An hour ago Punkin' Judy had been a bozo in love. Gloriously so, and suddenly with hopes for a life quite different than the ill-fitting male one that she had previously resigned herself to. But her harlequin romance had come to a sudden halt after an alarming change in Miss Tricia revealed her to be one very unstable clown, forcing P.J. to abandon both their professional and romantic relationships. We find her sitting out the final hour of their first & last clowning gig together, unable to decide which hurts more- her battered body or her broken heart...

======== HUMOR ME
======== by LAIKA PUPKINO
======== Part Five: NOBODY'S FOOL

"Didn't they always used to say that a man ain't supposed to cry?
But I defy you to look me in the eye and tell me you're a friend of mine..."
. . . . . . . . ~Warren Zevon

.
#.16)=====[EARLY RETIREMENT]====>

Eyes burning, head spinning, I stumble across the flagstone patio to the end of the house where the backyard's hose is coiled. I drop to my knees and rinse my eyes out for at least a minute.

This is all so messed up. What happened to the wonderful woman I met this morning? I love Tricia intensely, but there's no way I can handle this horrible "other personality" of hers. I am reminded of a song on this old black plastic LP my uncle was always playing when I lived with him; A man with a deep growling voice, lamenting wearily: Poisonous look-alike; You're not my girl .......... Poisonous look-alike; What have you done with her?

I hold the end of the hose over my head. Flour and chunks of rancid food run off of my hair, my face and blouse, and onto the paving stones in sudsy rivulets.

"Yeah that's it, take a bath. You stink," jeers Miss Tricia, then she leads the kids in a chant of- TAKE A BATH! TAKE A BATH! TAKE A BATH!

Hilarious. As I shut the water off I mutter a few choice profanities at her, wishing that my voice conveyed the gruff vehemence I used to be able to put into swearing, instead of the flutey tones that my sore throat today has left my voice stuck in. I'd sounded like Miss Hathaway from The Beverly Hillbillies having a snit fit. Deepening my voice as much as I can, I snarl- "Go FUCK yourself!"

Someone is standing next to me. It's Janice, our hostess and the birthday boy's mother. I stammer, "Oh Jesus, I couldn't see you there! Sorry ....... I was just, uh-"

She hands me the big white fluffy towel she's brought me and whispers, "No you're right. Fuck her! Whatever she's paying you it isn't enough."

"I just came to that same conclusion. At one day, this has to've been one of the shorter careers in show business."

"That's right, you did mention you just started today. But then she was talking like you two had been together a while."

I shrug as I rub my hair dry, "I didn't get that stuff either, but who cares? She's nuts, I quit, end of story."

"Good for you! A girl's gotta stand up for herself. I didn't like that look that came over her when she gave you that 'comical' beating one bit. My friend Patty raved to me about how funny this Tricia The Clown was, but I sure won't be recommending her to anyone. She seems kind of..."

"Insane?" I suggest as I drag the towel across my face. Handing it back to her I notice that it's wet, but not all gunked up with clown makeup like I'd expected. I am going to be very pissed if this shit doesn't come off!

"Not insane, no. Not to where she can't be considered accountable for what she does. Here, let's sit down," Janice says, and leads me over to the back row of folding chairs. Takes the one next to me. "It's more like she's just up there to entertain herself, whatever she thinks is funny, and to hell with everyone else. A lot of her material didn't seem appropriate for kids. I mean Bruno's okay, he's mature enough, but there's littler ones here. And you know Judy-"

"Please don't!"

"What? What's wrong?"

"I just ......... Well maybe it's dumb, but I really wish you wouldn't call me that! Punkin' Judy is this costume's name, this face design, not mine. My name---or not really, but- Well no actually it is. 'Real' that is; even if I never- Oh hell nevermind!---is Beverly .......... Beverly Xenakis."

She smiles, "Okay Beverly. And no it's not dumb. I can see how you wouldn't want to be stuck with some goofy name she hung on you. I've been watching the way she operates. She's a real little dictator! Like how she cut all these branches off my oak trees. The trees did need it, and she did an okay job, but it never even occurred to her to ask first. It just shows how she is about other people and their stuff. I'll bet her parents spoiled her rotten, gave her everything she asked for!"

"I guess they could afford to, living in Seven Hills, but all I know for sure about her folks is that they own that boarded-up amusement park down along Mercantile Pier," I say. The sun is now hanging about a hand's-breadth above the horizon, and a wind has picked up...

