The Clown

After his university education, a twenty-something finds himself in a loop of humiliations.

Friday, 3:34pm- He is at a far corner of his uncle’s backyard. The plastic chair he is sitting on may break and so, he balances his small yansh at the foremost portion of the chair so that he is more likely to topple over and stain his jeans than break a leg of the chair and fall on his back.

He is nursing a bottle of Star Lager, not so much cold as it is wet. Its label is stripping off but he holds on it for whatever reason- he knows it adds no value to the bottle- that it will not matter to the trailer driver transporting crates upon crates of empty lager bottles to the bottling company but still, he holds on to it. He takes little sips, lets the sour lager run its course all over his tongue before swallowing. By his own estimate, this bottle, foisted on him by his aunty at his arrival, should last him the entire evening.

Around him, uninhibited children run around the length of the yard. They trip and fall on the grass, their cackles trail behind them. It’s his younger cousin, Chike’s, ninth birthday party. He’s an ‘in-betweener’ their midst; too old to run around and play like the children, yet too young to be in the kitchen with their parents sipping wine and eating meat. He’s at the outpost- the anomaly, banished to the end of the backyard close to the generator on an old plastic chair that could give way at any time to his miserly weight.

He is still at his place of banishment when his aunty comes to meet him. He finds that she always seems to have a look of worry on her face- like a mid-level manager who has to shoulder the entire responsibility of a rural Mr. Biggs- like she’s always going to worry about her husband’s big project at work or what her child is going to eat at school. She says to him, Ugo, can you please come?

He leaves his outpost and follows her into the house- through the kitchen where there is a superman themed caked with a bread knife sticking out, through the washing room, and finally, they are in the general area just in front of his cousin’s room. Since they’ve passed the kitchen, he knows she’s not going to give him meat (suya on a plate) as he’d originally believed.

She’s young- like his uncle. Unlike the other parents- her friends, she’s not dressed for a party. Instead, she’s in white shorts the length of half her thigh and a black and white strip singlet that exposes just a little bit of her cleavage.

I need a favor, she tells him. He realizes suddenly that his Uncle Ebuka, is in the passage with them, red plastic cup in his hands, heads down but somehow ready to pounce.

Babe, his uncle begins.

Wait fess, his aunty interjects. Shey he’s here? Let us ask him. If he says no, then we’ll leave it. They have already spoken about ‘it’, he realizes and he also knows he’ll not say ‘no’. It’s like that between him and his aunty. Interspaced in what he believes to be a friendship, she likes to ask for favours- sometimes small, sometimes medium, never big least he can no- but nevertheless in a size where his saying ‘no’ without a valid excuse would be ‘somehow’.  

He likes her. His mother thinks she takes advantage of the fact that he’s shy.

It is only in the silence that follows after his aunty is done talking does he realize what she’s asking. Wait, are you asking that I be a clown for the party?

His uncle is the actual blood relation. His father’s much younger half-brother who is now evidently much richer. The two men had grown up in the same large polygamous compound; the same father, different mothers across different timelines. Ugo’s father was already a well settled university grad when his uncle was still in primary school. It was only his uncle had shown impressive talent for academics did the two siblings rise beyond the plethora of other half-siblings and find themselves.

His uncle is now saying, Babe, this guy does not know anything about clowning. I’m not even sure Chike would like this.

See, I just said let us ask him. There is no harm in asking, abi? If he says no, nothing would happen? It’s just that Chike kept asking for one and we promised him, remember?

He knows she’s being manipulative. Again, he would not directly say, ‘no’- she knows this. He wonders if he’s uncle is in on this. If the entire ying-yang, back and forth disagreement is a way of plausible deniability so that if his parents ask if he was forced, they can say, Nooo. Ebuka was even really against it but Ugo agreed.

He did not even want to come to this party- which is something because he is typically ambivalent about things. It was only because his mother had said, Just go. At least, someone from the family needs to be there. Though he believes she may have also just wanted to get him out of the house where per her own words, he just sits and mopes. He understood that this simple suggestion told in a calm tone could morph into something more in the future and since he had graduated from school just four weeks ago with a 2:2 in his professional degree certificate, he has been careful not to cause any trouble.

He is skeptical about doing this. He should have said; I actually have zero idea what it takes to be a clown. Instead, he says, But, then what about the outfit?

There is no discussion about where the outfit came from; perhaps, the other clown had cancelled and sent his outfit over, after all, this is last minute. But there is a yellow jumper, red wig, and an exaggerated shoe. In his aunt’s room, he sits by the dresser while she applies white powder on his face.

What I’m even going to say? He asks.

Oh, don’t worry. It’s just children, his aunty says. She steps back for a bit and inspects her work on his face. After some consideration she applies more white powder to his cheeks with her make up brush. Anything excites children, she adds.

