PREVIOUSLY ON HUMOR ME: Billy X. had a crush on the little clown Miss Tricia, and he was delighted when she asked him to fill in for her sidekick one day. Secretly unsure of his masculinity, Billy had major issues with dressing up as a girl clown. But he got over them, got made up, and now---after a nice refreshing roofie nap---he is about to take his first trip out into the world "en clownne". Little does he realize that he has signed up for something stranger and far more consequential than just a one day job ....... AND NOW, PART TWO.

======== HUMOR ME
======== by LAIKA
======== Part Two: DIVINE CHAOS

.
"I swear, people have more fun than anybody!"
~~~Lemuel Q. Stoopnagel

.
[====> I am lying here, sprawled across the cracked and weathered vinyl seat of this derelict Tilt-O-Whirl car, getting some sun (of course I don't actually tan from this, but it feels good) while I review my notes for this memoir. In Book One, in the part where I first saw myself in this outfit, I see that I had written: "I'm glad this is such a silly costume I'm wearing---these high-top purple clodhoppers making the whole ensemble look even more ridiculous---and not some attempt to turn me into a ravishing beauty..."

But from a vantage point of 7 months later, I have to ask myself: Was I as glad for the sheer goofiness
of my face and outfit as I was insisting? Or was I not in fact deeply disappointed by the facetiousness
of my transformation? It seems this way now, but who can say? As Thorenstein said: "Memory is the great revisionist."............ But I DO know that---in retrospect, the deed having been done---I would much prefer that my mistress had made me into a lady-thing that was not nearly so ........... exotic. One who at least has options as to how she will live, instead of being A ZANY AND NOTHING BUT---with this clown suit permanently affixed to my body, my candy-colored skin, the pot belly that no amount of dieting will remedy (which she loves to rub, calling me her"stuck piglet")---doomed to skulk around the Monkeyshine District with all the other freaks & mutants!

While I am absent many of the regrets you might expect or even insist that I have, there is one that still torments me- WHY CAN'T SHE HAVE MADE ME PRETTY?!?! That's what's so awful. Knowing that she had the means to, and yet did this.

I mean sure, SHE thinks that I'm beautiful, but she's a CRAZY PERSON, a CLOWN FETISHIST!! And sure The Bughouse Gang all think I'm hot, but they're A BUNCH OF BUFFOONS! And for that matter: WHY ME?!!? Was it simply that I was available, finding myself in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or did The One Who Turned Me observe something in my nature, things that I could never admit to myself---A WILLINGNESS, A COWARD'S YEARNING FOR SLAVERY---which suggested I was a candidate for Punkin' Judydom? .......... They say hindsight is 20-20, but mine is like some mad funhouse mirror, and the harder I look into it the less clear everything gets...

But there is a whole lot about this new life I love. Maybe more on this later. The sun has moved to a point behind the Wonder Wheel. Guess I'll go inside...]

.
#5.)=====[ THE MAN IN THE GORILLA SUIT IS ME ]====>

Someone is crushing my nose. Saying: "Honk! Honk!"

I startle awake, not knowing where I am for a second. "What the-"

Miss Tricia is grinning down at me. She rachets the chair up into sitting position, saying, "I can not believe you slept through all of that! I had to be my own audience for the last couple of hours. Nobody likes a Miss Nancy Narcolepsy!"

I gingerly touch my nose, my fingers finding a slick rubbery sphere the size of a ping pong ball. "That really hurt!"

"Oh puh-leez! It couldn't have hurt that much," she scowls, then says brightly, "I decided that you didn't need the Judy wig after all. That short haircut looks so darn cute on you! You want to see what you missed while you were conked out?"

"Sure," I tell her. She unclips a long rectangular mirror from the underside of the toolbox's lid and holds it up in front of me, gripping it by its gold plastic frame.

From the red lace neck of this blouse clear up into my hairline, most of my face is a uniform soapy white. The cotton-candy blush of my cheeks stands out jarringly against it, as does this big pink heart in the middle of my forehead (this insignia strikes me as oddly cult-like for some reason. Strawberry Shortcake meets the Manson Girls...). She has given me a huge red frowny mouth. Its hooked ends run halfway down my jaw, which she had apparently shaved for me. Experimentally, I run a finger across my jaw, pressing down.

