THIS SERIES CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF FORCED BOZOFICATION, BIZARRE NOSE MODIFICATION, SELTZER-WATER SPORTS AND PIE PLAY. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE "CLOWNDOM" STORIES PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS ONE. IT WILL ONLY UPSET YOU...

======== HUMOR ME
======== by LAIKA PUPKINO
======== Part One: TURNING PUNKIN' JUDY

[===> As I review my notes here in this abandoned fun house deep in the Monkeyshine District, I am aware that this memoir has ended up a lot longer than the few pages I had assumed it would take. But the more I wrote the more important it became to chronicle the events of that day---my bizarre transformation and everything that led up to it---EXACTLY as I remember them. It would sadden me terribly to think that Billy Xenakis had disappeared off the face of the Earth without leaving at least some record. So please. Humor me here...]

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"When you put on the nose, it grows..."
~ The Firesign Theater.
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#1.)===[ PROLOGUE: THE LAST DAYS OF BILLY X. ]=====>

My part time job at the Party Zone didn't pay a hell of a lot, but then it really didn't have to. It only had to bring in a little something extra for me between the end of one year's commercial fishing season and the date in Spring when we could start going out again. A supplement to the money I had nested away during the fat months, like the prudent little animal in some fable.

This was my third off-season working at the Zone. I found it pleasantly sane and relaxed compared to life onboard the freezer trawler Brave Ulysses, which often felt like I was trapped in some unending episode of JACKASS. With that crew you constantly had to watch your back, and often found yourself turning in at night to a bunk filled with slimy fish heads. Rowdy good fun for a day or so, but it got old quick. And you could forget about reading anything that required any concentration. My shipmates seemed desperate to prove something with all this adolescent ruckus. Maybe they thought that if you shout loud enough that you're having fun you will be. And Uncle Dimitri---the putative leader of this bunch, who should've been a stabilizing counterforce to their idiocy---was the worst of the lot! (Although I really am grateful to him for taking me in when my mom went off to the hospital. For raising me, when rearing a child was really the last thing he had ever planned on doing, and for teaching me a fairly well paying profession...)

So the retail sales job was a nice change of pace. I liked that the store was only a couple of blocks from my apartment, and loved the fact that I had a home to go to each night instead of being at sea for weeks at a stretch. This seemed like an arrangement that would work out for me as long as George owned the party shop and my uncle had his boat. Or one of these days I might even get serious and go back to college. I had no way of knowing that these would be the crowning years of the life I once knew. Before that ill-fated encounter that would turn me into the laughable monstrosity I am today...

We had managed to get through the madness of the Halloween thru New Year's, and were well into in the "who wants to go home early" season. Business was slower now, but we still had our regulars coming in. Teachers, caterers, and this one squirrelly kid who was working his way through our entire inventory of practical joke items week by week as his meager allowance permitted. And of course Miss Tricia the Clown...

Miss Tricia was one busy little clown. Always stopping by en route to one of her gigs to pick up streamers, balloons and helium. She admitted that she could get a better deal at the Uber-Mart, but she said she liked our selection better. It was less drably generic, helping her tailor her parties to each kid's tastes.

I liked that she was such a perfectionist about her job, a genuine artiste. And although there were perhaps more beautiful women who came into the store---those statuesque doctor's wives with the graceful bearing of models---I liked HER. I liked her a lot. Miss Tricia looked to be about thirty, which would make her roughly nine years my senior; and I could tell she was actually quite pretty under all that heavy greasepaint. I was dying to see what she looked like without it, and wished that just once she would come in wearing civilian clothes.

Her makeup was white with big blue triangles bracketting her dark eyes. She wore a Raggedy-Anneish wig of bright red yarn that ended in a pair of ribboned pigtails. The ends of her red and white gingham shirt were tied together at the bottom to expose her svelte, white-painted midriff, which was about the only way I could tell she had a nice body. Those pants were so baggy; and the shirt covered a bosom that while artificially large was a single shapleless mass; clearly not intended as something sexual. Her nails were an exotic high gloss black but as short as any guy's.

