THIS SERIES CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF FORCED BOZOFICATION, BIZARRE NOSE MODIFICATION, SELTZER-WATER SPORTS AND PIE PLAY. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE "CLOWNDOM" STORIES PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS ONE. IT WILL ONLY UPSET YOU...

======== HUMOR ME
======== by LAIKA PUPKINO
======== Part One: TURNING PUNKIN' JUDY

[===> As I review my notes here in this abandoned fun house deep in the Monkeyshine District, I am aware that this memoir has ended up a lot longer than the few pages I had assumed it would take. But the more I wrote the more important it became to chronicle the events of that day---my bizarre transformation and everything that led up to it---EXACTLY as I remember them. It would sadden me terribly to think that Billy Xenakis had disappeared off the face of the Earth without leaving at least some record. So please. Humor me here...]

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"When you put on the nose, it grows..."
~ The Firesign Theater.
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#1.)===[ PROLOGUE: THE LAST DAYS OF BILLY X. ]=====>

My part time job at the Party Zone didn't pay a hell of a lot, but then it really didn't have to. It only had to bring in a little something extra for me between the end of one year's commercial fishing season and the date in Spring when we could start going out again. A supplement to the money I had nested away during the fat months, like the prudent little animal in some fable.

This was my third off-season working at the Zone. I found it pleasantly sane and relaxed compared to life onboard the freezer trawler Brave Ulysses, which often felt like I was trapped in some unending episode of JACKASS. With that crew you constantly had to watch your back, and often found yourself turning in at night to a bunk filled with slimy fish heads. Rowdy good fun for a day or so, but it got old quick. And you could forget about reading anything that required any concentration. My shipmates seemed desperate to prove something with all this adolescent ruckus. Maybe they thought that if you shout loud enough that you're having fun you will be. And Uncle Dimitri---the putative leader of this bunch, who should've been a stabilizing counterforce to their idiocy---was the worst of the lot! (Although I really am grateful to him for taking me in when my mom went off to the hospital. For raising me, when rearing a child was really the last thing he had ever planned on doing, and for teaching me a fairly well paying profession...)

So the retail sales job was a nice change of pace. I liked that the store was only a couple of blocks from my apartment, and loved the fact that I had a home to go to each night instead of being at sea for weeks at a stretch. This seemed like an arrangement that would work out for me as long as George owned the party shop and my uncle had his boat. Or one of these days I might even get serious and go back to college. I had no way of knowing that these would be the crowning years of the life I once knew. Before that ill-fated encounter that would turn me into the laughable monstrosity I am today...

We had managed to get through the madness of the Halloween thru New Year's, and were well into in the "who wants to go home early" season. Business was slower now, but we still had our regulars coming in. Teachers, caterers, and this one squirrelly kid who was working his way through our entire inventory of practical joke items week by week as his meager allowance permitted. And of course Miss Tricia the Clown...

Miss Tricia was one busy little clown. Always stopping by en route to one of her gigs to pick up streamers, balloons and helium. She admitted that she could get a better deal at the Uber-Mart, but she said she liked our selection better. It was less drably generic, helping her tailor her parties to each kid's tastes.

I liked that she was such a perfectionist about her job, a genuine artiste. And although there were perhaps more beautiful women who came into the store---those statuesque doctor's wives with the graceful bearing of models---I liked HER. I liked her a lot. Miss Tricia looked to be about thirty, which would make her roughly nine years my senior; and I could tell she was actually quite pretty under all that heavy greasepaint. I was dying to see what she looked like without it, and wished that just once she would come in wearing civilian clothes.

Her makeup was white with big blue triangles bracketting her dark eyes. She wore a Raggedy-Anneish wig of bright red yarn that ended in a pair of ribboned pigtails. The ends of her red and white gingham shirt were tied together at the bottom to expose her svelte, white-painted midriff, which was about the only way I could tell she had a nice body. Those pants were so baggy; and the shirt covered a bosom that while artificially large was a single shapleless mass; clearly not intended as something sexual. Her nails were an exotic high gloss black but as short as any guy's.

The only part of her get-up that might be considered suggestive was her mouth. Not some big old sloppy jeering grin but tiny red bow lips like a geisha- which somehow worked to emphasize rather than minimize her boisterous persona. It was disconcerting to hear that enormous voice coming out of such a delicate face. The incongruity of it.

I felt a surge of hope when I spotted the business card on the bulletin board up by the registers. A winged unicorn trailing a tricolor chunk of rainbow behind it with "MISS TRICIA THE CLOWN. BIRTHDAYS. SPECIAL EVENTS." and her phone number on it. It was good to know that if I ever had a sudden fit of courage I could actually call her up.

But how do you ask a clown for a date? As with a disabled person or a member of another race, there is a whole shitload of social baggage that comes with the awareness that they are physically different, and that certain unenlightened souls make a big deal out of this; So that you're thinking that they might be thinking thay you think that way. Should I just come right out and try to clear the air about the issue, telling her: "HEY, I'M NOT PREJUDICED"? Or would this only serve to convince here that I am obsessed with the matter, and not truly cool about it?

Thoughts of this nature spun round and round in my head like some evil screeching whirligig until I was a nattering mass of indecision........Would she suspect me of having some awful CLOWN FETISH?!

I found it troubling that while she used only her crazy sing-song clown voice when speaking to me, she would occasionally talk normally to our other employees. Despite the friendliness of the words she spoke, this contrived Miss Tricia personality seemed like something she was using to maintain a distance between us...

[====> And if only she had kept that distance! But in late February came the day that would change everything, as I was abruptly yanked out of my complacent life and forced to become a part of her twilight world, her bizarre schemes! The day of my irreparable transformation, my nightmare descent into this dickless bozo vassaldom... ]

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#2.)=====[ AN EASY FIFTY BUCKS ]=====>

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are my days off. Knowing that the season of hard work and long hours is approaching, I spend these weekly "vacations" just being a total self-indulgent bum. Tearing around Vermillion Dunes on my little 100cc XK Stuka, reading Raymond Chandler novels, or just watching a numbing succession of crappy daytime t.v. shows...

We get paid each Thursday, and since the store is so close to my apartment, and Old Downtown is just another few blocks in the same direction, I normally don't even bother to take my truck. I can drop by to pick up my check, take care of the bills, splurge on lunch at a fancy restaurant (fancy meaning any place where you eat from an actual plate and don't have to unwrap your food...), browse for a few used books or cds or videos, then hit the UberMart for whatever groceries I need for the week.

Most days I found myself working alongside a big-hearted but quite ditzy young woman named Cherie. While some guys might find spending whole days in her company on par with getting a root canal, her endless chatter about celebrities---and my often being called on to lend a sympathetic ear regarding her boyfriend problems or those epic fights with her mom---also seemed like a refreshing change of pace. Maybe it was being so close to my mom as a kid, but I tend to get along pretty well with women.

My check is tucked safely away in my wallet, and George is showing me the florescent lights he wants me to change when I come in on Saturday. With his phlebitis and Cherie and Linda's fear of heights, I'm the one who gets volunteered to go up the giant ladder. I offer to do this for him today.

"No Billy, I'd rather wait until we-" he starts to say, when I see his eyes narrowing, sense him tensing up at the sight of something behind me.

At the same time I hear Cherie cry out: "Yayyyy! It's the clown lady!"

I have noticed George's reaction to Miss Tricia before. It is quite subtle; he treats her with the same jolly deference he shows to all our customers. But for someone who spends as much money in here as she does there's clearly something about her that George doesn't care for or trust. Which is odd, because she is very much the same sort of whimsical gregarious ham that he is. You would think the two of them would hit it right off...

Cherie is pretending that she has mentally regressed to about the age of five, like she does at some point every time the woman shops here. Giggling, "Make me a ami-nal balloon, Miss Trishia!"

"I don't knoooow, Cherieee," croons the clown in a ridiculously morose and dull-witted voice, "Ballooons don't grow on treeeees, yuh knoooow..."

"Please! Please! Please! Please!"

Of course Cherie will get her balloon aminal. This is just a game they go through. She likes to dangle them from the replica old-fashioned traffic light that hangs above her register (green for open, red for closed) until they are so shrivelled and fried that George makes her toss them out.

Miss Tricia approaches me and George, wanting me to help her find items that might be good for to a baseball-themed party for a nine year old boy.

George steps forward, sort of standing in front of me, and tells her that today's my day off and I probably have stuff I need to do. This seems like a bit of an overreaction. Like he thinks I'm such a hopeless people pleaser that I'll wind up doing things I don't want to unless he intervenes for me.

"But I kinda have to talk to him," says Miss Tricia, staring down at her pointy zebra-striped cowboy boots, as if what she needs to discuss with me is personal and perhaps embarrassing.

I turn to George. "It's okay, I don't mind."

In fact it's much more than okay. I have always felt that Tricia might be interested in me too, but it's hard to tell. Is it flirting to tell somebody: "I like you, you're silly"? Or is she merely getting into character for the day ahead?

When he realizes that he's not going to stop me he relents. He points at my t-shirt (a bespectacled young "Hairy Pothead" with a spiky leaf-shaped scar on his forehead, intently brandishing a magic wand-sized marijuana cigarette) and smirks, "I ought to drug test your miserable ass for coming in here wearing that. All right, but just try not to act like you work here!"

I follow her around while she finds what she needs. She is quick about it, knowing where everything is around here almost as well as I do, stopping only to ask me my opinions: "Which kind of paper plates should we get? These Seattle Mariners ones or the Giants?"

It's nice that Miss Tricia is using her regular voice with me for a change. She sounds a lot like Jennifer Jason Leigh---simultaneously imperious and vulnerable, very sexy---as she confesses in a low, furtive voice that she is in a bit of a jam today.

Occasionally I had seen her come in with her assistant. An awkward, big framed "sadface clown" of a girl who rarely said a word, and seemed rather shy and listless for a clown. "Punkin' Judy"---who was usually very reliable---had phoned in sick not more than an hour ago. And they had this HUGE kid's birthday party to entertain this afternoon ........ Miss Tricia asks me how I'd like to make a few bucks under the table.

"It's not that hard," she says. "You'd help me set up, hand out cake, and do a lot of this-"

She pulls a pack of long, condom-shaped balloons from her cart, opens it, hands me one. I grip the slippery little opening in my mouth, blow it up, and tie off the end.

"That was quick. You do that well!" she says, and hands me another.

"It's not exactly plasma physics," I shrug, and inflate this one too.

"Excellent! You're not filling these so full that I can't work with them ....... And also, we would be doing a couple of skits."

I continue blowing up balloons for her. "What kind of skits?"

"There's one where you'll be reading that poem 'Casey at the Bat' while I act it out-" she swings an imaginary bat, shields her eyes with her hand and beams like she's watching the ball sail over the centerfield fence.

I don't believe the Mighty Casey had hit any home runs in that poem, but having just inflated my fifth white balloon I am too out of breath to correct her. I nod, none too certainly.

