🤡 Squeeze my nose for a good time

HONK! If you are a member of the Depressed Clown Society.

“HONK! HONK! HONK!” I yell, because if the bumper sticker wants me to honk, I’m going to honk. I stare at it in the dirt beyond the parking lot of my townhome. A few weeks ago, I found a diamond engagement ring sparkling under the morning sun. Yesterday, my neighbor Jenna found an old cassette tape. 

“And you know what, bitch? It still fucking works!” she said. I kept my eyes and hands focused on pruning the dying succulent. Dried out, shrunken leaves littered the concrete around my feet. She had parked her car and was going to enter her townhome, two units down, but saw me sitting on my back porch. She always comes to talk whenever I’m out on my back porch. 

“That’s nice,” I said, pulling small clovers out of the dirt. I didn’t know how they got in my potted plant, but whatever. I placed the pot on the ground and picked up the terra cotta one housing a living stone. My boyfriend gave it to me and said, “It reminded me of your pussy.” He broke up with me two days later. I think he meant it as a compliment, but I spent weeks looking at my vagina in the front camera of my phone, making sure it didn’t look like a fucking alien vagina. 

“And it’s like… devil music or some shit, you know? Like those Satanic Panic fuckers would have jailed people for this shit.” Jenna sighed. “It’s just me and Satan, baby! Anyway, you working Friday? I’m hosting a listening party for this tape and another one that popped up from that crusty ass dirt last month. We are blessed by this treasure.” 

“I have to work,” I said. I looked up at her. She leaned on the makeshift pallet fence dividing my back porch from my neighbor’s. “You know how it is.” 

“Oh girl, I fucking know! Capitalism makes a bitch out of everyone.” Jenna shakes her head, face growing serious, eyes full of concern. “When you’re off, just come on over. Martin is bringing a keg from the brewery, and I got that wine you like from the vineyard on Seacoast.” 

“Thanks, Jenna,” I said. 

“Well, I’ll leave you to your weed or whatever the fuck you’re growing,” she said, pausing to take another look at the living stone. “It looks like a decaying asscrack.” 

“HONK!” I yell again. I reach down and pick up the bumper sticker. It still has the liner over the sticky part. My car, already covered with bumper stickers, won’t mind another addition. I walk around to the back and cover the one that says, “I LOVE AGING & DYING.” My mom always tells me to take that one down because people will think I want to die. I tell her maybe I do, and then she’s always like, “Don’t say that! We should cherish our time on Earth,” and then I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right,” but I never mean it. 

I slide into the driver’s seat and start the ignition. 

The thing about bumper stickers is they provide randos with unfettered access to the staunch beliefs of others in an anonymous, non-threatening way. Most of the time. There was this one day where I spent nearly two hours driving behind some asshole in a big-ass lifted Ford pickup. Instead of those little stickers that are, like, a mom, dad, and three kids, it was a huge gun, a big gun, and then some smaller guns. And I was like, are these guns he owns? Is the medium-sized gun supposed to be his wife? Do his kids like being represented by mini AK-47s? I never passed the dick because I feared he’d shoot me once he saw my bumper sticker that says, “I’ve aborted twelve babies!” with a smiley face. 

My bumper stickers speak to who I am, and now I’m a member of the Depressed Clown Society. HONK! HONK! HONK! I wonder if my mom will like this better than the last one. No fucking clue what the Depressed Clown Society is, but hey, I can be a depressed clown. Like, when my ex-boyfriend broke up with me after I spent all day crying over the death of one of my houseplants—which is a totally normal thing to do—even though I’ve never killed a houseplant… 

The road in front of me comes into focus, and I don’t remember how I got to the stop sign before exiting my neighborhood. The therapist I had last year called this “disassociating” and told me, “I should be concerned if it happens during times of increased danger,” like driving. So then I stopped telling her about it because a girl has got to get to work, and I’m not taking the fucking musty and sweat-stinking city buses. 

After a few miles of driving, and then five hours at work, I can be home with my cat, plants, a massive bowl of popcorn, and my eggplant parm with a side of tortellini & alfredo from work. Employee discount, here we come. I can almost taste my Friday night ritual on my tongue. It started two weeks after he left me because I decided I needed structure and food comas to get through the days. 

The sign for the Italian restaurant appears in the near distance, so I flip on my blinker and wait to make the left turn. Behind me, someone honks and then flashes their lights. A fellow depressed clown? My heart races. I turn my head to get a good look at them, and holy shit, a man speeds by in a tan junker, and his hair is orange, and he has a red ball for a nose. Another car honks, one, two, three times, before racing ahead. All I see is a crop of shaggy brown hair. Whatever. The lane of oncoming traffic clears so I turn and enter the restaurant’s parking lot before pulling around the back and turning the car off. A HONK! bubbles in the back of my throat, but the expo cook Josh sits on the back stoop, smoking his hourly cigarette. I wave at him and he salutes me. The urge to HONK! grows—blood bubbling under my skin. I bring my hand to my nose for a good squeeze, but my nose isn’t a big red ball, so it can’t honk. Fucking useless nose. I pull down the sun visor and flip the mirror open to look at my depressing, typical nose. It’s a little redder than usual, probably because I honked it—or tried to, anyway. I open my car door, shut it, lock it, and walk toward the restaurant. 