The only part of her get-up that might be considered suggestive was her mouth. Not some big old sloppy jeering grin but tiny red bow lips like a geisha- which somehow worked to emphasize rather than minimize her boisterous persona. It was disconcerting to hear that enormous voice coming out of such a delicate face. The incongruity of it.

I felt a surge of hope when I spotted the business card on the bulletin board up by the registers. A winged unicorn trailing a tricolor chunk of rainbow behind it with "MISS TRICIA THE CLOWN. BIRTHDAYS. SPECIAL EVENTS." and her phone number on it. It was good to know that if I ever had a sudden fit of courage I could actually call her up.

But how do you ask a clown for a date? As with a disabled person or a member of another race, there is a whole shitload of social baggage that comes with the awareness that they are physically different, and that certain unenlightened souls make a big deal out of this; So that you're thinking that they might be thinking thay you think that way. Should I just come right out and try to clear the air about the issue, telling her: "HEY, I'M NOT PREJUDICED"? Or would this only serve to convince here that I am obsessed with the matter, and not truly cool about it?

Thoughts of this nature spun round and round in my head like some evil screeching whirligig until I was a nattering mass of indecision........Would she suspect me of having some awful CLOWN FETISH?!

I found it troubling that while she used only her crazy sing-song clown voice when speaking to me, she would occasionally talk normally to our other employees. Despite the friendliness of the words she spoke, this contrived Miss Tricia personality seemed like something she was using to maintain a distance between us...

[====> And if only she had kept that distance! But in late February came the day that would change everything, as I was abruptly yanked out of my complacent life and forced to become a part of her twilight world, her bizarre schemes! The day of my irreparable transformation, my nightmare descent into this dickless bozo vassaldom... ]

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#2.)=====[ AN EASY FIFTY BUCKS ]=====>

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are my days off. Knowing that the season of hard work and long hours is approaching, I spend these weekly "vacations" just being a total self-indulgent bum. Tearing around Vermillion Dunes on my little 100cc XK Stuka, reading Raymond Chandler novels, or just watching a numbing succession of crappy daytime t.v. shows...

We get paid each Thursday, and since the store is so close to my apartment, and Old Downtown is just another few blocks in the same direction, I normally don't even bother to take my truck. I can drop by to pick up my check, take care of the bills, splurge on lunch at a fancy restaurant (fancy meaning any place where you eat from an actual plate and don't have to unwrap your food...), browse for a few used books or cds or videos, then hit the UberMart for whatever groceries I need for the week.

Most days I found myself working alongside a big-hearted but quite ditzy young woman named Cherie. While some guys might find spending whole days in her company on par with getting a root canal, her endless chatter about celebrities---and my often being called on to lend a sympathetic ear regarding her boyfriend problems or those epic fights with her mom---also seemed like a refreshing change of pace. Maybe it was being so close to my mom as a kid, but I tend to get along pretty well with women.

My check is tucked safely away in my wallet, and George is showing me the florescent lights he wants me to change when I come in on Saturday. With his phlebitis and Cherie and Linda's fear of heights, I'm the one who gets volunteered to go up the giant ladder. I offer to do this for him today.

"No Billy, I'd rather wait until we-" he starts to say, when I see his eyes narrowing, sense him tensing up at the sight of something behind me.

At the same time I hear Cherie cry out: "Yayyyy! It's the clown lady!"

I have noticed George's reaction to Miss Tricia before. It is quite subtle; he treats her with the same jolly deference he shows to all our customers. But for someone who spends as much money in here as she does there's clearly something about her that George doesn't care for or trust. Which is odd, because she is very much the same sort of whimsical gregarious ham that he is. You would think the two of them would hit it right off...

Cherie is pretending that she has mentally regressed to about the age of five, like she does at some point every time the woman shops here. Giggling, "Make me a ami-nal balloon, Miss Trishia!"

"I don't knoooow, Cherieee," croons the clown in a ridiculously morose and dull-witted voice, "Ballooons don't grow on treeeees, yuh knoooow..."

