What a Clown

 

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.