🎙️ Sydney Bollinger

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Read Sydney’s story, Squeeze my nose for a good time, on Foofaraw now!

Are you a member of the Depressed Clown Society?

I am not, but only because I am not, nor have I ever been, a clown.

I took away three distinct themes when reading your story:

The feeling that there’s something wrong with you and people keep staring i.e. bad hair day, giant pimple, fly undone, etc.

The sense of dread that you have to battle through until you’re a bit delirious at the end of it all

The desire to be part of a “cool” group or club, but you end up having to change yourself in a way you don’t like to achieve that

Do any of these resonate with you and the origin of this story or am I completely off my rocker?

I definitely think the second theme does.

I wrote this for a writing workshop and the prompt was “haunted object.” I was also really depressed while drafting and when that happens, I feel like there’s a pit of numb despair in my body swirling away any joy I could possible have. When that happens, there is nothing to do but keep moving, and I think battling through the dread to get to the point of delirium is sometimes when we can heal. The point where the lines between reality and fiction begin to blur allow us to exist outside of ourselves.

Do you think Lottie has become a clown for the rest of her life? Or is it temporary?

I think it’s temporary. It’s something that happened to her in the moment, but I think if she ever needed to be a depressed clown again, she could. She finds catharsis in the absurdity, especially because she feels like she doesn’t have much meaning in her life, so being the depressed clown finally gives her a role.

How do you think Lottie is feeling the next morning?

A little confused but also free.

Do you have any cool bumper stickers?

I do! I really like bumper stickers. My favorite one (although it is now so faded it is hard to read) says “I’d rather be trick or treating.” I have a couple others related to horror movies, one urging folks to read banned books, and then one for Phantom Basketball Club.

Fun fact - this story is actually based on a real bumper sticker I found in the dirt beyond my parking lot (where things do come up from the ground). It said “Honk if you’re a dramatic clown!” I took a picture of it (attached) and left it. I went back for it an hour or so later because I regretted not putting it on my car and it was gone!

Have you ever honked at someone with a “Honk if…” bumper sticker?

I don’t think so! I’m always afraid the person will think I’m upset with them.

What’s one of your recent favorite short stories?

I really love Emma E. Murray’s work (I had the pleasure of interviewing her for Write or Die Magazine). She has a story called “Mother of Machines” about a teenage girl who falls in love with an industrial lathe. It’s a beautiful, haunting, and violent story. The story is in her recent short story collection The Drowning Machine and Other Obsessions.

What book are you reading right now?

I’m always in the middle of several books, but here are the highlights…

I knit, crochet, and sew, and have been really getting into the history of textiles and clothing recently. I just finished Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber and have just started Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser.

I’ve also been diving into Creature Publishing’s catalogue. I’m in the middle of Root Rot by Saskia Nislow right now and am loving it.

Please promote your writing (or friends’ writing) that has been published elsewhere (or anything else you’d like to promote)

I am a zine fanatic and recently released a second volume of Death Wish. The zine is about Sylvia Plath, mushrooms, suicidal ideation, and making sense of clinical depression. It’s one of the darkest things I’ve ever written and came out of the same depressive episode as “Squeeze My Nose for a Good Time.”

Weekly-ish, I release a Substack called Running on Sentences. It’s about running, but it’s also just about being a human and understanding what that means. I started the project when training for my first marathon and have just kept it going in the time sense since then.

I want to thank Sydney for taking the time to talk about bumper stickers and honking with us this afternoon!