"Please! Please! Please! Please!"

Of course Cherie will get her balloon aminal. This is just a game they go through. She likes to dangle them from the replica old-fashioned traffic light that hangs above her register (green for open, red for closed) until they are so shrivelled and fried that George makes her toss them out.

Miss Tricia approaches me and George, wanting me to help her find items that might be good for to a baseball-themed party for a nine year old boy.

George steps forward, sort of standing in front of me, and tells her that today's my day off and I probably have stuff I need to do. This seems like a bit of an overreaction. Like he thinks I'm such a hopeless people pleaser that I'll wind up doing things I don't want to unless he intervenes for me.

"But I kinda have to talk to him," says Miss Tricia, staring down at her pointy zebra-striped cowboy boots, as if what she needs to discuss with me is personal and perhaps embarrassing.

I turn to George. "It's okay, I don't mind."

In fact it's much more than okay. I have always felt that Tricia might be interested in me too, but it's hard to tell. Is it flirting to tell somebody: "I like you, you're silly"? Or is she merely getting into character for the day ahead?

When he realizes that he's not going to stop me he relents. He points at my t-shirt (a bespectacled young "Hairy Pothead" with a spiky leaf-shaped scar on his forehead, intently brandishing a magic wand-sized marijuana cigarette) and smirks, "I ought to drug test your miserable ass for coming in here wearing that. All right, but just try not to act like you work here!"

I follow her around while she finds what she needs. She is quick about it, knowing where everything is around here almost as well as I do, stopping only to ask me my opinions: "Which kind of paper plates should we get? These Seattle Mariners ones or the Giants?"

It's nice that Miss Tricia is using her regular voice with me for a change. She sounds a lot like Jennifer Jason Leigh---simultaneously imperious and vulnerable, very sexy---as she confesses in a low, furtive voice that she is in a bit of a jam today.

Occasionally I had seen her come in with her assistant. An awkward, big framed "sadface clown" of a girl who rarely said a word, and seemed rather shy and listless for a clown. "Punkin' Judy"---who was usually very reliable---had phoned in sick not more than an hour ago. And they had this HUGE kid's birthday party to entertain this afternoon ........ Miss Tricia asks me how I'd like to make a few bucks under the table.

"It's not that hard," she says. "You'd help me set up, hand out cake, and do a lot of this-"

She pulls a pack of long, condom-shaped balloons from her cart, opens it, hands me one. I grip the slippery little opening in my mouth, blow it up, and tie off the end.

"That was quick. You do that well!" she says, and hands me another.

"It's not exactly plasma physics," I shrug, and inflate this one too.

"Excellent! You're not filling these so full that I can't work with them ....... And also, we would be doing a couple of skits."

I continue blowing up balloons for her. "What kind of skits?"

"There's one where you'll be reading that poem 'Casey at the Bat' while I act it out-" she swings an imaginary bat, shields her eyes with her hand and beams like she's watching the ball sail over the centerfield fence.

I don't believe the Mighty Casey had hit any home runs in that poem, but having just inflated my fifth white balloon I am too out of breath to correct her. I nod, none too certainly.

"You don't have to be all Royal Shakespearean about it, just read the damn thing. You couldn't do worse than a couple of the helpers I've had..."

She hands me yet another one. "And it’s not like you'll have to carry the whole show. Mostly you'll just be following my cues. Saying 'Yes Miss Tricia!' or 'No Miss Tricia...'. You can handle that, can't you?"

"Yes Miss Tricia," I wheeze, white spots swirling crazily in front of my eyes.

"Then WELCOME TO THE EXCITING WORLD OF PROFESSIONAL BUFFOONERY!" she chortles like some obnoxious t.v. announcer as she takes the last balloon from me. "Consider these your audition. I think we're about done here."

"But couldn't you find someone with experience at this kind of thing to help you?" I gasp as I wheel her cart toward the registers for her.

"Nope. You were it," she frowns, and starts twisting and tying the six balloons, her brow furrowed in concentration, her hands a blur.