"You don't have to be all Royal Shakespearean about it, just read the damn thing. You couldn't do worse than a couple of the helpers I've had..."

She hands me yet another one. "And it’s not like you'll have to carry the whole show. Mostly you'll just be following my cues. Saying 'Yes Miss Tricia!' or 'No Miss Tricia...'. You can handle that, can't you?"

"Yes Miss Tricia," I wheeze, white spots swirling crazily in front of my eyes.

"Then WELCOME TO THE EXCITING WORLD OF PROFESSIONAL BUFFOONERY!" she chortles like some obnoxious t.v. announcer as she takes the last balloon from me. "Consider these your audition. I think we're about done here."

"But couldn't you find someone with experience at this kind of thing to help you?" I gasp as I wheel her cart toward the registers for her.

"Nope. You were it," she frowns, and starts twisting and tying the six balloons, her brow furrowed in concentration, her hands a blur.

By the time we get up front Miss Tricia has finished Cherie's balloon sculpture. It's a bird, a white crane- which you can clearly tell is meant to resemble one of those ceremonial folded-paper cranes that the Japanese use at weddings and such. All those Volvo-driving culturati types up on Parnassus Hill would especially love this one!

Cherie is all smiles as she takes it from her, and secures it in the little fishing-line noose overhead. Then she starts ringing up her stuff.

"Come on," enthuses Miss Tricia. "It'll be a kick in the old noodle!"

What the heck? I don't have anything else planned for the day, and maybe after this job we can go have dinner, a few drinks or something. So I say, "Tell you what. I'll help you out, but if it turns out that I really suck at this you don't have to pay me."

"I'm betting that you'll be pretty good at it. I know Cherie here sure thinks so!"

Cherie---blowing an enormous pink bubble with the gum that George is always warning her about---grins impishly, nodding in encouragement.

Miss Tricia lapses into a more normal tone of voice, "The party doesn't start until three-thirty this afternoon. So there's plenty time to get you into costume and get our routine worked out."

"Costume? You mean like a clown?"

"Well you can't show up dressed like that. That's not funny at all!"

She says she has a costume and makeup for me in the van, and she would hate to drive all the way back to her place, which is clear across town in the Monkeyshine District. (For those of you who don't know Star City this is actually the Mercantile District, but given the neighborhood's reputation and seedy history nobody here calls it that). She asks, "Do you suppose there's like a back room here we could use?"

I glance over at George, who is hovering nearby, pretending to tidy up a hanging rack of adult novelties. He has an odd, pained expression on his face that I can't quite decipher. I decide not to ask him.

"We could go to my place. I live really close to here."

"Far out!" crows my new employer. She puts her hands on her belly and throws her head back, like the Story Lady at the library doing Paul Bunyan: "HO HO! THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!!"

We gather up her purchases. As we head for the front door she whispers conspiratorially, "All right Angel Doll, let's go make you fabulous. I guarantee this will be a day you'll never forget!"

We go out to her late-model van, load the stuff into it and climb in. It's a nice ride, or at least it was until she painted it up all crazy.

She helps me find the end of my seatbelt, buried way down inside the seat. As she does I gaze at her glossy muticolored face, mentally undressing it...... Big expressive eyes, great cheekbones, a loveable little nose. She might even be prettier than I'd originally thought. I'm glad I have all day to work on telling her how much I like her.

As we pull out I see George, his expression still strangely somber, setting the plastic HELP WANTED placard in the window. And I wonder why the hell he would be taking on a new employee at this time of year...

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#3.)===[ OH GOD IT'S A DRESS!!! ]==>

I was seeing one of the barmaids at The Animal Shelter until recently. Like Miss Tricia, Shelly was a few years older than me. I never would have admitted this back then, but although I did all the requisite boasting around my crewmates and such, I had been a virgin until just last summer. I was ridiculously clueless and shy around women, missing all of Shelly's hints until the night she pretty much attacked me back by the dumpsters!

It was a difficult relationship. While I will always be grateful to her for helping me to clear such an enormous hurdle in my life, in the end I just couldn't keep up with the way she and her girlfriends drank. I like to have a few beers or take the occasional toke myself, but it bugged me that she needed to get liquored up to go do anything. Then there were the scenes she pulled, her mouth getting me into fights on more than one occasion! The casual way Shelly took my suggestion---the result of much angonized soul searching on my part---that we take a "breather" from each other told me that she'd never been all that serious about us in the first place. Maybe Dorko Spazz was not quite the endearment she had always claimed it was!

Nor was I crazy about the way the conversations in her circle always seemed to revolve around either partying (how wasted so-and-so had got, or who had access to meth...) or boats and fish and fishermen and fishing. So this year I resolved to make my annual break from Star City's Harbor District as complete as possible. And Miss Tricia and her pink polka-dot Clownmobile seemed about as far from that whole world as I could get...

I have her pull into my neighbor Jim's space. Jim doesn't own a vehicle, and (unlike that weird old Mrs. Piguini in #11) he doesn't care who uses his assigned parking slot. As we're getting out Miss Tricia looks over my apartment complex. "I love it! It's all so ........ so normal!"

I had always thought of our old ferroconcrete building as very strange and very very cool. With its bulbous lines and undulating red shingle roof it looks like something that escaped from a miniature golf course. And I rankle a bit at the accusation ......... But then I remember where she calls home.

"Well I guess it is compared to living down in the 'Shine; with all those dadaists and fake vampires and the New Adamites running around naked. And with that freaky Matrix Liberationist Temple compound; I keep expecting to turn on the t.v. one day and see them in a big shoot out with the ATF!"

"But don't forget, we also have the highest concentration of clowns of any place in America, after Circus Town in Florida," she says with pride.

"Really? So then the competition must be murder on you!"

"No, because most of them are just Lifestyle Clowns. The ones that do work have telemarketing jobs and such. It's a costume movement, like that pirate thing up in Seattle. I know a lot of LC's, they're good folk!"

"You mean to say they just dress up like that? That's absurd!"

"Well yeah, that is kind of the point."

"I'll say one thing for the place, it sure isn't dull there! Say, do they still have that big old spooky abandoned amusement park down there?"

"Mystery Village? Oh yeah, it's still there. Actually, my family owns that whole property."

"You're shitting me- that place is huge! The land must be worth millions!"

"You would think so, but no. They're hoping the district will gentrify so they really can get twenty million for it! But I kind of like it the way it is," she smiles as she opens the van's sliding side door and grabs a dry cleaner's bag, holding it high up off the ground.

The plain gray bag bulges strangely, which leads me to think it holds my clown suit. She points at a big Craftsman tool box and a cheap looking suitcase with kooky decals on it and tells me to bring them.

As we trudge up the black steel spiral staircase bolted to the outside of the building she asks me if I know that old WHO'S ON FIRST skit.

"I've heard it," I confess, "But I can't say I know it. But I do know one about a man who tries to return this dead parrot he'd just bought to the pet shop. I mean this thing is DEAD! All dusty and with its feet sticking up! But the pet shop guy keeps going: 'Nothing wrong with this bird, Guv. He's just resting is all.'"

She whoops, "I love those guys! But that's not really about baseball, is it? I'll teach you this routine, and if you start to run into trouble we can just start whomping on each other! Kids are a pretty forgiving audience, for the most part. As long as there's enough action they don't insist on a lot of continuity."

I drop the luggage onto my dining area table. Miss Tricia asks me if there is anything to drink here.

When I open the fridge to check she spies the six-pack of distinctive black bottles and cries, "Oooh, Star City Dark!"

I open a beer for each of us and she clinks hers loudly against mine. "Here's to show business, Angel Dollink!"

I like the way she said this. Jokey and theatrical, sure, but infused with a real warmth and sincerity. Without the hollow mechanical quality of her clown character's one-size-fits-all enthusiasm. At the very least I have found a bright, interesting friend today.

"I'm glad that Judy was so heavy, and you........ Well you're not exactly tiny, but you're small enough that this should fit you," she grins as she rips the plastic shroud off the costume she had brought up, revealling...

Oh God- IT'S A DRESS!!

Or maybe some kind of one-piece skirt and blouse thing. The colors, patterns, even the fabric of the top and bottom are so weirdly mismatched that they almost look like seperate items; so I'm not sure what to call this thing. But whatever it is---even if you make allowances for the deliberate eccentricity of clown couture---it is without a doubt a feminine garment!

It has neither pants nor anything analogous to them. The plaid bottom part balloons out into a sort of knee-length hoop skirt, its bowl shape held rigid by a concentric series of circular plastic ribs inside it. There is a dense rayon fringe around the bottom meant to suggest that it is underlain by petticoats. Its blue, grey and black plaid pattern is comically oversized, and looks like it was clumsily drawn on there with a variety of markers.

And the outfit's top half? Pink. Blindingly pink! That cheap electric pink felt-like shit that all the little kindergartner girls go gaga over ......... I'll be damned if I am setting foot outside of here in this thing!

Miss Tricia notices my reaction. "What’s the matter?"

"That's a dress..."

"Well of course it's a dress. You're going to be Punkin' Judy!"

"But that's for a girl clown!" I protest, in what comes out as a sickly childish whine, "I can't .......... I mean that's ......... I don't wanna be a girl clown!"

Which I suppose would've been quite hilarious if it had been intentional. But hearing myself simpering in this pathetic way only steepens my descent into pure unreasoning panic!

Seeing that my brain has gone into a nosedive, Miss Tricia grabs the stick. "Come on Punkin', you're a CLOWN!" she coaxes, "The drag element just makes it funnier. It isn't like you are all turned on by this, or you're out looking for a boyfriend. Which would be fine with me, but in that case I'd suggest a different outfit ........ The straight guy mugging it up in a dress is a comic tradition that goes back probably for as long as people have been wearing clothes!"

I suppose she's right. There is no way that anybody could mistake this for a sex thing, or some serious attempt at presenting myself as a woman. To raise too big of a squawk about this might look like I have something to hide. That the lady doth protest too much...

I grin sheepishly, "No you're right. It took me by surprise is all."

"Great," she smiles, "I would be totally screwed if you backed out now! But you must have seen my helper whenever she came into your store with me ........ How did you think you would be dressed?"

To be honest I was always so focused on Miss Tricia that I barely even glanced at her assistant. I guess I would make a lousy crime witness. I sip my beer. "I'd heard that every clown had his own unique outfit and face, and it was considered stealing for one to dress up like another."

She seems pleased that I at least know this much about her calling. "You're right, that is our one real hanging offense! But I came up with this face and outfit. I own the Punkin' Judy character and everything attached to it!"

It occurs to me that her offer of fifty dollars for three hours work was misleading. She had not factored in all this preparation and training time. But I can't say that I mind. I am not doing this for the money, and the fact is I would rather spend six hours with her than three. And if I actually do have fun today, and want to do this again, I'm sure this part will go a whole lot quicker next time.