"Wow, that is a close shave. What did you use?"

"Thousands of tiny robots."

I roll my eyes, "What? Borg nano-probes?"

"Yes. You will be one of us now," she says in emotionless monotone, "Resistance- Shit, that isn't funny! You're going to hate me..."

"Jesus, it wasn't that bad of a joke! Fine then, keep your 'trade secret' if you don't want to tell me."

I must have been completely out of it to have slept through all her cosmetic ministrations, especially when she pressed these giant false lashes onto my eyelids. They change color as they go across: red > orange > yellow > green > blue > purple. As a counterpoint to these, the nails on each of my hands have been painted in five different colors in what looks like metal flake Testors model paint. Kind of cool, actually.

"Thanks for not going too crazy with these...."

She had been staring off across the room, her expression clouded. "Huh?"

I hold my hand up. "These artificial nails. At least I'll be able to use my fingers."

"Oh yeah, artificial. Those were, uh- the shortest ones I could find."

"Well I'm glad. My mom, when she was still at home, hers were always so long she was always like 'Couldja get that for me, hon?' It didn't seem practical at all. But she's like that. Puts a lot into how she looks. Or she was, she did..."

"She's dead? I'm sorry!"

"No, she's in Osterberg State Mental Hospital. She's pretty messed up. She was always so stylish, so funny and full of life until the day she just ........ lost it," I sigh, watching the inappropriately zany face hanging before me say the same dismal words.

Oversized purple teardrops droop from the outside corner of each of my eyes, like prison tattoos. Inky black makeup has greatly increased the width and length of my eyebrows, while giving them a distinctly feminine arch. And then there is this spherical red nose, that I can see without the mirror, and which threatens to make me go crosseyed if I keep staring down at it.

"Do you like it?"

"I'm really not an expert on the asthetics of this, uh, artform. What would make a face design good or bad. But yeah, I guess so."

It's unnerving how unfamiliar this face looks. And I don't mean the ghostly pallor, or the nose, but how the overall shape of it seems so much softer, less angular. The changes are so implausible that I wonder if this is some kind of trick mirror she is holding. The woman is a jester after all.

But when I wave a person who could be my eighteen year old sister---if I had a sister, and my sister was a clown---waves back. It's like a gimmick from some Magritte painting. Disorienting, and more than a little creepy...

I am reminded of a science show I saw on PBS once. It told about how huge areas of the human cerebrum are devoted to face recognition, an important survival skill, since unlike most mammals we (hopefully) don't recognize our kinsmen by sense of smell. It is a highly complex pattern recognition program we are hardwired with, and while it feels totally natural to us, it is far from perfect. It's the reason that people from races that we weren't raised around seem to "all look the same" to us.

The show went on to discuss strange glitches that can arise in this programming. Like this one obscure neurological disorder, eerily similar to what I am experiencing here, where your own reflection suddenly looks utterly foreign to you- leading you to terrifying doubts about whether you're even real or not! Whodat Syndrome, I believe it's called...

Miss Tricia must have read my thoughts. She says, "Amazing what you can accomplish with a little makeup and face putty."

"I would say so!"

But how could adding on putty make my whole jawline seem smaller and less angular? I lean in toward my reflection, cautiously palpitating the tender bright red bulb of my nose, "Wow, how did you stick that on there?"

Tricia bruskly yanks the mirror away and clips it back into place inside the makeup case. Closes the lid. "Come on, we really have to get going. The longer we leave those kids waiting the worse they're gonna be!"

"But the party isn't until three-thirty."

"Which gives us exactly forty-eight minutes to get there and get set up."

I glance up at the wall clock. "Jesus! Why didn't you wake me?"

She smiles wistfully, "You looked so peaceful. I just didn't have the heart to..."

I lower the chair, stagger to my feet under the weight of the rubber vest. This costume is going to take some getting used to. These eyelashes are so huge that every time I blink my eyes I am startled. Like rainbow colored bats are swooping in at me from out of nowhere!

