reflection

TW: scary clown, childhood terror.

I’m pretty sure everyone has a scary clown story. Here’s mine:

1968-69: My eyes opened. I was in my bed. The first things I took in were the walls. My bed was set into an alcove. The wall of the alcove was to my left, and the head and foot of the bed had their own half walls. My view widened to include more of the room. Past the foot of the bed, and slightly to the right, there was a window, about the level of the head and torso of an adult. I awoke, opened my eyes, and allowed my eyes to adjust to the light coming in the window, and slowly took in the shape that was contained within the window.

There was a human form crouched in the window, maybe squatting on the window sill–it’s not clear. As my eyes focused, I could see that the person’s face was obscured by makeup-white pancake base, big red oversized lips, bulbous red nose, eyes like horizontal slits with vertical slits slashed through them. There was some kind of collar, but I only call it a collar in retrospect, as I didn’t know what a collar was. I didn’t know what a clown was, either. I am describing an experience through adult eyes that didn’t make any sense to me as a young child, but that I can recall as clearly as I experienced it as a child.

This character was looking at me. He was a character, but he was also a person. He was looking at me, and pointing at me. He was looking at me, and pointing at me, and smiling at me, with that painted-on smile that I was not able to interpret. Was this a happy face? What was the intention behind this painted-on smile? Was I supposed to smile along? I did not feel like smiling along. I did not trust this character. I did not trust this person.

He was looking at me, and pointing at me, and smiling at me, and saying, over and over again, “You…, you…, you…, you…,” and laughing. And laughing. And laughing. “You…, you…, you…”

I felt my eyes widen, and my breath catch, and then rush in in a big rush, and an electric feeling of terror, and I screamed…
I awoke screaming. Someone came and got me, and picked me up and hugged me.

And that was it. That’s the end of the memory. I can still recall it like it happened yesterday. I have described this dream to each of my parents, and as far as I can tell, I was maybe 2 or 3 years old, judging by the description of the space. The clown form in my memory is the clown from a box of straws (you might recognize it), and I remember that box being in the house, and I remember being confused that the clown from my dream was on the box of straws.

As an adult, I can totally enjoy clowns, slapstick body-humor, the thrill of the unknown intention, and of the obscured identity. But it is an enjoyment that is a bit like enjoying the feeling of jumping into a hole in the ice of a frozen lake, having almost drowned once, and having trained oneself to get past the initial reaction of panic as one’s body is engulfed in bitingly cold water.

Feb 14, 1976: I had done something wrong. I don’t remember what, but I had been sent to my room. It was after dinner. I was almost 10, but not quite.

Being sent to my room was not the worst thing that could happen. Sometimes, when I did something wrong, I got the belt, or the nearest piece of two-by-four. Sometimes I got a talking-to. Sometimes I had to write a penance 50 times–”I will consider my words before talking back.” But tonight, I was just sent to my room. It was after dinner, so it was just my time, as far as I was concerned.

I had a train set–a pretty nice one–with it’s own plywood platform (my dad worked at a plywood mill), and a few plastic trees, stations, and railroad workers. I developed some facility in using the connectors, and could sculpt some satisfying layouts. This night, I was just enjoying watching the train respond to the gentle pressure of my fingers on the potentiometer that controlled the speed of the train. And I was listening to the radio.

The radio was my church from a very early age. I had been given an incredible radio as a child. It was the size of a modern toaster oven, and had buttons like piano keys that allowed one to choose from multiple bands that one doesn’t see on most consumer radios: Long Wave, Short Wave I, Short Wave II, AM, FM, etc. You could tune in the local AM station, or you could find stations that broadcast in Morse Code, or random tones that sounded both cool and ominous.

This night, I was listening to KAGO Klamath Falls, the AM station that played American Top 40 (as I write this, I am audiating both the American Top 40 jingle and the jingle for KAGO, though it’s been 45 years since I’ve heard either one). Watching the train go around the track, and through the tunnel, and get faster and slower in response to my hand on the dial, I listened to Casey Kasem describe the top 40 hits of the time. Each song was familiar, as KAGO was a Top 40 station, and it was what was playing in the school bus, and my step-mom’s car. I remember thinking about the ranking of the songs:

• Wow, that song Bohemian Rhapsody is so new-sounding and weird, but it’s also sad, and I like it
• Junk Food Junkie is funny
• Dream Weaver should be higher. It’s really cool
• Golden Years! I love that song! Should be in the Top 5!
• Oh! What A Night: I don’t know what it’s about, but it seems very grown up, so I think I should like it
• I Write The Songs: I sing this to myself all the time, except when no one is around, and then I sing it at the top of my lungs! Greatest song ever!

So, as I was watching the train go around, and mentally commenting on the hits of the week, I was also formulating in my mind what I thought would be the number one song in the nation on that evening. Even before Casey was at number 15, I had decided that 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover was going to be the number one song.

