The clown school problem

I hated clown-school.

 

The summer school for wannabe clowns was established on Happy Island, in what had been the empty house, when I was aged 17. It meant that every summer, rather than being the quiet, island idyll I’d grown up on, it suddenly become full of over a hundred trainee clowns.  

 

The clowns were mostly a couple of years older than I was, 19 or 20, all of them obsessed with clowning 24/7.

 

I tried to be friendly when the first group of students arrived, but they all, ignored me from the start. When they did speak to me it was to call out “Hello tiny feet,” “or Hello white nose” or to mock my deficiencies in balloon animal manipulation. “Ah, he’s made another snake.”

 

At the time I was caring for my mother, whose condition had deteriorated to the extent that she could barely walk and was prone to periods of panic and poor comprehension, all multiplied a hundred fold by the sudden clown invasion. Their reckless kerfuffle made my mother confused and worried. Many times I caught her trying to phone her doctor to complain that the medication she was taking made her see clowns. 

 

At night the island was full of the squeaks of balloon animal production and the splash and batter of custard pie on face. Occasionally, very occasionally, the sound of laughter would ring out from somewhere.  

 

My lifestyle didn’t change during this period. Every morning I would rise early to meet the boatman. It was a good time to be out and about, there was rarely a clown to be seen. One morning though, a purple headed clown was waiting for the boat when I arrived. She surprised me immensely by saying “Good morning,” normally there wasn’t a single clown on the island who would give me the time of day.

 

“Morning”, I said, “you off to the mainland?” It seemed the most likely reason for her rising at such an early hour.

 

“No,” she said, “I’m picking up mail for my parents. They run the summer camp, you see.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise. So you’re a three-clown family?”

 

“Four, my brother’s a clown too. Professional now, working for a highly-respected circus.”

 

That was the first time in my life I’d ever heard the phrases ‘highly respected’ and ‘circus’ thrown together. I relished the random juxtaposition of language, it’s what made me become a writer.

 

“I’m Jed, by the way,” I said, extending a hand in formal greeting. I was, let’s be honest, a bit inexperienced with girls and I wasn’t very good at casual chatter with strangers. How did you say hello to a girl if not by shaking her hand?  

 

To her credit she shook my hand without so much as giving me an electric shock or squirting me with her buttonhole.

 

“I’m Mr Tickles,” she said.

 

“Mr Tickles,” I said, with emphasis on the Mr, in case nobody had ever had the foresight to pick up on the oddity before.

 

“All clown names are masculine. I’m Mr Tickles because I carry a tickling stick.”

 

She held up a purple feather duster.

 

“I won first prize at the under-18 clown-tickle contest last year.”

 

I was lost for words and consequently the two of us fell into silence, the sort of awkward silence that can befall two teenagers of opposite gender when there are clearly hormones kicking around screaming out for interaction, communication and bonding, but a lack of the worldly wisdom to deliver said desires.

 

The conversation had ended there. I’d talked briefly to the boatman, relieved to break my own personal silence, but that just gave Mr Tickles the opportunity to leave without speaking further. Without saying ‘goodbye’ or ‘see you around’.

 

That conversation was, I realised in my bedroom some time later, the first proper conversation I’d had with a girl my own age in over six years.

 

I held that thought.

 

Mr Tickles was the closest I’d been to a real-life, sexually developed, attractive, pretty, girl my own age. Since, well, since I’d been thinking about that sort of thing.

 

Images flashed through my mind. I speculated what she’d done to acquire the name Mr Tickles. What skills she’d mastered with the purple feather duster. 

 

I was late making mother’s tea.

 

I won’t say I thought no more about the encounter, because I did. Covered in greasepaint though she’d been, clad in a ridiculous purple, curly wig though she was, she was also, without doubt in my mind, the most beautiful woman in the world. And she’d spoken to me. Greeted me as if I was a fellow clown.

 

The next morning I rushed down to see the boatman half an hour before the boat was due, just to maximise my time with her if she was there. But she wasn’t there.

 

However, a couple of evenings later I was walking along East Bay, getting out from under mother’s feet as she was in one of her moods, when I saw a purple-headed figure sitting with her feet dangling over the sides of the cliff. ‘This is it’, I thought, ‘the moment you’ve been waiting for all your life’.

 

I nervously sauntered over. As I approached it became clear that it was Mr Tickles and not another purple-headed clown. Her tickling stick was lying on the ground to her right and, well, I just recognised that body, that position, that way of being in the world, even though I’d only met her briefly that one time.

 

I decided not to be me, for once, to be a confident, clownish, type that girls admire. I bounced my bum on the ground next to hers.

 

“Hello again,” I said brightly. “What you doing here alone?”

 

It wasn’t until I’d finished talking that I realised Mr Tickles was in tears. She’d come here to get away from the rest of the world and have deep, personal, private cry about it. And here was I bumbling ‘hello’ like I was, well, more foolish than a clown for a start.

 

She was silent for a while, looking at me in shock as much as everything. I started to stand up, mumble apologies and walk away, but to my amazement she said “Don’t go.”

 

I sat down next to her. I mumbled more things “I didn’t realise,” “sorry”, “do you want to talk about it,” but after a while it became clear that my role was just to sit there silently and, well, just to be there.

 

I stared out to sea. Years later this bay would be covered with abandoned fridges on which the sun would glint and glitter like gold, creating what can only be described as the most wondrous sight in the universe. Pre-fridges, however, all there was to see was the sea, the sky, the sand, the lush green clifftops, not a single fridge in sight. Still, I sat there, occasionally turning my head, never quite managing to turn my head and speak to her. Speech seemed a long way away, like that distant dot on the horizon that might be a boat, or it might simply be a metaphor for the distance I felt from the clown sitting next to me.

