Stop Me If You've Heard This One by Arnett Kristen

Author:Arnett,Kristen [Arnett, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000 Fiction / General
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 2025-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (PART I)

Before we go any further, I need to reiterate that not all clowns are interchangeable.

For instance, I wouldn’t call myself a circus clown, though my makeup and clothes are essentially modeled after their traditional, capering style. Consider the folks from Barnum & Bailey, those jewel-toned pioneers of the craft, prominently featured in all the circus marketing and ad work. You can’t think of the circus without thinking of the clown; they’re inextricably linked. But much like Diet Coke isn’t Regular Coke, these circus clowns and their artistic choices differ from mine in a few distinctive ways.

First of all, circus clowns don’t tell jokes. At least, not in the traditional sense. The theater of their work is the circus tent itself, the veritable Big Top. Not only is it too large a venue to allow for voicework, the tent means that the clown must gambol and cavort beside a bevy of other attractions and not take the focus too far away from the ringmaster. They’re supporting actors, not the main event. Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! Circus clowns slip through the gaps of these entertainments, drawing your eye from one amazement to the next. They serve as guides.

That leads me to another difference between us: they work as a unit. When I say “circus clown,” what does your brain immediately conjure? It’s not a single face, it’s a full-on horde: multicolored bodies spilling from a minuscule car or tumbling from a “burning building,” like in the movie Dumbo. Individually, they don’t do much other than cartwheel and tumble, but together they mime out fantastic scenarios that allow us to consider the humor that comes from surviving dangerous situations. Isn’t that what the circus is all about? Defying death and living to tell the tale?

Clown work has been around since the very first chucklehead decided to paint a joke on a cave wall. There’s what feels like a million types of clowns: Whiteface and the Auguste, the Tragic and the Harlequin. Tramp and Jester and Character (consider Bunko and his debilitating horse phobia, all wrapped up in the role of cowboy hopeful). It’s been said that the original clowns weren’t simply providing entertainment, they also served spiritual roles, doing double duty as priests or shamans. It makes sense when you think about it. Who better to understand the human condition than a person whose whole job is to uplift and delight the spirit?

Laughter is the best medicine, after all. And even if it’s not, it sure goes down a hell of a lot easier than Robitussin. Which makes what I’m about to say next a particularly bitter pill to swallow: I can’t clown my way out of this situation. I’m having dinner with my mother and her new girlfriend, and the new girlfriend is the ex-wife of the magician who recently fucked me in a library and now refuses to call me back. In theory, this should be hilarious. But no one who would find this funny is present, and that means I’ve got to keep all my little jokes to myself.

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