowling pins, one old-fashioned toasters with dangling rubber cords.

People reacted.  People thought: this is some stunt, this is hysterical.  My family did, too.

At one point, I watched my son reach out, trying to touch the flouncy striped pant leg of the clown nearest him, but I caught his hand just in time.

“He’s not real,” I told him. “They’re not.  Finish your burrito,” I told him, “then we’ll go to the beach and build a sandcastle.

--EVEN AS YOUR EYES ARE CLOSING

                                                      Family Circle

My tongue is in shambles again, and my ears wear a ghost parachute so that everything I hear is slanted rain. 

No one seems to notice that the coffin in the kitchen is beginning to reek, though the counter and chairs look disgusted. 

The last time I had a friend over he swallowed his tongue and turned into cellophane.  Neighbors keep moving to other planets.  Children disappear all the time around these parts.

Dad recently repainted the outside of the house with coyote blood, but every window is stitches of black masking tape. If there’s a sun out there, we don’t know it.

Auntie keeps floating to the ceiling, banging her head on the spackling, breaking every naked light bulb.

My uncle drinks something clear and syrupy, burping up a flock of dead moths. He molests the razor strap by his hairy thigh, laughs and says it’s someone’s turn to impersonate himself, someone else’s turn to dial 911 backward. 

Everyone’s nervous because Mother wants a new set of eyes. Her fresh pair of choppers gleam like Half and Half. Older brother hasn’t opened his mouth in weeks.

Yesterday my sister taught a butterfly the alphabet in Spanish.  I may have made that part up.  Sis no longer lives here, unless that’s her in the casket.

                                                       

--SAY WHAT YOU NEED TO SAY

                                  I Was A Roulette Wheel

They started with darts because they could, because Mom and Dad were gone again, off selling clouds to mountains that didn’t need them.

I thought things might be different this time, but my mind liked to get stoned on hope and abstinence, like a castrated preacher with a flask full of clear.

The air inside the barn hung thick and hairy and I was frightened again.  The ground lay covered in slimy chicken shit matted with white-gray feathers, even though we’d never owned chickens or any other kind of fowl.

One brother wore a menacing look, a tarantula face.  Another brother kept morphing into different versions of an angry orangutan, his wing span something I kept an eye on.

The first dart hit me in the thigh, the pain like eating a cactus.  There should have been seepage, but our family only bled dust.

A fleet of my other brothers stood behind tarantula and orangutan like a troupe of horny inmates.  Their faces were made of scaly bark, their eyes only sockets. 

They kept coming in and out of focus because I was a roulette wheel tied prostrate to a swirling wooden disc.  Upside down, the world felt momentarily safer, the way breathing can when you’re dead but don’t know it.

Soon the darts came flying in pairs and threes.  My brothers were good at aiming, be it fists or rifle, but I was better at spinning, and so most of the darts missed their target, though one did pierce my ear, stuck there in my lobe like an exotic African earring.

We had a sister once, at least I think we did.  There used to be a few photographs of a six-year-old girl around the house.  There used to be a pink room that smelled like cotton candy.  I found a frilly little girl’s dress once back by the wood chipper.  It might have been her size, or perhaps the wind blew it there.  It’s terrible to say, but I’m glad she’s not around anymore, my maybe Sis.  There are far too many forms of torture.

Soon as I think this, I’m tied to a chair instead of a wheel and I’m blindfolded, which I guess is a blessing.  Or not.

Each brother takes turns bending words into my ear, sharing their foul secrets.  I’d tell you what they are but then they wouldn’t be secret.  I can share this though: my brothers have done hideous things.  But I guess we all have, at one time or another.

Listening, as they whisper their deeds into my soupy skull, is like being forced to watch a different grainy snuff film every thirty seconds, real blood exploding against walls and clocks and countertops.  From fear, the chair I’m sitting in keeps biting me on the ass.  My legs run away from me, tripping on tree root after tree root.

I remember we had pets once, dogs and a couple of cats who kept losing their paws, then whole legs.  Mom said we were broke, busted, that food was scarce.  For a few weeks around that time, our meals were peculiar.  And then one day, the pets were all gone for good.

Sometimes Mom and Dad don’t come back from their trips and they send their shadows as surrogates instead.  That arrangement might seem less perilous for a boy like me, but then some shadows yield butcher knives and tire irons, garrotes and chainsaws.  Shadows—you gotta watch out for them, they’re tricky motherfuckers, and anything but flat.

Toward the end of the evening, my brothers light my hair on fire.  They rip out my toe nails with their fangs.  They tape my eyelids open and stab my pupils thousands of times with a bent paperclip, and then when that’s not satisfactory, they use an ice pick.  Dust flies everywhere until everyone is choking on the itchy plumes.

I wish I could hold a grudge the way the moon does, but what good would that do?  We all have choices, though not the very first one, the one that counts.  Someone else gets to make that decision for us, and so we carry on as best we can.

--WHERE IS THE LIGHT?

"I know some have strong feelings about gun rights but I want you to know I've hit rock bottom and I am not interested in your views as it pertains to this issue. Please do not post anything about guns aren't the problem and there's little we can do. This isn't a time for prayers, or study and inaction, it's a time for prayers, action and the asking of God's forgiveness for our inaction (especially the elected officials that ran to the cameras today, acted in a solemn manner, called for prayers, and will once again do absolutely nothing).”
-Houston Chief of Police Art Acevedo in his official Facebook page statement

--WHEN THEY CALL YOUR NAME, WILL YOU WALK RIGHT UP?

