Clown Girl - Monica Drake [0]
Dedication
Title Page
Introduction
Epigraph
Chapter 1. - The Clown Falls Down; or, Sniffles Stumbles
Chapter 2. - My Chicken, My Child!; or, Clown Bashing Lite
Chapter 3. - Hide and Seek; or, Love in the Ruins
Chapter 4. - Chance Pays the Karmic Bill; or, Give Chance Some Peace!
Chapter 5. - Plucky, Come Home!
Chapter 6. - We’re All Chaplin Here
Chapter 7. - Hostility Shoots from the Hip
Chapter 8. - Cinnamon Buns and the Angel Act
Chapter 9. - Lost Chance
Chapter 10. - Our Kodak Moment; or, Rexless Behavior
Chapter 11. - The Tidy Side of Hell; or, Tonics, Soporifics, and Palliatives
Chapter 12. - Drinks on Me; or, Oddball, Corner Pocket
Chapter 13. - Silence Isn’t the Only Thing That’s Golden
Chapter 14. - Bounty Hunters and Piss Thieves
Chapter 15. - The Juicy Caboosey Show; or, Full Flame and Glory!
Chapter 16. - A Turn for the Nurse
Chapter 17. - Evidence, One and All; or, Life’s Bloody Picnic
Chapter 18. - Death Throes of a Chicken Flock
Chapter 19. - Sexy Rex and the Emergency Comforts
Chapter 20. - Sliding the Slippery Slope
Chapter 21. - Granulation and Ruination
Chapter 22. - Bailing, Bailing …; or, Kafka is Mine!
Chapter 23. - Harsh Medicine; or, My Strabat
Current Titles
Copyright Page
For Kass and for Mavis
TO WRITE THIS BOOK, OR ANY BOOK, WOULD HAVE BEEN impossible without the love and support of so many people. In gratitude, I thank:
Kassten Alonso, who understood this novel from its inception, who’s not afraid to laugh at a clown, drink red wine and say What if, what if, what if ?; Alex Behr, for her generosity and attention to detail; Tom Spanbauer, who taught me the urgency of storytelling, the value of voice; all the writers in our workshop, particularly Chuck Palahniuk, Stevan Allred, Suzy Vitello, Greg Netzer and Erin Leonard; Cherryl Janisse; Nirel; Cynthia Chimienti, gorgeous comedienne, keeper of costumes and ritual; Mickey Lindsay, with her brilliance, who knows why ducks are funny; Shelley Reese; A.B. Paulson; Larry Bowlden, who asked How’s the writing? even before I started writing; Rhonda Hughes; Kate Sage; my parents and family, Barbara Drake, Bud Drake, Moss Drake and Bellen Drake; Charles Mudede; Karalynn Ott; Haley Carrolhach; Kevin Canty; Pete Rock; Elizabeth Evans; Carolyn Holzman, who taught me to defy gravity, or at least keep on trying; and for Candy Mulligan, in memory.
—M. D.
Introduction
WELCOME TO THE BOOK OF MY ARCH ENEMY. “RIVAL” would be a nicer word, but let’s be honest.
In 1991, in Tom Spanbauer’s kitchen, where our whole workshop of beginning writers still fit around his dinky kitchen table, every week Monica Drake was the star. The stories she read to us…about sitting all night locked inside the Portland Art Museum, alone to guard the ancient mummy of a Chinese empress, staring at a dish filled with the preserved contents of the mummy’s stomach—mostly ancient pumpkin seeds. As Monica talked about being locked behind steel gates and barred doors and bulletproof Plexiglas, the rest of Tom’s students, we’d forget to breathe.
Every Thursday night, Monica told about hunting for cash register receipts in supermarket parking lots, even begging shoppers for their receipts as they loaded bags of food into their cars, all because the store sold eggs for twenty-five cents per dozen if you could present receipts totaling twenty-five dollars. Monica wrote about a world where characters ate nothing but cheap eggs, getting stinkier and stinkier in apartments where everything had been broken at least one time. Wire or glue held together every cracked lamp and dish or splintered chair. Poverty and violence haunted every situation. People bought and sold food stamps for enough profit so they could drink NyQuil all day and stagger the streets with a permanent green mustache. Her characters, like the best characters, Monica based on real people in her life.
To make Thursday nights even worse, Monica’s stories made everyone in Tom’s workshop laugh. Laughter so loud and honest that to people passing on the sidewalk,