“Yo, Lottie, what the fuck is wrong with your nose?” Josh asks. He takes a drag on his cigarette, then lets the smoke out of the corner of his mouth. I reach up to touch my nose and it feels… odd. Foamy. Squishy. Josh stands up, now looking down at me. He lifts his hand, reaches for my nose, and squeezes it. 

“HONK!” I yell. Josh laughs and squeezes my nose again. “HONK! HONK! HONK!” I wait to feel embarrassment, but it never comes. 

“You working like this? Could be a fun night!” he says. My eyes widen, remembering I need to go into the restaurant and clock in. I place my hand over my nose and pull, but it’s—HONK!—stuck. I pull harder and now my eyes are watering. HONK! HONK! I dig my fingernails into the foamy—HONK!—flesh, finally digging into a chunk and—HONK!—rip a piece off. Blood covers my hand and drips down my arm. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I say, running back to my car. With the non-bloody hand, I reach into the discarded Taco Bell bag and pull out a handful of used napkins. The scent of Taco Bell Fire Sauce fills my nose, but I don’t know where my nostrils are, and it stings. I start the car, rip out of the parking lot, and speed back to my house. I lurch the car into park, shut it off with one hand, and remove the—HONK!—bloody napkins with the other. Faint thumping vibrates my car. Jenna’s listening party. Jenna’s goddamn listening party. I hit the steering wheel with my right palm. White residue appears. I wipe my hand on the passenger seat, leaving behind more white residue. 

Flinging open my car door, I run into my house and go straight to the bathroom, flipping on the lights, and then I see it. Red nose illuminated against an impossibly white face, the makeup uneven and patchy. Dark triangles appear under my eyes, the smoky color running down my face as if I am crying, but I feel no tears. But then the tears come. I let them come. I welcome them. I heave and sob so the makeup runs. It’s obvious what I am. 

My face twists and contorts in the mirror, cheeks rosy-red, stained by the dark drips of eyeshadow. My hair, usually limp and brown, curls into frizzy springs of carrot orange. The desperation of a Depressed Clown overwhelms my insides. I collapse to the ground as tears pour out of my eyes. The bathroom tile cools my skin, and here, curled up in the fetal position, I remember Jenna’s party. And I am a clown. And clowns go to parties. I raise myself from the ground, tears still streaming from my eyes, and look down at my clothes. My work uniform transforms into a ruffle collar, oversized polka dot shirt in colors of a muted rainbow, with big red pants. Shiny red shoes grow three sizes too big around my feet. I see myself and know I am ready. 

I walk out the back door and see the bumper sticker. HONK! if you are a member of the Depressed Clown Society. Someone catches me in the spotlight of their headlights and honks. 

“Are you a member of the Depressed Clown Society?” I yell. The driver rolls his window down. 

“What?” 

“Are you a member of the Depressed Clown Society?” I yell again, enunciating everything more deliberately so he can understand me. 

“No. What the fuck. I’m just trying to park and you’re standing in the middle of the goddamn lot,” he says. I step out of the way and follow the short sidewalk to Jenna’s back door. She swings the door open before I can knock. 

“Girl!” she says, mouth agape and eyes wide. She takes a breath and then smiles. “I love a good fucking costume!” 

“What costume?” I ask, stepping inside. Jenna turns, raises her eyebrows, and shakes her head. 

“I thought you had work?” she asks. She grabs a plastic cup from the stack and fills it to the brim with wine. 

“I don’t work there anymore,” I say. She nods.

“Well, bitch, it’s just a fucking party tonight. Get in there and get frisky with the devil.” She hands me the cup of wine and pushes me into her small living room. Through a cloud of smoke, people lounge on the couch, the floor, and on yoga mats. Tears fall down my face again, and I welcome them. I take a gulp of wine and let the cup fall to the ground. The vibrations of the devil cassette climb through my body, rumbling everything inside me. My tongue reaches out to taste the salt of my tears, and I taste the tears after every shift at work. The tears when my plant died and my boyfriend left me. The tears when I realized getting out of this hellhole was never going to happen, and when I turned 26 and no longer had coverage for Prozac. When I realized I didn’t believe in God, so I was going to Hell; how my house sits dark and empty even when I’m inside. The tears build in pressure, the dam of my tear ducts holding them back, but I tell my tear ducts to let them erupt. I dance, thrash, wiggle, and kick. 

Performance is my calling. 

I squeeze my nose and HONK! I pull an endless stream of colorful fabric out of my shirt sleeve. I clap and sing and dance and HONK! and kick my legs in the air. All the while, my face drips and the tears stream. I am in front of a woman lying on the floor with her legs up the wall, and I say, “Hello there, I have something for you,” and procure a flower from behind her ears. With each movement comes more tears, more tears, more tears until big splotches mixed with white face makeup plop to the ground of Jenna’s apartment. 

I walk to Jenna. We lock eyes and she watches me, mouth hanging open. 

“Guess what?” I whisper. 

“What?” she asks. I take her hand and place it on my nose. She squeezes. 

“HONK!” I yell. She stifles a laugh while I continue my dance, but then the laughter escapes her mouth, loud, bold, all-consuming, and laughter rings out in the room, everyone laughing through the smoke and the devil music. 

At me.

And I am happy. 

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