"Come on, Pumpkin Pie! If we hurry we'll just have time to hit the Nasty Joe's on McFarland. It'll be my treat," she says as she grabs the makeup box.

I take the suitcase. It's a lot lighter now with just the pink boots in it. I scoop my wallet and keys up off the counter, but then realize that this Punkin' Judy suit doesn’t have any pockets in it.

"I'll hold on to those for you," says Miss Tricia, sticking her hand out. I give them to her.

As we're stepping through the door she reaches up under my skirt and squeezes my ass in a lewd, proprietary way!

I am ashamed of the submissive thrill this sends through me, and of the image that springs unbidden into my mind: Of her shoving me roughly backward onto the bed and flipping up my skirt. Of being engulfed in the muscular wet grip of her vagina and being violently ridden while she holds down my wrists, my head snapping from side to side in a white hot delirium of surrender!

It seems like there had been a time when I was not so pathologically passive, when I could imagine being on top. But that was all it really was. Imagining. Shelly had been my very first girlfriend, and she took control right from the start. I can't say that she made me this way, but she sure did bring it out in me ........... And now here I am, with yet another woman who clearly has a dominant streak, and likes to call me by girly names. I am dreading where this might be heading; and also suspecting that all my "dread" is just so much face saving bullshit, masking strange and terrible desires...

Dreams of subjugation ........... of blissful capitulation .......... lessons in makeup and deportment ........ gold star from Teacher ......... in flouncing, mincing; the idiot sissy minstrelry of Little Miss Me ........ Now pink pills from an Anna Nicole Pez dispenser ......... My unneeded old wardrobe set out on the curb for them trashmens so big and scary I has to hide behind Miss Tricia, my tinygirl face buried in the comforting softness of her butt ........... Until finally I am led down impossible corridors to my Subterranean Princess Prison, its suffocating girlieness snuffing out the last defeated shreds of my masculinity. This is your home now, do you like it?

"Oh yes Miss Trissie, it is boo-full! I yam so happy! You sure saw through me ......... You has taught me to exult in the fathomless sea of yeilding at my core, this existential minus sum I has becomed!"

I shake my head. Weird where my imagination goes sometimes!

Cutting across the lawn to the parking area she hooks a hand around my arm, lifting and cradling it, patting my wrist with her other hand, "It'll be okay, Baby. You're gonna be fine."

I don't get the impression that she's speaking of our upcoming performance, but about what I was just envisioning. Like she has been reading my mind again.

Out in the carport old Mrs. Piguini is sweeping her parking slot with a kitchen broom, knocking the leaves into the adjoining spaces. Keeping it tidy in case she gets that surprise visit from the Pope or whoever she thinks is coming to see her.

She does not return my wave but scowls, silently informing us that she doesn't approve of us parking in Jim Devonshire's assigned space either. You might think it had something to do with her seeing me in my new neon transvestite frippery, but this is how she always is. She stares daggers at us until we have pulled out and disappeared around the corner of the building.

You're a pip, Mrs. Piguini!

.
#.6)===[ DARKNESS AT NOON ]==>

Down Korova Street, a canyon of ancient brick warehouse buildings with weird artifacts on display in the windows and hanging from the fire escapes. Miss Tricia cranes her neck this way and that, taking in all the junk-art goodies. "Wow, when did all these artist's lofts go in here?"

"I don't know when it started, but there's been more and more of them over the year and a half I've been here. You never saw these?"

"No, and I've lived in Star City all my life."

"Yeah, me too. Or at least since I was around two, which makes me all but technically a native. I love this city! San Francisco might have better views, with how it's laid out and everything, but we have just as much cool stuff..."

We swing out onto Van Helsing Boulevard, narrowly avoiding a colorful jitney cab, whose driver seems to be putting way too much faith in all those little idols on his dashboard.

"There's a great view from Seven Hills District," she says, "It's beautiful. The towers on Star Harbor Bridge all lit up at night."

"Sure, but who can afford to live there? ........... Oh."

