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s t e p h e n   m o r a n

- introduction -


cLoco the clown

carmencita haverty

the silver circle
[a]  live reading

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C l O C O   T H E   C L O W N

Part 1 of  Gerry Boysey's Human Circus


b y    S t e p h e n    M o r a n

There are no animals in Gerry Boysey's Human Circus, unless you count Mrs Boysey, the fire eater. There's nothing different about our clown acts though, same car that falls to bits when we drive in. Same buckets of stuff you think is going to be water to throw over the crowd. You can sneer, but it still works, I know – I see them falling off their asses laughing night after night. It's like Spike Milligan said, some people need corrective surgery after laughing themselves out-of-joint, crooked into strange shapes after my act.

It's not just my act, there's Pinto too. I told her it was a horse's name, but women just have no sense of the comic. I mean horses make people cry. Never mind. They don't bill her. I'm the star. I'm not the original Coco the clown, I'm Coco from Novodirgod on the Potudan. The original Coco and Coco's two to five were all from other places. Coco the Sixth, by coincidence was also from Novodirgod. By rights I'm not allowed to call myself Coco, because the real Coco the Ninth is a litigious – I don't like to say. Starts with C. So if you look closely at the bill there's a very small 'L' inserted to make me Cloco. I wouldn't want to tangle with that other headcase.

Pinto is a stupid – I don't like to say. Starts with B. She's from Ashby-de-la-Zouch. I mean, all she has to do is honk the horn when we drive in, and stop honking it after the car explodes. What sense does it make for the horn to still work after the car has exploded. You want to get on with the buckets and pratfalls at that point. But no. Honk, honk, honk! After the car has collapsed. It's dead, that's the joke, the car is dead you silly cow. Honk, honk! I'll slap her upside the head one of these days, and not with a slapstick. With a bloody frying pan or something.

What I wanted to say was, we clowns get a raw deal. What exactly is ‘sinister' about a clown, I want to know. Why do you people hate us. A load of cynical so-and-sos crawl into the big tent every day, every damn night, and I humiliate myself for them, abase myself, just so they can laugh like horses' asses. Have you ever considered how moronic you look with your big traps open and guffawing like a pack of howler monkeys? I mean where do you non-clowns get off?

And you say we're sinister. Don't make me laugh. Clowns don't laugh. Under the painted sad face, we're smiling, but we don't laugh. It's playing with your emotions. You expect us to be on-duty all the time. Some of your little brats try to get round the back of the tent and sneak in under the flap or gawk at us backstage. You want to look at me, you pay at the door. If there's one thing I can't stand it's bloody freeloaders. I swear I'll have the head off one of those little rats, or my name's not Coco.

Of course, my name really isn't Coco, or Cloco. But let's not go into that. It's all ancient history. Who I was before, what I did, and what they said. False! All false. The way the judge slandered me. I will say one thing, just because a person gets off on a technicality doesn't mean he's not innocent. I mean not guilty. I mean…

The big trousers are funny, you must admit. C'mon! And the big shoes. I've made people fall into paroxysms of laughter just by describing my costume to them on the phone. I won't have that custard pie in the face though. I can't stand that. I don't mind dishing it out, but to be funny you have to take it back, and it just ruins the makeup. It is actually funny. That's the one thing that makes me laugh, when I go out. I love to go to a thing that has custard pie throwing. It's something different, something I can't do myself, because of the makeup.

One day I'd like to do something off-the-wall, run out naked into the ring, with the makeup on. Climb the rope ladder after Noeleen and the Flying Gamines. Chase her with a sodden towel and flick it. She'd lean back and her long black hair would hang down. It would be funny because she's too tall for me.

Sometimes after a show, I'll just lie here on a thin mattress in the caravan and think about Mrs Boysey spouting flames, Barkers and howler monkeys, the band that only knows one tune, drum rolls, the Flying Gamines, posters that say Cloco instead of Coco. And I'll fall asleep in the makeup.

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copyright © 2005, stephen moran, all rights reserved