"The Hackenbush's? Oh Lord, no wonder! That sure explains-" Janice stops, her brow knitting in concern, "You're shivering!"

"I guess I am," I giggle through chattering teeth.

"Do you want to go inside and lay down? I'm sure I could find something for you to wear that isn't half soaked."

This sounds like exactly what I need, but there's the awkward matter of my male anatomy. I would first need some help removing this ridiculous contraption strapped to my chest and belly, and I would have to get nearly naked to do that. I shake my head, stoical. "I'll be fine."

"Then hang on a second," she says and goes into the house.

Four flimsy red frisbees---promotional giveaways from a defunct restaurant chain---have been set out on the lawn, forming a small baseball diamond with a horribly foreshortened outfield. Miss Tricia calls the kids out onto the field: "Okay everybody, look at your stars. No, I mean the stars I gave you. The stickers .......... Red Star Team you guys are at bat. Green Star Team, find a position. Hey kid, can you pitch? Cool! And you, Ren and Stimpy. You can't both be third base, you need to- Whoah! You're a short lil' thing, didn't see you there. What was that? Speak up ....... Fine, you're a My Little Pony. Go be a pony out in right field ........ Okay stop right there, good horsey! And you kids, don't you want to play? Come on you little sluggards, it'll be good for ya!"

It's not quite an open insurrection, but five of the moms are keeping their kids out of this weird woman's game. Or make that six. I don't see Bruno out there either.

Janice is back with a blanket. She drapes it around me, a motherly gesture. "Here. I'd hate for you to catch pneumonia."

The blanket is warm and fluffy right out of the dryer. I wrap it tight around me, "Oh, thank you!"

She sits back down, her dark eyes scanning me for any sign of discomfort, "Do you need another? Or maybe a couple of aspirin?"

"This is fine," I assure her, although I am far from fine. My stomach feels all achy and bloated, sending sharp cramps down into my intestines. I can only hope that with the sun starting to set this party won't go on much longer. I ask her, "So who are these Hackenbushes anyway?"

"You've really never heard of them?"

"Not unless you mean that politician who got in trouble recently."

"She's a Hackenbush, all right. One that got caught!" gloats Janice, "They like to play like they're important members of the business community, philanthropists even, but everything that family does is shady in one way or another..."

"What do you mean?"

"To start off with, they have to be the worst slumlords in Star City."

"You mean those firetrap apartment buildings down around Macedon Avenue?"

"Not even! Anything in the 'Shine would be on the high end of their properties. I'm talking about Deep Star," she says, making the same face everyone makes when referring to our city's notorious tenderloin, "My husband helped some renters bring a suit against them. They were systematically kicking out anyone who'd been there a while, for made-up reasons, stiffing them on their security and cleaning deposits; and then bringing in new tenants at a hundred more a month. Getting around the city's 17% rent increase limit that way."

"That is dodgy."

"Oh yeah, they're a bunch of scoundrels! Figuring that nobody who was bad off enough to live in Deep Star would try and fight back, and what's sad is that they got away with it for years. A lot of the people they burned have moved clear out of state and will never be found .......... And oh! The cousin, Hampton Hackenbush? He was all tied in with that Nanodyne scandal. He's the one destroyed those internal memos about that awful mess down in Honduras."

"Really? I was doing my one semester at Star City College when that happened, it was a huge deal there. From what I understand they were trying to use nanobots for mosquito abatement..."

"That was the one," she nods. "The 'bots were designed to go after the mosquito's larvae, but they got into the town's drinking water and caused all those miscarriages. Exactly what that one researcher had tried to warn them about."

"They had demonstrations, both on campus and down at the Nanodyne building. My aunt Apollina was involved with those. But it's funny, I don't remember hearing how that case came out."

"Not too funny. Somebody sure was bought off, the way that just blew over. Twenty-two miscarriages in four hours? Even without the evidence of those memos it's a no-brainer. There have been some scary theories about it, like that it wasn't really an accident but a secret test of this drastic population control program called 'Project Pandora' ........ But what we know for sure is that Hampton H. Hackenbush entered the Cursor Building at 2 a.m. and spent four hours on the 50th floor doing something; and the next day a bunch of records were missing ......... And then like you say, there's our former city treasurer Bunny Hackenbush. She'll probably end up doing at least five years for her little scam. So if you ask me that whole family is bad news!"