"Yeah," she grins ruefully, "I grew up on 'Plutocrat Peak'---private school, all that---but I never really fit in there. I'm more of a 'Shine kind of girl."

"I wasn't putting Seven Hills down or anything-"

"I was. Buncha bozophobic assholes!"

"I was just saying, I mean where else could you see something like this?" I chuckle as we pass the Nanodyne building. Sixty stories tall, it looks like an enormous computer cursor arrow that had dropped out of the sky point first, and stuck itself into a grassy hillock. "Or this?"

The boulevard ahead splits in two as we rush toward a pair of tunnel entrances sculpted into stylized Greek masks- the westbound lanes emerging from Comedy's Stan Laurel grin, our lanes disappearing into the mouth of Tragedy.

"These go back to the days of the WPA," I tell her. "Some lucky Italian stoneworkers probably got a year's wages out of this project."

"I know. And I also know these used to give me nightmares when I was little," she says, cringing in what sounds like actual dread. "Oh no, it's gonna eat us! NOOOOOOO-"

"You know, I'd kind of prefer it if you drove with your eyes open."

And then we are in the brightly lit white-tiled tube, barrelling throught the heart of Parnassus Hill. We emerge onto the #99 freeway, heading South.

As I try to find a decent station on the radio, I catch sight of myself in the van's rearview mirror ........ At least my new employer hadn't messed with my hair much. She had just dumped a bunch of mousse into it and scrambled it up, so that my two inches of jet black hair gleams wetly, with little points stick out in all directions.

If I was wearing a dangerous leather jacket the effect might be rather punk rockish. But in this context, with the pink top and frilly red lace collar, and my stunned-looking and disconcertingly delicate face ............ it makes me look like some teenage female mental patient, one who is just too out of it to think about fixing her hair. Juliette Lewis on Haldol.

And once again I am thinking about my Mom. How she got. It was horrible to see her with her hair all lank and tangled, her expression dull, face pasty and deeply-lined whenever Aunt Apollina and I went to see her on visiting days.

I had always loved my Aunt Apollina. She was that exceptional, somewhat offbeat and slightly scandalous relative that some kids are fortunate to have. Although she wasn't even from Mom's side of the family, she was the one person willing to go down to that depressing warehouse-for-lost-souls with me every Saturday, even when half the time my mother barely responded to us. And when she did respond it was with a sadness that just stomped your heart flat.

"How's your father?" she would ask, assuming I had heard from him. Unwilling to think bad of him even then.

I would always make something up; that he had taken me to the zoo or some place, and that I was sure he would be visiting her soon; when in fact the selfish chickenshit---who had skipped out on us right when Mom was at her most vulnerable!---was nowhere to be found.

I used to dream about of having a house for us, that I could somehow step up for the bastard who left us, could provide a place where she could live with some dignity, surrounded by things she loved, and having someone caring for her who regarded her as more than just another anonymous gullet to stuff meds down. But I was twelve years old. I couldn't do anything for her. I felt so fucking helpless!

And even now, while I could make a space for her in my apartment, and could probably afford to feed us both, what I couldn't do is leave her alone there when I was at work. But even getting her into a better hospital would be a huge step up. Even if I'm a slacker with no huge ambitions for myself, I should at least-

Miss Tricia sees me staring at my image and sputters in mock exasperation, "Good Grief, just look at you preening! You just can't get enough of yourself, can you?"

"WHAT?! No I wasn't!"

She twists the mirror down so that neither of us can use it, "Well that will be enough of that, young lady. I mean I'm glad that you appreciate how gorgeous you are, but nobody likes a Miss Connie Conceited!"

.
#.7)===[ THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR WOMAN ]====>

The drive-thru line at the Nasty Joe's looks impossible. She produces a pair of plastic bicycle horns for each of us and we go in, honking and hollaring that US CLOWNS NEED SOME COFFEEEEE!!

The staff smiles indulgently. Kids are squealing- that such divine chaos could have dropped into their lives so unexpectedly! And I can't stop laughing like a blithering idiot. Especially after Miss Tricia cries out, "Just look at my poor assistant here! She's going into withdrawals!!!"