By the time we get up front Miss Tricia has finished Cherie's balloon sculpture. It's a bird, a white crane- which you can clearly tell is meant to resemble one of those ceremonial folded-paper cranes that the Japanese use at weddings and such. All those Volvo-driving culturati types up on Parnassus Hill would especially love this one!

Cherie is all smiles as she takes it from her, and secures it in the little fishing-line noose overhead. Then she starts ringing up her stuff.

"Come on," enthuses Miss Tricia. "It'll be a kick in the old noodle!"

What the heck? I don't have anything else planned for the day, and maybe after this job we can go have dinner, a few drinks or something. So I say, "Tell you what. I'll help you out, but if it turns out that I really suck at this you don't have to pay me."

"I'm betting that you'll be pretty good at it. I know Cherie here sure thinks so!"

Cherie---blowing an enormous pink bubble with the gum that George is always warning her about---grins impishly, nodding in encouragement.

Miss Tricia lapses into a more normal tone of voice, "The party doesn't start until three-thirty this afternoon. So there's plenty time to get you into costume and get our routine worked out."

"Costume? You mean like a clown?"

"Well you can't show up dressed like that. That's not funny at all!"

She says she has a costume and makeup for me in the van, and she would hate to drive all the way back to her place, which is clear across town in the Monkeyshine District. (For those of you who don't know Star City this is actually the Mercantile District, but given the neighborhood's reputation and seedy history nobody here calls it that). She asks, "Do you suppose there's like a back room here we could use?"

I glance over at George, who is hovering nearby, pretending to tidy up a hanging rack of adult novelties. He has an odd, pained expression on his face that I can't quite decipher. I decide not to ask him.

"We could go to my place. I live really close to here."

"Far out!" crows my new employer. She puts her hands on her belly and throws her head back, like the Story Lady at the library doing Paul Bunyan: "HO HO! THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!!"

We gather up her purchases. As we head for the front door she whispers conspiratorially, "All right Angel Doll, let's go make you fabulous. I guarantee this will be a day you'll never forget!"

We go out to her late-model van, load the stuff into it and climb in. It's a nice ride, or at least it was until she painted it up all crazy.

She helps me find the end of my seatbelt, buried way down inside the seat. As she does I gaze at her glossy muticolored face, mentally undressing it...... Big expressive eyes, great cheekbones, a loveable little nose. She might even be prettier than I'd originally thought. I'm glad I have all day to work on telling her how much I like her.

As we pull out I see George, his expression still strangely somber, setting the plastic HELP WANTED placard in the window. And I wonder why the hell he would be taking on a new employee at this time of year...

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#3.)===[ OH GOD IT'S A DRESS!!! ]==>

I was seeing one of the barmaids at The Animal Shelter until recently. Like Miss Tricia, Shelly was a few years older than me. I never would have admitted this back then, but although I did all the requisite boasting around my crewmates and such, I had been a virgin until just last summer. I was ridiculously clueless and shy around women, missing all of Shelly's hints until the night she pretty much attacked me back by the dumpsters!

It was a difficult relationship. While I will always be grateful to her for helping me to clear such an enormous hurdle in my life, in the end I just couldn't keep up with the way she and her girlfriends drank. I like to have a few beers or take the occasional toke myself, but it bugged me that she needed to get liquored up to go do anything. Then there were the scenes she pulled, her mouth getting me into fights on more than one occasion! The casual way Shelly took my suggestion---the result of much angonized soul searching on my part---that we take a "breather" from each other told me that she'd never been all that serious about us in the first place. Maybe Dorko Spazz was not quite the endearment she had always claimed it was!

Nor was I crazy about the way the conversations in her circle always seemed to revolve around either partying (how wasted so-and-so had got, or who had access to meth...) or boats and fish and fishermen and fishing. So this year I resolved to make my annual break from Star City's Harbor District as complete as possible. And Miss Tricia and her pink polka-dot Clownmobile seemed about as far from that whole world as I could get...

