Now we continue…

After a moment, I grabbed my old-fashioned leather suitcase and joined Laverne at the truck stop counter. Now, you’re probably asking yourself, “Where did he pick up an old-fashioned leather suitcase? Has he had it the whole time but didn’t mention it?”

“I don’t like eggs,” I told Laverne.

“OK”, she said without looking at me. She was already eating: eggs, hashbrowns, maybe it was an omelete, I don’t know. I’m no good with breakfast food.

When the waitress approached me, I didn’t need to look at the menu: “I’ll take a pancake,” I said. “One. And a coffee. Black.” She poured the coffee into a mug with the words “WEL ME T TH OUSE O REOTYPE A D HO ERS” on it. Many of the letters had been scraped or scrubbed off over the years.

She brought my pancake a few minutes later and I asked for some cream for my coffee.

“Didn’t you say black?” she asked.

I smiled my politest smile and nodded, “Uh huh.” (It was good to be back in California.)

Just then I thought I saw a Nazi in authentic period dress out of the corner of my eye. I whirled on the stool to look upon the empty parking lot. It must have been my imagination… or must it have been?

“Let’s go,” said Laverne. “Let’s get some rest.” She laid some money on the counter and, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, headed for the door. I quickly finished my pancake in the way that disgraced ninjas kill themselves with frisbees, and bounded after her.

Across the highway was a two-story motor lodge, pale and cracking with blue paint. The sign said “U-SLEEP-IT”. When I caught up with Laverne in the lobby, she was arguing with the desk clerk.

“—see this guy! No way.”

“I’m sorry,” the clerk said. “It’s the only room we have available. But check out time is noon, so if you’d like to wait until then…”

“Forget it,” said Laverne, defeated. “We’ll take it.”

“Swell,” said the clerk. “You’re room 113. Just go out this door, turn left and go all the way down.” He handed her the key, dangling from some sort of plastic action figure keychain (closer inspection later revealed: Chewbacca).

“There’s only one bed,” I noticed aloud when we entered the room.

Laverne let out a heavy, smoky sigh. “I know. You’ll have to sleep on the floor.”

“But that’s no good for the sexual tension I’m trying to build in this story,” I said. “After all, it’s a king size.”

Laverne thought for a moment as she switched on the cooling unit under the window. It growled to life and Laverne sighed again. “OK, fine.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I mean, it’s nothing personal. It’s just the narrative is much more—”

She pressed a smoky finger to my lips. “Shut up. I’m going to take a shower.”

I shut up. Laverne took a shower. After a few minutes, she emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel. The steam from the shower drifted and dissipated around her body.

“Now you take a shower,” she said. “You smell.” It was then that I began to suspect she was falling in love with me.

“OK, I’ll take a shower,” I said suspectingly. Then I took a shower (suspiciously).

By the time I came out, Laverne was already in bed. She had drawn tight the drab brown curtains, but the desert sunlight still blazed through like the worms they put in jack cheese to turn it into swiss. I buttoned the butt-flap on my one-sy pajamas and slipped into bed next to her.

“Sweet dreams,” she mumbled.

“Do you think that’s dramatic enough for an act break?” I asked.

She was silent for a moment. Then: “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

“That’s better.

Coming up: More stuff!

It took me a few minutes to regain my composure. I sat on a park bench and fumbled absentmindedly with the piled-up cantaloupes. What was I going to do now? I had no train. No watermelon. No real Nazis. And a new arch-nemesis who would certainly try to kill me later (foreshadowing), despite my mother’s objections.

I picked up a cantaloupe with both hands, held it high above my head, and, with a primal scream, brought it smashing down upon my forehead. The melon (or, “loupe”) cracked open squishily. Its sweet nectar dribbled down my cheeks as I tore into the loupe-flesh with my teeth. It was a very powerful, symbolic, Lord-of-the-Flies-or-something-type of moment, trust me.