As we climb back into the van I am in incredible spirits. It was good silly fun in there, and this 30 oz. white mocha/kahlua Frozee Inferno is exactly what I needed to wake up!

And at about midpoint during our escapade I had looked over at Tricia. The outlaw pose she struck as she stood firing her horns toward the ceiling like six-guns seemed so incredibly dashing! Our eyes met, and she broke into this huge shit eating grin .......... and I realized that not only was I utterly and gloriously IN LOVE, but there were clear indications that the feeling was mutual!

This day sure hasn't turned out like I expected! I figured that I would be poking through the dim musty warrens of ATOZ BOOKS with my list of authors about now, lost in my solitary, ruminative pursuit. Fun enough, in its way.

But now here I am speeding down the freeway ........ under skies of purest azure, dotted with winsome little cumulus clouds ....... seated here beside this wondrous being; The Amazing Technicolor Woman .......... the both of us dressed in these outlandish outfits and singing along with the novelty number on the oldies station:

"Goodbye Cruel World, I'm off to join the circus,
gonna be a broken-hearted clown...
Paint my face with a good for nothin' smile,
'cuz a mean fickle woman turned
my
.... whole
......... world upside down!"

Several offramps later we pick up the cake at Cosimo's Bakery. It is huge; a green and tan schematic baseball diamond with outfielders, basemen, a pitcher, etc., all detailed little candles. Each is slightly different and they are posed like real players. The pitcher's cheek bulges like it is packed with chew. There is tenth figure, a batter at the plate, but the wick in his head has been clipped off. I imagine for kids older than ten you can add men on base. Then umpires, coaches, managers, costumed mascots, and drunken fans running across the infield with security people chasing them. When I tell this idea to Miss Tricia she starts laughing so hard she almost drops her end of the cake.

As we speed up the onramp and back onto the #99 Freeway she mutters, "Man, did I score this time!"

"This job? It's paying well?"

"I meant you," she smiles, her gaze steadfast and tender. "I sure do like you. I really hope you're the one."

I grin back, holding eye contact with her as long as I can, but I've never been comfortable with praise as direct as this. I look down, pretending that I'm trying to straighten out the rigid hem of my skirt.

A bit later, looking into the rearview mirror on my side, I see a vehicle that seems very familiar. "Whoah! I swear, that van is following us..."

"What van?"

"That stripey one. Klown Kleaners. They were on the freeway before the coffee place, and then took the same off ramp as us on the way to the bakery. It's getting kind of creepy."

She sighed heavily, "Oh well it was a good run while it lasted. Looks like they've finally caught up with me..."

"Who?"

"The Clown FBI! Their northwest branch has been trying to build a case against me for years."

"You're weird," I laugh.

"I'm weird? I'm not the one who's getting all flipped-out paranoid. That's a big company, those vans are everywhere, and obviously it isn't the same one. Of course you're seeing them, you're thinking 'clown' now."

I had seen how Shelly---when under the influence---could turn any little string of coincidences into a cosmic conspiracy and shook my head, embarrassed. "Oh yeah..."

The highway takes us inland, across the corner of the state marshland preserve. It seems the party is way out in Oceana, one of those sprawling, fresh-out-of-the-box suburban townships that could be anywhere.

We get off on Abraxis Boulevard, and a mile later turn into a housing tract with some instantly forgettable name like Morningland Vista. The drab earthtone houses cycle past in a dizzying repetition, like the background scrolling by in a cheap cartoon.

We find Sage Meadow Willow Creek Lane, Miss Tricia driving slower and slower as I call out the house numbers. And then we are here.

.
<===[ END OF PART TWO ]===>

.
====[ NOTES: ]=====>

.
[====> Lyrics to "Goodbye Cruel World" copyright 1961, 1963 etc. by Gloria Shayne. This song was recorded in 1963 by James Darren (who would later play the holographic Las Vegas crooner character Vic Fontaine on STAR TREK DS9...)

[====> Mrs. Piguini appears courtesy of Spiralling Agony Comics...