Out the room, as he walks towards the backyard, he flips through videos of clowns on YouTube shorts. He wonders if clowns are purely silent or if that is just for mimes. In his head, his tries to recollect the clown performers of his childhood from end-of-years and inter-house sports. He can’t remember if they spoke or even what they had to say. Now, he’s outside. The sun has receded further behind the fence, there is a cool evening breeze. The children barely notice him.

What should do? He should call their attention. Children, children! He yells out. There is music playing in the backyard- he starts dancing. He is bad at it. The children notice him. They start laughing- so do their parents. Surely, they can’t notices his depression. He is not doing so badly at this thing if they are laughing. He still doesn’t know if he is supposed to talk.

At the end of the day, he sits by the kitchen island eating up cuts of suya and chunks of cake as if it’s the most normal thing to do in the world. He has removed the ridiculous wig and jumper but the white powder and rouge lipstick on his face remains.

His Aunty enters the kitchen with a tote bag that she places just beside him on the counter. It’s for Aunty and Uncle, she says. It contains a large cut of cake that carries blue fondant icing from the superman themed cake. There is also a generous wrap of suya.

Thank you, he tells her.

She lingers for a bit. The party is already thinned out. Most of the guest are gone. His uncle is outside seeing the rest of them off in their cars.

You know you can remove the makeup now? His aunty says.

He laughs. I even forgot. He did not forget.

His aunty says, But Ugo, thank you so much, eehear? The children enjoyed themselves and I’m sure Chike had a blast.

Hurriedly, he cleans the makeup off his face with tissue he finds in the guest bathroom before escaping into the night.

*

At home, he tells his mother about the events of the evening. They are in the kitchen. He is sitting complacently on a stool while his mother, under the guidance of rechargeable solar lamps, is warming the cold bits of suya meat he brought back on the gas stove. When he’s done telling his story, she pauses from stirring the meat around with a spatula. There is a charring, he can smell it. He knows some of the meat will be bitter.

They asked you to do what and you did what? His mother asks.

He is silent. He rubs his hands against his bared chest. It is reminiscent of those times when as a youngster he was not privy to everything err he could commit and so some afternoons after school, he’d find out he had done something he didn’t even know was wrong.

His mother walks out of the kitchen. From the darkness of the parlour, he listens to his mother report the incident to his father who he pictures balancing on one of the sofas, legs up on the center table. His mother’s words rain like a barrage of artillery.

In the silence that follows, he imagines that his father- an older physical carbon copy of him; tall, very lanky and dark, is unsure of how to proceed with this information.

You don’t have anything to say? His mother asks accusatorily.

I’ll call Ebuka, his father finally says.

You’ll call Ebuka? That’s it.

Somehow, he feels his mother’s footsteps are heavier as she leaves the parlour. She is guided by the torchlight of her Redmi phone. In the passage from the sweet spot where call network goes best, he can hear her dial tone. Finally, his mother’s voice rings out, Aunty Beatrice? You won’t believe what Ebuka’s wife did to Ugo today! Aunty Beatrice is his father’s elder sister.

*

Since after university, he has taken up residence in his parents’ boys’ quarters even though his room in the bungalow is still available. In fact, it still contains a lot of his belongings like his mattress right from childhood and his books and a Rubik’s cube he never learned to solve. His exile is self-imposed like some sort of resistance. He is a child who now refuses the laser guidance of his parents and at the same time, an adult who cannot foot his own expenses. The boys’ quarters is a middle ground.

In the days that follow the incident, his mother maintains angry at him. She gives one worded answers to his questions.

-I want to go out.

-Okay.

He’s beginning to understand her side- it’s one thing for him to be humiliated by a family member, it’s another thing for him to willfully participate in it. Yet, when his aunty calls just few later and says to him, One of my friends is having a kids party and they asked of you- he knows he’ll do it. Even before she says, They said, he’ll pay 50k. Finally, she adds, And I just said let me tell you before I get back to him. You can say no. From her tone, he knows his mother’s backlash, even though not done directly, had still found its way to his aunty.

When he remains silent to her statement, his aunty goes, Ugo? Are you still there?

When is it?

There is conceit in her laughter. She says, it’s next tomorrow.

He should pick his mother’s side, he knows this. Instead, he says to her, What about the outfit?

It’s still here. You can borrow it if you want.

On next-tomorrow, he dons on a teeshirt and jean. In the main house, he tells his father he is going to see a non-existent friend and leaves the house.

*

He wears the clown outfit a second, third and even fourth time.

*

There is a certain level of debasement here, he’s sure, but he doesn’t want to explore this feeling. It’s like finding weird porn and being scared of liking it.

He is not even good at being a clown. When he goes for occasions, he says, children, children! He is not supposed to talk per certain schools of clowning but he doesn’t follow any school of thought. There is something tantalizing about knowing he’s wrong and getting aware with it.