I point at Miss Tricia, who is standing alongside home plate doing an over-the-top umpire routine, "But that doesn't mean she's that way. Doesn't it go back to like the Magna Carta or something, that you can't hold someone responsible for the crimes of their relatives?"

"Honey, what is the matter with you? I could see you were in love with her, the way you were following her around like puppy dog, but the woman just beat you black and blue! What does she have to do to you before you'll stop making excuses for her? I thought you lesbians were trying to to get away from that sort of thing..."

"I don't know," I sigh despondently, "I don't know what's the matter with me..."

Janice sighs along with me, patting my hoops skirt right about where my knee should be.

Another wave of shivering hits me. I watch dully as Tricia jabs her index finger into the air and bellows, "Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-eeeeeeeeeeee-RIKE!"

.
#.17) ===[BETTY'S PRESSING BUSINESS]===>

The house's back door shuts loudly and Bruno comes up to us, "Mom, your timer just beeped."

"Ah, my fiesta lasagna. Let's hope it turned out as good as it looked in the magazine. Bruno, could you do me a big favor and sit with Beverly a bit? She's not feeling too great. If she needs anything, get it for her. Or come find me."

"Sure," he says, and with a hesitant smile sits down in what had been her seat.

"It was nice talking to you, Bev! And think about what I said. You deserve better. Dreams can be intoxicating, and dictators can be charming. But you can't build anything on that. There has to be a foundation of respect."

"I can see that. Thanks for everything..."

Bruno glances back and forth between me and at his departing mother before relegating this exchange to the sort of feminine arcana that he doesn't need to concern himself with. I kid him, "So now you're stuck here watching me."

"I don't mind. I got this today," he says, holding up a fat white book with embossed gold lettering. It's the latest Tom Wolfe, just out in paperback.

"So why aren't you out there playing baseball with the other kids?"

Bruno waves his book at where Tricia is helping a toddler to lift and swing the big orange plastic bat, "That's not baseball. Hell, that's not even softball! And I'm not sure how my mom got the idea I was this huge basefall fan. I really only like the game when there's money being put on it."

I laugh, much louder and far more in the squealing 'Punkin Judy' vein than I had intended. "So you're like what, the school bookie?"

"Now there's an idea," he chuckles. "No, there's this pool at my Dad's firm. But it bugs me that they never let me place a decent sized bet."

"They're probably trying to keep from corrupting you."

"Or that's what they tell themselves," He drawls, his smirk boasting that he could mop the floor with all those piker lawyers. For all his odd fidgetiness Bruno doesn't lack basic self-confidence.
He opens the paperback to where his finger is wedged and reads for the next half hour, while looking over at me every other minute. 'Keeping an eye on me' like his mom instructed...

My nipples are itching furiously where those bits of wire or whatever it was from inside this fake rubber bosom had jabbed me, and it's driving me nuts that there's really no way to scratch them. I am considering going back into to the bathroom, bending that coat hanger I saw hanging in there into just the right shape, sliding it under there and scratching myself bloody, when Betty---the large blonde woman from the gang of housewives I'd met in the kitchen---sits down in the chair ahead of me. She turns it sideways so she can face us.

"I heard you quit your clown job."

"I think they heard that down in the Harbor District," titters Bruno.

Betty rolls her eyes, "When did you get to be such a smart ass, Boo Boo? Under the circumstances I'd say she was pretty restrained about it. Listen Judy, I don't really know you, but you seem like a good kid. If you want a job, Sonny and I need a new counter person at our dry cleaning shop."

"You'd do that for me?"

"It's just a cashier's job," she shrugs, "not much over minimum wage. I wouldn't expect you to want to stay there forever. But we can try it, see how it works out."

"That might be good. I've got a job coming up on a trawler- Er, I mean a sports fishing boat when the season opens in spring, but I don't think I'll be going back."

"Galley girl, huh? I did that a couple of summers when I was young, down in Corpus Christi. Bringing beer and nachos up to a bunch of grabby drunks; hosing down their puke. It gets old..."

"That it does. So how do I get ahold of you?"

"Just call the number on here," she says, handing me her business card, and leans in to kiss the air an inch from my left cheek- M'wah! Then she grabs Bruno's cheek and joggles it between her fingers, "And you be a good, little Boo Boo."