My initial panic at this outfit's lack of pants seems a bit childish now. A knee-jerk reaction about violating some social taboo- one of that whole interconnected slew of taboos that I have never been too obsessed with, compared to so many of the guys I've known. That pure visceral loathing and rage they feel toward queers and transsexuals seems really excessive, and somehow unbalanced. I mean, how the hell is it hurting them if that's what someone needs to do to be happy? Beating up on some total stranger seems far sicker and more immoral than any harmless fetish or gender disconnect.

But I'm not being entirely honest. The fact is that while some other man's unmanly proclivities may not set off any klaxon horns of panic within me, the idea of wearing a dress MYSELF does make me quite uncomfortable. And all my reasoned insistance that it should not bother me can only push it down so far...

I mean, while I'll admit that I loved how aggressive and even downright controlling Shelly could be in bed, the one time she teased me about her actually being the "man" in our relationship, and threatened to dress me up in a wig and corset, a pair of perilously high heels, and this dick-squasher thing she called a graph, I freaked out so bad that she never did it again!

And as far as that little phase I went through when I was eleven and twelve, that's all it was, a phase. I was confused. I would never dream of doing such a thing...

Well okay I dream about it, but everybody knows that dreams are just random firings of neurons that don't mean anything. I mean who doesn't have that dream where you're walking downtown in a cute little skirt and blouse and your hair and makeup are perfect and the sun is shining down and everbody is smiling and you feel so alive and free and the guy opens the door for you as you go in to the big important office building for the important businesswoman stuff you're engaged in, and then by coincidence you're both in the same elevator and the guy is smiling at you and ............. well you know that dream. But like I say I'm not into all that weird stuff!

I wonder if Miss Tricia would approve of me developing my own clown character eventually. "Bongo Billy" or somebody...

She has me strip down to my boxers, and then averts her gaze slightly as I exchange them for a pair of white satin bloomers with big red dots. They are quite baggy, and their short elasticized leggings remind me of some leaky toddler's training pants. Their slick fabric slides against my skin in disturbingly sensuous way.

"And now comes the fun part," she grins, as she wrestles something large and heavy and limp out of the suitcase. It's an obscenely gleaming bundle of milk-white rubber.

She unfolds it, revealing a compact, perfectly hemispherical latex pot belly, with two improbably pointy breasts cantilevered out above it. While not unduly large, they jut straight out like a pair of torpedos.

She has me sit on the front half of a kitchen chair and slips it over my front like an umpire's chest protector, then buckles the straps together in back. Suddenly I look like a terribly out of shape gorilla.

"Whatever you do, don't walk off the job," Miss Tricia chuckles, "You'll never get this off without help!"

I take a long pull from my beer. "I won't walk off."

"You never know. While kids are a pretty easy crowd for the most part, there's always that one little fucker who isn't satisfied with the scheduled entertainment and amuses himself by trying to push your buttons! Some of them are real geniuses at it too, knowing just what will do this. And these are always the ones with world-class jerks for parents, so be careful how you respond!"

She pokes her thumbs under the elastic waistband of my bloomers and pulls it upward, slipping it into the shallow groove that bisects this rubber tummy. The panties fit far more snugly now. She instructs me to get up and try walking around.

I do, rather awkwardly. The belly and tits wobble and slosh like they're full of greasy water. "Jeez, this thing weighs a ton! What's in here?"

"My special solution. I know it's cumbersome, but I think you'll come to appreciate it for its shock-absorbing properties. There's a reason why what we do is called slapstick comedy!"

She has me bend over and stick my arms out---like Superman---and slides the dress-thing down over me. When I manage to stand back up again she buttons up the outfit's neck and straightens its wide doily-like lace collar, fussing with it like a mom getting her little princess ready for Mass.

Then she helps me into a pair of clingy white stockings that come up to just above my knees. These are polka-dotted in loud primary colors, like Wonder Bread bags, and are opaque enough to hide my hairy legs.

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#4.)=====[ CLOWNS IN SPACE ]=====>

When we get to the shoes we run into a bit of a problem. While Punkin' Judy's clunky hot pink industrial platform boots appear quite massive, they are nowhere near massive enough. Miss Tricia tugs at her lower lip. "I don't suppose you have anything like this, do you?"

"Sure, I have a pair just like that. I keep them with all my other gay storm trooper boots!"

"Let me rephrase that: I need to see your funniest pair of shoes."

I point to the tan desert boots I had removed earlier. Her tiny mouth all but disappears as she grimly shakes her head.

We go into the bedroom. As I'm figuring out how I'm going to look under the bed with this unweildy hoopskirt on she drops to her knees and starts pulling out shoes, her adorable ass sticking up, for once clearly defined beneath these voluminous lavender pants.

"Okay, what do we got under here? A sneaker ....... a wing tip ........ another sneaker ........ Oh wow, what's this?! STRAP-ON SLEEPOVER! Interesting choice of reading matter."

Oh shit, I forgot that was there! She starts flipping through it, smiling, admiring the antics of the high-heeled and lingeried nymphos. I stammer, "That's uh-"

"Right. You don't know how that got under there," she snickers. "You know what they say about guys who dig lezzie porn like this, don't you?"

"N'uhn," I mumble, my face all hot and tingly and I'm sure bright red.

"That they like to imagine they're one of the girls in the pictures. I'll bet you're this hot little blonde here, getting fucked stupid by these other two!"

I sputter in outrage, "That's not---I hardly ever---That's RIDICULOUS!"

"Of course it is. You can't go around making generalizations like that," she grins, as if she doesn't believe this for a second, and resumes digging under the bed, "Hmmm...... flip flop...... another tennie...... Wow, perfect!"

She is holding up a pair of purple high-top basketball shoes. At size eleven I guess they do kind of look like clown shoes. "And here I was starting to think you didn't have any bozo in you! Lift your foot."

I balance myself against the wall as she sticks them onto my feet, crying, "Ze slipper, she fits! So it was YOU I danced with at ze ball last night! Come, mon fleur du mal, let me take you away from zees wretched life!"

I go to laugh over her sophomoric Cinderella gag, but after those accusations about my fantasy life it comes out as an anxious tittering.

And the fact that I am dressed like this only adds to my anxiety! I'm just glad that this is such a silly costume I am wearing---these immense purple clodhoppers making the whole ensemble look even more ridiculous---and not some attempt to turn me into a ravishing beauty.

I thought I had gotten enough sleep last night, but suddenly I am yawning. Miss Tricia says something that I don't quite catch. "What was that?"

"Oh......... I was just asking if there was someplace with a lot of light where we could do your makeup and wig?"

Out in the living room my 1950's "futuristic" reading chair is positioned under a lamp with a brutal halogen bulb in it. I turn it on for her and she gives me a hearty thumbs up!

I ease myself into the recliner. She pulls on the chair's big sinister chrome lever and it clack-clack-clacks loudly as I go tilting back---farther and farther---until I am almost laying flat.

Forced forward by how I am sitting, my skirt rises up in front of me like a plaid hillside. Its framework is more flexible than I'd anticipated, and a lot less bothersome in the way it presses against the backs of my thighs...

She brings her makeup toolbox and our beers over, and hands me mine. "You look like you could use this."

Thirsty, I tilt my bottle up and drink nearly a quarter of it. It seems odd that I can feel the effects of a single beer, but I do. "So uh, Miss Tricia.......... Now that we're working together, should I just call you Tricia?"

She is wiping my face with an oval sponge that smells of isopropyl and citrus. "To tell you the truth, I prefer Miss Tricia."

I take another draught of my beer. "Oh."

She giggles at my wounded tone, "No, it's not like that! It's not like I'm trying to be all snooty here. It's just that Miss Tricia is a clown's name, but 'Tricia' could be anybody. You see? It helps me to stay in character........ There is a logic to clowning that's different than the logic of plainface life, and it governs just about everything a clown does. Or it should."

I yawn again, loudly and musically, suddenly unbelievably sleepy. "So by this clown logic you, uh ........ like for example ........ If this building was to catch on fire we would have to run around like idiots doing things that make it worse?"

"Exactly!" she guffaws, for some reason sounding like she is far, far away. "But while Tricia is no name for a clown, I suppose once in a while you could call me 'Chief' or something, some nickname that a sidekick might give to her boss, that is affectionate without overstepping the bounds of-"

Then her mouth is moving but there is no sound, only a dull seashell roar that grows louder and louder. I watch her bright red lips and dainty white teeth going this way and that in rapt fascination.

I can see the painted surface of her face in extraordinary detail, the tiny pores now evenly-spaced sinkholes across the curve of her cheek, which looks like the airless surface of some wholly synthetic planet. It all seems achingly profound, on the verge of revealling some vast cosmic secret...

And then I am asleep.
.

.

<===[ END OF PART ONE ]===>

.
===[ A NOTE ON THE LOCALE: ]==>

I named the city this story takes place in after the space center north of Moscow. The name Star City sounded simple, dynamic, and it had a historical resonance with this pseudonym I've chosen as a t.g. fiction author.

It was only after I had invented this location that I found out that there already WAS a fictional Star City, featured in the world of D.C. Comics, a West Coast counterpart to Gotham City and Metropolis....... which to my astonishment was located at the northernmost tip of California, not far south of where I had imagined it being!

Mine is not neccessarily the same bustling port city found in the comics. Without D.C. characters what would be the point? But once I had made the mental association I knew this was the TYPE of place my Star City should be (there always tends to be something a bit fantastical about these burgs the superheroes live in, with their soaring Fritz Lang skyways and scary fascistic monuments looming up everywhere...); and my own made up city suddenly became a lot more surreal.

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...

Miss Tricia and Punkin Judy arrive at the worksite. The two clowns make out a bit, which sends P.J. to dizzying heights of love struck bliss. Over a series of vaguely surreal encounters, the imitation girlclown discovers s/he is passing as female without hardly trying, and that there is something quite nice about it. Which leads to a reaquaintance with someone dwelling deep inside...

======== HUMOR ME
======== by LAIKA PUPKINO
======== Part Three: AFTERNOON DELETE

"She's calling from inside, trying to get to you. All that woman really wants is you give her something too..."
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ~~~ Bowie/Ziggy Stardust

.
#.8)===[ KOOTIE KISSES ]=====>

And here we are. A mother and two small children carrying shiny wrapped parcels are headed up a driveway crowded with cars toward the sprawling one-story ranch house. There is a spot on the street right in front, which Miss Tricia zips into ahead of someone who was clearly about to park here.

She hollars out the window, "Suck eggs, Buddy! I'll let you in twice next time!"

Seeing my shocked reaction, she shrugs. "Hey, he'll live! We've got stuff to unload..."

The guy parks a few houses down and climbs out of his truck, shooting us a hateful look. I am relieved when he goes stomping off toward a house across the street instead of turning out to be one of the party guests,
a member of our audience.

