by Monica Drake
He liked it! He said, “The lactating clown act! My lucky day. Lucky, lucky luck.”
Under my breath I said, “More like granulating.”
He grunted and thrust, and said, lucky, lucky, lucky. All that separated us was one thin panty line, my cotton underwear, and I was so glad for that thin line as the final line I wouldn’t cross. Lucky, lucky…He slid his fingers inside my underwear.
He crossed the line.
All I could think of was escape. I didn’t want his little roll of nickels in my pocketbook. He moaned, sweaty, fingers prodding. My skin was up against Rich’s skin, and he felt like a rubber chicken, and made me think of bitter blood and feathers barely plucked. The closer to his skin I got the more I thought of dime-store buffet lines, processed ham and margarine and all the fake food I wished I’d never eaten. Rich was a squealing ham sandwich, a spoiled fake milk trick. And whose fault was this—mine, or society’s? Kafka’s or the cockroach’s, the audience’s or the director’s? I was the only one there; I couldn’t go on with the date. I caught Rich Johnson by surprise and threw him off. Ta da! I scrambled, and fell out the side of the van.
Voilà!
“Juicy,” Rich said. “Don’t go. Not like that.” He lunged. We wrestled on the dusty ground, over broken cement. The sequins in my dress were tiny claws.
I said, “I’m done. I can’t do it.”
He sat up. I rolled away, brushed myself off. We were both breathing hard—maybe for different reasons. He ran a few fingers through his high pompadour. He looked tired, a little puffy-eyed, older than he’d been only minutes before. He said, “Look, you, I’m in this for the fun. Helps cut the tension of a big work-week. Like the ad says, a good time. No joke. But if you’re not with me—at least let me pay up.”
Paying is half the fetish for some of these guys.
He grabbed a handful of bills from the van floor; three spotlights swung over the area. Like the opening to a big top three-ring hoopla, lights circled and danced, made shadows against the fallen walls until they found their way to all point to the same place: Blondie and me. Front and center, main ring, playing to an audience of cops.
Money fluttered like the drift of confetti.
“Stay right where you are,” a voice boomed across the Ruins.
One remaining Pendulous Breast hung out like a Cyclops. The other was a drained sack.
“Nobody move!” the voice said. “This is an arrest.”
Rich put his hands up like he knew the ropes. I followed his lead. We squinted into the glare. Cops came over the edge of a low, broken wall. One stumbled.
“Jerrod?” I said, hopeful, nervous, in need of a safety net. There was no answer, no Jerrod. No friendly officer waiting in the wings.
THE CHARGES: SOLICITING SEX, SEX IN A PUBLIC PLACE, trespassing, indecent exposure, and no proper I D. PLACE,
Down at the station, I said, “Indecent exposure? These boobs are fake.”
A woman cop, filling out forms, said “Many are. Doesn’t make ’em legal.”
I pulled my sweaty clown ID from inside my bra. The stack of family photos fluttered out, and there were my parents. I grabbed for the photo fast and tucked it back against my skin, didn’t want my folks to see me at the cop station. I pushed the clown ID across the desk. Nobody would touch it.
“State-sponsored ID,” one cop said. “Put that joke away, cupcake.”
I said, “I’m not a hooker, I’m a union-registered, dues-paying clown. The ID proves it.”
The woman writing up the paperwork said, “Clown, hooker—are the two mutually exclusive or redundant?”
“Or oxymoronic,” I said. “Ever think of that?”
Somebody snickered, in the sidelines. The woman cop said, “OK. Say you’re not a hooker. What’s the story, just all dressed up with no place to show? Lonely and looking good?”
Another cop, passing through, said, “So how come clown whores make so much money?” He face was blotched and red, his ears big. His neck…well, he had no neck. After a moment’s dramatic pause, complete with wheeze and whistle, he said, “A trick up every sleeve. Ha!”
I said, “You’re about as funny as a cry for help.”
“My pleasure.” He went back to huffing and puffing his way across the room.
I said, “This is prejudice. You don’t like clowns, I’m a clown, and I’m getting the shaft.”