Plus, cantaloupe is yummy. I think I even prefer its soft and slightly fuzzy texture to that of the flavorly-superior watermelon. Maybe.

Anyway, I was just about barf-ready sick of Albuquerque. So I headed to the famous Old Town Pickle District (famous for “Albuquerque’s Famous Pickles” since 1862[1]). I knew there would be a lot of trucks there, loading up to take pickles to the masses. Including the mass of California.

Sure enough, as the sun was setting, I came upon a trucker by the name of Laverne. I thought it was a bit cliché, but didn’t say anything because that would be rude. Plus, I needed a ride.

Laverne was not as ugly as you’d think. Although she was 44 years old (as I later learned from the truckers license above her sun visor) , she didn’t look a day over 35 years and 362 days old. Her skin was tanned and leathery, like tanned leather. But it was not unattractive. In fact, with her tattered blue jeans and her sun-bleached hair pulled back in a careless ponytail, she exuded a raw sensuality—an anthropomorphized passion that I, as a naive lad of however old I was at the time, had not seen outside of a Ken Burns documentary. Her mirrored sunglasses seemed to reflect my very soul.

I had to think quickly because I knew I could not be distracted from my journey. I didn’t remember what the point of my journey was, but I knew I couldn’t be distracted.

“Laverne,” I said timidly, climbing into the passenger seat. “I’m on an important journey. I’m afraid I must insist that you not fall in love with me.”

“Honey,” she purred around the cigarette between her lips (her voice was surprisingly un-raspy). “I can assure you”—the flame from her Zippo illuminated her face and danced in her eyes for a moment—”no one is ever going to love you.”

I was relieved. Laverne and I had an understanding, and I knew we would succeed in both our goals: Me, doing whatever I was doing. And she, delivering pickles.

We drove through the night, across Arizona, in silence. A few times I tried to start up conversation, but Laverne was terse in her responses and I soon realized she preferred the quietude. I respected that.

Rays of sun pierced the desert night behind us as we crossed the border and pulled into a truck stop in Needles, California.

“When was the last time you had a shower?” Laverne asked.

I thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose it was in Texas somewhere.”

“When was that?”

“I’m not exactly sure. You see, I was drugged with magic bananas and, plus, I wrote that part of the story, like, ten months ago. It’s hard to keep chronology straight without going back and re-reading everything and I’ll be damned if I have the time for that. OK, maybe I have the time, but I’m not going to, so if that’s a problem maybe you should just stop reading right now.”

“Yeah, well,” she said. “I think it’s been long enough.” She eased open her door and climbed down from her seat. “It’s been a while for me too. Let’s grab a motel room here, shower up, and take a nap until evening. The daytime heat in this desert can get up to 130 degrees.”

With that, she shut the door. I glanced out at the rising sun, that demented orb of life and death—of existence… and annihilation.

I watched Laverne enter the truck stop and take a seat at the counter.

In the distance, buzzards circled in the sky. Waiting.

Coming up: Roadkill! Sexual tension! Motel mini-soaps! Blurmstein returns! The theme song from The O.C.!

1. The pickles had been pickled there since 1807, but only became famous in 1862 when a traveling salesman/political blogger/Confederate loyalist named Edgar Flickette threw one at President Lincoln’s head during a press conference. The president ducked just in time, but the incident proved a grim antecedent to Lincoln’s assassination three years later—but by then it wasn’t a pickle… it was a bullet.

“Do you ever think,” The Other Guy asked, “about things?”

“Not much,” I said. The train groaned as the tracks curved southward. The sun shone in thin zebra stripes through the planks of the boxcar.

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “I never thought of it like that.”