Miss Tricia leans toward me---the invitation clear---and we start to kiss, our tongues like two horny little critters getting aquainted. It's good that we both don't have these big fake noses on or this might be difficult. She disengages her mouth from mine, kisses the pink heart on my forehead. Whispers, "My last Punkin' Judy didn’t have one of these. Do you know what this is?"

"Well sure, it's-"

And then I get it. To the rest of the world it is just a stock clown decoration, but between us it’s a coded message. A Valentine.

While this had cost Miss Tricia next to nothing, it means more to me than seems big expensive gift would. How personal it feels, the favored status it seems to confer ......... Suddenly compelled, I throw my arms around her!

She squeezes back, rocking me, and sighs huskily, "MY GOD you’re beautiful! I just hope you have a sense of humor about all this."

"Mmmmm ...... 'bout what?"

She slides and flickers her tongue across slick rubber surface of my nose, which is still slightly sore from when she had crushed it. I gasp as she takes it in her mouth and sucks on it, thinking: Okay, she's kind of kinky here, but this feels INCREDIBLE!!

And then I think: Wait a minute! I shouldn't be able to feel this like this!

And then I am no longer thinking with the verbal parts of my brain at all as her lips return hungrily to mine. But all at once I am forced to break free of the hands clamped onto my ears and turn away-

"Hold on," I grimace, and clear my throat, hawking guckily. Spit out the window, a spiralling viscid mass.

"Well that was pleasant."

"Sorry, was just tryin' to....... Oh dammit, naw agim! WRRAAAGCHK-K-K-- Fthooey!! Sorry..."

My throat has felt weird and sore since about the time we left my place. It's like I had a pine cone in there recently. My voice is hoarse, coming out in an odd fluty pitch.

She pats the top of my head, "I think romance had better wait until we get you fixed- uh, fix whatever this throat thing is."

"It might be wise," I nod, not wanting to give her strep or something.

And yet despite this little setback I am happy. Gone are my fears of an hour ago, that this affection we obviously share would settle into some cozy friendship that only I wished could be something more...

We get out and she hands me a key. There is a ladder running up the rear of the van, she has me climb up it and undo the padlock on the steel cable holding down a zebra-striped tarp that covers something large and boxy on the roof. Between the belly prosthesis and the hoop skirt, this is kind of awkard. The wind is picking up a bit, I feel it not just on my legs but---with how this skirt bowls out---on my ass. I yank the cable out through the eyelets in the tarp and push it back.

There are four compact stacks of flattened chairs on a rack up here. "How many?"

"You'd better get all thirty of them."

"Okay. OOOF! There's one..."

Damn, these feel heavy! They're made of wood, a good deal stouter than most folding chairs, but I can tell it's partly me too. Have I really been that sedentary since last fall at sea? I'm really going to have to get back in shape before next season starts! Whatever else my Brave Ulysses crewmates might say about me I've always been able to pull my weight out there, and have made a point of giving a little extra. If I can't manage to do that I might be in trouble. Especially after last year...

[====> You probably have already figured out what is happening to me ......... But I don't think it was too terribly dense of me to not suspect her of using a technology whose microscopic tinkertoys still seemed a long way from deserving to be called "nano-robots". And besides, what kind of sociopathic monster could do that to someone without her consent? The Joker maybe, or Star City's own lamely derivative The Damned Fool, but not dear little cute little sweet little innocent Miss Tricia the Clown! She's too NICE to be a whiteface slaver!!]

.
#.9)===[THE GHOST OF NORBERT WEINER HAUNTS THE VIDEO ARCADE]==>

Miss Tricia has an ingenious hand truck with a wide squat chest of drawers at the base and a bracket for an upright helium tank above that, then a fiberglass clown's head. The nozzle in its mouth blows up balloons, and the drawers hold whatever props she will need for the party, so she can haul a lot of stuff in one trip. Draped in a gaudy chrysanthemum-pattern vinyl trenchcoat, it looks like some disturbing limbless clown. I've never had this "fear of clowns" that you hear so many young ironic hipsters confessing to these days (the Latest Fashion in Phobias, bespeaking of a savvy mistrust of traditions...) but this thing really does creep me out.

As we are easing it down its little home-made ramp to the sidewalk a tiny girl wanders up to us, scowling suspiciously. She points, "What's dat?"

"This is Dolly, one of my former assistants," smiles Miss Tricia sweetly. "She's finally making herself useful!"

The child blinks at her. "Oh. I have a hamster."

"Bethany Lynne Thompson," comes a stern female voice from the front porch, "You get in here this instant!"

The Mom. Tanned, a bit plump, with her auburn hair in a longish bob cut. Her smile is relaxed and friendly as she crosses the lawn toward us, "Good, you're here! Let me show you where Bruno's party will be..."

Her name is Janice and I like her. The festive embroidered borders on her denim shirt and the silver kachina necklace remind me of that aunt of mine I'd mentioned earlier; the one who used to pilot those launches that went out into the Antarctic Sea to harrass whaling ships, much to the dismay ("These 'greens' are nothing but a bunch of damn Reds!") of the rest of our family...

I remember when it was being decided what to do with me, how much I wished I could have gone to live with my aunt Apollina and her partner Skyy. And they really wanted this too, but at the time it was deemed unwise to award the care of a child to a lesbian couple, so I wound up with my Uncle Dimitri.

And he wasn't a terrible man---he did get me into motocross, and taught me the joys of Jagermeister---but I didn't have fun just TALKING with him like I did with Lina and Skyy. They were into art and books like me, and the weirdest, most interesting movies. Dining out with them meant trying a place that served food from some country I had never heard of---eating sitting on cushions while weird entrancing music played---instead of to Killigan & Killigan's steakhouse for the ("Why argue with success?") usual #7 combo with the same drink and dressing. Which does offer a nice slab of meat but by the thirtieth time in a row it starts to seem a bit compulsive .............. I always felt so relaxed and at home, and laughed more, over at my aunt's tidy little (it even smelled nice) stone cottage. A supportive environment, that in the recesses of my heart I had hoped might even support me in that one matter that I never dared to tell anyone, or even think about too clearly...

*Sigh*

Janice shoos her daughter inside and takes us around to the back, where we park Dolly next to the picnic table. I didn't expect the back yard to be so big, but it's huge- bracketted by a pair of enormous shady trees that must go clear back when our state was still just a part of the Oregon Territory.

"This is perfect Janice," enthuses Miss Tricia, "We can do indoor parties, but ours is more of an outdoor kind of act. Pie fights, seltzer bottles- kids love all that kind of stuff!"

"Well as long as they don't track it into the house," cautions Janice, and takes us in through the back door.

For as many kids as are supposed to be in here the house is surprisingly quiet. Down the hall someplace one boy keeps repeating, "Get 'im! Get 'im! Get 'im!" in a stacatto rhythm.

Video games I'm thinking; and as we pass a dim shrinelike room, that is what it turns out to be. A horseshoe of couches around a flatscreen as big as a billboard, on which two of the kids are playing ROOSEVELT VS. ROOSEVELT. With the exception of one boy who is off to the side reading a newspaper, all sixteen or twenty kids are watching the game like it was the deciding match at Wimbledon.

Teddy Roosevelt is a lumbering giant in his khakis and his Rough Rider's hat. He grins like an ogre, all his teeth huge square things, muttering "Bully!" under his breath and weilding a massive gnarled shillelagh, his famous motto depicted literally. He's trying to smash Franklin Roosevelt with it but tiny FDR is just too quick- zipping nimbly through the air in his jet powered wheelchair and firing his rocket launchers! An orange blast from his flame-thrower cigarette holder makes the 26th president jump into the air holding his ass: YOWEEE!!!

"Whomp that liberal gimp!" yells a skinny long-haired girl in a Mister Hanky t-shirt.

"It's good to see that the youth of today is learning about American history," quips Miss Tricia.

"It's a godsend is what it is. I mean look at them, they're like vegetables! We could probably skip the party and they wouldn't even notice," chuckles Janice, then she realizes how this might sound, "I mean, not that I let my kids play on it all day, that's not good. But when you DO need them out of the way..."

And she does have a point. Having them out from underfoot like this is especially convenient right now, because it is vital to our plan that they not even see the cake until the latter part of the party. My boss asks her where we can hide it.

Janice tells us, and fetching it from the van we carry it into her bedroom and slide it onto this dresser with the big wooden framed mirror behind it...

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#.10)===[ DARKNESS AT NOON PT. 2 ]====>

And there's that girl again, helping to slide a cake towards us that's identical to ours. Mimicking my every move, and looking less like me than ever!

I purposefully look away from my reflection, once again thinking of that PBS special on that face-recognition disorder. I'm hoping that this distortion of perception will resolve itself once I am out of this costume and have wiped all this gunk off my face.

And if not, I reflect bitterly, I'm sure I can find someone who can badger me back to sanity...

When my mom first got sick, it had been my father's genius notion that he could shame and belittle her out of her helpless state: "You stink! Do you realise that Anne? I can actually smell you from here. It's sickening! I mean it's bad enough that the house is like it is, but can't you even take a fucking bath?"

It was a strategy that had always gotten him his way before, and I'm sure that if it were within her power it would have this time too. His utter blindness to her suffering (except for how this self-indulgent stunt of hers inconvenienced him) really opened my eyes; and finally gave me permission to hate him without conflict. Because while yes---as he was always reminding us---he was our family's breadwinner, making sure we never went without; this was not the incredible largesse, the unbelievable sacrifice he always made it sound like, but only the mimimum of what he was SUPPOSED to be doing!

So I was glad when he left. I knew how to do a whole lot of grown-up tasks, I could hold our household together. Or so I thought.

Those next seven weeks were the first time that I ever really knew hunger (and I guess the last time too). We lived with the shades drawn and with black trash bags taped across the t.v. screen. When the checks that I would have her sign for the electric and such began to bounce, I discovered that their joint account (bastard!!) had been cashed out. I learned to use only the glasses, bowls and plates from the non-evil side of the cupboard. I had a garage sale of expendible stuff and bought tuna and macaroni and cheese for us, and the few other things I knew how to cook. I killed "centipede things" for her that I couldn't see.

My performance at school began to suffer, and I was sent to the school counsellor. I did mention my folks fighting and a "seperation", knowing the sort of story that would satisfy the woman, but I kept my promise to Mom to not to let THEM know what was really going on. But conditions in our little indoor universe kept deteriorating, until finally---feeling very much like Judas---I made that grim, fateful phone call. Which brought the cops, her trip to the ER for dehydration, and that psychiatric evaluation from which she never returned.

After that, like I said, I only got to see her on Saturdays in that little institutional green day room. Mom would be all vague and taciturn until Aunt Lina left (in an attempt to give us some mother and son "alone time"), going outside and to the far corner of the grounds to puff a joint; When suddenly my mom became very talkative, very agitated! Saying how the hospital staffers were actually "Backwards Echoes", who could reverse time, rewrite events, steal your soul piece by piece...

