Things I Did for Money (3 page)

I won't lie to you: airports frighten me. All that cold white space full of tiny people, who don't realise how little they matter in the scheme of things. They greet, they goodbye, they buy a mouse-shaped chocolate and shuffle off with their hearts all crumpled. I don't want to be like that.

I could count on one hand the clowns who have received due credit for their art, for their genius gift to those poor lost creatures, the tiny people so worn down by all the greetings and goodbyes that make up this life. This is the clown's lot, and we grin and bear it. Don't get me started on due credit.

No, I won't pursue that line of thought. I'll just sit here and check my balloon supply, watch the arrivals board, and, as is my destiny, do my best to entertain small children. Here's a Japanese kid. Half fearful but can't resist the face paint. They know they're meant to love us, but there's always an element of caution.

As the child waddles closer a security guard swivels his head suspiciously, clocks my coordinates and starts pacing the near distance like a seagull eyeing up a stray chip.

‘Takeshi,' warns the kid's mother as his smooth face, that perfect skin, the plump cheeks and tulip mouth wobble toward me. I peek between gloved fingers, miming his fear. The kid's not the only one — he scares me too. We have something in common but it's not helping. I get nothing but a blank, petrified stare.

A good clown is not fazed by the language barrier. I try a balloon trick: a moment's furtive, rubbery wrestling, then — ‘Konichiwa!' — a bulbous green dog is born. Or from certain angles it could be a goat. Not perfect, but not bad.

The kid frowns. ‘Mummy, I don't like the clown,' he says in faultless English, then turns and waddles away without looking back.

The feeling, my friend, is mutual.

It wasn't always like this. Not so long ago I earned a lot of money and everyone wanted me around. People knew my name. People loved me, or gave me the impression they did. But respect is cheap. Here, in the vast cold expanse of this halfway place, no one wants to know a clown in a curly yellow wig. (Don't be fooled: check my body language. The pathos is all part of the act.)

The plane's not due to land for another ten minutes and there's a familiar tug in my bladder. I had hoped to avoid this. As I head toward the stick-man sign that indicates imminent relief for man and clown alike, I note with concern that more nervous seagulls in black airport-issue caps are clustering at the rim of my vision.

When I emerge from the men's room an entire flock of security guards is waiting for me.

Here is the problem: people cannot accept that clowns need to do the same normal things that normal people do — drink coffee, buy health insurance, expel urine. Especially that last one. It throws their entire conceptual system into disarray. Your idealised clown is a clean-living, asexual being who entertains children with buffoonish antics. Sure, his trousers might fall down onstage; but in no situation is it permissible for him to drop his pants, flip out his procreative tool and let human waste gush forth. The image is blasphemous, even sinister, like the idea of Santa fornicating or Bambi getting diarrhoea.

No. Once you put on that clown suit, you're strapped in and nothing but the cleanest fun will do. Rule number one: clowns do not have genitals.

The flock surrounds me. Curt words are spoken. There is a long, strange march through that milky-white airport space, all the way from the restrooms to the guards' office. Acres of marble floor stretch on forever like a dream. A tumbleweed blows past; a forlorn wind sighs in the building's pale rafters. As we cross the departure area, the hallowed hall of goodbyes, the silence thickens and parts to let our troupe pass through: six foolish guards and a dignified clown. Delighted children gape. The elderly give us a wide berth.

When the guards' office door closes behind us they wheel and turn on me. Want to know what I'm doing here. Who is my employer? Who I have come here to meet? What is the passenger's name? Why won't I tell them? And what was I doing in the men's room?

I tell them I am a law-abiding citizen with a job to do and a uniform to wear, a citizen not so different from themselves, who is forced by the laws of nature to obey my bladder with the same urgency as my fellow countrymen.

There is mention of a full body cavity search and an agreement is reached. We go our separate ways. I do not think we will meet again.