Bruno winces at the nickname but seems to realize that when it comes to grown ups and their teasing it's usually counterproductive to protest...

.
#.18) ===[THE TURING TEST]==>

The setting sun has turned the western sky into a curtain of crimson. Tricia brings the confused excuse for a baseball game to a halt, and leaving the kids arguing about which team had actually won heads into the house.

I hear her and Janice arguing in the kitchen for the next ten minutes. Words filter out to us ("Trees" .... "Bitch!" .... "Hackenbush") but only one little string of complete sentences; when Tricia explodes, "What the fuck would you know about it? You think just anyone can do this? I'm an ARTIST, goddamn it!"

In the failing light the book has been creeping closer and closer to Bruno's nose, and I don't think he's actually trying to read anymore. He keeps stealing glances at me. There is something furtive about it, how he looks away whenever I catch him at it. Finally I turn to him, "Okay, what?!"

"But I didn't say anything," he whines. I guess I'd sounded more irritable than I meant to.

"Sorry! It's just been a weird and a really rough day. If you have something on your mind I just wish you'd say it."

He fiddles with his tie, "I was just wondering something is all."

"Yeah?" I prompt. It would be hilarious if he turned out to have a crush on me.

"You used to be a man, didn't you?"

"I, uh ....... well I, uh-"

How the hell did I not see that coming? And fuck, what do I say?! Do I flat out deny it, acting all mortified and indignant? Or maybe just laugh and tell him I'm a guy, a 'regular guy', and that this female persona is just part of the job? Over the 1.8 seconds my brain becomes such a tangle of potential truths, half-truths and lies that finally I can only answer: "Yes I did..."

"Wow, I never met a she-man before!" cries Bruno, way too loud for my liking. But glancing around it doesn't seem like anyone had heard.

I say quietly, "You don't know that for a fact, do you?"

He thinks about this. "No I guess not."

"So who told you?"

"Nobody. And I didn't see it either at first. Not until you were out there arguing with your boss. But once I thought of it, it seemed obvious."

SHIT! After a very apprehensive start this morning I was starting to think that I was doing beautifully at this; such a total natural female that no one could imagine otherwise. But if he's figured it out, then who else has? Maybe everybody here is just humoring the weirdo in the skirt ............. Which would mean that this dream I've at long last come to embrace is not as practical as I had let myself hope. It's a possibility that depresses me to no end...

"That was a wrong question to ask, wasn't it?" asks Bruno sheepishly.

"I'm kind of new at all this, but I'd say so. Or at least I wouldn't go making a habit of it."

"I screw up pretty bad sometimes, talking to people. I have this-"

"Well you didn't this time! I pretty much demanded that you tell me what was on your mind. So it's not your problem if I didn't like what that turned out to be. And I am glad you're talking to me about this to my face instead of whispering about me behind my back..."

"No, I wouldn't do that ........ So what's it like anyway? You just decide you didn't like being a guy one day?"

"It doesn't work that way," I laugh, "Or at least it didn't with me. It was more like this battle that went on for a long long time, between what I was feeling inside and what I thought I thought I should be feeling. You know what the unconscious is?"

"Of course. So when did you lose the battle?"

The Punkin' Judy laugh that explodes from me is so wild and unexpected that it startles us both. A number of heads turn our way (Wouldn't it be awful if this idiotic noise had become my regular default laugh somehow? I really do need to see a doctor tomorrow, even though some of these complaints are going to sound pretty hypochondriacal and strange...). I tell him, "A few hours ago, I guess. And I really hope I lost it for good this time! I've been close to this point before, but then talked myself out of it. Decided to stick with what I had."

"But why, if you weren't happy doing that?"

"It's like you want to be 'good', you know? To not hurt or disappoint your parents, to do the things people expect of you. You start to imagine how hard it would be to live openly in a world that's so uptight about this kind of stuff. So you start lying to yourself. Telling yourself, 'I don't want to be a girl that bad'. You try to accept this totally false existence..."

He smiles sardonically,"A false existence, I sure know about that one! Although for me it's nothing as simple as if I'm a boy or a girl. I got this body, I figure it's as good as any."

"Good for you; life is complicated enough without gender issues. Although I wouldn't call them simple."