I have her pull into my neighbor Jim's space. Jim doesn't own a vehicle, and (unlike that weird old Mrs. Piguini in #11) he doesn't care who uses his assigned parking slot. As we're getting out Miss Tricia looks over my apartment complex. "I love it! It's all so ........ so normal!"

I had always thought of our old ferroconcrete building as very strange and very very cool. With its bulbous lines and undulating red shingle roof it looks like something that escaped from a miniature golf course. And I rankle a bit at the accusation ......... But then I remember where she calls home.

"Well I guess it is compared to living down in the 'Shine; with all those dadaists and fake vampires and the New Adamites running around naked. And with that freaky Matrix Liberationist Temple compound; I keep expecting to turn on the t.v. one day and see them in a big shoot out with the ATF!"

"But don't forget, we also have the highest concentration of clowns of any place in America, after Circus Town in Florida," she says with pride.

"Really? So then the competition must be murder on you!"

"No, because most of them are just Lifestyle Clowns. The ones that do work have telemarketing jobs and such. It's a costume movement, like that pirate thing up in Seattle. I know a lot of LC's, they're good folk!"

"You mean to say they just dress up like that? That's absurd!"

"Well yeah, that is kind of the point."

"I'll say one thing for the place, it sure isn't dull there! Say, do they still have that big old spooky abandoned amusement park down there?"

"Mystery Village? Oh yeah, it's still there. Actually, my family owns that whole property."

"You're shitting me- that place is huge! The land must be worth millions!"

"You would think so, but no. They're hoping the district will gentrify so they really can get twenty million for it! But I kind of like it the way it is," she smiles as she opens the van's sliding side door and grabs a dry cleaner's bag, holding it high up off the ground.

The plain gray bag bulges strangely, which leads me to think it holds my clown suit. She points at a big Craftsman tool box and a cheap looking suitcase with kooky decals on it and tells me to bring them.

As we trudge up the black steel spiral staircase bolted to the outside of the building she asks me if I know that old WHO'S ON FIRST skit.

"I've heard it," I confess, "But I can't say I know it. But I do know one about a man who tries to return this dead parrot he'd just bought to the pet shop. I mean this thing is DEAD! All dusty and with its feet sticking up! But the pet shop guy keeps going: 'Nothing wrong with this bird, Guv. He's just resting is all.'"

She whoops, "I love those guys! But that's not really about baseball, is it? I'll teach you this routine, and if you start to run into trouble we can just start whomping on each other! Kids are a pretty forgiving audience, for the most part. As long as there's enough action they don't insist on a lot of continuity."

I drop the luggage onto my dining area table. Miss Tricia asks me if there is anything to drink here.

When I open the fridge to check she spies the six-pack of distinctive black bottles and cries, "Oooh, Star City Dark!"

I open a beer for each of us and she clinks hers loudly against mine. "Here's to show business, Angel Dollink!"

I like the way she said this. Jokey and theatrical, sure, but infused with a real warmth and sincerity. Without the hollow mechanical quality of her clown character's one-size-fits-all enthusiasm. At the very least I have found a bright, interesting friend today.

"I'm glad that Judy was so heavy, and you........ Well you're not exactly tiny, but you're small enough that this should fit you," she grins as she rips the plastic shroud off the costume she had brought up, revealling...

Oh God- IT'S A DRESS!!

Or maybe some kind of one-piece skirt and blouse thing. The colors, patterns, even the fabric of the top and bottom are so weirdly mismatched that they almost look like seperate items; so I'm not sure what to call this thing. But whatever it is---even if you make allowances for the deliberate eccentricity of clown couture---it is without a doubt a feminine garment!

It has neither pants nor anything analogous to them. The plaid bottom part balloons out into a sort of knee-length hoop skirt, its bowl shape held rigid by a concentric series of circular plastic ribs inside it. There is a dense rayon fringe around the bottom meant to suggest that it is underlain by petticoats. Its blue, grey and black plaid pattern is comically oversized, and looks like it was clumsily drawn on there with a variety of markers.