Her grip on my arm would tighten painfully whenever one of them walked by, and I would hear the desperate, whispered entreaty, "Help me!"

"How?" I would whisper back.

And she would fix me with that lopsided, heartbreakingly-sad smile I had come to think of as hers,
"You know!"

But despite her assumption that there was some telepathic link between us I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Help her to escape? To kill herself?

"No I don't know! HOW?!"

Finally I learned to just agree to help her, and then write down the lists of numbers she recited for me (which were too long to be a combination for the door locks, a bank account number, geographical coordinates, or anything else I could think of). Because if I persisted in expressing my bafflement she would take this as something faked, a cold-hearted refusal to help her in her hour of need. "I don't think I want to talk to you..."

It was a heavy fucking thing for a twelve year old kid to have to go through! Not long before this, a typical conversation with her would be about my day at school. Was it fun? Did I have a little girlfriend? Now the one time I mentioned school she frowned, "Oh school. Don't let them take you away."

"Who?"

"All of them. Teachers, systems, kids kids kids!"

"Take me where?"

"Not to where. From where!"

"From school? You mean like strangers?"

"From you! Like this..." She did something with her hands.

"I don't understand."

"God, no!! Then you're already lost," she groaned, doubling over and hugging herself. And then she was crying inconsolably, and the one nurse she trusted rushed over, her dark Toltec eyes accusing me of trying to upset her patient.

.
#.11)=====[ MY TENURE ON "THE VIEW" ]====>

"What IS it with you and mirrors?" asks an amused voice, cutting into my reveries.

Apparently Miss Tricia was halfway down the hall when she discovered she had lost me.

"Oh sorry ........ What did you need?"

"Nothing, really. I just wondered where you'd got off to. You feeling okay?"

"Yeah sure. It's just been a weird day."

"Stick with me, kid. It's gonna get a lot weirder!"

Back in the hallway she eases the bedroom door shut. She sets her hands on my clavicles, kneading the flesh around them with the deft grip of a masseuse. She decides to risk kissing me again, throat-cooties (which does seem to be getting a bit better now) or not.

It starts out slow and sweet, but then sensing my response she gets more and more aggressive, her tongue a presence to be dealt with, which I am eager for. My toes flex inside my purple Keds and a glorious weakness tries to drag me floorward. As she pulls away she is smiling knowingly, and I'm smiling in moony bliss.

"Go park you pretty ass someplace, Liebchen. I've got all the rest of this! I can do it quicker than I could probably show you."

"But what about all those folding chairs?"

"I got 'em! Rest! I need you sharp and energetic in a half hour. I'll come find you when we're about ready to start." She says and swats my ass, impelling me down the hall.

"Oh......... Chief!" I trill campily as I rub my rear through the taut plaid fabric of my hoop skirt. Kidding around, but at the same time definitely meaning it.

The entertainment room is still full of children, a half dozen more having shown up. A few of these kids look to be around nine, but most of them seem far younger. It doesn't seem like the Birthday Boy himself had much say in the guest list. I would hate to think that these kindergartners are here because Bruno doesn't have any friends at school, but he might not. He is the one I had seen reading the Christian Science Monitor earlier, and there is something depressingly adult-like about him. Oddly subdued, like he is happy to go along with all this birthday party guff if it makes everyone else happy, but he'll be glad when this is over (he reminds me of the suit-wearing boy from that offbeat old black + white comedy A THOUSAND CLOWNS, if this means anything to you.)

He waves me into the room. A wry, lackadaisical gesture. Although I am curious to know what his story is, I don't go in. It seems like it could ruin whatever mystique I have as a clown if I just sat in there among them like a regular person on his break.

I continue down the hall, ending up in the kitchen. Janice is at the drainboard constructing an intriguing dish in a big heavy baking dish, some sort of Mexican lasagna with peppers and queso fresco and carnitas. As she works she is chatting with these four other moms, who are seated around the kitchen table drinking wine. They all turn and look at me.

Rattled by their stares, I say the first thing that pops into my head, "Um, can I give you a hand with anything?"

"Well aren't you a sweetie?" declares Janice. She has me wash my hands, then sets me up at a breadboard with a plate, a big bunch of celery, a knife and a spoon, a tub of low fat creme cheese, a jar of capers.

A woman---I'll call her Linda---continues her story about a neighbor of hers who refuses to see what her husband is up to with that slut he works with at the Saturn dealership.

"But what's she going to do?” wonders the Italian-looking Carla, "Patty's never even had real a job, and those kids of theirs are all so young! Any job she could get would only just cover the cost of day care..."

This is met with scorn from the others: "Do SOMETHING! At the very least say something! I mean sure she's in a bad position to leave him right now, but she shouldn't make it so comfortable for him to carry on like that. The way it is, it's like he's just throwing it in her face!"

"Let him know that you know everything he's up to," nods Gretchen, the only African American here. To the race-conscious titters of her friends, she affects a sassy ghettofied accent that she had not been using before, "Make 'im feel like th' lowdown rat he ee-yuz!"

I make little designs with the capers in the cream cheese after I've trowelled it into the celery sticks ............. It's comfortable here. The smells, their conversation; like holidays in my childhood, my Mom and Aunts in the kitchen preparing the feast while I drew pictures in the one corner of the kitchen table not taken up by food, just listening mostly.

"Yeah, I don't buy it. It's baloney to say she doesn't have choices," opines Betty, a heavy set blonde somewhat older than the others, "I divorced Mike when it wasn't exactly an ideal time---whenever that would be---and raised Matt by myself. Or at least until I met Sonny. Matt was nine then, Bruno's age. Wow, did him and Sonny ever hit it off! It sure was great to see ........ That's an age when a boy really needs a male influence. One who won't teach him that it's okay to hit women!"

A sudden jolt of anger makes me blurt out, "He DID?"

"Twice. The first time, I told him he got that one free. But the next time he did it me and Matt were out of there. I guess he didn't believe me."

Fuck, I hate guys like that! I tell her, "Good for you."

"But Sonny's a good dad," nods Janice, as she goes around the table with a bottle of Celebrity Vineyards Chenin Blanc, topping off their glasses.

"You trying to get us drunk?" giggles Carla hopefully. Of the five of them, she's the only one who seems at all tipsy.

"Sonny's a GREAT dad," raves Betty. "Great husband, great everything. And if I'd stuck with Mike we never would have met him!"

Janice is suddenly at my side, and standing very close. She holds out a glass of wine, "I suppose I should ask you if you're old enough for this."

"I'm twenty-one."

She leans in even closer. "What was that, Honey?"

I take a sip of wine and clear my throat, trying not to make too gross of a sound as I do. "Twenty-one."

"Oh, to be twenty-one again!" moans Linda, like she's an eighty year old with a walker instead of a shapely and fit thirty-five.

Janice looks down and sees my plate of gussied up celery sticks, and the small bundle of slim shoot remaining. "I think that should be plenty."

"Probably. I don't think they're really going to want these anyway."

"Who, the kids? Oh, of course not," she laughs as she picks up the plate and sets it on the kitchen table. "These are for us."

Betty jabs the air with a celery stick, "Maybe when you're twenty-one you can scarf down pizza and birthday cake without it going right to your ass, but someday these are going to be your best friend!"

And with this, a number of things that had been vaguely puzzling me in the past few minutes suddenly add up in my brain:

HOW CLOSE Janice had been standing to me, calling me "honey" in that affectionate and vaguely protective tone...

PLUS the heartfelt dietary advice Linda had given me, with its emphasis on maintaining one's figure...

PLUS the casual familiarity they are all showing me, which is subtly different---somehow qualitatively different---than anything I have ever experienced from a group of women before, no matter how friendly and accepting they'd been...

EQUALS: They think I'm a girl!

So what do I do about this? Casually mention my penis?

Then again, it might be less embarrassing to just play along with their misperceptions. I don't see how I would be obligated to tell them that I'm a guy, unless maybe one of them decided she could just casually change her top, here in the presumed absence of men-folk. Which I don't think is too likely to happen out here in the kitchen.

And actually this could be very interesting. Undercover anthropology. Like that English explorer Richard Burton, when he dressed up like an Arab in order to check out the grand mosque at Mecca.

Janice brings out a clever little stepladder, which becomes a backless stool when you fold the top half down. The others are all smiling at me as they scoot their chairs over and she slides it up to the table, saying, "Come sit with us, Judy!"

I'm starting to realize that---with whatever this problem is with my throat---my voice seems to sound more naturally female if I don't force it. "Thank you."

I sit, my satin undies on the oval seat, my hoop skirt warping to encircle my knees and the stool's legs, a proper young Bozoette.

"Isn't she the best?" whisper Gretchen.

"I know, like our very own little Himmel figurine," answers Carla in a way that disturbs me somehow. I imagine myself on a giant alchoholic housewive's nicknack shelf, spinning endlessly on top of a music box to the theme from DR. ZHIVAGO...

"Ugggh- not even! I hate those things," puffs Gretchen.

Carla is stunned, "How can anyone hate porceline clowns?"

Janice asks Betty, "So how is Matt doing, anyway?"

"He's back! Safe and sound, thank God! They've got him at Camp Archimedes for the rest of his hitch. Sonny and I raised him to make his own decisions in life, but I'm really hoping he won't re-enlist in April. He's already done his thing for 'king and country'!"

"I know," says Carla. "My Joey's only eight, but I keep wondering what the world's going to be like in ten years."

"I really can't see things being any better," sighs Janice. "I hate to say it, and I sure hope I'm wrong..."

Betty clinks glasses with her and Carla, intoning solemnly, "Here's to being pleasantly surprised!"

I sip my wine, wondering what the heck is keeping Miss Tricia. Even when these womens' attention isn't on me, it is. Like I am some puppy they are taken with. Or some reminder of their younger selves. An assumption of shared experience. This open affection---unmoderated by the ritual sarcasm of male bonding---feels good, but strange.

Gretchen tries to bring me into the conversation, "You seem like you're in an interesting line of work. How did you get started in it?"

"Well actually this is my first time doing this."

With my own voice sounding lilting and strange in my ears, I give them a feminized version of my story. The Party Zone Job, but nothing about my my job at sea. The birthday clown coming in with her offer, and that I like her, but not that I'm in love with her. Although Janice's little inward smile as I go on about how funny-and-smart-and-artistic-and-sweet-and-wonderful-to-work-with Miss Tricia is tells me that I haven't been too successful in disguising my feelings toward her. But if our hostess does know she doesn't seem upset...

A nagging pressure in my GI tract tells me that I need to poop. I ask to use the bathroom, and excuse myself. I am half afraid that they will all decide to come traipsing along with me, but I guess it's only out in public places that girls do that.