"Well maybe not simple, but at least they've got a name for what you are. You can go to a shrink and say I'm trans-" he vacillates, it comes out as a question, "-gendered?"

"That's better than 'she-man'."

"Oh, sorry. With you though, at least there's a way to explain what it feels like. A language for it. 'In the wrong body' and all that. But what if you don't feel anything? I make stuff up to tell my headshrinker so I don't totally waste my father's money. But mostly I just feel like ........... I don't know. Like I'm just this brain in a box. Nothing connects."

"Brain in a box?"

He gestures vaguely, "All the things that seem to be important to people, that they say are supposed to make you happy .......... Like love. Is there really such a thing?"

Is he talking about some sort of autism? "You love your parents, don't you?"

"I tell myself I do, because you're supposed to. I know I wouldn't like to see them hurt, and all that, but is that love? How do I really know? How do I know that what's inside me is the same thing as inside other people? When I look at that tree there, how do I know that I'm seeing anything like what you're seeing?" he asks, searching my face for some sign that I might understand. Whatever this is, it's no idle philosophical exercise but a serious issue for him. "Or sometimes even the whole idea of existing, the fact that I'm here---that I'm this THING that thinks and sees and hears everything out of this one little pinhole place---it just seems impossible. Like it can't be real. You know what I'm saying?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe you're describing what everyone goes through, or maybe you're completely unlike anyone who's ever lived before, like Keanau Reeves in that movie Stranger in a Strange Land. But what I am pretty sure of is that your self-acceptance shouldn't depend on whether it turns out to be one or the other. Actions can be good or evil, ideas might be true or false, but I don't think anything as involuntary as what someone's feeling or isn't feeling should-"

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU..."

The back porch's light has come on, and with it the string of tiny fake plastic Japanese lanterns that Miss Tricia put up. She and Janice are easing down the steps side by side with the cake, their smiles as they sing looking a bit strained and false. The backyard's picnic table is an ucky mess, so they put it on a folding table with a colorfull tablecloth they've set up next to the house.

"Duty calls. It was nice to meet you," says Bruno as he stands up, "And thanks for not talking down to me. Or you know, like I'm this strange kid..."

Here I am, a man in a hoop skirt and pink blouse with rainbow eyelashes, and he's worried about me judging him! My God, what an absurdly self-obsessed species we can be! My shrieking ninny laugh erupts from me again, but this time I don't try to quell it ........ I give up! At a time when not much about my life feels good, this feels good! Laughing uncontrollably, I bob my head and hold out my fist.

"You should really go out on your own as a clown. You're clearly in the right profession," he grins as he knocks his fist against mine, then he lopes off across the yard, leaving me here braying like a gooble-head.

Although the little table is somewhat sheltered by the house the candle flames are bent nearly horizontal, and a few need to be relit so Bruno can blow them out. Janice records this seminal moment with a modernistic looking little camcorder, and then him methodically cutting the cake and doling it out. Tricia tries to MC the proceedings until Janice rudely shoos her off. She wants no record of this loutish stranger in their family video archives.

Bruno and his mom banter idly as she films him opening his presents. At first he seems like just a regular boy on his birthday, all smiles and effusive thanks. But then I see how each present he unwraps gets a response virtually identical to the last. Granny's packet of underwear elicits the same exact, "Cool, just what I wanted!" as the latest hit video game...

While this is going on Miss Tricia folds up chairs from the mostly abandoned array of them, loads them onto Dolly (her Daliesque dolly) and hauls them out through the gate. I don't feel like being helpful, and she isn't asking for help. In fact she's studiously avoiding eye contact with me...

Ten minutes later they're all massing up the porch steps, going into the house. With just mine and six other chairs remaining out here Tricia seems satisfied that she has a big head start on tonight's cleanup. She abandons her hand truck and joins them. Janice---bringing up the rear---calls out to me, "Come on Beverly, we're in here now!"

"Maybe in a bit."

Something in her smile tells me that she knows that I'm lying, that I don't intend to budge from here as she says, "Okay sweetie. But if you need anything don't hesitate to hollar."

And now I'm alone out here, in this odd little patch of darkness where the porchlight doesn't seem to reach. It seems appropriate somehow...