 

Her makeup was smudged from tears, her face looked like the end result of a rather vicious pie-fight. I was 17. I’d never seen anyone look so sexual.

 

I stayed silent.

 

“It’s good to see you again,” she said, eventually, after what seemed a lifetime. “Sorry, I just,” she paused to sob again, “there was this clown, that’s all. This boy clown.”

 

“Oh,” I said.

 

“Yes. I thought he liked me and I …”

 

She sobbed again.

 

“Caught him clowning about with another girl I said.” She laughed and cried, simultaneously, at my joke, still to this day, the best reaction I’ve ever had from a joke.

 

“He’s a fool,” I said, no pun intended this time. “You’re the most beautiful clown I’ve ever met.”

 

Corny, but true.

“Do you really think so?”

 

“I do.”

 

We kissed.

 

Briefly, suddenly, unintentionally, we kissed. Because there, in that moment, it was what we both wanted to do.

 

“I don’t mean to hit on you on the rebound,” I said.

 

“You can hit on me if you want,” she said.

 

I hit on her.

 

It started of innocently, a kiss, an arm round her shoulder, a cuddle, an embrace. For ten minutes we were two sweet teenagers kissing and cuddling for the first time, and then, suddenly, VOOM. It went from friendly kisses to pure, unadulterated lust.

 

Though I had never been this close to a woman before, I recognised the smell of sex. I pushed her onto the ground and kissed her crotch, gently displaced her knickers and lovingly kissed her in a place I had never believed possible to kiss a woman. If kissing with tongues was French kissing – i.e. a foreign language to me before that day – then what I was doing now was, well, it was as foreign as you can get, a Flemish kissing. It was, it was beyond words.

 

When sex is shown on TV the couple are usually undressed, but for me and Mr Tickles there was no time for that. We quickly loosened large enough gaps in each other’s clothing to allow penetration. We wrestled each other onto the floor. It was uncomfortable, it was awkward, there was a rock under my knee, her zipper rubbing against my balls.  Every time I thrust in or out something honked like a car horn. What was that noise?  Did it mean I was doing something wrong? Or something right? Was this going to happened every time I had sex? I genuinely didn’t know. Our sex lessons at school hadn’t covered honking.

 

The sex started to get increasingly fervent. “You’re making a clown face,” Mr Tickles said, “and I don’t have protection.” Reluctantly, and with a certain amount of difficulty, I withdrew.

“Would you like to make a custard pie in my face?” she said.

“You’re obsessed with clowning,” I said, not quite understanding her offer.

 

“Here, let me show you how it’s done.”

 

She showed me how it was done. In no time at all her face was covered in custard pie.

“Oh you messy boy,” she giggled.  Mixed with the smeared greasepaint and tears made her face look like abstract art. It was abstract art. I kissed it.

 

We lay there for a while, saying nothing, staring out to sea. Eventually she spoke. “If we undressed we could do it properly.”

 

“What here?” I said. “You want to get naked her on the clifftop.”

 

She laughed. “What’s so crazy about that? We just made love here, on the clifftop, remember. Are you scared of seeing my tits?”

 

She removed her top and her lovely mounds jiggled in front of me. I wasn’t scared.

 

In the light of the setting sun we explored each other’s naked bodies thoroughly. Eventually we made love again, and this time she showed me how to make custard doughnuts.

 

Eventually the first chill of evening shivered through us and we dressed.

 

“I have to go,” she said.

“You could stay at my house tonight,” I said.

“No I couldn’t.”

 

“You weren’t afraid of being found out here.”

 

“They take a register. I’d be noticed. I’m sorry, it would be nice to spend a night doing that.”

 

“Do you want to meet up again? We could come here tomorrow night.”

 

“We shouldn’t,” she said. “It was crazy doing it in public view, we can’t get away with it every time.”

 

“I know a secluded cave.”

 

“I’ll meet you here at 7.00.”

 

That next morning I worked up enough courage to ask the boatman for some contraceptives. “Who’s the lucky girl?” he said, in-between winks and rude gestures.

 

“Mr Tickles,” I’d replied. He looked concerned at this, until I’d explained that Mr Tickles was the girl with the purple tickling stick. That seemed to make it all right.

 

For the next few weeks I had my first ever romance, mostly in those stolen hours that long summer evenings bring, mostly in caves and assorted secluded nooks. I daren’t take her home as mother would be snooping around, and the empty house was full of a hundred or so trainee clowns.

 

Eventually summer school ended and it was time for Mr Tickles to depart.

 

“It’s been the greatest summer ever,” she said. “You should come and visit me on the mainland. I have friends who’ll let us stay. You know, let us stay in the same bed.”

 

A bed! Wow. We kissed spontaneously at the mere mention of the word.

 

“I can’t,” I said, eventually. “I have to look after mother.”

 

She scowled at me beneath her clown make-up. “The boatman will look in on her. You have neighbours. You can’t abandon your life just because your mother’s unwell.”

 

We exchanged addresses and phone numbers and I came as close as I dare to promising to visit. I didn’t actually promise because I knew I wouldn’t keep it if I did.

 

We wrote to each other for a while. We phoned a few times and one night I even made custard pies while she talked dirty. But for relationships to work you really have to see each other and within a few months she’d stopped ringing or writing.

 

That next summer clown school returned, but with different organisers. Mr Tickles had already graduated, of course, and there was no sign of her all summer.

 

This was my first romance and it set a pattern for every relationship I’d ever have:  woman visits the island, we have a passionate affair, woman leaves the island, I fail to visit her on the mainland. Sometimes I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.