…Am I happy?  Damned if I know.  But give me a few minutes and I’ll tell you if you are.

…There are all kinds of misery, and sometimes I feel them all at once.  Misery loves company all right.  Especially mine.

…I want to ask the happiest person in the world whether it was worth it, all the sacrifices they made in order to become that happy.

…I figure if I run out of stories to tell, I can always make them up.  That way people will think they’re about somebody else.

…Somebody else is probably thinking the same thing I am right now.  I hope so anyway.

…I know there are worse things, but it doesn’t feel like it.

…I’ve only had my palm read once and that was a long time ago.  I wish I could remember what that woman told me.

…Some people care most about exhibiting how much they care.

…Someone once asked me, “Who is Len?”  I didn’t have the answer then, and I guess I still don’t.

…On a run the other day I saw a bunny as small as a mouse.  It looked at me like I was a monster, but it didn’t scamper away.  He’s probably the size of a cat by now.

…Here’s something sage someone once told me:  You can choose your friends, but not your friendships. 

…I wish I could ask the future whether I should give up or keep trying.  Then again, what if trying, even in the face of certain failure, feels as good as accomplishing?  What if it’s even better?  And here we are again. 

…I was angry at the ghost for months, would shout at it to stop trying to scare me.  Now I understand it’s just lonely.

…The trees always seem so unimpressed with me, but I don’t blame them.

…The trouble with comparing yourself to others is there are so many others.

…You are good.  You are bad.  You are abnormal.  You are just like everybody else.

…I still walk the halls of my old childhood house at night.  Who doesn’t?

…If you want to know someone’s secret, don’t ask a thing.  Just listen.

…Horror is terror that stayed the night.

…The dark owns everything.  Some of us just aren’t aware of that fact.

…After I stopped hoping to outgrow them, my fears were no longer a burden.  Hope is what then became a burden instead.

…Better than beauty, which is everywhere, is the memory of first discovering beauty.

…Shame needs an excuse to feel ashamed.  It apologizes for everything, even itself.

…It’s easier to speak to a crowd, to stare into the spotlight, than it is to look into a human face.

…There’s a tree growing inside of me. It’s branch is reaching through my throat right now.

…Our attention is always divided.

…I guess the question is: is it worth the effort to decipher?

…I keep getting mail that says, “No longer at this address.”

…I can lock up, if you’ve got somewhere you need to be.

…When you have a minute, call me back.

--I’M RIGHT HERE (a little early, a little late)

…And then the wondering sets in.

…There are times when I look around and everything looks perfect, even if I don’t feel that way, as if I’m the odd man out, but anyway, I usually make it to tomorrow.  Usually.  Sometimes.

…And what do I think?  Apparently, it no longer matters.

…Here’s some good advice from a stranger: Make noise for the love of noise and questioning.

…I have heard that this pain can be converted over time, but the reality is I don’t have much of that left.  The reality is I don’t believe it for one minute.

…Some ideas or thoughts are complicated, hard to articulate, but most people want their answers and solutions in a jiff, which furthers the unraveling.  A little patience, a bit of hesitation and a question asked back can usually solve a lot of misunderstanding.

…Despite what the philosophers and poets and theologians have said, I think beauty neither obscures the truth, nor reveals it.

…We all try, but how do we know if we’ve tried enough, if there shouldn’t be a little more trying when something’s that important?

…Eventually we grow up to love subtle things with more subtly.

…It’s easy to place your blues on a shelf, yet they’re still there, looking back at you wide-eyed.

…The bigger question is: What did you reveal because you needed to even if you were very afraid?

…Adore is a pretty great word if you really mean it.

…Potent is a good word to describe how dark it gets at times.  And still I work around it, or at least I try to.

…Yesterday I told my therapist I don’t know how to be happy when I’m alone.  I think he thought I was joking.  He didn’t laugh, but his face went kind of cockeyed.

…Stuff is stuff.  You’ve got to have some of it to get by, but any more than that is just vanity taking control, whether you realize it or not. 

…I don’t want to be impartial.  The world is full of people being impartial.

…People always say, “Just speak from your heart.”  Like they know what’s in my heart, or yours, or anyone else’s.

…However, when someone asks, “Does that mean anything to you?” I do think you should pay attention and answer with your heart.

…Here’s what I’ll do to get through this:  I won’t look down.  I won’t look at all.  I’ll tell myself you just didn’t understand and maybe you never really wanted to, even if you think you did.

…A hole can have many bottoms, as many as you want to give it.  There can be so many, and that in turn makes the hole bottomless.

…Lately I have been trying to learn something about the fundamental importance of you, because the thing is, there’s only one of you.

…We all have a shelf life.  We probably go past that shelf life, most of us, without ever knowing it.

…Total transparency?  Is that a concept or a joke?

…The biggest mistake I keep repeating is doubting myself.

…Let’s not kid ourselves, everyone is just trying to fit in.

…I could make a lot of wishes, but I’ll just make this one:  Much love.

…This is never going to end, so it’s best to look away.  After all, I’m the accident on the side of the road people have to slow down for even when they’re already very late for work.

…Impulsive is a relative term, so let’s think it through first, right?

…One day you suddenly care in a different way and it changes everything.

…I’m just a boy working on empty.  Sorry for that.