Our conversation went on like that, full of nonsense and sexual innuendo. We refused to discuss religion or politics, except as they related to absurdity or sex, which is to say, religion and politics were all we talked about. The Other Guy had been a snake handler in Appalachia for a number of years before moving to Florida and running for city council (but Florida isn’t a city, which is how he got his name). He lost the election. He lived for a time at Disney World, where he survived by pretending to be the animatronic Lizard King on the “It’s a Small World” ride. The riders would toss spoiled lunchmeat at the robots, as is the custom, and at the end of the day The Other Guy would gather this meat and sell it to the mole-men puppeteers. With the profits, he was able to purchase cat food. But he didn’t have a cat, so he ended up throwing most of it away. This was also the period during which he married and divorced his second wife without her knowledge.

That’s as much of the story I’d heard by the time we got to Albuquerque. I immediately knew, from countless Bugs Bunny cartoons, that one should in fact always take the left turn at Albuquerque. I tried to explain this to The Other Guy, but he was adamant: “I’m no commie,” he said. “I’d rather crash this train at full speed into a dynamite factory than follow a pinko like you!” Things had taken an unfortunate turn and I decided it was time for us to go our separate ways. Besides, the train was going crash into a dynamite factory, and I’d forgotten to pack my dynamite-proof underwear.

So, I bid The Other Guy adieu.

“Gesundheit,” he said. And he had never been more right.

After watching the explosion, I decided to head into town and see if the local sheriff needed any deputies. I saw a man on the street with a star on his chest.

“Hey, jerk,” I said. “Deputize me!”

“No thanks,” said the sheriff, because he wasn’t the sheriff. The star wasn’t a sheriff’s badge at all. He was just on his way to city’s annual Holocaust reenactment. Of course I followed him.

When we got to the town square I saw a few hundred citizens in authentic period dress, milling around, waiting for the festivities to begin. Jews were chatting with Gestapo. SS officers with their kids were seeking shade from the incinerating desert sun. It wasn’t until I saw the towering temporary guard tower that it dawned on me: this might be upsetting to some people. Especially Europeans who always get so annoyed when Americans try to copy their culture. I decided to find out what was, as they say, what.

“Who’s in charge of this thing?” I asked a little girl in a red dress and buckle shoes.

“I can’t find my mommy and daddy,” she said.

I sighed and rolled my eyes (to comedic effect). “Listen, are you going to help me or not?”

She started to cry, so I knew she was going to be of no use. I wandered off towards the guard tower where, in preparation for the opening ceremony, a young woman with a bullhorn was directing Jews to their starting positions.

“Are you in charge of this?”

The woman looked at me over the top of her glasses. “No,” she said.

“I’d like to speak with whoever is in charge.”

She sighed heavily. Clearly I was distracting her from important business. “You want Clancy Blurmstein, the chairman of the chamber of commerce. He’s over there in the Nazi headquarters.” She pointed to the park restrooms.

“Thanks,” I said. I threw up a half-hearted heil and headed towards the toilets.

When I walked in, I saw the spitting image of ”Dr.” Josef “Criss Angel of Death” Mengele sitting on the toilet. Don’t get the wrong idea—he had his pants on. There was a TV tray in front of him, loaded with papers highlighted pink and yellow.

“Are you Blurmstein?”

“Yah, zaht oos me,” he said. He didn’t look up from his paperwork.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Ach! Ein doon’t haven zee timen-freuden!”

“Please?”

“Are zhoo frommen zee newsen-pahper?”

“Yes,” I said. (I like waffles, so this wasn’t technically a lie.)

“Oh. In that case, I suppose I can spare a few moments.” Turns out he wasn’t German at all. The accent was fake.

“That’s great,” I said. “First of all, what is going on here?”

“Welcome,” he said, “to the 77th Annual Albuquerque Holocaust Reenactment and Watermelon Festival. Ours is the largest annual Holocaust reenactment West of the Mississippi. Only Ithaca’s is bigger. And they’re thinking of canceling theirs for budgetary reasons. If they do, we’ll be the biggest in the country.” He crossed his fingers and made a hip-thrusting gesture (which I considered wholly inappropriate).