While my stomach is feeling a bit better than it was a while ago, my "tits" have progressed from a terrible itching to an even worse aching; as bad as I imagine real ones would feel after they'd been liberated from that infamous wringer. It's an uncanny illusion, how full and heavy they feel, as if they are actually the size of the rubber contrivance covering them-

Unless this is no illusion! Tricia's family has connections to Nanodyne ........ Could she have gotten ahold of a nanobot swarm, programmed it and injected me with it? Little microscopic cutters, gobblers and shufflers at work all through my body, inexorably changing me? And wait a minute- Hadn't she even joked about such a thing, as I was waking up from that so-called nap this afternoon?! OH MY G-

Then again, it's probably far more likely that my imagination has gone off its rails here. Hasn't "I've been infected with nanites" become one of the most common paranoid delusions in recent years? The notion that Tricia would do such a thing to me---or with the security those nanotech facilities have, even could---is eerily similar to the sort of shit my mom was coming up with during those last days with her, our apocalyptic adventures in that darkened house. She was certain that a malign sentience called the Umonium was turning people into soulless facsimiles of themselves, so slowly that they didn't even realize it was happening. As irrational as all that was, the idea of someone being transformed into some sort of permanent clown through nanotechnology is just as crazy. If not crazier...
.

.
#.19)===[THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER...]==>
.

The last strands of color fade from the night sky. I pull the blanket tighter around my self and sit thinking about insane women.

My mom was the first and the worst of them, because she was so special to me and had actually been incredibly dependable for so many years, but mentally disturbed women have turned up in my life with a disturbing regularity...

Mary Phillips was my best friend in third through sixth grade. We discovered a parallel world that could be travelled to by touching the metal plates at the base of any streetlight. A nice enough place, except that if certain shadows touched you, you'd just disappear. The fact that we both totally believed in this land---and wrote a whole Baedeker for it---might not have been insanity, but just us being kids. But her fascination with setting larger and larger fires was not so ambiguous, and it finally got her in a heap of trouble before her parents whisked her off to another town...

Which (skipping over the strangely morbid Iris Nichols of my junior high days, since it was never clear whether her death was a suicide or an accident...) is quite similar to what happened to Jamie O'Rourke, who was my high school girlfreind briefly; a relationship I still feel had held promise. She was an openly bi girl with a zealot's belief in "be yourself" and "to hell with what THEY all think"; and my social and (as far as it went) sexual mentor for all of four weeks. My redheaded Alpha with all her frank & horny talk.

But unfortunately Jamie imagined herself a revolutionary warrior on all the important fronts of liberation, and I wound up stranded---dateless and gawked at---halfway through the junior prom, after she was hauled off out of the parking lot after the cops nabbed her for gouging things like ECO-RAPE and PIGGIES! into the paint of a dozen cars that had bumper stickers whose message she found offensive. Some of them ("VISIT THE TENNESSEE CAVES OF MYSTERY") for reasons known only to her.

She returned from the reformatory in our senior year, no longer on the bisexual fence but a confirmed lesbian: "You are just about perfect Billy. Damn it, why couldn't you be a womyn?"

At which my Beverly-self screamed: "Don't be a chickenshit- TELL HER!", while Blockhead Billy held firm to the helm, cautioning: "She's too reckless with her honesty, she'll blab this to everyone! Let's just try to get through high school in one piece here. Maybe after graduation."

But that next summer she went away for good. She swore that she didn't assault that officer, and that the misogynist bastard had been a victim of nothing more than his own clumsiness. But her laughter at the sight of his taped-up nose when he entered the courtroom didn't exactly endear her to the jury. We wrote each other a couple of times before that fizzled out. People told me that this was just as well, but in her own way Jamie did love me...

Far more than Shelly ever did, despite all the rabid fucking we were doing. And perhaps Shelly wasn't clinically insane, but a few days into one of her meth runners the distinction was academic. Like when she flew off the handle because I asked what television show she was watching, like this was some crafty veiled put-down; or peering out through the shuttered blinds muttering about a "suspicious looking" crow on the neighbor's roof. Spun...

So why did I suppose that Miss Tricia would be any different? Who was I kidding? And I guess as bad as this hurts it's better to suffer our breakup now than somewhere way off down the road, after I'd grown used to our being there for each other, to the contentment of sleeping in her arms.

