Nowhere to Be Found

by J. J. Steinfeld

My earliest thoughts this morning aren’t the way a sane person should start the day, even a bad day, even a day that has kicked you in the face and in the ass for starters. Two missing front teeth, knocked out by two different clowns yet, to go along with the root-canal work I already needed. I looked in the mirror after taking my wake-up piss, and I decided I looked like a clown…like a goddamn missing-two-front-teeth clown. I head a headful and a mouthful of irony and psyche-slapping clown imagery. I ran to the kitchen as if I had been scared by the most horrific clown on the planet, by a planet full of horrific clowns conspiring to drive me mad, and brewed the largest pot of coffee I could, sensing that coffee was the only therapeutic antidote to my current painful circumstances. Then I got the morning newspaper from outside the front door and situated myself in the kitchen as if I never intended to leave.

As I sit at my kitchen table and fill a morning with coffee after coffee—God, I don’t remember ever drinking this much coffee—and mulling over the latest setbacks in my life, my recent divorce, losing my job and therefore my dental insurance, the cost of the dental work I need to have done soon, cursing the damn pain as if my teeth, those present and those missing, have conspired to betray me and are laughing over their triumphs, my mind is attempting to negotiate with the sad news on the radio and in the newspaper. I wonder if things in the world are worsening, the sadnesses deepening? I’m thinking of today, of yesterday, last century, the century before that, what I want the world to be, not that anyone cares what my vision of a less damaged world is. I’m certain my morning melancholy is less a result of my current predicaments than of my excursion into the local art world last night. How could I possibly foresee that going to the opening of an art exhibition, Existential Clowning, by some artist I had never heard of, not that I know many contemporary artists, would lead to the loss of two front teeth and more melancholy than I can ever remember having to cope with.

I had been coming home from another unsuccessful job interview, fifth one in three weeks, dressed in my best suit, my shoes shined to an impressive gloss, as well groomed and presently as I had ever been in my life, and I saw the poster in the window of a downtown hair salon. It was the hair salon, I realized, that my mother favoured, at least until she and my father divorced. I take some contrary solace in the fact that I made it past forty—just barely, for what it’s worth—before getting divorced, while my parents were both in their late thirties when their marriage fell all apart. The only reason I went to the ridiculous sounding Existential Clowning art exhibition was because of my great-grandfather, who had been a famous European clown, or at least that was the story my father told me countless times as I was growing up. For reasons I never quite understood, I idealized my great-grandfather and his clowning accomplishments, even went through a phase as a child where I actually wanted to be a clown just like him even though I had never met him or even seen a photograph, only my father’s vivid descriptions of the talented clown. Growing up in North America, I had fantasies of wowing and bedazzling audiences all over Europe, as if crossing the Atlantic was where a clown could truly prove himself. I wound up in jobs anything but clownlike, and until recently had been working selling cars, high-end luxury cars, mind you, at which I had been laid off because of poor sales, by me specifically not necessarily the dealership as a whole. My heart just wasn’t in peddling large chunks of steel anymore. I know I’ll land on my feet. I’m resilient and have gotten through much worse than some stumbling job-hunting. Maybe I’ll move to a smaller city; maybe even a long-dreamed-of trip to Europe, to visit the cities my great-grandfather performed in. A guy swirling around in financial and emotional crises can dream, can’t he? I can change my life, start a new one, reinvent myself, so to speak, not too late to join the circus, I think humorously, maybe half-humorously. With two missing front teeth and another tooth in dire need of a root canal, humour, full or partial, is perhaps as close to salvation as I can get.

I wasn’t in the art gallery for more than ten minutes, than I got into a heated argument with the artist and his companion over his paintings. A little while earlier I had a somewhat sexually suggestive conversation with the woman, I actually thinking that she was interested in me in a physical way, touching the lapels of my suit in invitation, but she certainly wasn’t showing any friendliness to me later. A few moments before I would have given almost anything to be alone with this most provocatively dressed, intriguing woman, she telling me she adored when men desired her, wanted to let their darkest fantasies into the light of desire. That’s pretty close to the words she uttered, and I hadn’t talked to her very long. It was an exhibition of twenty illustrious clowns from history, along with a life-size papier-mâché clown. Large, haunting, even eerie canvases. I told the artist, who was on stilts, his head a hair away from the ceiling, and dressed in clown costume and miniature flashing lights, that he was missing my great-grandfather, who I argued was one of the greatest clowns of all time, having performed in all the European capitals, I added, merely quoting my father, and he told me my great-grandfather didn’t make his short list of illustrious clowns from history, that he was a mediocre, lacklustre, plodding caricature of a nineteenth-century clown. The artist’s companion, who was then eyeing me as I were a dangerous creature dressed in his best suit, was wearing an extravagantly sexy clown outfit and dark, brooding makeup, more like a Goth creation, with glistening fangs, I assume to promote the exhibition, some artistic statement I seemed to miss. But it was her eye-catching fishnet stockings, each leg a different colour, one bright green and the other even brighter yellow, and fantasy-tantalizing spike heels that had attracted and excited me. Spike heels I’d never seen so spiky or high. Oh, the irony, I had told her earlier, when she asked me why I was staring at her, and then poked fun at me for wearing a sombre-looking suit to a festive celebration of clown art. In fact, most of the people, male and female, were dressed as clowns, ridiculous clothing and paraphernalia given them when they entered the gallery. I told the woman that nearly two years ago I had gone to a Halloween party with my wife, now my ex-wife, both of us dressed as clowns. so it wasn’t that I was against being a clown in public. I revealed without hesitation that I remember that time because it was the beginning of the end of our marriage. Her boss from the call centre was there, I explained, dressed as Batman, how original, and my wife and her boss told me after a night of drinking that they were in love, as in love as Caesar and Cleopatra had been, even if they were dressed as Batman and a sad-faced clown. I guess it wasn’t the end of the world to lose your wife to Batman. Only time my wife wore fishnet stockings and anything resembling high heels, and that’s the irony I pointed out to the artist’s companion. Earlier, the artist had called me a bad sport for refusing to put on a fake bulbous nose or a fright wig. A little later I started laughing, and when he asked me what in the hell was so funny, I told him it was because he had not included a painting of Krusty the Clown from The Simpsons. When the artist denigrated Krusty, it was as if he had insulted a dear friend, and I argued that Krusty was the personification of the modern clown. I liked the sound of that expression, as if I was back in university and not dropping out with miserable grades before finishing my second year.