And the outfit's top half? Pink. Blindingly pink! That cheap electric pink felt-like shit that all the little kindergartner girls go gaga over ......... I'll be damned if I am setting foot outside of here in this thing!

Miss Tricia notices my reaction. "What’s the matter?"

"That's a dress..."

"Well of course it's a dress. You're going to be Punkin' Judy!"

"But that's for a girl clown!" I protest, in what comes out as a sickly childish whine, "I can't .......... I mean that's ......... I don't wanna be a girl clown!"

Which I suppose would've been quite hilarious if it had been intentional. But hearing myself simpering in this pathetic way only steepens my descent into pure unreasoning panic!

Seeing that my brain has gone into a nosedive, Miss Tricia grabs the stick. "Come on Punkin', you're a CLOWN!" she coaxes, "The drag element just makes it funnier. It isn't like you are all turned on by this, or you're out looking for a boyfriend. Which would be fine with me, but in that case I'd suggest a different outfit ........ The straight guy mugging it up in a dress is a comic tradition that goes back probably for as long as people have been wearing clothes!"

I suppose she's right. There is no way that anybody could mistake this for a sex thing, or some serious attempt at presenting myself as a woman. To raise too big of a squawk about this might look like I have something to hide. That the lady doth protest too much...

I grin sheepishly, "No you're right. It took me by surprise is all."

"Great," she smiles, "I would be totally screwed if you backed out now! But you must have seen my helper whenever she came into your store with me ........ How did you think you would be dressed?"

To be honest I was always so focused on Miss Tricia that I barely even glanced at her assistant. I guess I would make a lousy crime witness. I sip my beer. "I'd heard that every clown had his own unique outfit and face, and it was considered stealing for one to dress up like another."

She seems pleased that I at least know this much about her calling. "You're right, that is our one real hanging offense! But I came up with this face and outfit. I own the Punkin' Judy character and everything attached to it!"

It occurs to me that her offer of fifty dollars for three hours work was misleading. She had not factored in all this preparation and training time. But I can't say that I mind. I am not doing this for the money, and the fact is I would rather spend six hours with her than three. And if I actually do have fun today, and want to do this again, I'm sure this part will go a whole lot quicker next time.

My initial panic at this outfit's lack of pants seems a bit childish now. A knee-jerk reaction about violating some social taboo- one of that whole interconnected slew of taboos that I have never been too obsessed with, compared to so many of the guys I've known. That pure visceral loathing and rage they feel toward queers and transsexuals seems really excessive, and somehow unbalanced. I mean, how the hell is it hurting them if that's what someone needs to do to be happy? Beating up on some total stranger seems far sicker and more immoral than any harmless fetish or gender disconnect.

But I'm not being entirely honest. The fact is that while some other man's unmanly proclivities may not set off any klaxon horns of panic within me, the idea of wearing a dress MYSELF does make me quite uncomfortable. And all my reasoned insistance that it should not bother me can only push it down so far...

I mean, while I'll admit that I loved how aggressive and even downright controlling Shelly could be in bed, the one time she teased me about her actually being the "man" in our relationship, and threatened to dress me up in a wig and corset, a pair of perilously high heels, and this dick-squasher thing she called a graph, I freaked out so bad that she never did it again!

And as far as that little phase I went through when I was eleven and twelve, that's all it was, a phase. I was confused. I would never dream of doing such a thing...

Well okay I dream about it, but everybody knows that dreams are just random firings of neurons that don't mean anything. I mean who doesn't have that dream where you're walking downtown in a cute little skirt and blouse and your hair and makeup are perfect and the sun is shining down and everbody is smiling and you feel so alive and free and the guy opens the door for you as you go in to the big important office building for the important businesswoman stuff you're engaged in, and then by coincidence you're both in the same elevator and the guy is smiling at you and ............. well you know that dream. But like I say I'm not into all that weird stuff!

I wonder if Miss Tricia would approve of me developing my own clown character eventually. "Bongo Billy" or somebody...

