An excerpt from Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett
Cold Open
You can tell a joke one of two ways:
1. Open your mouth and say the damn thing.
2. Wait for someone else to try to tell it for you.
The second way is almost always funnier. People don’t want to hear a punch line; they want to feel like they’ve beaten you to it. Pretend you’re dumber than the audience, at least at first, and suddenly you’ve got them eating from the palm of your hand. The real gag is waiting behind the scenes, tucked neatly inside the fake-out. It’s an actual diamond ring disguised as a gaudy cubic zirconia.
I’m telling this to the woman from the birthday party, but she’s not listening. Her eyes have that faraway look, sleepy with desire. Lips part to reveal a slip of tongue and a back tooth gone inky with rot. I’ve got her up on the sink, underwear pulled down. She’s jiggling her legs rapidly, knees knocking together because I’m taking too long. She’s been after it ever since she opened the front door and found me waiting on her porch.
Listen, I’ve been busy. For the past two and a half hours, I’ve entertained her six-year-old son, Danny, and his entire first-grade class in a sprawling suburban Central Florida backyard. I’ve built zoo animals from stringy multihued balloons and pulled never-ending scarves from the ends of my belled sleeves. The bulbous yellow daisy on my lapel has shot water at the woman’s husband, soaking the neck of his expensive Ralph Lauren polo. I’ve thrown a whipped cream pie into the moon of a child’s upturned face and spritzed seltzer at an elderly schnauzer who took my rented pant leg between its tiny razor teeth and yanked until the hem unraveled.
“Come on,” she says, voice breathy and impatient. “Hurry.”
There’s a swath of black hairs lining the top of her right ankle, a sprawl of red dots climbing the inside of her bare thigh from a shaving rash. She kicks free of her underwear and almost knees my nose off in her rush to get naked. I reach up to right it, smearing a lick of greasepaint on my gloved fingertips. I’ll have to wash them with dish soap right when I get home or else they’ll stain. I tell her this, but she doesn’t care about that either.
“We’ve got ten minutes,” she says, which means we’ve got less time than that.
I keep my clothes on because that’s what she wants. The baggy polka-dot blazer, the orange striped shirt and gold bowtie, the purple spangled suspenders, my oversize parachute pants with their lines of glittery silver thread outlining the sperm-shaped squiggles of bright neon green. My shiny red shoes are long enough to bang into the side of the toilet bowl as I wrench off her blouse. Buttons plink onto the black-and-white tiled floor.
“Finally.” She wraps her legs around my waist, feet bouncing against my back as I slip off a glove with my teeth so I can slide my fingers inside her. She looks away from my bare hand, not wanting to see anything that’s not CLOWN ; she’s paying for CLOWN and has wanted CLOWN since she called the agency’s number two months earlier to plan her son’s birthday party. She stares hungrily at my painted face: the wide slick of paint that surrounds my mouth, the black and indigo triangles that shape my eyes, the iconic red foam nose that holds my overly hot breath inside its spongy interior. The wig I wear is powder blue, curls springy and cute, like a deranged Shirley Temple who just got back from Burning Man. Atop the wig sits a tiny rhinestone and suede cowboy hat I picked up one afternoon at a pet shop, which is now a staple of my clowning gear. I’m Bunko, a rodeo clown who’s terrified of horses. Goes over great with the kids.
“Do you have a dick?”
I stop thrusting and look down at her, finding us suddenly off-script.
“A dick?”
She licks her lips. Pink lipstick feathers at the corners of her mouth. “Not a real dick. I know you’re a female clown, I’m not dumb. I mean like . . . a dick dick.”
“A dick,” I repeat, because our time together is nearing its inevitable conclusion and neither of us has gotten off. There’s sudden shrieking inside the house, the bang of sneakers against the expensive maple floorboards, the groan of furniture as bodies ricochet against the walls. Soon her husband will do the thing that all husbands do when faced with a crew of screaming children: he will search for his missing wife.