Another cop leaned in close. He said, “Righto…We don’t like clowns. We don’t have to. We put up with a lot a trouble from clowns around this precinct.”
I asked, “Where’s Crack?” She’d been in the Ruins too, on her own paid date.
The cops looked up from their paperwork shuffle. Eyebrows raised. A few met each other’s glances. One guy said, “Come again—what’re you looking for?”
I said, “Crack. My boss.”
They all laughed, together, leaving me adrift in a sea of heads tipped back, hair tossed, flabby chins. A woman tried to catch her breath long enough to say, “So what’s your official title, ‘Crack Whore’?” She broke herself up again.
The fat man with the circus jokes said, “First crack whore we’ve seen that admits it up front.”
“I’m not a crack whore! I’m a clown. I work for Crack, my agent.”
They laughed harder. “That’s rich, that’s rich. Will work for crack. You got a sign proclaiming that?”
I said, “Speaking of Rich, where’s he?” They’d taken him down a hall. For all I could tell, they let him out a back door. The money was gone, confiscated as “evidence” or spent to buy his freedom.
“A clown crack whore,” the woman said. “We don’t get many of those through here.” She shook her head.
I said, “It’s not a crime to be a clown.”
“Ah, Jerry! Get a load of this one,” the woman called out.
Jerrod walked through the room, hands full of manila files, with a giant peanut-butter cookie on top of the stack. When he saw me he looked twice, tripped against a trash can, and did a stumbling dance. The cookie slid across his files, dropped, and broke.
“Shit.” He ran a hand over his forehead.
“Check this out,” a cop called.
“I’m busy,” Jerrod said, straightened up and kept going. Crumbs lay in a circle on the floor, a mini crime scene.
“Jerr,” the woman cop called after him. “You OK?”
He didn’t look back.
WHEN I COULD, I CALLED REX. REX WOULD BAIL ME OUT. He’d know I was innocent. We’d get the charges reduced in court—I didn’t need Jerrod’s help. They left me in a holding cell big as my mudroom, only air-conditioned, with a cot and a view of the hallway. It was good as any room at the YMCA.
After forever Jerrod came by. He cleared his throat. Nervous and jumpy, he said, “Well, I want to apologize. I was wrong… It was presumptuous, to think I understood anything about where you’re coming from.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “I thought you were different.”
I was different. “This is not me, not here.” I pointed to the floor beneath my big clown high heels.
He looked into my eyes. I took a breath. We both knew the question left unasked: if this wasn’t me, who was I? He touched my hand where my fingers rested around the bars. I pulled my hand away, didn’t want to touch anybody.
“Society?” he said.
I didn’t answer.
He said, “I can’t get you out of here. Couldn’t if I wanted to. Maybe if I’d been first to the scene…”
“That’s all right, I know.” With Jerrod’s help, it’d definitely look like I was dating cops. “Just do your job. That’s all I was doing, was mine.”
Jerrod said, “They have twelve-step groups for all the compulsions. The addictions…”
“It’s not a compulsion! I’m an artist. I wasn’t doing anything—”
He said. “I’ve heard a few different ideas about art…conceptual stuff…self-expression, sexuality—”
“I’m a performing artist!”
“Performance?” he said, and looked at me straight on. A big question.
I said, “Not some kind of sex art. Not that kind of performance.”
He said, “You might consider this as an addiction, and like any addiction it’s out of control, running your life.”
“Addicted to clowning?” I asked.
He said, “Addicted to making poor choices, putting yourself in a bad way.”
I said, “Come on, you can’t hang a clown without a trial. I’ve got it under control, it was just a little slipup.”
“Ever feel like it’s easier to act the part of a person than to just let yourself be one?”
“I’m not sure I know the difference.”
“Ah,” he said. “Right. Well, that explains a few things. For me, most times, I know what I should do as a cop, what I’m supposed to do. Same as if I had a script. But once in a while I don’t want to be the cop in the picture. I want to drop the act, break scene…be a civilian, a citizen, a bozo…The deal is, you’re building a record,” Jerrod said. “Same as the rest of Baloneytown. I’d like to believe that you’ve got a handle on your actions, you know I would, but here, now, booked on solicitation, caught half-naked outside a van, in an empty lot with a known john…it makes it hard for me to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
He had all the details.