She has me strip down to my boxers, and then averts her gaze slightly as I exchange them for a pair of white satin bloomers with big red dots. They are quite baggy, and their short elasticized leggings remind me of some leaky toddler's training pants. Their slick fabric slides against my skin in disturbingly sensuous way.

"And now comes the fun part," she grins, as she wrestles something large and heavy and limp out of the suitcase. It's an obscenely gleaming bundle of milk-white rubber.

She unfolds it, revealing a compact, perfectly hemispherical latex pot belly, with two improbably pointy breasts cantilevered out above it. While not unduly large, they jut straight out like a pair of torpedos.

She has me sit on the front half of a kitchen chair and slips it over my front like an umpire's chest protector, then buckles the straps together in back. Suddenly I look like a terribly out of shape gorilla.

"Whatever you do, don't walk off the job," Miss Tricia chuckles, "You'll never get this off without help!"

I take a long pull from my beer. "I won't walk off."

"You never know. While kids are a pretty easy crowd for the most part, there's always that one little fucker who isn't satisfied with the scheduled entertainment and amuses himself by trying to push your buttons! Some of them are real geniuses at it too, knowing just what will do this. And these are always the ones with world-class jerks for parents, so be careful how you respond!"

She pokes her thumbs under the elastic waistband of my bloomers and pulls it upward, slipping it into the shallow groove that bisects this rubber tummy. The panties fit far more snugly now. She instructs me to get up and try walking around.

I do, rather awkwardly. The belly and tits wobble and slosh like they're full of greasy water. "Jeez, this thing weighs a ton! What's in here?"

"My special solution. I know it's cumbersome, but I think you'll come to appreciate it for its shock-absorbing properties. There's a reason why what we do is called slapstick comedy!"

She has me bend over and stick my arms out---like Superman---and slides the dress-thing down over me. When I manage to stand back up again she buttons up the outfit's neck and straightens its wide doily-like lace collar, fussing with it like a mom getting her little princess ready for Mass.

Then she helps me into a pair of clingy white stockings that come up to just above my knees. These are polka-dotted in loud primary colors, like Wonder Bread bags, and are opaque enough to hide my hairy legs.

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#4.)=====[ CLOWNS IN SPACE ]=====>

When we get to the shoes we run into a bit of a problem. While Punkin' Judy's clunky hot pink industrial platform boots appear quite massive, they are nowhere near massive enough. Miss Tricia tugs at her lower lip. "I don't suppose you have anything like this, do you?"

"Sure, I have a pair just like that. I keep them with all my other gay storm trooper boots!"

"Let me rephrase that: I need to see your funniest pair of shoes."

I point to the tan desert boots I had removed earlier. Her tiny mouth all but disappears as she grimly shakes her head.

We go into the bedroom. As I'm figuring out how I'm going to look under the bed with this unweildy hoopskirt on she drops to her knees and starts pulling out shoes, her adorable ass sticking up, for once clearly defined beneath these voluminous lavender pants.

"Okay, what do we got under here? A sneaker ....... a wing tip ........ another sneaker ........ Oh wow, what's this?! STRAP-ON SLEEPOVER! Interesting choice of reading matter."

Oh shit, I forgot that was there! She starts flipping through it, smiling, admiring the antics of the high-heeled and lingeried nymphos. I stammer, "That's uh-"

"Right. You don't know how that got under there," she snickers. "You know what they say about guys who dig lezzie porn like this, don't you?"

"N'uhn," I mumble, my face all hot and tingly and I'm sure bright red.

"That they like to imagine they're one of the girls in the pictures. I'll bet you're this hot little blonde here, getting fucked stupid by these other two!"

I sputter in outrage, "That's not---I hardly ever---That's RIDICULOUS!"

"Of course it is. You can't go around making generalizations like that," she grins, as if she doesn't believe this for a second, and resumes digging under the bed, "Hmmm...... flip flop...... another tennie...... Wow, perfect!"