History knows their names, or it will learn them in good time: Plautus, Jean Bouchet, Harlequin; the many Pierrots, Grimaldi, Auriol; the brothers Durov, Fratellini and Marx; Footit and Chocolat, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Lou Jacobs, Emmett Kelly and Otto Griebling; Grock, Popov, Charlie Rivel, Coluche (who, incidentally, ran for president of France in 1981), Laurel and Hardy, Cousin Otto, Bubba Sikes, Jango Edwards. Beautiful names. (My own name is not worth mentioning yet, but its time will come.)

But today? The world's most famous clown is Ronald McDonald. While he does TV cameos and oversees the production of fibreglass replicas of himself, the rest of us eke out a feeble, balloon-twisting half-life — tolerated, vilified and ignored in equal measure. Horror movies starring evil clowns both mock and hasten our fall from grace. Oldest trick in the book: take something innocent and put a nasty twist on it. The cheap thrill of juxtaposition has cost the clowning industry millions.

Not that we have ever been universally loved. An old English law went so far as to say, ‘Players and minstrels are not people like other men, for they have only the appearance of mankind and are almost akin to the dead.'

Unkind, perhaps, but not completely untrue. We have always been the underdogs, the outcasts and rejects. The foolish and lacking, the reflection in the funhouse mirror. But there's also a certain power in it: our tread transforms the world into a stage; we plant mirth in the bellies of grown men. You may give us your laughter, pop us like aspirin, love or mock us, but you will really never know us.

Today we are reduced to flogging burgers and busking to the lunch-hour rush. But we know the Earth will turn, and our day will come.

I was never a funny child, and the circle that formed around me in the playground was not an appreciative one. My brother, who came first, who was funnier and better-looking and more charming, is now a wealthy real estate agent with hair implants. Perhaps I should give him my charcoal-grey suit, or even the navy-blue pinstripe, as a gesture of goodwill. I can't see myself needing them again.

Some days I have my doubts: the audience is stony, the laughs must be dragged to the surface like fish fighting the hook. There is a gap in the crowd, my guest of honour is missing. I wonder if I have any talent for this. Did I choose this path, or was it chosen for me? What's so funny about big shoes anyway? They just cause knee problems.

On the way up to my apartment I bump into my neighbour. We are the only residents in our block who seem to prefer the stairs to the lift — she is vain and a little on the heavy side, and I am not comfortable with small spaces. Catching me navigating the steps in my oversized footwear, she lets out a fearful squawk and flings a jewelled claw against her cheek with unnecessary force. I greet her politely and leave her in the stairwell, a ghastly, uncertain smile lurking near her undulating chins.

The answering-machine light is blinking again. I know who it is and what they have said. I won't replay the bluster, the threats and questions, the thinly veiled pleas and recitations of company policy. All that is behind me now.

I remove my huge red shoes and pace the floor in striped socks, draining a bottle of pinot and smoking a cigarette (more activities forbidden to the public clown). At some point I note from afar that the itch of my wig has burrowed its way inside my skull. I sort the mail into two piles: bills and personal letters. The first pile is looking robust, but the second refuses to take shape at all.

Night comes and I talk to the mirror. Plot the week's movements on a map, sweep a chopstick from point A to point B like a master conductor. There can be no theatre without an audience.

I set up at noon as the office towers begin to empty. The mall is lit by a bright band of sun, making the people squint as they pour from their buildings in search of lunch. My face paint oozes in the heat and my balloons take on a surreal, almost painful brightness. A crowd of six has coagulated around me.

My act opens with a toot on a toy whistle. The sound startles me so much that I fall down in shock. After some coaxing, a small boy helps me up. Gratefully I give him the whistle. He blows a loud toot, which startles me. I fall down. The pace builds, momentum gathers.

Then a single great swoop of laughter rings out, an uncalibrated hee-haw that sets off something inside me: a Pavlovian rush of some pleasant brain chemical swirling through my blood like wine. I spot the girl in the wheelchair, her jaw hanging wide with approval, saliva gleaming. The surge of strength she gives me is fleeting but sweet.

