My Harlequin Curriculum Vitae (Part III)

Part III of the series (see last two days for Parts I and II)

In college I realized that a clown suit was carte blanche. Just by putting on the suit I could invade any official function, from grand openings to parades. Shock factor was critical. I changed my name to "SMEGMO". I never got more mean looks than when I would put on my clown suit and then buy a bag of apples and a carton of razor blades on halloween.

Anyone that owns a clown suit should keep a black turtleneck, black pants and a derby around-- just in case. It may be necessary to outfit a friend, and a mime suit is easy, complementary and inherently incendiary. After my pal X24 moved from DeKalb IL to Wisconsin I caught myself putting on the clown suit a bit more often. One night in 1988 he drove down from Wisconsin with a cache of guns, a wheel of Mullin's Aged Cheddar, a 13 pack of beer that was a 24-pack and his black and tan coon hound Zeek.

Time would find us bored, drunk and cheeseless. We resorted to garbing ourselves in the clown and mime suits in the interest of trolling the Northern Illinois University campus for trouble. X24 was not the traditional mime. He announced himself as Marcel MarSatan, an evil mime, complete with the Charles Manson swastika bindi in the middle of his forehead. We stumbled, literally, across a dance party in the basement of a dorm, and although we had no invitations, everyone loves a clown and we entered unrivaled. We worked babes, ate food, drank booze, and made general merriment... until some retarded macho frat guy had to intervene, taking issue with the mime.

The scene spilled into the street, a series of frat guys yelling at a clown and a mime, and the mime would not break character, leaving the inebriated clown to negotiate escape. When I asked, "What's wrong, why are you guys so pissed off?" all he said was, "That mime was mouthing off at me".

I looked to Marcel MarSatan, he raised his shoulders, tilted his head and pursed his lips, stupified by the comment.

The guy yelled, "Wipe that look off your face!"

Not skipping a beat, the mime, with great exaggeration, passed his hand over his smiling face with a flourish, revealing a grumpy face on the other side. Of course this didn't really deee-fuse the situation.

Their major beef was with the swastika. Afterall, they were hyper reactionary, wealthy, white, Chicago suburbanites that were functionally useless and had zero capacity to understand satire. After explaining who Charles Manson was and that he wasn't Marlyn Manson's dad, it became apparent that we were going to get nowhere with the meatheads. I pointed my big floppy shoes toward home and quickly headed off. Marcel MarSatan followed closely behind, wratcheting himself along on an invisible rope.

We were half way home when a police car pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of us. Cops emerged and asked, "We understand a clown and a mime were causing trouble by the dorms".

Then I had to ask, "Well how do you know it was us?"

After realizing there is a time and a place for a clown gag I decided to play it straight with the cops. X24 would not break character until the police were ready to arrest him for disorderly conduct. Finally he too started to talk, the cops checked our identification and let us continue on.

It was a memorable night of clowning, but many more would soon be afoot...

(more tomorrow)