LITMIR.BIZ

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seed.

      I winked back. Gave him a quick wolf call with the whistle now hidden in my pocket. He stepped forward in an amateur clown walk, all bent knees and low to the ground in a long stride like an old R. Crumb “Keep on Trucking” poster. Nice try. I squirted my squirting daisy. A silver thread of water arced through the short space between us and rained down against the dandelion man’s khaki-clad crotch. Ta da! He stepped back, half-laughed, stepped forward again.

      Fetishists don’t give up.

      I squirted a second warning shot, fluttered my eyes over a fresh balloon, doubled over, then reared back and blew the balloon up like playing a wailing saxophone. I turned to the kids. The balloon grew larger and tauter until it was long and arched as an eager cock. A cock that I’d twist into a religious trick, maybe a Sacred Heart, one of the Shepherd’s flock, an angel or cross.

      Baby Jesus in a crèche is a quick trick, fast in pale pink. But kids never get it. Some fly it like a bumblebee, others hold it against their knuckles like a swollen hand, a vaginal cluster of plump pink rolls.

      Then the crown-of-thorns girl came back, the princess in her leopard sundress. She pushed her way past kids and coulrophiles, mom in tow. The girl was screaming, crying, her free hand full of damp, split rubber.

      Such a big voice from such a tiny girl.

      “It’s OK, baby. The clown’ll make you a new one,” the mother said, and signed me up like she didn’t see the pack of kids already waiting.

      I had to move fast. Once kids start cycling back through the line, balloon tying is a losing battle. Sheep boy would be next, his sheep-styled balloon popped in the heat, swollen with the day’s sun, twisted into final submission and gone to the big balloon party in the sky.

      Nothing lasts forever, right?

      It was time to rove. Get lost in the crowd. The kids had me trapped, as Our Lady of the Perpetual Poppers. I tied a third sheep and let the leopard sundress cry. I held up a finger, pointed to another child. Clown sign language for wait your turn. I meant to start making anything else—Jesus on the Cross, a wise man, one of the lowing cattle, or even a good old nondenominational, interfaith duck, balloon loon, or common quacker—but all my hands could tie was another sheep. The kids screamed, No.

      I did a little polka with my sheep, then passed it to a quiet-seeming girl. She tucked her hands under her armpits. “A flower,” she said. “I want a flower.”

      All I could tie was sheep! I couldn’t think. This had never happened before. It was like some kind of a stroke, my brain shutting down. The screaming and laughing and crying of children was a wall of white noise that severed my body from my brain. Sheep and sheep and sheep. Light blue, I tied a sheep. Green, more sheep. Even yellow—a wise sheep.

      Fake leopard sundress howled and clung to her mother. I waved good-bye, clown sign language for go away. The fetishist architect hovered in the near distance. The other, the dandelion-headed dandy with the high-buck smile, he was gone.

      I started to tie a replacement crown of thorns but it turned into another sheep. Sheep piled at my feet with all the same twists, the same fat bubbles. The hot force of the sun was like a hand traveling its ninety million or billion or kazillion, however many miles to press against my skin and melt the polyester of my striped Goodwill pants, the ad-libbed clown suit. The sun, the kids, the screams—I felt faint, empty, small as an insect sliding underfoot. The world was onstage. I was the lone audience slouched in the cheap seats.

      This wasn’t the clown I set out to be.

      Once my plan in clowndom was to defeat physics and defy gravity by using sheer strength to balance in positions seemingly impossible in the Newtonian world. I choreographed a silent adaptation of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” costumed and lit as a live equivalent of black- and-white film. The show was glorious in its melancholy, physical beauty!

      “The Metamorphosis”—the story of a man turned into an insect—was the story of all humanity! When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. Self-expression was the antidote to verminville; I practiced and practiced until I was Kafka’s tale incarnate.

      But productions are expensive. I needed cash. A software company came out of nowhere and hit me in my sore spot. They offered big cash for a few hours of work, a few tricks. A party. Corporations don’t care about bodies defying gravity, human teeter-totters, and translated literature. Kafka? No. They want silly walks, balloons, and juggling. The money’s there.

      What a grueling job I’ve picked, Kafka wrote. Day in, day out…

      I bought my first bag of balloons and the flimsy paperback Balloon Tying for Christ as a sure way to fill contracted time. Next thing I knew, I was a corporate clown. I worked for an international cookie company, a burger chain, a mortgage investment bank. I met Matey and Crack on the job. Crack had an agent. She waggled a finger, flashed a few paychecks, and at her side I turned full-on commercial clown as a temporary deal. For the street fair gig, she hooked us up with the Neighborhood Business Association.

      I twisted another sheep head, another pillowed body; the kids screamed. My arms were heavy. The world moved closer, noises louder and colors glaring migraine bright. I fell to my knees, fell on my flock of sheep. Balloons squeaked and squirted out from beneath my weight and danced into the air. They shifted, drifting around me. The kids laughed. Of course they laughed! The rubber chicken poked a leg out of my bag as the bag slipped from my shoulder.

      Tiny hands brushed against my clothes. Their voices were as one, the cackle of an amplified gag gift, a screeching giggle box. They pressed the squirting daisy, pulled the pom-poms used as hair. One kid took the chicken and swung it over his head. I reached, but could barely breathe in a claustrophobic cloud of peanut butter, grape jam, and soft, sour milk breath. I looked around for the architect, my fan. Any coulrophile would do.

      When I caught the eye of a passing stranger, I tipped an invisible glass to my lips. Water. I needed water. The guy kept going. Another looked. I pointed my thumb to my mouth, hand in a fist, pinkie cocked. A drink. I needed a drink.

      Clown games.

      Nobody would hold my gaze. No adults anyway. They looked in the window over my head, at ceramics, coffee cups, and baby clothes. Where were the fetishists when I needed one? There’s no easier way to be invisible than through the embarrassment of clown gear mixed with a plea for audience involvement. Finally, as I curled on my drifting bed of sheep, a man slipped me his card. The card fell into my hand. Call me, he’d written, with his number.

      A golf course designer. A golf course spatial use and planning consultant.

      I grabbed his wrist and broke my clown rule—I spoke. “A drink,” I whispered.

      He smiled. “A drink. Sounds good. Let me know when.”

      I held on. My fingers pressed tighter around the metal accordion of his watchband. I whispered, “No, I need a drink now. Water…” I said, “I’m sick.”

      He reached for his card back and shook his wrist free. So long to the dream date! The fetish was broken, the fantasy gone; I was only a sick girl in makeshift clown clothes. He said, “Hey,” out loud to nobody, and backed away. His silver watch flashed in the sun. “The clown’s sick.”

      No Florence Nightingale, this clown-stalking links designer.

      Matey and Crack turned. The stuffed purple parrot swung on Matey’s pirate-clown shoulder and the world receded into a wash of soft colors. The wail of the girl in her fake leopard sundress grew dim. There was a hum that wouldn’t stop. I closed my eyes, cheek pressed into the hot hard gravel of the sidewalk. It was coming for me—the short, meaningless life of an insect. Sheep bodies touched my skin lightly, carefully, like a priest’s last rites, like gentle kisses. Swimming or drowning, there’s not much difference. I was flooded with grease-laden festival air, the bodies, the heat, the weight of air itself. I drifted toward balloon heaven. I was that transitory thing, an underinflated sheep,

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