She is holding up a pair of purple high-top basketball shoes. At size eleven I guess they do kind of look like clown shoes. "And here I was starting to think you didn't have any bozo in you! Lift your foot."

I balance myself against the wall as she sticks them onto my feet, crying, "Ze slipper, she fits! So it was YOU I danced with at ze ball last night! Come, mon fleur du mal, let me take you away from zees wretched life!"

I go to laugh over her sophomoric Cinderella gag, but after those accusations about my fantasy life it comes out as an anxious tittering.

And the fact that I am dressed like this only adds to my anxiety! I'm just glad that this is such a silly costume I am wearing---these immense purple clodhoppers making the whole ensemble look even more ridiculous---and not some attempt to turn me into a ravishing beauty.

I thought I had gotten enough sleep last night, but suddenly I am yawning. Miss Tricia says something that I don't quite catch. "What was that?"

"Oh......... I was just asking if there was someplace with a lot of light where we could do your makeup and wig?"

Out in the living room my 1950's "futuristic" reading chair is positioned under a lamp with a brutal halogen bulb in it. I turn it on for her and she gives me a hearty thumbs up!

I ease myself into the recliner. She pulls on the chair's big sinister chrome lever and it clack-clack-clacks loudly as I go tilting back---farther and farther---until I am almost laying flat.

Forced forward by how I am sitting, my skirt rises up in front of me like a plaid hillside. Its framework is more flexible than I'd anticipated, and a lot less bothersome in the way it presses against the backs of my thighs...

She brings her makeup toolbox and our beers over, and hands me mine. "You look like you could use this."

Thirsty, I tilt my bottle up and drink nearly a quarter of it. It seems odd that I can feel the effects of a single beer, but I do. "So uh, Miss Tricia.......... Now that we're working together, should I just call you Tricia?"

She is wiping my face with an oval sponge that smells of isopropyl and citrus. "To tell you the truth, I prefer Miss Tricia."

I take another draught of my beer. "Oh."

She giggles at my wounded tone, "No, it's not like that! It's not like I'm trying to be all snooty here. It's just that Miss Tricia is a clown's name, but 'Tricia' could be anybody. You see? It helps me to stay in character........ There is a logic to clowning that's different than the logic of plainface life, and it governs just about everything a clown does. Or it should."

I yawn again, loudly and musically, suddenly unbelievably sleepy. "So by this clown logic you, uh ........ like for example ........ If this building was to catch on fire we would have to run around like idiots doing things that make it worse?"

"Exactly!" she guffaws, for some reason sounding like she is far, far away. "But while Tricia is no name for a clown, I suppose once in a while you could call me 'Chief' or something, some nickname that a sidekick might give to her boss, that is affectionate without overstepping the bounds of-"

Then her mouth is moving but there is no sound, only a dull seashell roar that grows louder and louder. I watch her bright red lips and dainty white teeth going this way and that in rapt fascination.

I can see the painted surface of her face in extraordinary detail, the tiny pores now evenly-spaced sinkholes across the curve of her cheek, which looks like the airless surface of some wholly synthetic planet. It all seems achingly profound, on the verge of revealling some vast cosmic secret...

And then I am asleep.
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<===[ END OF PART ONE ]===>

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===[ A NOTE ON THE LOCALE: ]==>

I named the city this story takes place in after the space center north of Moscow. The name Star City sounded simple, dynamic, and it had a historical resonance with this pseudonym I've chosen as a t.g. fiction author.

It was only after I had invented this location that I found out that there already WAS a fictional Star City, featured in the world of D.C. Comics, a West Coast counterpart to Gotham City and Metropolis....... which to my astonishment was located at the northernmost tip of California, not far south of where I had imagined it being!

Mine is not neccessarily the same bustling port city found in the comics. Without D.C. characters what would be the point? But once I had made the mental association I knew this was the TYPE of place my Star City should be (there always tends to be something a bit fantastical about these burgs the superheroes live in, with their soaring Fritz Lang skyways and scary fascistic monuments looming up everywhere...); and my own made up city suddenly became a lot more surreal.