.
#.12)===[VOICES IN THE HEAD...]=====>

Okay, how the hell do I do this? Not wanting to wrestle with this cage of hoops encircling my pelvis I decide to just take the whole dress-thing off and hang it on the hook here. I still have this unflattering torso form stuck to my front, like a giant leech from some 1950's horror film. With the way these straps all buckle together in the middle of my back, there is really no way to take it off. I drop my polka-dot knickers down to around my ankles, and sit...

I guess everywhere I go there's going to be mirrors. This one is a big floor-to-ceiling thing, directly in front of me. And by now it seems kind of pointless to wig out every time I see my reflection. It is what it is.

Looking at myself straight on like, this I'm having a harder time shrugging off the changes I see as just some subjective hallucination. And as close as we were all sitting, none of the women in the kitchen had given any sign that they suspected I wasn't a girl. While it seems like it should take more than a bit of blusher and a lace collar to turn me into a credible female, I am forced to admit that---aside from the silly makeup, this third trimester belly and these impossibly horizontal tits---I make a pretty okay looking chick.

AND YOU LOVE IT DON'T YOU?

I jump. "What?!"

YOU HEARD ME.

"Who is this?"

YOU KNOW! REMEMBER WHEN WE USED TO DO THIS? DRESSING UP AND GETTING ALL FEMMY IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR?

"That was a long time ago!"

TOO LONG. DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN MOM AND DAD WOULD GO OUT, YOU'D GO INTO THEIR ROOM, RIGHT TO THAT LITTLE BACKLESS NUMBER OF HERS AND WRIGGLE INTO IT? YOU HAD GOOD TASTE EVEN THEN, BEVERLY...

"That was just a phase! like I say I was ....... I was confused!"

SEEMS TO ME THAT WAS ABOUT THE ONLY TIME YOU WEREN'T CONFUSED. OR SCARED. THE WAY YOU FELT ......... LIKE AT SCHOOL, PRETENDING TO READ THE DATES ON THE COINS FROM YOUR POCKET, SO YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO LOOK OTHER KIDS IN THE EYE. IT WAS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE HAD BEEN GIVEN A COPY OF THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL---HOW TO BE, HOW TO FEEL---EXCEPT YOU...

"A lot of kids feel that way! It doesn't mean they're ........ what you're saying."

I COULDN'T TELL YOU ABOUT THEM. ALL I KNOW IS YOU, AND HOW WHEN YOU LET ME OUT EVERYTHING JUST SORT OF CLICKED INTO PLACE. YOU KNEW WHO YOU WERE THEN. WHAT YOU WANTED. HOW YOU WANTED TO BE REGARDED BY OTHERS.

"I was going through a lot. My mom went psycho! I was experimenting. I got over all that!"

YEAH, WHEN UNCLE DIMITRI CAUGHT US AND CALLED US ALL THAT HORRIBLE STUFF. WHICH IS WHEN YOU DUMPED ABOUT THREE CEMENT TRUCKS WORTH OF INSTANT MARBLE ON ME. GEE, THANKS A LOT! WHICH SHELLY ........ FOR ALL HER BAD INTENTIONS, AT LEAST SHE STARTED KNOCKING SOME CHUNKS OUT OF THAT! YOU KNOW, YOU CAN BULLSHIT EVERYONE ELSE, AND YOU DO A GREAT JOB OF BULLSHITTING YOURSELF. BUT YOU CAN'T BULLSHIT ME, BEVERLY...

"Stop calling me that!"

HEY YOU PICKED IT! AND IT FIT, DIDN'T IT? FELT SO MUCH REALER THAN "WILLIAM". CAN YOU HONESTLY SIT THERE WITH A STRAIGHT FACE AND TELL ME YOU'RE NOT A GIRL?

"Okay fine! Yes I've wanted to be a girl, yes I feel like a girl sometimes."

SOMETIMES? LIKE ONLY WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT. WHICH YOU DESPERATELY AVOID DOING. THAT HURTS ME, YOU KNOW...

"If something isn't possible, then it doesn't matter what I feel. It's pointless to-"

HEE HEE! YOU'RE SO DISSASSOCIATED FROM YOUR OWN TRUTH THAT YOU'RE SITTING ON THE CRAPPER TALKING TO VOICES IN YOUR HEAD, AND YOU TELL IT DOESN'T MATTER? NOW PULL MY OTHER LEG!

"There's such a thing as physical reality!"

THAT CAN BE REMEDIED. WHAT WOULD BE SO TERRIBLE ABOUT BEING WHO YOU REALLY ARE?

"People would hate me! My family, they'd burn my baby pictures!"

YES, THERE'S THAT. I KNOW OUR FAMILY. I'M NOT SAYING IT'LL BE EASY. BUT IF SUPPRESSING ME WAS GOING TO MAKE ME GO AWAY DON'T YOU THINK IT WOULD HAVE BY NOW? ALL YOU'VE REALLY ACCOMPLISHED IS TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL SHITTY AND ASHAMED. LIKE THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG ABOUT YOU. THERE ISN'T, YOU KNOW...

At this point I lose it, crying and gulping.

NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU, BEVERLY...

Not fair! Saying that, what I've always wanted to hear. To feel ....... I grab a bunch of toilet paper and blow my big red nose. It honks like a toy horn.

I say faintly,"Thank you."

AND THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE TEARS EITHER. YOU'VE EARNED THEM. THIS IS YOUR CHANCE .......... YOU HAVE SOMEONE WHO LOVES YOU. DON'T BE AN IDIOT!

"S-she said I was b-beautiful..."

AND DO YOU REALLY WANT TO GIVE THAT UP? WHY SHOULD YOU? YOU KNOW AFTER HOW THINGS GOT THAT LAST WEEK OUT YOU CAN'T GO BACK TO THE ULYSSES. THIS IS IT. THE CROSSROADS OF DESTINY! HOO-AHH!

"It's just, (sniff-f!!) ....... It scares the shit out of me, okay?! I'm not one of these brave people who just gets out there and goes for it! Maybe all I really am is just a pussy!"

IF YOU HAVE THAT LITTLE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW STRONG A WOMAN CAN BE, YOU'RE PROBABLY RIGHT ......... LISTEN, I'LL GO AWAY IF YOU WANT. BUT THE NEXT TIME I COME BACK MIGHT BE WHEN YOU'RE PAST FIFTY. YOU'RE REEEEALLY GONNA HATE YOURSELF IF YOU DO THAT. COME ON BABY GIRL, DON'T BLOW IT!

"Well gee, I..."

.
[======> And that's what you call literary license. What actually happened was a lot more jumbled and fragmentary than this point for point debate with my female self. But in essence and in outcome this was EXACTLY what happened. And it had this same effect. An influx of self-honesty and courage, of feeling okay with the idea of being ........ transgendered.

The idea that I should be worried or indignant over the prospects of emasculation is swiftly losing its grip on me. WHY should I be indignant? For who? A bunch of assholes on a boat?! What has the society of men ever given me besides a few laughs? What fealty do I really owe my my uncle, my cousins?

To never be a burden on them, I owe them this. To take one of them in for a while if he falls upon hard times. To fork over a kidney or whatever if it got down to that. But to demand that I BE them, at the expense of my own happiness? I can't. Not anymore.

I am moving into a space where my already tenuous link to them will most likely be severed completely. And that will be sad, but did they ever do much to make it inviting? They sneer at the whole concept of being there for someone emotionally, what they call "all that happy horse shit". For that I've always had to go to the freak of the family, that muff diver, who I don't think would have any major problem with Beverly...

And what do I owe my father? His despicable, craven abandonment nullified any contract between us. I LIKE the idea of disappointing and even disgusting him! Of letting him get a good look at what I've become, a pole dance and a curtsey before I kick him in the teeth with my pink stormtrooper boots-

"How do you like me now, DADDEEEEEEE?!!"

Or maybe not. It's been quite satisfactory not seeing him these past nine years. But I do like the idea that I seem to be turning out about as different as from him as a son can get...

"And those were some cool boots," I mutter.

YES THEY WERE.

"And I wish they HAD fit! What's wrong with that?"

HEY, YOU'RE PREACHING TO THE GREEK CHORUS HERE. I'LL BET MISS TRICIA WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU IN THEM!

"You think so?"

But even as I ask this I know it's true. She does have that clown thing, and it is something more than a job or even an artform to her. And I guess that's okay. We do make a cute, whimsical couple...
.

Tricia.....

Miss Tricia.....

Mrs. & Mrs. Miss Tricia The Clown.....

.
I touch the private benediction that she had painted on my brow, then address my mirror self (and my legions of imaginary suitors) batting my rainbow eyelashes and drawling like some dingbat coquette out of Tennessee Williams: "Sorry fellahs! Ah'm spoken for!"

The cackling laughter that erupts from me feels good at first, but then it frightens me as it takes on a life of its own and is soon raging out of control. When it finally resides I am drained and sligthly nauseous.

I finish up, and wriggle back into my clown dress.

.
#.13)====[ BRUNO'S BIG BREAK ]====>

Returning to the kitchen, I pause at the threshhold. The conversation out here has moved on to the big SuperUber-Mart they plan to build out on Abraxis Boulevard, what can be done to stop it, and: "Why the hell would you want to do that, Linda? New business is good for Oceana!"

Carla is the first one to see me. "Wow, look at her smiling! That must have been one hell of a shit!"

Then she bursts into shrieking laughter, slapping her knees in a rapidfire rhythm.

Betty shakes her head, "Carla Dear, I think you've had enough!"

Janice turns my way, "What do you need, Pumpkin?"

I'm about to say that I don't need anything, when I realize she is talking to a different Pumpkin. Bruno is standing in the entry beside me. He announces, "Miss Tricia says to tell you that we're ready to start now."

Janice looks at her watch, "Holy Cow! What took her so long?"

He fidgits, straightening his bow tie, "I'm not sure. She had our ladder out, and the tree saw."

"She what?!"

Just then there is a chorus of juvenile groans from the entertainment room. Miss Tricia has turned off their computer games.

Her voice rises above the clamor, "ALL RIGHT, LOOK ALIVE YOU ZOMBIES!"

We all grab our glasses and crowd into the hallway behind her as she corrals the pack of kids out the back door. Slapping red or blue star-shaped stickers onto each child as they pass by, "Okay now, don't lose these."

She's excellent at the crowd control part of this, cheerful but absolutely inflexible, moving them along like a sheep dog, "Take a seat everyone! You too Bethany, right there..."

She comes back in and then marshals the moms out, "Come on ladies, plenty of seats for everyone!"

As we start to file out a finger hooks itself throught the neck of my collar. "Not you, Jude! You stay here."

Five rows of six seats each face the picnic table. Everyone is settling in, but they keep looking back here.

Balloons hang from the trees like giant berries, transforming the backyard into a cut-rate magic forest. A string of major league baseball penants crosses the yard ten feet up. She really should've let me help with all this!