“You read my file,” I said softly.
He nodded, looked down, and his lashes danced over his tired skin.
I said, “Sheesh. With a write-up like that, how can I even hope you’ll see my side of it?”
He shrugged. “If it helps, I hear the conviction in your voice. That’s one thing.”
“Conviction,” I said. “How about acquittal? That’s what I want to hear. Acquittal in my voice and everyone else’s.”
I still had big plans, plans to make myself into somebody special, talented and altruistic. “Once I patch this up, maybe it’s time for me to skedaddle, get serious, join a real circus or Clowns Without Borders or go—”
“Or time to quit running away,” Jerrod said, and offered a hint of a smile. “Your friend the landlord hasn’t pressed charges, so that’s good.” He touched one of my fingers again, ran a calloused thumb over my skin. “Life is so short. People waste it. I see it every day on the streets. You don’t want to get stuck in Baloneytown on parole.”
After a minute he said, “‘Man is what he believes.’”
“What about women?” I asked. “And clowns.”
He sighed. “I’d say the same goes, all around. It’s a quote, from Chekhov. I like to believe in the essential goodness of human nature. And I’d believe in you, if you’d give me half a reason.”
This time, I didn’t pull my hand away.
22.
Bailing, Bailing …; or, Kafka is Mine!
REX WALKED LIKE I WAS A STRAY DOG HE WANTED TO shake. My long-toed, pointy, clown high heels clattered on the pavement as I tried to match his pace. With Rex giving me the icy treatment, ours was a long, hostile walk through a short town. Out of sight of the cop station, finally he looked back over his shoulder and said, “Shit, I try to stay away from the slammer, Nita.”
I said, “Not a big deal. We’re still doing O K. A little glitch.” I waved it off with one hand. I wanted to hug Rex, to hold him, make him stop walking. I almost caught up to him, then reached for his elbow. He swerved away and shook out his arms. He seemed loose after the station. Maybe too loose. He wouldn’t catch my eye. I said, “Dahlink. Are you stoned?”
He looked over his shoulder again, like somebody might be coming for him. Then he looked me up and down, in my ripped dress, as I tried to match his fast clip with my one good Caboosey boob jostling. He said, “Enough to take the edge off. Wouldn’t hit the pig farm any other way.”
Myself, I wouldn’t go to the cop station any way but sober.
“Nita, what’s happened anyway? I’m gone for three weeks, come back, I’ve seen you two days. First you’re at the tavern for breakfast and now you’re a hooker, busted, and ask if I’m stoned, like that’s the glitch in the gig.” He shook his head.
“I’m not a hooker,” I said, and linked one finger through his belt loop to pull myself close to him.
He reached a hand to his pocket. His elbow pushed against my chest. “Then what’s this about?” He came up with a piece of paper, folded up small, and started unfolding it, still walking fast. I let go of the belt loop. My heart sank. “Trixie, Twinkie, and Bubbles!”
I snatched the paper from Rex’s hand.
“Where’d you get this?” I unfolded the page the rest of the way. It was a picture of me, between Crack and Matey, clown shirt unbuttoned low, red hair lacquered. Matey’s hand grabbed my boob. Crack kneeled on the floor in her fishnets, lips pouted.
Compromising clown porn.
“Clown Union Hall. The place is plastered with ’em. And it’s not art.” He spit on the ground. “Maybe that’s what tipped the pigs off, huh?”
“Just wait, Rex. We need to talk. I can’t talk when you’re walking so fast.” He kept going. I said, “I was working a clown gig, like a birthday party or a corporate deal, only smaller, that’s all. A private show. One-on-one.”
“A private show,” he said, and scoffed as though I’d claimed to be joining a convent, working on a cure for cancer, raising Chaplin from the dead. “Go ahead, con yourself, but don’t bullshit me, Nita.”
“It’s true,” I said. “What I thought was—”
Rex cut me off. He said, “I’ll tell you what’s true. I’m busting my ass in California to set up our future and you’re a hooker, and a drunk.”
