Flash!

First published at http://flash-frontier.com

The Greatest Show on Earth

I feel like the spindly drawings in the corners of pages of books, flicked
through to animate this two dimensional space I inhabit. Here I am
mid-stride. Poised…

My wife! She left me for another! What a Bozo he turned out to be. She
feared no one took her seriously. I cannot change the past. The future’s a
different story, which starts somewhere.

“You’re a clown,” she once whispered, affectionately.

At college, I learned that in summary, the visual joke brings on a quicker
reaction, but the verbal joke is more widely quoted and remembered longer. I add audio for effect. The punch line is always a fart. An arse-blossom. An amusing answer blowing in the wind.

“You’re a CLOWN!” She once accused, peeved.

People who suffer from coulrophobia bother me. I’m a sad cliché. Like a dyslexic man who walks into a bra, my life is laughable. A real hoot. Aoooggahh! Klaxon horns give me tinnitus.

“YOU ARE A CLOWN!” She once screamed, then slapped my creamy white face red.

Behind this scumbled visage of makeup, which radiates a cartoon sun, are tears. Mirth is infectious, like Ebola. On my deathbed, I think I’ll find that, actually, morphine is the best medicine.

…my oversized plastic clodhopper casts a shadow. Children perch on bleachers, peer under flapping fabric into the murk. They’re desperate for lightness. Ruthless absurdity enriches their lives.

A banana skin. I slip, flip, fall, land, fart. Hilarious.

Later, my fans depart: art distorts life; life funfair-mirrors art.

Framed Excerpt.

Tongues.

Our native language now. Is it local or is it digital? Code or chit-chat? We shared a common tongue once, you and me. Many times, actually, but I really mean Once Upon A Time. Similar stories. On the same page. Pages of our history were more like an epic romp. An historical page-turning bodice-ripping yarn. Then, one day, or night, or two nights or many days, speaking in tongues led not to silence but to schisms, to uncomfortable clicks and clearings of throats and cocked heads and blank stares as we lost our voices, as our voices got shriller and said less of things out louder, and made less sense and unravelled the very things we we're trying to mend through talking, even though when we started we didn't know they needed mending. Talk does that. Conversation unstitches the intimate fabric of relationships that have been left unspoken for too long or spoken of too much so they become threadbare. Don't worry though. These are easily repaired.  They require words as webbing, deed as the trees to which they are attached. But oh, what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to weave webs.

Ties.

What did he have to do to stop being the butt of Carl’s stupid jokes? Did he have to become a notorious alcoholic, first rate carouser, develop a callousness that erased all empathy, laugh in the face of other’s misfortune, embrace suffering, reject redemption, reach rock bottom at a rate of knots and not stop, ever, to finally register above dull-mocking on the barometer of his fair-weather friends?

Against all logic it seemed harder to ditch colleagues in adult years than as children, William considered. As children and teens it’s so abrupt. A decision is taken and acted upon. Grown-ups find it more difficult to cut ties.