“Also, I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything, but could you use the clown voice? I mean, I’m paying for the experience, you know?”
Shifting back into Bunko is easy enough. I grin down at her and widen my eyes dramatically.
“Let’s see what I’ve got up my sleeve,” I say, high-pitched and giggly, the tone I’ve worked to perfect since I took up clowning eight years earlier. “I bet Bunko’s got something just for you.”
I’ve got nothing like that in my clowning kit. All my dildos are at home, squirreled away inside my nightstand. But if I’ve learned anything from clowning, it’s that there’s always a way to turn nothing into something. I’ve entertained an entire backyard full of people with nothing but a wooden spoon and a cast-iron pan as accompaniment, drumming the theme from The Brady Bunch while simultaneously dancing a jig. I’ve landed a somersault on a Slip ’N Slide while juggling three Coke cans and somehow managed not to break my neck. If I can’t MacGyver myself a dick out of thin air, then I need to find a new profession.
Clowning is an excuse to make everyday life wildly, luxuriously absurd. I create a drumroll sound effect with my tongue, wriggling my fingers expectantly before delving inside the interior pocket of my coat. I rummage in there for a moment, allowing the expectation to build, and then suddenly produce a magic wand.
Her eyes widen. “Ooh.”
It’s collapsible. I’d used it earlier at the party, tapping the brim of Bunko’s undersized cowboy hat to summon a rubber snake, exclaiming in alarm when the wand broke into pieces and the reptile suddenly “escaped.” It gets a laugh every time, that stupid wand, and I hold it out in front of me now like I might actually create some real magic.
If I can’t MacGyver myself a dick out of thin air, then I need to find a new profession.
As she tentatively takes it in her hands, I let it collapse. The woman screams with joy, legs immediately spreading as I command the wand erect again. It’s not nearly as wide as a dildo, but it’s not the size of the wand that matters, it’s the motion of the potion that counts, and the woman seems thrilled with what I’ve produced. I prod it inside her as she stares up at my makeup-caked face, hands knotted in the sides of my bright blue wig, grunts spilling from between her closed lips as I hurry, hurry, hurry. We’re definitely running out of time. It sounds like there’s a stampede heading toward the bathroom, so many little bodies needing to purge their bladders and bowels after swilling cups of overly sugary lemonade and consuming a towering Publix layer cake that must have cost the woman a small fortune. People with money never think about what birthdays cost. No expense is spared for a kid who will barely remember the day; there is no other choice than to have a party because the alternative—no party, no gifts—is unthinkable for the upper middle class. They’ll never have to waffle over a bank account in the teenage digits, deciding which birthday dreams get to live and which must crawl away and die.
I should have charged more.
She cranes upward and presses her face to mine, tongue slipping inside my mouth as she comes. I wrench backward and push her away, sure my makeup is ruined, and it must be, because some of it now coats the right side of her face in a Picasso-style swirl. Sudden banging on the bathroom door. The wand has collapsed again, slithering out of her body. I shove it back in my pocket as she yanks her underwear on, blonde hair mussed and frizzy from repeatedly rubbing against a stack of bright yellow hand towels.
“Hurry,” she says, but this time it’s said with a trace of genuine fear as she works to scrub the greasepaint stains from her chin with a wad of damp toilet paper.
I clear my throat, but she won’t look at me. My usefulness has reached its inevitable conclusion upon delivery of her orgasm; the clown must go back in the box. If I put out my hand and tried to touch her shoulder just now, she’d swat me off like a cloud of gnats.
More shouting. It’s the husband. He’s agitated, demanding a response from his wife. “Marcia, are you okay? Marcia, answer me!” She looks more like a Samantha, I think, then pocket the thought for later as I climb inside the oversize tub and clear the windowsill of bath products. I shove the frame open and use the soap dish as a stepping stool, bottles of Pantene Pro-V and floral-fragranced shower gel falling to the floor as I heft myself onto the lip, shower curtain wrapped around my scissoring legs.
