Clown Girl - Monica Drake [76]
It all made sense. I’d be a sassy, busty clown girl juggling fire. Of course—why not? I’d play to crowds high and low. I’d find the fine line between Crack’s clown whore and my own comic interpretation, work both sides and move easily from the comedy of burlesque to striptease, slapstick to sexy. I’d graduate from Clown Girl to Clown Woman.
I stood on my knees in the world of costumes, slid down the elastic waist of my striped satin pants, and sang quietly, I’m every woman… The Fabulous Fat Ass snapped on in front. If getting dressed as a clown is about tapping into spiritual guides, finding history in the clothes and makeup, well, my spiritual guide for this show was one big girl—sexy, round, and ripe. Who wants to be a skinny, orphaned, emancipated clown bruised by a miscarriage? No, I’d transform myself into a fertility goddess. It was the Venus of Willendorf calling me out.
Other than a little camel toe as I stretched the formerly loose pants back over the Ass, it all came together so easily! I’d invent my own show, self-promote, and move from clown lackey to star performer.
I pulled the valerian vial from my long pocket and shot a few more drops of valerian over the tumbler of melting ice to calm my thrilled nerves, mitigate my fear of success, fear of failure. I could do this. I could bust out in my own newly busty way.
And the key to success was Rex’s tip: Burn shit up. Light anything on fire, audiences love it. I swung the melons left and right, shimmied my shoulders, and on my knees did the Grand Teton Jiggle Dance.
I’d do a new silent, sexy version of Kafka: Gregor Samsa wakes up, finds he’s metamorphosed into a woman with an hourglass figure—where every second counts !—and his world’s on fire. I’d do a busty Beef-Brisket Dance, on fire. Two Clowns in a Shower on fire. And Who’s Hogging the Water?—that’d be mixed genre, soft porn plus fire. Even an ordinary juggling show with a bodacious bod and the pins on fire would be a new show altogether.
I found a tin of face paints in the medicine chest. In the cabinet’s mirror, I patted white on my cheeks, drew stars around my eyes, and lined my lips deep red.
A narrow cabinet opposite the cot, near the ambulance’s back doors, had once held an oxygen tank and hoses. I crouched down in front of that cabinet and rested on the Ass like it was a beanbag chair. Soon as I opened the slim cabinet door Rex’s spare fire-juggling batons, his best maple-and-asbestos-handled torches, fell out—like a sign that I was on the right path, the torches fell right into my new mondo bazookas, right into my ripe casabas, bounced off, and landed in my lushly padded lap.
AS I STOOD IN MY HOMEMADE CROP CIRCLE IN HERMAN’S backyard, I saw the first complication : Juggling with boobs demands a whole new skill set, with a new center of balance and an increased sense of self. In short—the boobs were in the way.
I started with practice tosses. Three balls in the air. My arms smacked the sides of the heavy, swinging nylon sacks. I knocked into one gazonga and missed a catch, first try. The boob barked out its duck call. But the Fabulous Ass kept me grounded and I gave it a shake-shake-shake, like maracas, as I tossed the juggling balls.
I had a small tape player in the backyard, and played Stevie Wonder in a whisper as I warmed up. When the summer came… One ball, then two, then three in the air, quick and easy tosses; I grew accustomed to moving with the Pendulous Breasts. It was great to be up and working so early. Shadows moved in the hedges that lined the yard. The tall grass rustled. This was the clown equivalent of farmwork. I tossed two balls up into the night sky as one came down, then reversed the pattern. Two down, one up ; two up, one down. Milking the Cows, I’d call it.
Simple stuff, child