I didn’t have any evidence that led to this conclusion. I just knew it. It wasn’t necessarily my favorite song that week (I think I Write The Songs was my jam at that point in time), but I just had this feeling in my shins that 50 Ways was going to be the number one song.

And then I forgot about it. I got lost in the train. I got lost in hearing ELO sing about an Evil Woman, which was so interesting, and exciting-sounding, and new, but confusing as well. What was an evil woman about? I got caught up in imagining what a Love Machine would look like. I tried to imagine what the sexy part of You Sexy Thing looked like. Remember, I was almost 10. And the train was going around and around.

And then, it happened. It was time. The number one song in the nation was: 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.

I knew it. How did I know it? I was right. How was I right?

A great stillness came over me as I realized that I had merged with the will of the nation, and the list of possibilities of how this could have happened ran out. That stillness, and the wonder of having been correct in my projections, lasted a long time.

I can still call it up, as I struggle with more current concerns–the memory that I was right, once, when I was almost 10, somehow sustains my 50-something self. That stillness…

During a weekend trip up to San Francisco from San Diego in the mid-80s, my girlfriend and I stopped at Caffé Trieste in North Beach for cappuccinos. It was early evening, and the the place was pretty packed. We were enjoying looking at people, checking out their style choices, listening to the mix of music coming over the speakers.

My girlfriend got my attention at one point and leaned in close–”Look at that guy over there,” as she gestured over at a man seated at the large communal table. He was dressed kind of shabbily, if I remember correctly. He had big, course workman’s hands, and he was fairly kneading a crayon onto a piece of cardboard. He had a big box of crayons, and he was using them almost like clay. You could see that there were layers upon layers of color, mixing together and forming an earth-like texture. We couldn’t really tell if he was making an image, or just working with texture.

Does anyone know who this might have been? I’ve always wondered if his art or his person are a part of San Francisco culture that is known to others. A friend just made a post about the artist Jean Dubuffet and it sparked my memory. Thanks, Leticia A. Martinez!

Winter 1978: I lived in Klamath Falls Oregon and attended 7th grade at Brixner Junior High School. I was a band geek–I remember playing The Theme from Evergreen in band, and I still get the closing bars stuck in my head a couple of times a year. I was the only boy flute player. That didn’t make me popular with the girls OR the boys. I also had gone to about 10 different schools by that time, in 4 different towns, so I didn’t have experience really knowing people very well.

The thing to do on Saturday nights was to get dropped off by your parents at the skating rink. We would skate, play pinball, drink Cokes, and sometimes hang out at a booth. I wasn’t any great shakes as a skater–I could shoot the duck pretty well, but I could never skate backwards. I would watch as the couples would do the slow skate together, lights dimmed, facing each other with hands on each other’s hips, sometimes the guy skating backwards and sometimes the girl. I wanted to be one of those couples SO BAD, but I could never muster the courage to ask a girl to skate.

One time, I was playing the Tommy pinball machine when the lights went down. I’m pretty sure the song was Reminiscing by The Little River Band, one of my favorites. Just then, H____ D_____ came up behind me and asked if I wanted to skate with her. My heart leapt out of my chest. “Sure,” I said, trying not to sound too excited and trying to keep my hand from shaking. We just skated around holding hands, both facing forward – she in her denim-colored saddleback Dittos and me in my white bell bottoms. We didn’t talk or look at each other. I couldn’t think of anything to say that I didn’t think would make me sound stupid. But I soaked up the feeling of her hand in mine, and tried to flow with the gentle swinging of our arms.

When the song ended and the lights came back on, she just turned and smiled at me, and we gave each other a slight wave, from the hip, and then I watched her skate away. When my dad picked me up, I was silent on the way home in the truck, trying to remember her smell and the feeling of her hand. I thought about her all weekend.

On Monday, back at school, in Mr. Stauffer’s science class, I wrote RG + HD, surrounded by a heart, on my blue fabric-covered 3-ring binder, which also had signatures and logos and sayings all over it from other kids (that was a thing). At lunch, one of the other kids saw it right away and asked me if I was in love with Howdy Doody.

I don’t know how she found out, but at the end of lunch, H_____ D_____ came over to where I was sitting. She looked me straight in the eye, and said, “I’m not your girlfriend,” then turned and walked off. In math class, I dutifully filled in the heart with my blue ballpoint pen, and that was it. Not even a full day did that token stay on my notebook for me to look at and dream about. I don’t remember ever seeing or talking to HD again after that. I was totally ashamed that I had acted so one-sidedly, and I never wrote another girl’s initials next to mine again. I didn’t kiss a girl until my birthday party in 8th grade, and I didn’t have a girlfriend until 10th grade, but my heart fell in love many, many times.

And it still does. I don’t feel like my heart has grown up at all. Honestly, every trip to the grocery store is like playing pinball, waiting for someone to come up and ask me to slow skate.