He continued. “This year we’re performing Sachsenhausen. More than 2300 Jews, Gypsies, and Germans—from as far away as Flagstaff—will provide a fun and educational experience for the entire family! And watch out…” (Here he leaned to his left, even though I was standing directly in front of him, and cupped a hand to his mouth secretively.) “Or you just might learn a little history along the way.” He chuckled to himself for a moment. “After that, we’ll cool down from the heat of the ovens with all the sweet, juicy watermelon you can eat! Watch our state-champion Melon Gobblers perform their championship routine. They don’t just eat watermelons; they also wear them like shoes! Come one, come all, Jew and Homosexual alike, to the 77th Annual Albuquerque Holocaust Reenactment and Watermelon Festival! (Last weekend in June.)”

“Very informative,” I said. “Are there really going to be 2500 participants?”

“Twenty-six hundred,” Blurmstein corrected. “And they prefer to be called ‘performers’.”

“Yeah, well, I prefer to be called Captain Starwars McAmazon.com, but a rose by any other name, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“I know,” he said. “You smell great.”

I nodded.

“Are you going to stay for the festivities?” he asked, with hope in his eyes.

“I’m afraid I can’t. You see… I don’t like watermelon.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. But I don’t like cucumbers.”

“I understand,” said Blurmstein. “Then you must go. On to California… On to freedom.”

I was shocked. “How did you know I was going to California?”

“I know all kinds of things,” he said menacingly. “I know you don’t work for a newspaper. I know your shoe size is 11. I know how cute a baby rhinoceros is.”

“But how?”

“I have a subscription to National Geographic,” he snarled. “And I support public television.”

My head was spinning. Maybe it was the fumes from the park toilets. Maybe it was the sudden realization that rhinos are always ‘horny’. Whatever it was, I knew I had to get out of there. And fast.

I burst from the restroom, Blurmstein’s maniacal laughter echoing behind me. I stumbled onto the park green. Dizzy and disoriented, I collapsed a few yards away.

A man who looked like Hitler came to my aid. “What’s the matter, sir?”

My vision was blurry and my speech mumbly. “Whuh… Who is that man?”

“What man, sir?”

“The man in the bathroom. Back there.” I gestured behind me as Hitler helped me to my feet.

“Back where?”

“What are you, blind and racist? Right over th—” I froze. Looking behind me, I realized the sturdy concrete restrooms had vanished. There was only an old tire. “It’ssatire! How is this possible? Where’s Blurmstein?”

The Hitler-looking guy now looked like Hitler, only more confused.

“Excuse me, sir, but… who?”

“No, no, what’s happening?” I gripped the man by the shoulders. “What about the Annual Albuquerque Holocaust Reenactment and Watermelon Festival?”

“Sir, I’ve lived here all my life and I can tell you… there is no such thing.”

I gasped. “N-n-no such thing?”

“No, sir. Never. This here,” he said, sweeping his arm towards the people bustling around us, “is the 77th Annual Albuquerque Holocaust Reenactment and Cantaloupe Festival.”

My strength gave way, and I dropped to my knees. “No,” I whispered. “No, no.” The aroma of the orange, supple melon flesh drifted to my nostrils, and mingled with smell of grass and pretzels.

“Tell me,” I said without raising my head. It was little more than a whisper. “Do the Melon Gobblers wear them like shoes?”

Hitler Guy was silent for a moment, then spoke. “I’m sorry, sir. Cantaloupes are too small to wear like shoes.”

I stifled a sob, and my anguish turned suddenly to rage. I pounded the ground with my fist. And again, until my knuckles were stained with the dark, grassy green of fury. As Hitler Guy drifted away, I silently vowed revenge. I knew I hadn’t seen the last of Clancy Blurmstein. If that was even his real name.

Which it was.

The End…? No, of course not. That would be dumb.

My face hurt.

You see, that first banana split in Denison was laced with banana roofies: a secret Jamaican extract that renders the victim extremely impressionable and unable to remember anything that happens while under its influence. Also, I was drunk.