He experiments with leaving venues still clad in clown makeup and attire- children on the street who have never seen a clown before mistake him for a masquerade and run away.

He is a spectacle.

People he graduated with are already working for multinationals even before NYSC call up letter. They earn in dollars and they own domiciliary accounts.

The clown costume is now in his wardrobe, wrapped out of sight where his mother’s prying eyes and inquisitive fingers will not find it.

In his room, he applies clown makeup while sitting in front of the mirror. Glued on the mirror is a passport photography of him in respectable dressing.

His mother calls him from the main house to eat egusi soup he refused to cook. In the privacy of his room, he lies on the carpeted floor and jerks off to weird porn.

On twitter, he tweets: You won’t believe the s**t that happened to me last month. The tweet has 52 impressions and no reply. Still, he wants to talk about it with somebody.

His mother screams at him. She says, why? Why is always so difficult with you? I can’t ask you for something and you’ll do it! He wants to please her- he finds that he can’t.

Random numbers call his line. The speakers say, Is this the clown?

Today, he will be. Tomorrow, he won’t.

Reviews

[JayG]

Okay, take a deep breath. What I'm about to say will sting. But...I’m making the assumption that you’re serious about writing. And since the problem is both common and invisible to the author, I thought you might want to know.

The trap that caught you is simple, and once pointed out, obvious: You’re writing exactly as you were taught to. And while that may seem a good thing, we all forget a few critical points:

The purpose of universal education is to provide employers with a pool of workers who have predictable and useful skills. For writing, that's the ability to write the reports, letters, and the other nonfiction they need. It's goal is informing the reader clearly and dispassionately. So, the approach is fact-based and author-centric. Great for reports but useless for fiction, because it's goal is entertaining the reader by making them feel that they’re LIVING the story moment-by-moment, and, as-the-protagonist.

To do that requires an approach that’s emotion-based and character-centric. In other words, the approach that's used by professional fiction writers. We forget that the fiction-writing field has been under refinement for centuries. Today we call that knowledge, The Commercial Fiction Writing Profession.

The problem is, the pros make it seem so natural and easy that we forget it’s a profession, and never look for those skills. To better understand why they're necessary, look at your opening, not as someone who already has context, backstory, and more, BEFORE they begin reading, but as the reader, who hasonly what the words suggest to them.

• Friday, 3:34pm

Why does the reader care? Would the story change in the smallest way were it 4 PM or Noon? No. But giving that information FIRST, makes it seem important. So, fwith sentence a readers expectations differ from what you planned.

• He is at a far corner of his uncle’s backyard.

We don’t know who he is, his age, the century, the country and city, or, what’s going on. We don’t know who his uncle is, or why we need to know who owns the place.

And given that we can’t see the house or the yard, which is the “far corner, and why does it matter where in the yard he is?

Of more importance, he's our avatar, the protagonist nd he doesn't have a name? Who will cheer for and worry about someone with no name who lives at an unknown time and place?

My point is that you’re thinking cinematically, and telling the reader what would be in the background of the screen they-can’t-see. You’re spending lots of words on what a filmgoer would see in an instant, in parallel. But every word you supply the reader is read serially. So, every unnecessary word you can trim makes the story read faster and so, have more impact. You have a LOT that needs trimming.

> The plastic chair he is sitting on may break and so, he balances his small yansh at the foremost portion of the chair so that he is more likely to topple over and stain his jeans than break a leg of the chair and fall on his back.

Okay, who cares? He DOESN’T fall. So how he’s sitting isn't meaningful scene-setting, it'd not moving the plot, and, it's not developing an aspect of character that matters to-the-story. And ANYTHING that doesn’t do one of those three does nothing but slow the pace of the story, and so, will help lose the reader.

I hate to mention all that, because you’ve worked hard on this. The fact that you have, demonstrates your dedication, perseverance, and, that you have the plot. Unfortunately, that's not enough. What’s missing are the skills that can add wings to your words, which you must have, because nothing-else-works. After all, it works for the pros, so can we really argue?

Try this: Visit your favorite bookseller site and read the excerpt from an excellent book on the techniques you need to acquire, to see how it fits.

The easiest one I know is Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict.

A bit more advanced is Jack Bickham’s, Scene and Structure.

The very best, though an old book, is Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. He also has an excellent book on character development.

I suspect you'll find yourself pushing the "add to cart button on one of them. They won’t make a pro of you. But they will give you the tools you need to become one. So, take a look.

But whatever you decide, hang in there, and keep on writing.

And for an overview of the field, you might check some of my articles and YouTube videos.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”
~ Alfred Hitchcock

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

[Davidgeo]

Enlarge the font. Please.

[Ike]

Hi Davidgeo!

I literally don't know how to do that and I've been trying since, lol