“But Crack said—”
“The truth is you’re out of control.”
I said, “We need money to get—”
“You’ve lost your way as an artist, Nita. You’re getting nowhere. I can’t keep doing this.”
“This?” The icy hand of Dread fingered my insides, knotted my spleen, my gut. My heart. “Doing what?”
He waved a long arm my direction and said, “Supporting you. Encouraging you, trying to set an example. Hoping you’ll make a clown of yourself.” He started walking fast again.
I ran alongside him. “I thought we were supporting each other, Rex. That’s why I gave you the money for Clown College. Why I’ve been working hard to make more.” I put a hand out to stop him from walking, to hug him, to talk to each other. I said, “Crack said you’ve been on clown dates before too. She said that’s how you paid for—”
“Oh, bull,” he said.
“—the unicycles. Is it?” I wanted to see in his bleary eyes.
He looked away and said, “Crack? How reliable is Crack?”
“Is it true?”
Then he glared. “I bail your ass out, and you interrogate me.” He stomped up ahead.
I trotted behind.
I said, “She knew about the rubber-chicken sex thing, the jokes. Plucky.”
He didn’t answer.
“Rex, tell me. Have you done clown dates?”
He bit off the end of my sentence when he snapped, “Don’t make this about me. I’m not the bad guy here. I’m not the one fresh out of the slammer, posing for porn.”
Then he added, “I’m not the one dating cops.”
Dating cops. So Rex had talked to Herman. I said, “I’m not dating him!” How many times could I defend myself?
“Him?” Rex said, and smiled a thin lizard smile. “Who is ‘him,’ exactly, that you’re not dating?”
“Anyone. I’m not dating anyone, except you.” I tried again to touch Rex, to find the comfort of our bodies. He shook me off, stepped away.
“Is it the cop I saw you with out front?”
There was no good answer. I said, “While we’re on it—what about you and Crack? How’d she know about the rubber-chicken sex jokes? I thought that was our thing, private.” I grabbed his arm, and this time got a good hold.
He sneered. There was n
o love in the way he looked at me. None.
“Tell me,” I said. “Is love just an act with you? A big show?”
He turned on the sidewalk, stared at me. He said, “Sheesh, chill, OK? Listen, babe, you’ve got problems. I care about you, and you’re a mess. But I’ve got bigger things on my playbill than your messed-up tricks. Even the cop doesn’t matter, ’cause I take the long view, and my big deal right now is Clown College, whether you’re on board or not. I’ve got the scholarship gig in less than a week. That gives me five days to put together some award-winning shit.” He put his big hands on my shoulders, pulled me close. He ran one hand over my burnt hair. “We’re wasting our creative juices, arguing.” His voice was soft. The sneer was gone. Was this an apology?
“I don’t want to fight either.” I leaned into his chest, and breathed his skin through his shirt. He ran his hand over my hair. I was a kitten, ready to purr.
He said, “What I could really, really use is your help, with the application.”
I’d helped him before as a test audience and a prop, a sidekick, and a judge. “You can do it, Rex,” I said. “You’re a showstopper.”
He said, “Nita, you don’t get it. Sure, I can do the club thing, wow the drunks and underage druggies. A little fire, a handstand, the one-wheeled bike tricks… ”
“You can wow anybody.”
“This is different. It’s for…culture. For older people. Real people, at the Cultural Center. There’s a lot at stake, you know? I want to make it, to be one of the Community Arts Advancement scholars. The money would mean something, but I’m after the recognition. Nita, it’s been fifteen years of stage shows, talking myself up, always proving and promoting. Now, an Emmett Kelly Award…that’d do the talking for me.”
We’d had variations on this conversation before. I was the audience, there to give prompts. I said, “So, what’re you going to do? I can help, any help you need. We’ve got all kinds of resources.” I held on to his elbow and felt a rush of love.
He let go, started walking again. He said, “First, you have to pay me back that bail money.”
I trotted along at his heels. “Of course. I always pay you back…But didn’t I just give you that money to go to San Francisco? For Clown College, all that?”