Over the years, Granny Peterson (proprietor of the ice cream saloon) had drugged upwards of eleven unsuspecting travelers, sending them to unknowingly perform obscene acts in an Amarillo burlesque show. She kept us under her control by feeding us daily spiked banana splits.

We were only able to break free when, during the national banana recall of aught four, she was forced to substitute plantains in the splits. Unbeknownst to Granny Peterson (no grandchildren, liar!), the enchanted plantain contains magical enzymes which neutralize the hypno-hallucinogenic effects of the Jamaican extract. Not many people realize that the plantain was botanically and supernaturally developed to aid against the voodoo of the Caribbean and its horticultural precursor, the banana (AKA “the devil’s banana”, AKA “the kitchen-counter banana”).

Reality came crashing upon me like a kick in the face when the bearded transvestites of the burlesque show were kicking me in the face. That was the gimmick: truck drivers and stay-at-home moms paid a quarter to watch men dressed like bearded ladies kick me and two other guys in the face for 20 minutes.

When I realized what was happening, I knew I had to escape. I waited 17 minutes until the show was over (after all, these low-class prostitutes and postal workers paid good money to see the show, and who was I to rob them of their only joy in life?). On the way to the after-party, I pulled aside the other faces (Tom Tom and The Other Guy).

“Hey, you guys,” I said. “Like, crazy, right? We should totally split… Ha ha, split, get it? Bananas. What do you think?”

“Oh, I get it,” said The Other Guy. “It’s not funny, but I get it.

“I think it is funny,” said Tom Tom, “but I don’t get it.”

“The banana splits were obviously drugged,” I said. “But ‘split’ also means to leave. So we should ‘split’, like leave, but also it’s funny because of the banana splits.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Tom Tom.

“Are you stupid?” asked The Other Guy.

But Tom Tom wasn’t stupid. He was just dumb. After 10 minutes, it was clear that Tom Tom hadn’t been drugged. He’d volunteered for this, because he liked getting kicked in the face. He skipped off towards the party trailer yelling “Beer!”, leaving me alone with The Other Guy.

“Are you an idiot, too?” I asked.

“I hope not,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

At that point it was well past midnight, and under cover of darkness, we crept to our rooms behind the abandoned warehouse, and gathered our things (which mostly consisted of bottles of whiskey and our stamp collections; I had some leftover clown paraphernalia; The Other Guy had a hat). After brushing our teeth, we cartwheeled toward the train depot, toward freedom.

When we got there, The Other Guy held up his hand. “Wait,” he said. “How can we go out into the world like this?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Look.” He pointed to our moonlit reflections in a window of the train station.

Unfortunately, months of “You’ll Get A Kick Out of This” shows had caused our faces to become mutilated and malformed. But that’s how I looked already, so no one would be able to tell the difference. The Other Guy wasn’t so lucky.

“It’s not so bad,” I said, swallowing back some bile. “Who needs a nose, anyway? I can fix you up in no time.”

I whipped out my clown attaché case and began applying face paint liberally (mostly blues, whites and oranges, to complement his complexion and downplay the Phantom-of-the-Opera/Mel-Gibson-in-that-one-movie aspects). By the time I was finished, he looked better than Gary Busey—far from passable in normal society, but good enough for a train ride through the desert.

We’d already missed the midnight train to Georgia, but at the far end of the yard, nightshift workers were loading up a 3AM train to Barstow, CA. I knew that was our ticket out of there. But it wasn’t. We didn’t have tickets. But we snuck on the train anyway.

Hiding in a boxcar, under a pile of doggie chew toys, I overheard one of the loading crew ask another, “Did you hear about that kangaroo in Colorado(?!)”. The bellow of the train whistle drowned out any reply. The wheels screeched and onomatopoeia’d to life, and The Other Guy and I were on our way to California—the land of dreams and waking up.

Still to come: Choo-choo, animated assistance, dirt, cacti, the Grand Canyon, The Other Guys dies (to me), and 2005. Don’t mess with Texas.

