The Clown

People often ask me why I write such dark/weird stuff. And I've never had a really good answer... until now. Just stumbled across this photo of myself, at what? Maybe a year old, if that? I'm in my bedroom at 4738 Darrah Street, which was the middle room. And on the wall behind me is the clown my father painted.

This was no ordinary clown. If you click on the photo to see a bigger version, you might notice the shelf the clown is holding with arms that come right out of the fucking wall. Arms that could conceivably drop the shelf and reach down for that innocent toddler sitting there with a dazed expression on his face.

People, I grew up thinking those arms were going to come out of the fucking wall and grab me.

Look at me. I'm so scared, I don't even realize that I have some kind of wrapped gift in my hands. I'm not thinking about gifts or toys; I'm thinking about the clown. That the moment I turn my head even a few inches to the left is the moment it's going to come out of the fucking wall and grab me.

And check out the clown's face. This is no jolly entertainer. This is a crazy man on a drug/booze bender who decided to slap on some facepaint and scare the living crap out of whomever he encountered.

I know my Dad meant well. Instead of buying some lame kiddie furnishings, he took the time to create this one-of-a-kind image on the wall of his first-born son's bedroom. Maybe he thought it would be funny. Maybe he thought the clown would become my imaginary playmate. Or, maybe he dropped one too many tabs of LSD in Vietnam.

Still, I suppose I do owe my career to my Dad and that clown. Because at the heart of everything I write, beneath the plot and characters and dialogue and rest of that fancy nonsense, down at the most primal level, there is only this:

There are clowns.

And they have arms that can come out of the fucking walls and grab you.