i'm sick.

i've been in bed for too long now with a hacking, phleghmmy cough and slow reflexes. i've just woken up from this horrible nightmare involving the stanley kubrick movie the shining and this clown i used to know when i was living in santa cruz. in those days i was almost married to a clown. we had been living together for about five years until one day it just seemed like it wasn't going to work out. we loved each other dearly, so i don't hold anything against him, but for everyone else out there, i'd recommend a few ground rules if you're in love with a clown:

• don't let him get clown make up on the bong.
• the shoes mustgo into the closet.
• there's only so much room for balloon animals.
• the nose doesn't belong in the bedroom.

i digress. the nightmare that i had just woken up from was actually about a friend of his who would twist balloons at our local farmer's market. it was really quite impressive how many balloon creatures he could make - everything from the starship enterprise to a harley davidson motorcycle. the complexity of each balloon animal involved how many balloons were used and how many ways one could have them interlock with each other. this particular clown used to come over to our house to get drunk and make new weird clown sounds.

"do you want to hear the new noise i came up with?" he would ask everyone. we all nervously agreed.

"aaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuoooooooooouuu- uuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiieeeeeeggggghhhhh!!!"

it was a hybrid of a dying sea lion and the scariest monster that you can think of from the hobbit. he looked around the room for approval, but everyone backed away a couple steps and continued staring, wondering if maybe he was going to suddenly explode or melt or do something else that would be equally as frightening. having not received the approval he was looking for, he started to drink as much as he could get a hold of and stayed at our house until morning. shakes the clown is a funny movie until it's passed out on your couch getting white makeup all over your bong.

i had dreamt that this clown had died and come back to life. just reappeared on my doorstep and started making himself comfortable in my home. what made it even more distressing was that at the same time this was happening, i was dreaming about being the shelley duvall character in the shining. jack nicholson was slowly going insane and being possessed while this clown had taken over my home. i tried to escape, but everywhere i went, there would be a crazy jack nicholson just around the corner.

it was one of those horrible waking dreams where i would think that i had woken up, only to be confronted by the drunken, big-footed balloon twister or the crazy, hatchet wielding movie star. i'm still not sure if i'm really awake right now. i get the creepy feeling that at any moment i'll turn around and see a rubber poodle at the foot of my bed.

one of the scariest clown stories i had ever heard was a friend of mine whose mother tried to raise him as organically and naturally as she could. one of the things that she had made for her child was a handmade clown doll stuffed with dried beans and seeds. every night she would put the clown next to him in bed until one night he woke up screaming "THE CLOWN IS EATING ME THE CLOWN IS EATING ME!!!!" his mom ran into his room to find that insects had been laying their eggs in the beans and the maggots and larvae were crawling all over her child's face.

so the moral of my story is if you ever find yourself face to face with a clown, don't give him liquor and don't fill him up with dried beans or you'll have nightmares too.

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future | retro