21.
Granulation and Ruination
SO I’D DO ONE INNOCENT CLOWN DATE FOR THE MONEY. No sex. Then I’d top off my savings, follow Rex to Berkeley, and move into the art-clown life happily ever after. The date, Crack, and corporate clowndom would melt into the gentle fog of a bad dream.
In the Ruins the van loomed in the dark like a rocky cliff, the precipice I’d soon throw myself over. I wore the top half of the patched Caboosey suit under the red sequined dress. It was a quick patch job with electrical tape, for the occasion. I stepped one teetering, clown-style Manolo Blahnik knockoff into the loose sand of the open lot. The Pendulous Breasts jiggled. The van door slid open and Crack tumbled out, a bottle in hand, as dust danced in the twilight.
“Here she is!” Crack called. “Our clown lady of the evening.”
“I’m not a
clown of the evening
,” I whispered, maybe only to myself. “I’m an artist,” I said louder, to the open lot, as though to convince the world. Then I tripped on a piece of rebar, snagged my dress, caught myself with a hand to a cinder block, and skinned my burned palm.
“Yes,” Crack said. “Our artiste, star of the show!”
Behind her, a bouquet of pale blond hair cut into the moonlight; a man climbed from the back of the van.
I straightened up, stood and brushed off as Crack came forward, took me by the hand. She passed me the bottle. The bottle was hot at the neck from her clutch. Freixenet.
“Meet your date, Rich Johnson.” She waved a hand. “Rich, meet Juicy Caboosey.” She slapped me on the rear, hard enough to knock me forward and toss champagne from the bottle’s mouth in a moonlit gush.
“Hello there, Juicy!” His voice was low. His suit was nice, well-cut and dark.
“Rich?” I said. “That’s his name, or his tax statement?”
He laughed. “A regular Mae West, just what I ordered.”
Ordered. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“To you, that’s his name,” Crack said back, fast. She gave me a wink, clown sign language for
Don’t Ask
.
The man had a narrow chin, ruddy cheeks, and eyes that were too vacant. He seemed familiar, like I’d seen his pompadour and ruddy cheeks before. “I know you, don’t I?”
He chuckled again, nervous this time. “Strangers is better,” he said, and tugged on his shirt cuffs.
Of course—coulrophiles always preferred the anonymous thing.
Crack whispered, “Don’t blow it, Sniffers.” She wrapped her arms around my neck, gave me a smooch on the cheek like some kind of staged lesbo clown moment, and it was all an act until she hissed in my ear, “Play it right, in twenty minutes it’s over and you’ll be the richest joke in Baloneytown. No kidding.”
She laughed loud and fake, like our powwow was one big party. One big lie. Rich looked over his shoulder, gave me a profile view of his long nose, sharp chin, and then the flash of teeth, and in that flash I remembered exactly where I’d seen him—the hallway, outside the Chaplin gig. Old Blondie. He’d done his hair differently. And at the street fair, the day I fainted, hanging around with another pompadour altogether. He wore his hair like a costume, but it was the same guy. This was no generic clown date, it was personal. I folded my arms across my chest, held the bottle of grocery-store bubbly against my hip. Crack took my hands, as though to loosen me up.
She whispered, “Plan to be a party pooper or a party trooper? We’ve only got room for troopers around here. I need you on board.” She straightened my dress. Plumped my fake cleavage.
With her face close to mine, I whispered back, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what, Clownster?” She reached for the warm champagne.
“You set me up. We know this guy—he’s practically a stalker.”
“We don’t know him. He’s a date. You’re dating, right?” She turned away. I followed her toward the van. A second, shorter man spilled out the open van door, his hair pressed tightly to his head like a stocking cap, then I saw it was a stocking cap. Crack reached for his hand. She’d take the little guy, and leave me with Mr. Blonde and Blow-dried.
I wasn’t ready to pair off yet. “Can we talk?” I asked her.
Crack looked to Rich, his hair bright and pale as a streetlight. She looked back to me. “You and me,” she asked, “or, like, talk as part of the show?”
A date wasn’t a show in my book. I said, “You and me, alone.”
Blondie shrugged, gave the go-ahead. Crack and I walked into the dark.
I said, “I can’t do it, Crack. It’s too hookerish.”
She said, “It’s a piece of cake. Let him do all the work. All he wants is a brush with fantasy, maybe to cop a feel of your plastic hair. These guys, they’re a dime a dozen and simple as flapjacks, no joke.”
“But why this one? He’s seen our shows. I don’t want to be in his high beams.”
Crack shook her head. “He’s been to our gigs, so what? He likes what you put out.”
“Put out?” I said. I felt the blood drain from my face.
“What you offer, I mean. You don’t have to put out.”
My mouth was dry; my mind broke out in a rash of panic. “Feels like I’m cheating on Rex. It’s not good. I love Rex, and he trusts me.” What I didn’t say was that it felt like I was cheating on art too. Cheating myself.
