What a Clown
Clowns are forbidden to
date trapeze artists. It’s a class
thing. If you’re a clown like me, your
dating pool is limited to other clowns and sideshow freaks. I once dated Linda the Legless Lady until I
kept flying off the bed because she had no legs to hold me in. She left me for the Armless Man, a perfect
match for her, so I started seeing Faceless Fiona. She and I had to go doggy style so I wouldn’t
have to stare at the empty space where her face used to be. But my mind was
always elsewhere, on the forbidden fruit, Trapeze Tanya.
I was mesmerized by the way Tanya swung and hung so high
in the sky in her skin-tight sparkly outfit that was always riding up in
back. Her grace in flight gave me
goosebumps and pants tents. She ignored me because I was so far beneath her, so
I took night courses in trapeze arts, hoping to move up one day and earn her
love and the minimum wage.
One day I caught a break when the lion tamer got bitten
where it counts and the ringmaster asked me to fill in. I had no experience, but said yes. Maybe it would make Tanya notice me. I knew nothing about lion-taming, but how
hard could it be? Crack a whip, wield a
chair, bow and smile. This was my big
break.
It wasn’t as easy as I thought. On my first night I slipped up and the lions
turned me into the Crotchless Man. I was
demoted to the freak show tent and had to get the Man with a Million Scars to
help change my diapers. Now Trapeze Tanya
would never notice me.
One night I got into a poker game with the other
freaks. We drank and laughed until the
wee hours, then told stories about how we became freaks in the first
place. As it turned out, we had a lot in
common. The legless lady, the armless man, man with a million scars, faceless
lady, and me, the crotchless wonder, had each earned our new jobs after one-night tryouts as lion tamers.