“Shit,” I say, because the thick loop of wire that keeps my pants extended has caught on the edge of the frame. The lock on the door has proved ineffective in the face of the husband’s outrage; there’s a loud crack as the cheap fiberboard breaks. Pieces of MDF clatter onto the tile floor as he bursts into the bathroom.
One more solid push and my pants finally tear. Someone grabs my leg and yanks off one of my oversize shoes as I slither through the opening. I fall forward into the blazingly hot Florida afternoon, landing face-first in a thatch of bougainvillea. My blazer snags on the thorns as I roll free, knocking into a pair of black garbage bins.
It’s always the jokes that go off the rails that work best, I think, as my own shoe flies from the open window and whacks me hard in the neck. The beauty of it stuns me for a moment, and I stand in the sunshine and watch the shoe roll down the hill and land in a nearby flower bed, squashing a clutch of fuchsia peonies.
“You fucking clown!” The husband yells it again, in case I missed it the first time. “You goddamn fucking clown!”
He chucks a shampoo bottle at my head. I duck and it smacks into the side of the garbage bin, Pantene spurting from the broken lid. I take off down the street at a gallop, abandoning my clown kit in the middle of the couple’s living room. It’s full of stuff I need for work, a hundred fifty dollars’ worth of makeup and gear, and as I’m running for my life, I realize that the man isn’t wrong. The punch line is sitting right there.
I am a literal fucking clown.
Aquarium Select III
The hot older lady with the baby bearded dragon is at Darcy’s register. I know this because Darcy is clicking the talk button on her walkie-talkie and repeatedly hissing the word “fire-breather” into the mic. It sounds like the opening to an especially bad EDM track. Jamming the button alone is usually enough to pique my interest; it’s our signal that something special is happening so we should drop what we’re doing and pay attention. For an exotic pet store, “special” happens way less often than you’d think.
The headset buzzes, and then there’s a brusque, no-nonsense voice in my ear. “Stop messing around.”
Darcy clicks back in, all mock professionalism. “Yes, sir, Mister Manager.”
Work is boring, but at least it’s predictable. The paycheck is fine for part-time work that barely requires rubbing two brain cells together. It gives you time to think about anything other than what you’re getting paid to do. That’s what Darcy and I tell each other when the days begin to stretch out in front of us like chewing gum that’s had all the flavor gnawed from it. Boring is better than stressed-out. We’re financing our creative careers.
Clowning ain’t cheap, I think. I mentally pour one out for my kit, abandoned last week in that woman’s living room.
“I need restock on aisle four. Filter socks and media baskets.”
If we don’t respond, he’ll yell at us again. On a boring day that would be fine by me—it gives me something to do, and he’s funny when he’s pissed. In fact, several of my clown identities have taken on very specific uptight Mister Manager vibes: peacocked chest, veins in my neck protruding as I grind my teeth. But since I want to check out the woman at the register, I take one for the team and answer him.
“Right away, Mister Manager.”
“Knock that crap off,” he says. “I’m tired of it.”
Mister Manager’s real name is Roy Mangia, but Darcy and I have been calling him Mister Manager ever since the third week of work when I heard him accidentally announce it as his last name over the intercom. He’s a forty-something dude with a roachy patchwork beard who eats the same overly mustardy tuna sandwich every day for lunch. The guy drives a teal-green Mazda Miata with a rack for his incredibly expensive racing bike dangling from the back. He’s the poster boy for masculine midlife crises.
Instead of heading to aisle four so I can do my actual job, I slip past the tower of glowing blue tanks that line the wall of the shop and power walk to the register. There she is: the MILF of my dreams. She holds out the lizard for Darcy’s inspection. She’s been coming in at least once a week after buying it from our coworker, Wendall, who neglected to tell her that baby bearded dragons are essentially the French bulldogs of the reptile world: allergic to nearly everything, expensive as hell, and almost always on the verge of death.
“He’s shivering. See? His neck is all pale.”