I shuffled down the lonely Nebraska highway—corn stalks rising on both sides, as high as an elephant’s eye. The elephant’s name, I later learned, was Wallace. He was part of a traveling circus that was passing out of Omaha at that very moment.

At the front of the caravan of trailers, a rusty old pickup truck pulled along side me and stopped. An enormous man in a top hat leaned out the window.

“You there, boy!” he called from his truck. “You a clown?”

That was too much. All the emotions I’d been bottling up since leaving college 20 minutes before burst forth in big, comic clown tears. “No,” I sobbed, as tears smudged my face paint, hilariously. “I’m not even a stuuuudeeeent!” (That is the way clowns sound when sobbing.)

To my surprise, the man began laughing—a booming, donkey laugh. “My word, boy,” he said, wiping the amusement from his brow. “You have a way about you. My name is Colonel Frederick Niles Baxter, and I am the ringmaster of this here show. I say, I simply must have you as part of my traveling circus.”

Could my dreams really be coming true, here on this dusty Nebraska highway? “Gee, Mr. Baxter. I would love to be in your circus. But I feel I should tell you, I pee’d in a punch bowl once. Also, I haven’t graduated from clown college, so I can’t legally call myself a clown.”

“Ho ho, not at all, my boy, not at all!” chortled Colonel Baxter, his bushy black mustache dancing beneath his nose, “Why, I can’t legally call myself a man! Those Washington fat cats may take comfort in their ‘legalities’ and their ‘municipalities’ and their ‘FDA approvals’ and their ‘electric blankets’ and whatnots and hoo-hahs, but I ask you: will those things keep them warm at night? Maybe so, but can they ever compare to the warm corpse of a freshly-slaughtered goat?”

The Colonel had a point.

So I hopped in the back of his truck and the caravan got underway again. I talked with Colonel Baxter through the window in the cab of the truck. When I say “I talked with”, I actually mean “He talked to”, and when I say “Colonel Baxter”, I actually mean “me”. Generally, that whole sentence should be rearranged. The Colonel was in the passenger seat, and Google the Trained Chimp was driving. (Google was 17 years old, so it’s just a coincidence.)

Colonel Baxter talked and talked. About his youth (he was a fighter pilot in the War of 1812), his love life (including the divine Sarah Bernhardt, star of stage and screen, etc.), and of course his 25-year career as ringmaster of this traveling circus. We were halfway to Topeka before I realized “Colonel W.N. Baxter’s Amazing Traveling Circus” was less a “traveling circus” and more an “unsanctioned zoo”. By the time we passed Wichita it had become apparent that this “unsanctioned zoo” was less an “unsanctioned zoo” and more of an “illegal large mammal ultimate fighting mobile tournament”.

The large trailers in our caravan, which I’d thought were simple animal cages, were actually the wrestling rings themselves. Hairy, sweaty, drunk men were packed into each of the four trailers behind us, watching no-holds-barred fighting matches between a platypus and a raccoon, a cheetah and a wild boar, an elephant (Wallace) and a gorilla, and a horse and a halibut, respectively.

Naturally, when the Colonel told me this, I was appalled.

“That’s awful!” I said. “Just awful! How in the world is anyone going to pay attention to my clown act when all that awesome, awesome animal fighting is going on?”

“Don’t worry, my boy,” he said. I was beginning to view him as a father figure. “You’ll be the one in charge of shoveling away the losing carcasses. Why, you’ll be the star of the show!”

“Oh, OK,” I said. “That makes sense.”

When we stopped at the Starbucks in Coffeyville, KS, something occurred to me. “Colonel Baxter,” I asked. “Can you get in trouble for killing so many animals, including endangered species?”

He chortled his jovial chortle again. “My boy, my boy. The best part is, it’s 100% legal. You can bank on it.” (I believe this last comment referred to the ATM he’d recently installed in trailer #3.)