"I deal only in real clowns. Clowns that had an influence and made an impact on the history of clowning," the artist said, sounding like a professor patronizing one of his students.

"What’s real and not real in this mixed-up world is highly objective," I told the artist on stilts, dealing with my own insecurities and resenting this pompous artist-clown towering above me.

"Excuse the oxymoron, you moron, but I take my clowns seriously," the artist said in a voice that scratched annoyingly at my self-esteem.

"My great-grandfather had an influence and made an impact," I said, and told the artist not to call me a moron or else I’d knock out his silly lights. I tried to sound tough, but I felt ineffectual not to mention angry.

"If you were a clown, if you had the capability to be a clown, you’d be called The Moron," the artist’s words smacking all my senses.

When I told him again not to call me a moron, he started shouting out the word moron over and over, as if he were hurling rocks at me, and I pulled off a couple of the lights from his costume.

The Goth clown shoved me into the artist, who toppled atop me, and I, in turn, onto the huge papier-mâché clown in the centre of the gallery, crushing it.

"Bastard, you killed my creation," the artist said from the floor, awkwardly trying to get his crushed clown to stand upright. He pulled off his stilts and waved one at me, demanding, "You owe me a thousand dollars for ruining my creation."

"Your creation is hideous and isn’t worth the price of a cup of coffee," I said, looking at what was left of his prized artwork, remembering my morning’s excessive coffee drinking.

The Goth clown started to dance around my head, and I thought she was actually trying to puncture my face. I was scared, but even more fascinated by her two-colour fishnet stockings and defiant spike heels. I stood up and brushed off as if it were flesh some of the material that was on my suit jacket, the same one I had worn to my job interview earlier in the day. It looked and felt like real flesh and I started to accuse the artist of some illegal artistic activity. He called me demented and perverse, and I had a difficult time thinking of anything to call him except a stupid idiot. My mind and eyes were on the Goth clown.

As I continued to brush off my suit, another clown, one with a glowingly orange wig and a nose half the size of his face, jumped on my back, yelling, "You philistine, you philistine, you enemy of art."

Not that I’m strong or anything, but I managed to flip the clown off my back, and he landed head first on the floor, making a sound like a thunderclap. A petite clown who had been standing near us swung her purse at me, catching me in the mouth just when I was about to say something about the absurdity of what was going on. My hands went instinctively to my mouth and as I spat out blood I realized that she had knocked out one of my front teeth.

"Call the police," a burly clown in the corner called out.

I took a step toward the exit when a clown who was wearing a stovepipe hat sucker punched me and knocked out a second front tooth. I swung wildly at this clown, at every clown near me, but struck only air. More blood came pouring out of my mouth and I made a futile attempt to stop the bleeding with the right sleeve of my suit jacket. The artist grabbed my left arm but I pulled away and was able to get out of the gallery before the police arrived; however, rationally or irrationally, I’ve been waiting for some sort of knock at the door ever since I got home.

