3-A Clown Who Couldn't Drink Alone

The next night, I was supposed to meet up with Charley for a few cocktails, but like typical Charley, he gave me the wrong address. The name of the bar didn’t match the address he gave me, but I assumed, maybe he just messed up the name, so I walked inside the bar with a different name.

I’ve been to a lot of bars in my life, and honestly, I’ve seen some pretty unconventional, raunchy, racy stuff. I’ve seen girls kissing girls, boys puking on girls, naked cowboys dancing on bars, boys feeling up girls in public. I’ve even seen a guy and girl sneak into a bathroom stall, and I can only imagine what happened with all that moaning. But never in my life, have I seen what I saw inside this bar.

I looked at the end of the bar, and low and behold, there was a clown drinking alone. It wasn’t even 8pm, and here you have a grown man, complete with clown makeup, rainbow hair, and oversized shoes, drinking a jack and coke. You can’t make this stuff up in New York City. Of course in the Village, no one even looked twice at him.

What do you do in these situations? I personally look for balloons when I see a clown thinking there is a party close by, but on this night, I didn’t see any. So I tiptoed over to get a closer look at him. I was afraid of prying too much since I wasn’t sure if this guy was mentally stable, but as I got within a few feet of him, I started to get angry.

You’re a clown, a role model. You’re on a higher pedestal, --you know priests, rabbis, ministers and clowns. How could you drink so openly in costume and risk the reputation of all other clowns? Are you that much of an alcoholic that you can’t control yourself? So I approached him boldly.

“Guy, what are you thinking? There are little kids outside. You can’t let them see you like this.”

I pointed to the windows that revealed our private world to the other side.

He looked at me and didn’t say a word. I knew I had to be more forceful with this clown.

“Remember the first time you saw Santa Claus driving a car? It scarred your view of him forever, and I don’t want that to happen to some other kid. You can’t be seen like this. You have to go now,” I said.

Nothing came out of his mouth. It was like he didn’t even hear me talking. Have you ever looked at a clown up close? It’s easy to see why young children are afraid of them because they can look scary. But this clown, didn’t look scary; he looked vulnerable.

His eyes were void of expression, sad and empty, even though they were hidden underneath outdated wired frames from the 1980s. His mouth was painted red, but it didn’t even look like a happy smile. It lacked life and laughter. His eyes seemed to hold inner pain.

I had a favorite phrase with my friends, “quit being a sad clown,” but never in my wildest imagination did I ever think I would see a real “sad clown” drinking in a bar by himself.

I waited for a response. I wasn’t about to walk away.

Then, he took a long sip of his cocktail, removed his glasses and stood up. He was about a foot taller than me, and I’m not lying, I was a little afraid. But I wasn’t about to run. I had faced my clown fears at the age of nine and I got over them. I wasn’t about to go back into therapy because some drunk couldn’t drink alone in his apartment like the rest of us.

“You know, I used to be a clown for Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey. Maybe you heard of it, ‘The Greatest Show on Earth.’”

He spoke with such passion, he almost sounded like the voice behind the microphone. When he said, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” you could feel him come alive.

“Everyone loved me: the children, the moms, the dads. They laughed when I fell. They held their breath and yelped, ‘aahhhhhhh” when the tigers opened their mouths. When the organ played, all eyes and lights were on me.” He took another swig of his cocktail. “Then they laid me off.”

He turned around and sat down.

It was hard to imagine a life like that, but it was easy to see why people watched. This man was extremely charismatic, even under all of that makeup. He spoke with a cadence, and a boisterous voice that started deep beneath his diaphragm. He knew how to hold a crowd and put you under his spell with his voice. I didn’t know what to say, so I turned to the bartender and ordered a drink. I sat at the stool next to him without even asking if it was available.

This silence was deafening. It was a race to see whose mouth would remain shut the longest. Normally, I’d probably lose within seconds, but I was competing with a clown. He had to break first.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so when the bartender delivered my drink, I subtly tried to imitate the clown’s mannerisms. I swigged it like he did, and stared at the empty wall in front of us without purpose. I even put my feet on the stool, like he did, though it probably wasn’t as obvious since I wasn’t wearing a size 19 in clown shoes. He finally turned and studied me. His laughter broke the silence.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“I live in the Village, but I’m originally from Kansas.”

“Like Dorothy,” he said.

“Kinda, except my name is Elsa. What’s your name?”

“Larry.”

I turned towards Larry and mentally studied him. He looked like he cracked a smile, but I wasn’t quite sure of it underneath all of that white paint.

“I’m sorry they let you go, but there has to be other clown jobs out there,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s all downhill after Barnum and Bailey. The traveling, the elephants, the midgets, it was first class. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

“There have to be other clown jobs out there. You can’t just give up. Children need you. What about the Big Apple Circus?”

“I tried, I tried. They don’t want me. They say I’m washed up and kids these days aren’t interested in ‘my kind’ of humor. Besides, no one wants a clown over 40 these days.” Larry ordered another cocktail.

Then, I stood up and ran my fingers through his curly, red, green and blue wig. I walked around his stool and gently took off his glasses. I felt the texture of his bright red, thick, fat tie and looked him up and down. His polyester coat looked heavy and uncomfortable. He didn’t blink.

“I think you need a makeover,” I said innocently enough. “The stars do it all the time to relaunch their careers. Why can’t we do that with you? We could give you new hair. And those boots, c’mawn, they are so 1970s. And how old is that tie? Maybe we can change your blush from white to a more earthly tone, like magenta.”

He listened as if I was his highly paid consultant.

“What’s wrong with my hair?” Larry pretended he was looking at it, even though his hair wasn’t long enough to reach his scope of vision. He was a natural performer.

“It is so 1980s. The rainbow hair, the red nose, the happy smile, the white face. It’s predictable.” I said. “You need something from today’s era. More modern.”

“You really think we could pull it off?”

Larry seemed to be buying into my vision.

“Of course we can pull it off, and you’ll be even better because of it,” I said. “You know, Larry, everything happens for a reason.”

“If that’s true, why was I laid off?”

“So you could get a better job.” I said it with firm conviction because I believed it.

“But I loved my job,” he said.

“Did you ever wish you could try something new?”

“Never. I always wanted to be a clown for Barnum and Bailey, and I loved every minute performing.”

He wasn’t supposed to answer like this, but there had to be a reason to his firing, I thought. He forced me to think quickly on my feet.

“Larry, you can still love what you do and perform at another place. Actually, I don’t know why they laid you off, but in time, I’m sure you’ll find out.”

“You really believe that?” Larry looked like a child, uncertain of his future, but wanting to believe in a greater magic.

“I really believe it,” I said.

Larry yelled for the bartender.

“Bartender, another round for both of us. This one’s on me.”

He might be a clown, but underneath the mounds of makeup, I could tell he was a natural charmer.