She sees the glass of wine I am holding. Grabs it out of my hand, drinks it down in one gulp, sets it down on the washing machine. "So how you feeling, Babe?"

I grab her, drag her away from the window, hug her, "Wonderful!"

"I guess so," she laughs. She backs up far enough to inspect my face. Sees the well-being radiating from it. "This isn't the wine, is it?"

"I'm in love!"

"Yeah," she says softly, her eyes saying all the rest of it.

"And also there's some stuff, issues, things I've been working out."

A balloon pops outside and a very young child starts screaming his head off.

She pulls away, jerks her head toward the start of the commotion, "We did start a bit late. We'll give 'em an hour and twenty of our best stuff, then see how the moms look. Once the moms look ready to go, it's safe to wrap it up at any time. You ready to go be a clown?"

I nod, swinging my arms as I march in place, pantomiming pure gusto!

"That's the idea. I've got to warn you though, things might get a little rough out there."

I point at the large, very fake plastic daisy pinned to her lapel, which she hadn't been wearing before. "What? You mean you're gonna squirt me with your flower? I can't believe we're doing that dumb old gag!"

"Wait until you hear them laughing over that 'old gag'. It'll be a revelation! Just how low the humor is that we're aiming for..."

Bruno is standing behind a little cd player on the picnic table, looking very serious and important. I smile, "I see you brought in more help."

"Look at him! Isn't he great? He's calling himself my sound engineer," she giggles Miss Tricia. I'm glad that she likes the little misfit as much as I do.

"I think this will turn out to be the highlight of the party for him."

"You might be right," she says, studying him, then turns to me, "Isn't this great?! Miss Tricia and Punkin' Judy: Back in Action!! Just like old times, isn't it Dollink?"

"Old times?"

She grips my arm, her eyes boring into mine, "No, I mean it! I am SO GLAD you worked out your issues and came back to me, Judy! Promise me you'll never do that again!"

Okay, this is weird. She's acting like I was gone for weeks. "Jeez, I just went to the bathroom. What do you mean?"

"You know," she says with a strange, melancholy smile that seems unnervingly familiar somehow.

But then before I can say anything more she has given Bruno a curt professional nod; and---returning it in kind---he presses the play button.

She gives me a quick peck on the lips and growls, "It's SHOWTIME!"

.

<====[ END OF PART THREE ]====>

.
====> NOTE: This story takes place in the Great State of Westlandia, that little funny shaped one (which some people say resembles the ass-end of an animal cracker) that you see on the map, nestled between California and the Oregon panhandle...

====> WARNING: The next installment (PART FOUR: The Old Ultra-Slapstick) will show a whole other side of Miss Tricia the Clown...

In which our Technicolor Angel's gruesomy dark side emerges, and she tolchoks me soundly from gulliver to yarbockles, leaving your humble narrator one bruised and weepy and disillusioned young devotchka, who sadly concludes that she must leave the employ of this certifiable bozova, who has suddenly turned all brutal-like...

===== HUMOR ME
===== by LAIKA PUPKINO
===== Part Four: THE OLD ULTRA-SLAPSTICK

"OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~Mr. Bill

.
#.14)=========[MADCAPS]====>

Though I had been Punkin' Judy for a few hours now, this was the start of my actual performance as a clown. Poised there---peering through the window in the back door of this suburban ranch house, our audience all seated expectantly out in the yard---my apprehension is like a modest version of what a paratrooper must feel, sitting hooked to the static line, listening to the drone of the engines, the wind whistling past the open hatch. The breasts-and-belly form strapped to my front like a reserve chute adds to this impression.

Then comes Miss Tricia's kiss, and her cry of "It's showtime!", as she flings the door open and leaps off of the back porch. I follow a heartbeat later. Geronimo.

We go trotting out there, making as flamboyant an entrance as we can to the fanfare blatting from her little boombox. Running circles around the makeshift theater and stage, my new lady love going clockwise and me counter, with her doing an impressive series of flips and cartwheels while I'm just skipping and doing this jazzy "HERE I AM!" thing with my upraised hands. Lame, but it seems better than doing nothing.

The music is the theme from the popular kid's cartoon show Bionic Barnyard Commandos, the closing-credits version that's missing the vocal track. Tricia sings her own lyrics over the strident march, and seems to approve when I start shouting "Birth-Day!" in the places where the chorus goes "Oi! Oi!" in the real song. As the music comes to an end she is running straight at me. I see her nod discretely, telling me that this is intentional. We collide and fall down!

Miss Tricia rolls gracefully and springs back to her feet. I intend to do something of this sort, but with this rubber mass I'm wearing under my dress I just hit the ground like a big sack of rice and stay there!

As I lay there winded and dazed she appears, standing over me in a caricature of concern. "Oh my golly goodness! Are you all right, Punkin' Judy? Here, lemme help you up-"

She grabs my wrists and pulls, not realizing that she has her foot planted firmly on top of me and all she's doing is wrenching my shoulder sockets. Miss Tricia tries lifting me several different ways, each with an absurd built-in flaw, which is obvious to the audience but not to her.

As the kids go apeshit over this I'm starting to get what she has been telling me about clowning. That wry observational humor and pithy bon mots just don't cut it in hard-core. They are all howling at her feigned ineptitude, while my bit about filing for Workman's Compensation had died a lonely death [Thank you, one mom who laughed].

Tricia enlists our sound man's help in getting to my feet, then smoothly sends him off to rejoin the audience, embarrassing him with: "Ladies and Gentleman, our birthday stud, the mighty Bruno!"

Some seconds later she sashays over to me, pivotting left and right at the waist in an infantile display of coyness, "Say, Punkin' Judy..."

"Yes, Miss Tricia?"

"Do you like my flower?"

"I sure do!" I exclaim, leaning in to admire it. "Wowie-zowies, that's puuurty-"

I had expected to get spritzed, but the water comes out of it more like out of a pressure washer than any little squirt toy, and I didn't have to fake acting startled. Four seconds and a gallon later I am sputtering and drenched! Where had she hid all that?

And so it goes. Mirth and merriment of the most unsophisticated sort. I have discovered this hysterical shrieking giggle I can do; like the winnying of the world's silliest horse! It's a laugh that could become grating very quickly, but employed at just the right times it never fails to crack them up! It feels good to have brought something to this act; to know I'm not a complete disaster at this but seem to be finding my way here...

I never imagined that my character would be so loopy and dumb, but this is what seems to work here. It's like when you're singing with someone ....... Miss Tricia projects herself as a strong "tenor", often foolish but unwaveringly confident. My harmonizing with this by adopting an even more serious persona might work in some other kind of act, but in clowning hers needs to be the bassline. So I've become this childish "alto" nincompoop, who these kids think is hilarious and the adults seem to find sweet, endearing...

She is doing a lot more of the actual work here than I am (I spin the jumprope while she skips it, juggling bright-colored clubs as she does), but after a half hour of this running around I am glad when she leads me to a folding chair that she had set aside for me.

Her oh-so-solicitous tone (how nice it'll be to sit and relax) should have tipped me off, but I wasn't thinking. And maybe it wouldn't have been as funny if I had known the chair was rigged to collapse under me, but I also wouldn't have yelled OH FUCK! like I did.

I sit on my ass on the damp grass and watch this solo part of the show- a game where the kids shout out things for Miss Tricia to make out of balloons, trying to stump her. With the exception of Bruno (who thinks it's a riot to request balloon facsimiles of "truth" and "redemption") none do. Her Abrams M-1 tank is amazing.

Inspecting my red>orange>yellow>green>blue painted nails, I am baffled to discover that where they had only extended an eight of an inch beyond the tips of my fingers an hour ago, they are more than double that. Measuring them against the same stripe on my plaid skirt I had used earlier shows that this is no trick of perception or memory, and I am utterly mystified. Spooked not by their feminine length and shape---that part I like---but by the question of HOW? And if they are growing, shouldn't there be a gap between my cuticles and where she painted them? But it's like the color is growing along with them. Weird!

A smallish pair of zebra-striped cowboy boots come into view. She is asking me something.

"Huh?"

"I said: So are you ready to bring out the cake?"

As I get to my feet I deliver the only line that I have been asked to remember today: “Duhhhh ....... What cake?”

"What do you mean 'what cake?', you banana-head! The cake I told you to buy. The birthday cake! We're at a birthday party, you know."

"No wonder I couldn't find the duty-free store. Oh yeah, the cake ......... Well you see I had it ........ but I was attacked by, uh ........ anti-caking agents?"

"A likely story. Can't I trust you to do anything? We promised all these kids-"

But by some fantastic coincidence, somebody had left this big cardboard box---which when we spin it around they can see is labelled CAKE FIXIN'Z---and this giant glass bowl on the picnic table. We set out to make Bruno's cake.

The flour (which we have a dusty little fight with) and the eggs are normal enough, but after that each ingredient seems to get more unusual---and more toxic---than the last. We act like it is the most sensible thing in the world to be tossing in catsup and instant coffee, spackle and plastic army men and leaky old AA batteries. A lot of the items in the box are from Miss Tricia's refrigerator, which she had given a long overdue cleaning last night. Tupperware tubs full of aromatic surprises.

The three gallon bowl is clear pyrex, so that the kids have a clear view of the gross-out developing within. They are both repelled and mesmerised [see De Sade and Gallagher: The Lure of the Unthinkable by Tricia Hackenbush, Dr. August's Clown Quarterly, Winter 2005]...

Into the mixing bowl goes a jar of glitter, then an old fashioned string of nasty pale sausages, which she works into the glop with her big potato masher.

"Hair conditioner?"

"Maybe just a schmeck," she cautions, but expresses no concern as I dump in the whole bottle, and then the bottle itself.

A lithe, elongated Siamese cat---who must live here---is padding quickly across the yard behind us, keeping its distance from all these shouting kids, erroneously deciding that Miss Tricia and I are less of a threat.

In one deft motion she scoops him up, and dangles him over the bowl: "Should we put the kitty in the cake?
A nice delicious kitty-cat cake?"

Ear-splitting screams from the kids before she lets it spring away- "Oops!"

The last ingredient in the box is three apples. She turns to me in concern, "Oh drat, Punkin' Judy! There's nothing to cut them up with."

I don't know why it is important to cut up these apples and not some of the larger and far less chewable items that are bobbing around in the glop, but I'm sure she has some perfectly stupid reason for it.

"I know!" she exclaims, and grabbing me by both biceps starts walking me backwards.

She stands me up against the trunk of the nearer of the two oak trees and sets an apple on top of my head.
I don't have a good feeling about this.

She goes over to "Dolly" and folds the clown-thing's trenchcoat back, pulling a bow and a sheaf of arrow from a slot alongside the helium tank. The bow is small, but it is clearly something from the sporting goods department and not the toy section. It's a real bow. Real arrows with pointy steel tips.