But don't assume I am totally immersed in all this tooting and laughing. No — the world is much bigger than that.

I'm preparing for a dangerous high-wire stunt involving two rickety chairs and a piece of string when I spot her: the blonde woman stopped rigid in a nearby doorway, her mouth a cartoon horror zero pasted across her white face. The moment freezes. I can smell her fear. When I turn back to my audience, they've melted back into the swarm of the mall. I'm alone.

Some people are terrified of clowns, but I can hardly be blamed for that. The most rational people fall prey to the stupidest fears: that shameful Achilles heel they try so hard to hide. That secret they tell no one but their closest loved ones. It's a shame.

My flow broken, I struggle to win back a few bodies from the midday herd. After much earnest capering I've finally collected two schoolgirls, one elderly gent and a labrador, when a tall man with an impeccable grey silk tie sidles up and touches my elbow.

‘Hello, yes.' He is embarrassed. ‘Sorry. Could I have a word?'

I indicate my hard-won audience, but the man already has a reply: before I can register it, the folded fifty-dollar note has made its split-second journey from his hand to mine.

He speaks quietly. ‘Please don't take offence, but I wonder — is there a chance you could move your show to a different spot?' His eyes skip around the mall, avoiding mine.

The permit I wordlessly produce has no effect. He merely stares after the departing dog, addressing its hindquarters: ‘You see, my co-worker is terrified of clowns. A phobia, really. Nothing personal. But we would really appreciate you picking another spot, because you're right in her line of sight. Her window's just up there.' He points.

I do take it personally — how could I not? — but graciously I put the man and his nervous eyes behind me. Something sweet has crept into my bones and settled there like warm syrup. The little girl's laughter. What looked like a glimmer of respect in the old gentleman's eyes. Or summer itself, perhaps.

Here's a little secret. The clown's trademark tools: wisdom disguised as stupidity; the childish pleasure of being naughty; mimicry, mime and surprise; the blow (slap of wet fish, slop of custard pie in face); and the fall.

The fall is my speciality. Hard to do with style, but a crowd favourite. Bam. Splat. Whoops … They love it.

At first there were bruises, but I soon learned to soften my body, to roll with the fall. Children do this without thinking and survive nasty tumbles that would leave their adult selves with broken bones. Humans are born with the fear of falling — put a puppy on a high window ledge and it will cheerfully gambol right off the edge, but a baby will back away from that empty space. It gets worse as we age: we brace ourselves, forget how to fall. But the fear can be unlearned.

I should know. It's a family joke that my mother dropped me as a baby not once but twice. ‘He land on his head? Sure seems like it! Huuurggh-huuurgh.' (How I hated that uncle.) No, fortunately I landed upright and nappies were thick in those days.

As a first memory it's hardly promising, but others have suffered far worse and spent their whole lives trying to forget. You can see it on their faces, in the way they laugh or don't laugh on cue. My own early slips were not so bad.

That slipping sensation does return unbidden sometimes, just on the verge of sleep — I jerk awake, saving myself from a minor mishap on the stairs, or one of those sickening, panicky plunges into some godless void.

But don't read too much into that childhood business; I've been held tight plenty of times by plenty of women, and fallen from very few. I have mastered the art of the soft landing. And there are some excellent foam-lined shorts available by mail order if you are prepared to shop around.

Gravity waits for us everywhere. A scene I once witnessed sticks in my mind. The stage was dimly lit but the actors' voices carried clearly to the edges of the room.

‘You're bored,' he said accusingly.

He was standing near the door, holding a cigarette that had gone out. She sat at a table, sorting papers.

‘I wouldn't say bored,' she said without looking up. ‘Just a bit restless.' Her gold hair shone under the stage lights, but her face was in shadow.

‘You're bored,' he said, folding his arms tight against his chest, the unlit cigarette looking foolish now. ‘You can't even look at me.'