And one important thing has come out of my meeting her. I've been awoken to the fact that I HAVE to be a woman. To be Beverly. It's just no longer enough for this girl's life to exist as substanceless projections playing in my head as I lie in bed at night. Somehow today I have moved from "Wouldn't it be wonderful?" to "How do I start this? Who do I speak with?" So whatever her intentions, I do have Tricia to thank for that.

I pull Betty's business card from where I'd stashed it, under the elastic at the top of my polka-dot stocking, and stare at it thinking...

The counter at a dry-cleaner's doesn't sound like nearly as much fun as my job at The Party Zone, and I've been promised that the pay there will suck, but it does have one advantage. It seems less scary to me to just start over in a place where no one ever knew me as Billy than to explain this radical change I've embarked on to Linda, Cherie, Michael and especially George- a swell old guy but would he be so swell about this?

I imagine myself getting a new place somewhere across town (nothing too ritzy, maybe on the nicer end of the Rainbow Quarter, away from the parade-day craziness of Catastrophe Street...) and slowly building up a decent female wardrobe- pretty skirts and dresses---about a jillion of 'em!---and whatever kind of nice shoes they have in my size.

I could work for Betty 6 to 8 months, being the model of perky professionalism and customer service ........ until something better came along. Maybe some business friend of hers, a glowing reference from Betty. I really hate to lose her, but I realize Bev needed to move on to something better...

It's a good plan, unless I've been injected with nanoscopic clownbots. I guess I'll know by tomorrow whether I'm delusional, or a clown, or a she-man, or some combination of the three.

"Didn't you get any cake?"

Lost in thought, I didn't even notice there was a man standing next to me until this question coming out of nowhere made me jump in my seat.

"Oh crap, you scared me!" I say, and when I raise my eyes to look at him I startle again, shrieking shrilly.

It's not cool to scream at the sight of an African American man, but he is a tall, tough looking guy who bears a remarkable resemblance to the merciless hit man Samuel L. Jackson played in Pulp Fiction. He's wearing a suit pretty much identical to the one that character wore and his eyes are hard and wary, like he's ready for any kind of trouble. The red calico do-rag sitting snugly on his head adds a gangsta touch to the outfit. I sure don't remember him being at the party...

He holds out a paper plate with a chunk of birthday cake and a plastic fork on it and says in a rather somber tone. "I would've got you a piece with a ballplayer on it, but their heads were all melted. You need to eat this. You really do."

"Thanks," I say and take it from him, even though I don't want it.

We stare at each other. Whatever he wants with me I don't need this right now. I ask, "So are you ......... a friend of Bruno's?"

He frowns, "No. I missed the party, I'm afraid. I just came to bring you this cake, and to let you know it's going to be okay, even if things get a little hairy. You'll be back to your old plainface life pretty soon now."

"I intend to. I'm done with all this," I say, tugging on my costume's red lace collar, "And with her."

"After that routine she put you through no one could blame you for that! It's sad when a clown goes skyhook like this," he says with a weary shake of his head. And now he doesn't seem like a hoodlum but a television detective; one of those older, seasoned ones who have seen too much of this world's ugliness. "Especially a performer who showed the kind of promise she had..."

"You really think she's talented?"

"I saw her when she was just starting out, a small part in the Doctor Augustus Review when she was about seventeen. Astonishing. She could've one of the best. A clown's clown," he says, never cracking a smile. "Or a clown's clown's clown. Or a clown's clown's clown's clown. A clown's clown's clown's clown's clown's-"

"I get the idea!"

"Sorry," he frowns, "That kind of got away from me. Eat that cake. It's what the doctor ordered."

I have no desire to eat anything, and if I did it sure the hell wouldn't be this. A perfect cube of bright pink dough studded with slivers of maraschino cherry and topped by a waxy Playskool green icing; just looking at it is making me nauseous. Its jarring hues remind me of my luridly made-up face. Neither food nor people should be colors like these...

"Mmmmm, I will. Looks yummy," I say as I casually lean down and set it on the grass in front of me, "So are you like a cop or something?"

"Or something," he says and then he hops away, in a way that seems to defy gravity- until I catch sight of the heavy springs in the heels of his platform shoes. Each jump takes him higher than the last, and on the fifth he bounds right over the backyard's wall and into the adjoining yard.

Okay, I think, Now now none of that could’ve actually happened.

But there's the chunk of cake he'd brought me sitting at my feet. I squash it with my shoe...
.

.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART 6...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4eUSmUWsUY&feature=related