As a teenage convert to the LDS Church, and as a professional circus clown, I was often troubled by a scriptural admonition found in Doctrine & Covenants, Section 88, verse 121: “Therefore, cease from all your light speeches, from all laughter, from all your lustful desires, from all your pride and light-mindedness, and from all your wicked doings.”
To this day I have to watch my tongue in Sunday School class, lest I hijack the discussion to go into a stand up routine about peculiar LDS doctrines like the history of polygamy, where to find ziff, or what exactly is a curelom?
When I decided to give up my circus career to serve two years as an LDS missionary, I figured my struggle with the dangers of merrymaking were over. But one of the first letters I received from Thailand, my proselytizing assignment, was from the Mission President, Paul Morris, requesting me to bring my Ringling clown equipment with me to Thailand.
Gulp. Out of the frying pan into the fire . . .
However, before I got to Thailand I would spend two months in Laie, Hawaii, at the BYU-Hawaii Campus, to learn the ins and outs of the Thai language. So that’s where I and my clown trunk landed in the winter of 1975. There were twelve of us Elders, called to serve at our own expense for 24 months in the Kingdom of Thailand. We bunked with all the other young Elders called to preach in Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and other Pacific Rim destinations.
The media often portray LDS missionaries as dewy-eyed regimented zombies, programmed to spew out the party line and nothing else. But I found my colleagues to be a group of boisterous, almost rowdy, young men bent on playing touch football whenever possible, and longing painfully to strike up a conversation with one of the beautiful Polynesian girl students who seemed to loiter on campus under every palm tree. But such fraternizing was strictly verboten. Lusty young men we might be, with all the hormonal urges of the common male animal, but our time and our thoughts were consecrated solely to learning how to say “Can we come in to tell you about the Book of Mormon” in Thai or Japanese or Tagalog. Nothing else.
Having been around the Ringling showgirls for two seasons, I found myself proof against the wiles of sarong and languorous tropical smile. Besides, my mind was much taken up with a troubling request from the head of our Language Training Center. President Rose had brown curly hair, a permanent peeling sunburn, and the exact same beaky nose as Louis Calhern the movie actor; he asked me the first week I arrived to do a clown show for all the Elders. Just a little diversion from the constant struggles with learning a foreign language, as he put it. I put on a brave face and almost gave an open hand salute as I replied that I would be happy to do so after a few days of preparation and rehearsal.
So there it was -- I would have to face down my inborn desire to make a mock of everything both sacred and profane to find a middle path to entertain nearly 300 LDS missionaries.
I lost a lot of sleep over this conundrum, until, one night, tossing and turning in my sweaty bunk, I grew suddenly weary of struggling with such an eschatological can of worms. I’d do my old tried and true clown routines and let the chips and laughs fall where they may. Then I fell into a deep and blissful sleep, snoring like a buzzsaw (my bunkmates complained the next morning.)
Not only did all the missionaries come to my performance at the campus auditorium that Saturday night, but word had spread among the student body, and I found an additional crowd of graceful young men and women standing in the back, reeking of patchouli and coconut suntan lotion, eagerly awaiting my act.
Part of my clown routine, unabashedly stolen from the great Harpo Marx, was to single out one of the prettiest girls in the audience and repeatedly make ridiculous passes at her during my show. I’d offer her a feather bouquet, a box of half eaten chocolates, fashion a pink balloon poodle for her, and eventually work up the courage to pucker my lips in outrageous fashion in expectation of a tremendous smooch. This always reduced my victim to helpless giggles, at which point I would feign intense irritation, hit her with my rubber chicken, and trundle myself back on stage to continue my tomfoolery.
The lovely lady I chose that night was a voluptuous product of the Islands indeed. Even without my glasses (I never wear them when performing) I could tell she had broken many an LDS heart already. She played along as expected, giggling and blushing, until I approached her towards the end of the show for my impossible kiss. Instead of backing away screaming with laughter, she lept at me -- me, a chaste young Mormon missionary! -- and planted a passionate kiss that made my lips tingle as if I’d spread horseradish on them. And boy, did she smear my makeup!
The crowd of Elders roared in delight at my discomfiture, as did President Rose and his family. I was the one who had to back away and then run off stage. When I came back to acknowledge the standing ovation, that same bold beauty was delegated to come up to put some lei garlands around my neck. She stacked about a dozen of ‘em on me, until I couldn’t see anything but hibiscus petals. I stumbled off and the chuckling crowd dispersed back to missionary barracks or student housing.
As I removed the clown white that evening I had visions of that singularly gorgeous and cheeky young lady and I getting married in the Temple after I had served my two years in Thailand. But alas -- I never learned her name, never saw her again, and today, as I write this on a cold winter morning sitting in my recliner with a quilt over my lap, I begin to doubt that it ever really happened. It is just an old man’s dream. Like so much else that seems completely outrageous and pleasant from my past.