Darcy hums noncommittally. Her mohawk is especially tall today, nearly grazing the bottom of a long banner advertising Ocean’s Blend supplements. Darcy Dinh likes a theme, and she generally sticks to aquatic colors when it comes to her hair: blues, greens, purples. This week, she’s gone for a mix of all three. If she stood in front of the store, she’d blend in chameleon-like against the paint. The exterior was painted by a muralist ten years earlier. It features bloated whales and scraggly, bug-eyed seagulls on a background of murky, phosphorescent foam. Some days, when I arrive for a shift, it feels as though I’m entering a rip-off SeaWorld. It’s a part of the scenery for me at this point. My eyes scan past the paint and over the aisles of piled-up junk. Wobbling stacks of glass tanks? Check. Bags of fluorescent gravel? Check. Gigantic wall mural that features what might be a demonic mermaid? Check.
Wendall is standing next to the entrance, pretending to clean the window. The rag in his hand moves in circles about five inches from the actual glass. His face is bent over his phone, and it’s giving his skin a greenish, unattractive tint. It used to be that Darcy and I would have yelled at him by now for leaving us with all the work, but lately she’s been giving him a pass. Making fun of a coworker is a team sport, and she’s dropping the ball.
“Cherry?” Darcy waves me over. “Can I get your help with this?”
The woman turns to me and holds the lizard out for my inspection. I stare at it like I know what I’m doing and declare that it needs a better heat lamp. Despite four years working at Aquarium Select III, I know almost nothing about reptile care.
“He’s cold,” I say, because even I feel frozen inside the tundra that is our shop. Mister Manager keeps the temperature akin to that of a walk-in freezer. He claims it’s good for circulation, but really he’s just trying to prevent us from curling up in dusty, hidden corners of the store and napping when business is slow. It’s a miracle that the animals haven’t all died in this latest instance of the Ice Age.
I lead the woman to aisle two where we keep the reptile habitats and various supplies, supplements, and equipment. Most of this stuff has been sitting on the shelf for years; we don’t have much turnover because people prefer to buy their pet stuff online. The boxes are coated in a fine layer of grime. I can feel Darcy’s eyes boring a hole into my back. I don’t have to see her to know that she’s thrusting her hips in a pornographic gesture that would get her suspended if our boss caught her. When I turn around, I see that Wendall has wandered over from his “cleaning” project and is busy showing Darcy something from his notepad.
Seven clicks in a row over my headset as I put my arm around the woman’s shoulders and guide her around the corner.
“I’m going to take the walkies away from you.”
“Yes, please,” Darcy replies, high-pitched and saccharine. “Thank you, Mister Manager.”
“Screw you both.”
Wendall’s not included in this lambasting because he is never around. I’m not sure he even has a walkie-talkie, much less an earpiece. It’s a point of contention between myself and Mister Manager because I’m of the opinion that since Wendall takes two-hour bathroom breaks and three-hour lunches, he’s technically the worst employee at Aquarium Select III, yet we’re the ones getting chewed out over a little harmless fun. Wendall is a slam poet who is never not high. On shift he’s either spaced-out or droning on and on about black holes, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t care about stocking shelves. Darcy used to hate it too, but now she laughs when she sees him scratching down goofy little phrases in his notepad, like he thinks he’s going to be the next Kerouac. But I’m not fooled. The guy’s a secret menace. Whenever he does anything job related, it just turns into more work for everyone else. Take restocks, for instance. He puts everything on the wrong shelf, then throws up his hands in despair when confronted with the error. Usually, it’s me or Darcy who’s tasked with fixing it, the age-old tale of women having to take care of a helpless man. Except he’s not helpless; he’s just lazy. Or maybe, a little malicious. It’s like how my older brother Dwight used to load the dishwasher poorly so that our mother would stop asking him to do it.
I bet she wishes she could yell at him about the dishwasher now, I think. We could take turns really laying into him in person instead of dealing with all the jumbled detritus of his memory piled up in our heads.
“Which light are you using?”