I am using my Punkin' Judy giggle to indicate timidity and reluctance ("Nope, uhn-uhn, don't wanna do it, nope!") but it doesn't seem to be influencing her decision to perform this stunt.

Which is when a voice in my head---gender-neutral, a different dissociative "person" from the one I had spoken with this afternoon in the bathroom---says with absolute conviction: NO ....... DEFINITELY NO.

I don't care if my boss here won the gold medal at Athens, or if she's done this a thousand times and never missed, there's always a first time. Just ask Joan Burroughs! Making a bunch of kids laugh just isn't a good enough reason to put myself at risk like this. Not when you can accomplish the same thing by just saying "Poop!" in a goony voice...

She glares at me furiously when I remove the apple from my head and toss it to her, then head off toward the house exclaiming, "Wow, I just remembered. I know where there's a cake. I guess I did bring it after all!"

As I start to make my way around the rows of spectators she calls out after me, "Oh no, I'm not falling for that one again!"

"No, really. And it's just a swell cake, all basebally an' ev'rything, Hee-yuck!"

"Do you really think I'm that stupid? This is the same exact stunt you pulled at that gig in Portland on Sunday. 'I'll be right back' you said. 'Trust me' you said ......... Right before you disappeared on me. Grabbed a passing cab and left us all stranded there without a cake. I had to stick candles into a bunch of Doobi-Doos. Horrible, horrible, discontinued butterscotch-kiwi Continental Snack Foods Doobi-Doos! How COULD you, Judith?!!"

What's so weird and creepy is the way her voice drops so completely out of clown mode, and has such a convincing quaver of bewilderment and hurt in it. I mean it sounds like actually BELIEVES this ludicrous story. If she's acting, she sure has me fooled!

She bellows in rage, "JUDY, GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE! I'M WARNING YOU..."

She had already notched the arrow into the string, and a rather paranoid idea comes over me- That as long as I don't turn around she won't fire at me, but to turn and face her would make me a fair target in her mind! A preposterous notion, and it really makes no sense---that she would be psycho enough to do the one but not the other---but this image has such an overwhelming grip on me that I keep my back to her, and quicken my pace toward the house, just twelve meters away now.

"You're gonna love this cake. Jumpin' Jillikers what a dummy I can be, forgettin' like that. I swear, I'd forget my head if I-" I make the 'mistake' of feeling for it in the air a foot above my head, "Whoah, where'd it go?! Oh wait, here it is!"

And now someone is coming up fast behind me, breathing hard. Tricia obviously. But just as I turn to face her-

(Feel free to skim this next chapter if it becomes too violent for you...)

.
#.15)===[KIDS DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!]==>

.
A fierce blow to the backs of my knees makes me fold and pitch forward!

I am on my hands and knees, trying to clamber to my feet as blows rain down on my ass and back! She is using this cartoonishly swollen and oversized florescent-orange plastic baseball bat. The thing might be hollow but she's really leaning into it! People are laughing, assuming that it's all just part of the act...

Why isn't she pulling her swings and letting me fake my reactions? Doesn't she realize how hard she's hitting me?

Of course she does. And while this is not as bad as having an arrow lodged in your aorta, it fucking HURTS!

"Oh no," she hisses, her voice choked with hatred, "You're not leaving me again! Every time, just as I'm getting you trained, you pull this shit! You're incapable of gratitude, you little whore! All my effort, all the sacrifice, the promises we made, the hopes-"

Somehow in the last couple of minutes she's turned as crazy as a shithouse rat! Either she really believe I had done this to her, or she's mistaking me for some previous Punkin' Judy who left her- whatever her malfunction is I have to get away from this barrage of blows!

But when I have almost managed to scramble to my feet she does the back-of-the-knees trick again and I land face first, my lips sliding across the grass! She plants her boot on my back and addresses the audience, "Punkin' Judy tried to run away and leave us all without cake, kiddies! Because she's a big selfish Stupid Butt who can't bother with what anyone else needs! And what do we do with bad clowns who don't do their job?"

The children all shout out suggestions, none of which are what she says next.

"That's right! We BEAT THEM!" she cheers, and to demonstrate this she starts dancing around, swinging the bat at imaginary targets, taking them out in sequence.

This is my chance to make a break for it, but hindered by this heavy prosthesis hugging me I only manage to get to my knees before she whirls and swings it toward my face, but at the last instant veers and brings it down on my collarbone- driving me down! And now she breaks into song---the same song we had been singing together back on the freeway---punctuating each line by whacking me:

"Oh step right up, and take a look at a fool-" . SMASH!!

"He's got a heart as stubborn as a mule-" . KRAK!!

"Come on ev'rybody, he’s good for a laugh-" . POW!!

It's odd that it never occurs to me to call out for help- (I guess some stubborn reservoir of masculine ego making me reluctant to hollar, "Help! Help! This GIRL is beating me up!"); I am staggering back and forth on my knees with the blows, grunting! While the vest is padded, it doesn't help in the back, where it strikes my kidneys! Oh Fuck, I'm going to have some real bruises tomorrow!

"And no one can tell his heart is broken in half!" . WHAM!

Part of me still can't believe this is happening! It's like some Three Stooges take on that ghastly "Singing in the Rain" scene from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE!

"Well the Joke's on me, I'm off to join the circus-"

Here I make a grab for the bat, only to have it connect with my wrist! . KRUNCH!!

I draw this arm in against me, and now only have my left hand to defend myself with. I picture her last Punkin' Judy in a hospital bed, huge old-fashioned casts on her arms and legs, suspended by wires and weights on pulleys.

Our agreement of '$50 for a few hours work' sure didn't include this! I shout, "Whoah, whoah, whoah! Time out here..."

"No time out for you," she squeaks inanely, Minnie Mouse as a dominatrix- "You didn't say your safe word."

"My WHAT?! Are you out of your goddamn- GHAAAHHHHHH!!!"

The bat has caught me cleanly across the tits! There must be steel wires inside this vest, and the plastic cudgel must have driven them clear out of the rubber- because what feels like a fondue skewer has stabbed into each of my pectorals, missing my nipples by millimeters!

At this I fall over onto my back. The bat comes down on the belly part of the costume, and another spike gets me right in the navel! The kids roar with laughter as I scream!

Finally she backs off, leaving me gasping in pain. She stands like she's posing for her statue, staring off over the brown shingled rooftops, her eyes burning with some insane joy. Obviously the woman has issues. Serious issues. Mogadishus...

I should really get up and run now, but all I can think about right this moment is to see what the hell stabbed me in these three places, and how bad these wounds are, to see whether I should relax or really start to panic!

Although I don't know how I'm going to get to behind this rubber sack strapped to me when with my sprained and numb right hand I can't even rip this blouse open-

Miss Tricia clamps her hands to her cheeks, her mouth forming a scandalized O- "My goodness! What are you doing, Ju-Ju?!"

"Just go away," I answer miserably.

"Oh no! Punkin' Judy is trying to rip her clothes off. Remember what the judge told you last time? That's a Bozo No No!"

I'm really coming to hate that stupid singsong voice she uses. "Look this isn't funny, alright? This piece-of-shit fat suit of yours is coming apart, and it-"

Miss Tricia gasps, and two fingers drive themselves up my nostrils then yank upward! My eyes fill with tears and I hear myself making noises I didn't know a person could make as I am half lifted, half clamber to my feet!

"Punkin Judy just said 'shit', kids. She said a naughty! And what do we do with naughty girls who say bad words?"

"Beat them!!" roars the peanut gallery.

"That's right, we wash their mouth out with soap. Right this way, Miss Poopymouth!"

Her fingers twist my nose and she walks me to the picnic table- a surprisingly effective means of inducement that she must have learned when she was employed at Abu Griab. She mutters through clenched teeth, "You've broken my heart for the last time, you ungrateful bitch! You think this hurts? Then you have no idea of the pain you've put me through-"

I am still bent in half, my captive honker hovering over the table as she fumbles around with her free hand for something. "Soap? I coulda sworn I saw a bar soap around here ....... Oh drat!"

As I'd expected, she slides the giant bowl with the noxious concoction in it into position under my face."I don't see no soap here kids, we'll just have to wash her mouth out-"

A plan is forming in my head. My helplessness and bewilderment are only partly an act as I whine, "Why are you doing this to me?"

"WITH CAKE!!" she hollars---which doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it---and releases my nose just long enough lock her hands behind my head and shove it into the foul concoction.

Bubble bubble. Whatever you do don't breathe in. This has been a weird day. And on top of it all I'm hallucinating voices. Staticcy + distant like on some cheap little radio:

*This looks bad, Cap. Should we move in?*
*Maybe, not just yet...*

Bubble bubble. Something bobbing, like trying to get into my ear. What am I doing here? Oh that's right-

My eyes clenched tight, I drive my heel back into her shin and push off the table with both palms, and with all my might! She staggers back. I grab the bowl and fling it at her.

It misses her by a mile. But that's fine. The main thing is I am out of her clutches, and I'm going to stay that way! I scream as loud as I can, "THAT'S IT, I QUIT!"

"You what?!" Miss Tricia gasps.

"You heard me, I quit! Quit! QUIT! You You SICK FREAK!"

"Oh for Pete's sake. Haven't we rehearsed this enough times?"

"What rehearsal?! I know we sure as hell didn't rehearse you beating the crap out of me," I scream. Some ingredient from the "cake fixins" is burning my eyes.

"It's a plastic bat. You're totally padded," she huffs, and pounds her own thigh with it quite hard to demonstrate that it doesn't hurt. "Don't be such a goddamn baby!"

"Hey, can I try that?" I cackle nastily, reaching for the bat, and I am gratified on some dark animal level by how she steps back away from me.

"Folks, I apologize for my partner here," she announces, the model of reasonableness. "She's got some problems at home. I guess I didn't realize how bad it was or I would have told her to stay home today..."

"You can make up any lies you want. Just stay the hell away from me!"

"All right, go sit down, I'll finish this myself. Stay out of my way for the rest of the show, and when I'm done I'll give you a ride home. Again my apologies, folks. Now who's up for some FUN?"

Half-blinded, I make my way around the audience toward the house. The kids are laughing at my stiff staggering walk---probaby not realizing that a clown can actually get hurt---but I sense considerable tension about this incident from many of the adults.

The pain that had lanced through my chest and belly is subsiding, but I picture the metal points that had jabbed me as all misshapen by rust and oozing God-knows-what. I limp away, muttering, "If I need a tetanus shot, you're going to pay for it."

She hollars lewdly, "Sure Baby. I'd love to pay for your tit job!"
.

.
And that---Sirs and Madams, Sisters and Brothers---is the worst of it. The part I have been dreading telling you. But I had survived this plunge into that gyring, lucifer space; and while again on my oddy so knocky, I was free. But in my gloopy innocence I failed to fully pony
the shiny whirring machinery of her craft...

And why am I talking like this?
.

<====[ END OF PART FOUR ]====>

.

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