The Humor

The clown, with his face painted Vaudeville style which wa a prime, white layer with blue and black trimmed around the eyes.  He had on an oil based paint that sheaned in the sun and it made his face look more like a mask then a painted face.  He’s been doing this for so long that the oil has actually loosened his face and with out the paint, he looked bloated.  Red lipstick, the cheap one’s you could find in an upscale gas station covered the bottom half of his face.  The art isn’t to actually smile but if you happened to move your face a teeny bit, your grin would grow from gigantic to extraordinary.  

    He slowly pulled a white rag out of his zany, ruffled onesy with hot pint, decrepit green zig zagging to his feet.    Laughter raised through the wall, from their makeshift trailer.  Kids shouting and screaming and seeing the show.  Their parent’s chasing them down, having a nightmare while still trying to remember when they were that age.  Everyone has a crazy carnival story.  He could hear the stomps, the running, the playing of mini games with microphones blaring incoherence to win nickel prizes. 
    The glory died a long time ago, his mentor Rim Ram told him nearly a decade ago, before his humorless death.  Clown’s, stemming from the court jester were the pioneers of slapstick, the proprietor of fun, and the care takers of joy and the gods of happiness.
     He scrunched up the rug with his right hand.  Still in it’s overly large white gloved and lowered it, like he was bowing at the end of his circus career.  There has been a cultural murder to the clowns.  It could of been due to the over exposure of Bozo, kids already anxious for being on the show, the possibility that they could get called down to do the buckets, crying when they eventually get here because there is a guy, you dad’s size, in a goofy, frilly outfit with face paint to hide his sixty year old face.  Then other kids saw this and thought the same thing.  They didn’t need to see a clown, they already knew they were a bad experience.  Then, it could of been the protective nature of the anxiety ridden parent’s taking them out into public when he could easily get lost.  As a boy, you never wonder about if you were lost because everything was new, you were always lost.  Or finally, the amusement of him, a clown, disgusting, usually over weight men, practically baby sitting my child.  The job has passed. 
    The rag is smothered over his eyes until the paint runs off his face like tears after a breakup.  He keeps moving it clockwise from one side of his to the other and then down.  Before was a clown, now it is just a man.  Comedy can’t breathe another second.  But I can’t recall the last time it did truly.  There isn’t anymore of us that aren’t on stage.  Slapstick was born in the 20th century and then died a few decades later.  That is what most of us clowns try to use because getting hurt used to be hilarious.  But now falling on your ass is a common day practice, getting your face punched can happen on a Friday, and getting sprayed in the face with water happens when you try to fix your plumbing yourself.  Slapstick has taken an extreme form nowadays.  The only laugh you can get is if you put your health on the line but the concept of the joke isn’t the same.  Instead of laughing at you getting hurt they are laughing at you being a moron.  Then a person dies and is forgotten.  But us clowns have already vanished before the laughter. 
    He looks in the mirror and peers back onto his own face touching the mask that separates himself from his personality.  If only everyone looked like they wanted to.  He turned around so he could peak over his shoulder and unzip his outfit.  It was time to leave, his shift was over, and his replacement just came in to share his mirror.  All clowns have there own persona but the un-witty ones just copy just like his counterpart.  He looks over almost disgustingly, and steps out of his work uniform and throws it into a bag of used laundry by the door which was strewn on the floor from it’s encumbrance.  He just stands in his gray boxer briefs exhibiting his slouched frame.  He goes to put on his white t-shirt then to his blue jeans and walks through the doors.
    A kid, still in elementary school, still turns to him, points with his index finger, and laughs at nothing but the nakedness of the clown.  The clown doesn’t acknowledge the kid but he knows that humor has become straightforward.  All the concepts have been used to their limits and death has arrived from modernity.