“This one,” the woman says, picking up a box. “Is it no good?”
She has stowed the bearded lizard inside her neon-pink fanny pack. I can see his tiny face mashed against the mesh front pocket as he wriggles around frantically, searching for a way out. I pretend to examine the light, but mostly I’m staring at the incredible amount of cleavage spilling from her Lycra workout top.
“It’s possible you need a different bulb for it,” I say, because that sounds sensible enough to be actual advice. “Something warmer.”
Along with the Lycra top, she’s wearing a pair of pink and yellow spandex leggings and fluffy white leg warmers. Her hair is what a box of dye might call “spicy cinnamon,” and there’s approximately two pounds of makeup on her face. I don’t know what it is about women who could be my mother that gets me off, but I am a sucker for anyone over the age of fifty who looks like they are about to lead a very rigorous step aerobics class. Possibly it’s due to the fact that I’m looking for someone to take care of me since my own mom forgot to call me on my last birthday, but even I’ve got my limits; I’m not going to ogle this woman’s tits while reminiscing about my unhappy childhood.
Aquarium Select III stocks only three different types of heating bulbs, so we take our time poring over the packaging—the woman because she’s genuinely interested in saving her lizard’s life, and me because her skin smells like a mixture of cotton candy and dryer sheets.
“I’m not sure,” she says, frowning so hard it looks like it hurts. “What do you think?” Her lipstick is a slick of bright red, a color that’s entirely reminiscent of the clown paint I wear for work events. I wonder if it’s the same brand I use when I’m out of the good stuff.
I could lie and make something up, some bullshit about faulty heating elements and Florida humidity, but my heart’s not in it. It’s thinking about the clown paint that did it; my kit with all my best stuff abandoned in some woman’s living room because I was too much of a coward to go back for it. There’s not enough in my bank account to buy more. I’ll have to use the cheap, shitty stuff that makes my face break out until I save up enough for the good greasepaint again. There’s an audition in a couple of weeks I’ve been gearing up for—an opportunity to get in on a traveling children’s showcase that tours from Gainesville down to St. Petersburg—and if I prep my set list wisely enough, I could be good to go on gigs for the entire summer. I could network with half the clowns in Florida and land even more full-time work. But no gear means no audition means no money. Twenty-eight years old and broke with a chin full of acne isn’t exactly a persona I want to lean into.
“I’m actually not sure either.” I slide the box back onto the shelf. “It could be any of these.”
The woman sighs deeply. “I don’t want him to die. My husband left three months ago, and Bradley is the only thing getting me through it.”
Twenty-eight years old and broke with a chin full of acne isn’t exactly a persona I want to lean into.
“Bradley’s a great name for a bearded lizard. It makes him sound like he’s got a 401(k).”
I awkwardly pat her shoulder as her lip quivers and her eyes leak trails of bright blue mascara.
“Your name’s Cherry?” She sniffles hard. “That’s exotic.”
“Not really.” My name is actually Cheryl, but nobody except my mother has called me that since I moved out at eighteen. Cherry is a good time, a person who owns a muscle car and drinks straight gin and parties ’til three in the morning. Cheryl is the name of the person who does taxes for a living and drives a sensible, buff-colored sedan. Cheryl is Nancy’s letdown of a daughter, Dwight’s disappointing younger sister who was never as funny or as cool or as smart as he was. But Cherry belongs only to herself, and she’s beyond fine with that.
“I’m LeeAnn. Boring name for a boring old broad.”
“I don’t think you’re boring,” I say, poking at the lizard that’s squashed inside her fanny pack. It has stopped moving, which probably isn’t a good sign. “I think you’re a very cool reptile broad.”
She’s crying again. Instead of prolonging her misery, I lead her to the back of the store where Mister Manager is directing a trainee named Austin on how to painstakingly scrub stains from the side of the turtle enclosures. They’re coated with a thick layer of sickly green algae from the bacteria that drifts off their shit and from rotten chunks of uneaten food.