Crack laughed then, and not her bitter or fake laugh, but a deep belly laugh, loud and for real. “Oh shit,” she said. “You’re still hung up on Rex? And we thought Matey was the sadomasochist in the group…”
“Hung up?” I said. “We’re in love.”
She said, “Sheesh…Good old sexy Rexie back in town, and you’re his puppet all over again. Don’t think Rex hasn’t had his share of clown dates.”
My heart was a knotted balloon then, a stopped watch. “What do you mean?”
She said, “That old rubber-chicken routine? It’s a classic. Hell, even I fell for it way back when.” She slapped an arm over my shoulders. “How do you think he paid for that fleet of unicycles?”
“What are you saying?” Her arm was heavy across my back. I tried to shake her off, the way I wanted to shake off new information, the possible truth.
“Don’t be shocked, little Sniff. You make too big a deal of it.” With a gentle pressure she steered me left, and then left again, and we made a U-turn until we walked toward the van. The men were outside tipping bottles back. Crack said, “Get in the game, give it a good play. If you don’t want to do it again we won’t. My word.”
I was numb. Rex and the rubber-chicken routine? What did she mean? Plucky. Plucky the chicken, who was even now in my pink shoulder bag. How many clowns had Plucky been with?
“Call the shots on the date,” Crack whispered. “Do what you’re comfortable with, and no more.” She dropped her arm from my shoulders. “I got the down payment, but set your own prices as you go, and make sure you get cash before it’s over.”
I teetered in my oversized heels, across chunks of broken concrete.
“You get the clubhouse. We’ll find our own space.” Crack grabbed the short man by one of his thick hands. I watched their backs as they climbed over a pile of broken joists, then disappeared into the dark.
“Come on in,” Rich Johnson said from the dark cave of the van.
I was there to do a job—not a hand job, not a blow job, but the same logic applied: the faster we got started, the sooner it’d be over. I hitched up my dress. Sequins fell and glinted against the ground, caught in construction debris. I took his hand. His palm was damp. In one big step, I launched myself into the back of the van. He reached to close the door behind me. I intercepted with my elbow.
“Like a tab, let’s keep it open, right?” A quick exit route.
He shrugged. “It’s your show.” I liked the sound of that. My show. Then he said, “Besides, there’s nobody out here. Just you and me. And I thought clowns didn’t talk.”
He put a hand up as though to cover my mouth and winked. That I didn’t like, but it was part of the fetish: muteness, not mutiny.
He spit out the side door and popped the cork on another bottle of cheap champagne. The cork hit the side of the van like a bullet. I ducked. My ears rang. He sat hunched, a vulture, on a narrow, cramped wooden bench that was attached to one curved wall inside the van. He patted the plank beside him.
I crouched on the wheel well. He held a plastic champagne glass my way, pulled it back and tipped it toward his lips, then raised his eyebrows in his own little act meant to be a question: did I drink?
I fanned my hands in front of the Pendulous Breasts and pushed the air away, a flutter of sign language to say
no no no
. The breasts crowded my knees.
He dropped the plastic glass, took a swig off the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and murmured, “Juggle something.” He rolled an old beer bottle toward me.
I didn’t reach for the bottle, but dug in my bag for juggling balls, then chicken-walked toward the open door and dropped a foot outside.
Rich snagged me by the dress. “Ho-no! The act stays onstage.”
The dress stretched like a bungee cord; sequins sprang like fireworks while I hovered between the fresh breeze and fetid air.
I pointed at the ceiling, a pidgin version of clown sign language: too low to juggle.
“Let’s see,” he said. He pulled me deeper into the dark corner of the van, wrapped his arms around me, and slid up close behind. We were both on our knees, against the matted carpet. Something on the floor cut into my kneecap. “I want to feel your jugs while you juggle,” he said, and his breath was a death wheeze. “Get it? Jugs and juggling? I always think of that. Since I was a boy at the circus.” He ran a hand over the Pendulous Breasts.
He had me in a tight squeeze. I tossed one ball, tried to lunge for it but couldn’t move. The ball hit the side of the van, rolled, then nested in a carpeted corner.
He hiked up my skirts. I tried to wriggle out of his arms.
“Why the resistance? I’ve got money.” With one arm still around me, he pulled a wallet from his pocket. The wallet flipped open. He shook it like a kid pretending the wallet was a seagull, and the gull dropped bills. He laughed as dollars drifted.
He undid his belt and his pants fell all too willingly down around his knees. Rich whispered, “Feel my big balloon dog.” His breath was murky with the smoke of old pot and soured champagne. He rubbed himself against my thighs. I fell forward under the pressure of his weight, onto my hands on the loose bills scattered on the dirty carpet. “Feel it?”
I could feel it. I nodded, and broke a rule as I said out loud, “Is that a big balloon dog, or a whoopee cushion? Maybe someone forgot to inflate—”
He said, “Hey—
sh sh sh
. Just give it to me, Juicy,” and he rubbed himself against my underwear. He twisted my Pendulous Breast nipple, except it wasn’t a nipple. It was electrical tape that came off in his hand, and the scorched threads gave in. Sand rained down.
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.