Clowns are not normal people; if they were, they wouldn’t be clowns. This seems like a simple straightforward conclusion, needing no further explication. But the eggheads can never leave clown alley alone for very long. Ever since the days of Grimaldi and George Fox, writers and intellectuals have been burrowing into the clown psyche to figure out what makes it tick. But, in the famous words of E.B. White, “Trying to dissect humor is like trying to dissect a frog -- you may discover some interesting material, but the whole thing dies in the process.”
My second year as a clown with Ringling we played Boston in the early spring. One day a youth nearly my own age was escorted into the alley by Charlie Baumann. He wore a cream colored silk shirt with a deep purple necktie. He reeked of classy. His bespectacled face showed a keen interest in what was going on around him, which at the time was a somnolent attempt by several hungover clowns to nudge a cockroach under Chico’s trunk with their feet.
“Dis is Herr Jenkins. He vill study you. Behave!” was Baumann’s curt introduction.
“Ron Jenkins” said the youth, going around the alley and shaking hands. “I’m a third year Psych student at Harvard. I’m leading a study on the comic ego and its antecedents. You know, how clowns like to think of themselves and what keeps them at the job. That kind of thing.”
He seemed a harmless loon, unobtrusive and respectful. So clown alley let him poke and prod. That week in Boston he showed up after the matinee and singled out several clowns for a group interview. His first group consisted of Prince Paul, Swede Johnson, Dougie Ashton, and Mark Anthony. They sat in a solemn semi-circle around him as he adjusted his glasses, flipped through his clipboard, and drew a pen from his plastic pocket protector.
“Please tell me where all of you were born, to begin with” he asked in a pleasant voice.
“Me mother said I didn’t get born, I was hatched” replied Dougie, giving his bushy auburn eyebrows a Groucho Marx waggle.
“Germany” said Prince Paul.
“Where in Germany?”
“How the hell should I know, schmendrick? I was a bastard, so she just gave me to her relatives to raise. I came to America in 1920 and bin a citizen since ‘35.”
“Okay. Thank you. And you, Mr. Johnson?”
Swede gave him an appraising look before launching his taradiddle.
“That’s a strange story, that is” he began. “My folks was off the Cape of Good Hope in a subchaser during the First World War when a tidal wave washed the whole crew overboard onto a dessert island.”
“You mean a desert island, of course.”
“I don’t mean nothin’ like it, kid. Half the damn crew was smothered in coconut custard and the rest had to run for their lives from the creeps suzette. My mother had me while hiding out in a rice pudding swamp . . . “
“Dammit, Swede” interrupted Mark Anthony, “just tell the kid you was born in Copenhagen so we can get this over with. I gotta go out and buy some flanges for the prop boxes before the next show!”
Much relieved that someone had at last shown good sense, Jenkins turned to Mark and asked him where he had been born. Unfortunately, Mark had just discovered Helena Blavatsky and Theosophy; his murky reply was to the effect he had not yet been born but was scheduled for enlightenment somewhere in Tibet by the year 1991.
Jenkins tried a few more clinical questions, but it was easy to tell his spirit had fled from the proceedings.
The next day he renewed his efforts to unlock the complexities of the clown mind with me, Roofus T. Goofus, Spaghetti Joe, and Smitty. Smitty sat down with a bowl of cornflakes.
“Scuse me while I have some dinner” he said in a genteel manner, then poured a can of Budweiser over his cereal. Jenkins visibly gagged at this. It was old news to the rest of us. Smitty couldn’t function if his blood alcohol level fell below .080.
“Uh, where were you born?” he started with me.
“Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Minnesota” I replied promptly. Then felt impelled to add: “My great grandfather Ole Stuhlsted was born in Trondheim, Norway.”
Jenkins winced slightly, mastered his emotions, and continued. Roofus came from Champaign, Illinois. Spaghetti Joe from Brooklyn. And Smitty from Redlands, California.
“What basic needs do you think clowning provides for you?” he asked Spaghetti Joe.
“Chicks” shot back Joe without hesitation. “My long red rubber nose is a real turn on for those chippies once I . . . “
“Shut up, you perving liar!” the rest of us chimed in, sick and tired of his mythical sexual exploits. It was all he ever talked about.
“No, no -- that’s okay. I need to know what each of you really wants out of your clown career” said Jenkins soothingly. So once again we had to listen to the fictitious and puerile sexual adventures of Spaghetti Joe. This was becoming an annoying waste of time. I could have gone out to one of any of a dozen used book shops nearby. And there was an Italian guy just outside the backdoor selling crab rolls from a pushcart.
Jenkins filled several pages with Spaghetti Joe’s piffle before turning to me.
“What is it you want from your job as a clown?”
I had my glib answer ready, when suddenly I realized that he had just asked me substantially the very same thing my mother asked me the night I left for Clown College. She was in tears -- not from sadness but rage. What did I want from this insane idea? She told me I was throwing my life away. I’d be dead in a few years. Homeless. Coming back to beg for help, but it would not be her problem anymore. I’d made my bed, now I had to lie in it.
“It’s to get the hell away from you!” I yelled at the perplexed Jenkins. Then I stomped out of the alley, got some crab rolls, and spent an hour at a used book store while trying to piece together what had just happened to me. But I couldn’t face it down, not yet. Trying to analyze it took away my appetite and my lust for belly laughs. So I decided to follow Dougie Ashton’s sage counsel whenever things turned upsetting.
“Buck ‘em all!”
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