“No, like this.” There are large sweat stains darkening both of his armpits. “Up down, up down. You gotta get a real rhythm going or you’re gonna miss spots.”
I clear my throat. Austin the trainee looks at me with puzzled recognition. He has a real baby face: chapped pink cheeks, bare hint of stubble over his puffy pink lips. Can’t be older than seventeen. I probably clowned at a birthday party he attended; it’s happened before.
“Mister Manager, this customer needs some of your expertise.”
He stops windmilling his arms long enough to scowl at me. “We’re busy, Cherry.”
“LeeAnn here is having a problem with her bearded dragon.” I lean forward conspiratorially and shout-whisper as loud as my voice will let me. “One she bought here. From Wendall. With the protection plan. Ninety-day refund guaranteed in cases of animal loss.”
He straightens up and smiles at her. “Right. Let’s get you sorted.”
I leave them to figure it out.
Back at the register, Wendall has disappeared. Darcy is painting her chewed-up fingernails with a bottle of gummy Wite-Out that has probably been sitting in the supply drawer for at least ten years.
“You fuck her?” Darcy asks.
“I wish.” I hop up onto the counter and let her paint stripes of Wite-Out in my short black hair. I need a haircut. It’s getting too long in the back, threatening to turn into a mullet, but I can’t be bothered to pay someone to cut it properly when I know I’m just going to be shoving it under a wig. At times I wonder if it would be cheaper all around to just dye my own hair like Darcy does; then I could perm it and walk around all day like I’ve been electrocuted.
“Do you think Bunko would’ve fucked her?”
“Probably.” My black jeans are frayed at the hem and dragging on the floor, picking up dirt and lint. I put my foot up on my lap and yank at the threads until they come off in my fingers. “Look, pubes.”
“Don’t change the subject.” She yanks on my hair, and I yelp. Darcy’s short, but she’s strong. She plays drums for a local punk band called RHINOPLASTIZE , and her arms have the kind of muscles that could choke a man to death without her even breaking a sweat.
“I’m not going to fuck that old lady,” I say. “She’s too nice.”
“What does nice have to do with anything?”
I let her paint a stripe of Wite-Out down the center of my nose. “Too nice for me.”
Someone walks through the double doors at the front and squints blindly in the dank, purplish light. We can’t keep anything too bright in the store because it upsets the aquatic pH balance of the fish tanks, according to Mister Manager, but it seems like it has less to do with any of that and more to do with the fact that you can’t tell the store is a pigpen if no one can actually see the tumbleweeds of dust rolling around on the scuffed linoleum floors.
The guy stops at the register across from us. “Y’all got Science Diet?”
“What’s that?” Darcy blows on my nose so the paint will dry faster. Her breath smells like the Sour Patch Kids she ate for lunch. “Like Lean Cuisine?”
He looks at her in disbelief. “No, it’s dog food. How can you work at a pet store and not know that?”
She stares back. “You’re saying you want to eat dog food?”
“What?”
“Try five blocks over at our partner store, Aquarium Select II,” I say, interrupting before the interaction can turn into something that requires disciplinary action. Darcy might think it’s fun to get fired, but unlike her, I need this job. Her need for constant conflict occasionally makes me want to strangle her.
When he leaves, Darcy throws the bottle of Wite-Out at the closing door. It ricochets off the glass and bounces into a coral display. “What kind of moron goes to an aquarium shop looking for dog food.”
“What kind of aquarium shop sells bird feeders?”
It’s true that our selection makes no sense from an aquarium perspective. While Aquarium Select II and Aquarium Select III both offer a variety of fish, dozens of tanks, assorted filters, corals, crustaceans, reptiles, and a wide range of aquatic plants, they also stock items that have nothing to do with aquariums, including cat toys, Weedwackers, mole repellent, potted orchids, and fireplace implements. There is no Aquarium Select I.
“None of this matters.” Darcy closes out her register with a bang and then gives it the finger. “This job is a negative, a zero. It’s a time suck. What matters is the stuff out there.”