The phone rings, interrupting my mid-morning musings and I anticipate it might be the police: The voice on the other end, rather sweet-sounding, asks me why I wasn‘t at rehearsal. She tells me they were working on a sensational new act that was going to revolutionize clowning. I think it is the artist’s companion from the opening, her fishnet stockings and incredible spike heels prominently in my thoughts. I was thinking about her before I fell asleep, found her odd, but exciting, yet in the dream I had she had fangs instead of teeth and kept snarling and growling at me, refusing to have sex with someone who also wasn’t wearing fishnet stockings. I laugh at the voice, and it repeats the message of my dismissal from the circus, this time firmly, the sweetness souring: You are fired. I tell the voice I don’t work for any circus, haven’t even been to a circus since I was a little kid, to see a travelling circus from the Old Country that my grandfather had been with at the end of his long, remarkable clowning career. Unfortunately, my father collapsed halfway through that circus show, and had to be rushed to hospital. He didn’t die that day, but was never the same and I rarely heard him mention my great-grandfather or the circus again. I tell her briefly about losing two of my teeth at the opening of the art exhibition, and she tells me she’s not interested in my personal life. She does say that I will be given a month’s salary, which I thank her for, but I suggest she’s talking to the wrong person, firing the wrong person. Sipping on my coffee, I tell her she should get her clowns straight. She repeats my name, my entire work history, my date of birth, emphasizing that she has the right person, that she is firing the right clown. Am I an innie or an outie? I ask in frustration, and she tells me it’s good to have a sense of humour, especially for a professional clown, and apologizes for my firing, although the decision was not hers. If it was up to her, their circus would have more clowns, not be cutting back. In fact, she says, she’s a bit of a clown groupie, but don’t get her wrong, none of the affairs were tawdry or regrettable. She has the fondest recollections of each and every clown she slept with, and she always insisted they wear their clown costume during sex. What about fishnet stockings? I say, and she informs me that she has never worn that type of hosiery in her life. Hosiery aside, I told her I was being serious, that one’s belly button is a good indicator of both identity and character. No matter what I say, how serious or humorous, she keeps telling me I’ve been fired, there is no way I can get back into the circus. She seems to be getting irritated with me, and says repeatedly, You were nowhere to be found, as if that might sum up our entire conversation and my non-existent circus-clown career from which nevertheless I was being fired. I question her choice of words, the loudness of her voice, most of all I question the tampering with the routine of my life. This phone conversation, I conclude, is a slight to my being, a discourtesy to my existence, and I say this as politely as despondency allows, my explanations and arguments receiving derision from the caller. I should hang up, but I keep expecting the woman to say something profound or revealing, waiting for her to let me in on the joke. A man takes the phone and further emphasizes my firing, the termination of my contract with the circus. Then another person takes the phone, a voice I can’t determine if it’s male or female, and tells me about the deficiencies of my life. The morning moves along with a devious unpleasantness: more slights, more discourtesy, more tampering, more voices repeating my fate: You are fired turning softer, then, You are discarded, discarded louder than fired, next, You were nowhere to be found and You are discarded now uttered parallel and vicious by two voices.

There is a knock at the door, a startling and loud knock, and I throw the phone receiver to the floor. I walk slowly to the door, not knowing who to expect, thinking again that the police were here to arrest me, and I open the door: there is my great-grandfather, and he shows me his famous squirting cactus, brings it close to my face, and squirts me, liquid the colour of blood. More and more of the red liquid, redder even than the blood when my teeth were knocked out yesterday. No, this has to be someone from the art-exhibition opening, from the damn Existential Clowning—but they couldn’t know how my great-grandfather looked, his amazing squirting cactus, how my father had lovingly described him to me. I ask questions, but the clown in front of me keeps pressing the squirting cactus, the red liquid covering my clothing and all around my feet. I push the clown with the squirting cactus out the door, even it is my great-grandfather. No, it has to be someone from the art-exhibition opening. Regardless, I couldn’t allow the red liquid to completely fill my life.

Back in the kitchen, I brew another pot of coffee. I pick up the phone receiver from the floor, tell the still talking voice to find another clown to torment, not that I am a clown, hang up abruptly, and dejected, confused, my melancholy expanding, I nevertheless decide I will find a new job soon, not to allow my mind to play tricks on me, but first, I realize, I have to change my clothes. My shirt and pants, even my socks, are completely drenched with red liquid, and, as the pain in my mouth seems to increase, I hope that the dark-red stains will come out in the wash, and to ease my pain, I attempt to imagine how my life would have been had I become a clown like my great-grandfather.

Fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives hidden away on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. Between the waiting and figuring out new ways to sidestep the prodigious Angst-Creatures that have been pursuing him since he first attempted as a child to write a short story, he has published a novel, Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (Pottersfield Press), nine short story collections, the previous three by Gaspereau Press — Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized?, Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown, and Would You Hide Me? — and a poetry collection, An Affection for Precipices (Serengeti Press), along with two short-fiction chapbooks by Mercutio Press, Curiosity to Satisfy and Fear to Placate and Not a Second More, Not a Second Less, and a poetry chapbook by Cubicle Press, Existence Is a Hoax, a Woman in Fishnet Stockings Told Me When I Was Twenty. His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over thirty of his one-act and full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States, including the full-length plays Acting Violently, The Franz Kafka Therapy Session, and The Golden Age of Monsters, and the one-act plays Godot’s Leafless Tree, The Waiting Ends, The Entrance-or-Not Barroom, No End in Sight, Flowers for the Vases, The Word-Lover, Laugh for Sanity, A Murderous Art, Back to Back, Freesias in Whiskey, The Heirloom: An Evidence Play, and God’s Work.