I act like we haven’t had this conversation at least two dozen times over the course of the last week. “Out where?”
She jabs her thumb in the direction of the front door. “There. Where shit is alive.”
“Okay, Dr. Frankenstein.” She’s not wrong, but recently I’m finding it hard to stay motivated. Aside from the upcoming showcase, the agency can’t approve any bookings until I rectify my gear situation, and there’s no quick way to refit a kit, especially if you’re broke. The pants I ripped were a rental, which means that even though I stitched them up the best I could, I still owe money for the repair. It’s a tremendous bummer to realize that I’ll have to work at least ten more mind-numbing shifts at Aquarium Select III before I can afford to pay for all of it.
“We should quit,” Darcy says for the fortieth time. “Start making art.”
“I am making art.”
“You know what I mean.”
I do and I don’t. It’s not the same for Darcy, which is a reality she conveniently forgets. If Darcy quits this job, she’s got a financial safety net ready and willing to catch her. There will be other jobs, other opportunities. If I quit, I’ve got my car to live in and a twenty-five-dollar Dunkin’ gift card for groceries. The two of us have very different ideas when it comes to how to achieve our dreams. And recently, our discussions about how to get there have gone from talking to stepping carefully around a minefield full of arguments.
Mercifully, she changes the subject. “Are you coming to my show tonight?”
“I can’t,” I say. “I’ve got a date.”
Darcy doesn’t like this. Her nose wrinkles, mouth twisting like she’s tasted something rotten. “Bring her. Unless she’s a piece of shit who doesn’t like good music.”
Our friendship is predicated on the fact that we both pour all our real energy into our respective creative passions. We hang out, we fuck around at work, and we discuss our plans for the future. RHINOPLASTIZE is a whole separate problem. Darcy has it in her head that her band could suddenly take off, like maybe the record label people who discovered all her favorite bands might stumble into a decrepit house show in the middle of Central Florida and point at her like God’s spotlight has shone down on her spiky head, as if she were the next coming of John Bonham. It’s that kind of fantasy thinking that keeps us both constantly hustling—her with music, me with clowning. Neither of us has time to date. It’s one thing to hook up with women; it’s quite another to admit that at some point I might end up with a girlfriend. That would ruin everything.
Easier to turn it all into a joke, I think, and quickly pivot to clown mode. “I don’t like bringing new women around my friends until I’m sure they can behave themselves.”
“So, what you’re saying is you’re a misogynist?”
I gather my backpack from where I’d stashed it earlier beneath the counter. “I wasn’t talking about the women behaving. I was talking about you.”
“Fuck off,” she says, and barks out a laugh. “You’re such an asshole.”
Darcy’s got a great sense of humor. And by that I mean that I can tell the same joke fifteen times and she’ll still listen to it, even if she does roll her eyes and call me a moron.
“I’m taking off,” I yell to the back of the store, and when Mister Manager comes on the walkie-talkie to tell me I still have twenty minutes left of my shift, I pull the plug from my ear and toss the whole thing to Darcy.
“Bye, bitch!” She chucks the walkie under the counter. “Hope you get laid!”
Outside in the late-afternoon sun, I stretch my arms and let my skin bake before climbing into my car. After spending six hours chilling in an icebox, the heat is intoxicating. I remove the shade from my windshield and stash it in the back before running my hands along the oxblood leather seats, fingers tapping along the shiny chrome of the dash, a breathy woman’s voice rasping out sexy lyrics from the custom speakers, bass throbbing beneath me.
Cheryl might drive a sensible sedan and stay far away from drama, but Cherry has a candy-apple-red Pontiac Firebird, and she’s not afraid of anybody’s blowhard husband. Cherry’s got an audition in a few weeks. Cherry’s going to ace it.
“Let’s go get your gear back,” I say to my reflection in the rearview mirror before blowing myself a kiss.
The post The Birthday Clown of Your Queer Fantasy appeared first on Electric Literature.