You see, Colonel Baxter had found a way to stick it to those Washington fat cats once again. A loophole in the Federal Animal Pugilism Act of 1910 stipulates: “If said acts occur while traveling in excess of 295 furlongs per solar inclination [~35MPH], they thereby cease to be cruel, and are therefore ‘A-OK.’” This provision was added at the behest of noted High-Speed Kangaroo Boxing enthusiast William Howard Taft. You see, at the time, the only people who could afford to travel that fast were presidents, newspaper barons, and Sherlock Holmes (who, by that time, was getting on in years, yet still maintained an entirely fictional lifestyle).

“That all sounds great,” I said. “When do I start?”

“We need to pick up a panda in Muskogee,” the Colonel said, combing his mustache. “Then you can start your rotations.”

“Bitchin’,” I said.

Alas, my career was over before it began. When we arrived at the panda distribution center at Muskogee, federal marshals were there to take the Colonel into custody. Turns out the Federal Animal Pugilism Act of 1910 isn’t a thing, so neither is the loophole. I suppose it goes to show you, you shouldn’t get your legal advice from Google.

The marshals were going to arrest me too, so I had to think fast. I plastered a wide grin across my face, hypothesizing that everyone loves a happy person. As it turns out everyone loves to savagely beat a happy person. Fortunately, they thought I was decidedly and inconsolably unhappy (on account of my sad clown makeup, which overrode the smile), so they didn’t beat me. That’s what I call the ol’ switcheroo. They let me go.

I decided then and there that clowning ain’t for me. I stopped at a nearby lake to wash the crusty paint from my face, then embarked on my journey of self-discovery. And what better place to discover myself than the birthplace of both self and discovery: Texas, the Lonesome Realization State.

After a few days of hitchhiking, thumb-wrestling, and bocci ball, I stumbled through the swinging doors of an ice cream saloon on the outskirts of Denison, TX. I ordered a banana split at the counter, and that’s my last solid memory. After that, it’s a blur. (I don’t even like bananas.)

Memories of booze, women, milkshakes, gambling, supercool, the cowboy mafia, sundaes, and goofballs swirl together in a blurry potpourri of perversion. The next thing my mind can firmly grasp is in October 2004. I was in Amarillo, living the Panhandle lifestyle, but everything…was about to change.

Not literally, of course. I just mean it was going to change for me, because now I could remember stuff, see?

Also, literally.

Still to come: Lots of dirt and tumbleweeds, burlesque shows, a kangaroo in Colorado(!?), and 2005—2006. Suck it, Texas Yellow!

Dear Conlan,

I know “This is Conlan”. But who is “this”?

Your loyal questioner,
Sasquatch
Canada

I guess that is a fair question, considering that present state of the economy. OK, Sassy, I’ll fill you, and the rest of the world, in on just who the This in This is Conlan really is. Our story begins during the sunny Fresno summer of 2001, right after I graduated high school. I begin my story here because, as everyone knows, Life Begins at 40.

The Complete History of The Con, Part 1

After high school I turned down a bunch of full-ride scholarships to the usual places–Harvard, Oxford, Genius University International–in favor of a clown college in Nebraska. At least, I thought it was a clown college. I was halfway into my second semester before I realized that Thomas P. Clown University of Omaha was a regular school, founded by a regular guy who just had a funny name (Horatio P. Snufflebottom, Jr.).

You may wonder how I was able to attend for a full semester and a half without realizing my mistake. Well, take a look at these titles from the course catalog and tell me they sound suitable for a traditional (i.e., clown-free) institution of learning:

• Linguistics
• Gerontology
• Gender Studies
• Floppy Shoes & Seltzer
• Math

I know, right? Anyone could have made the same mistake. But one day, during a particularly hilarious lecture on slavery, my Astronomy professor said something that changed my life forever. “Conlan,” he said, “this isn’t clown college.”

As you can imagine, I was devastated. I ran from the room, crying. I was sad for myself, sure; but worse, I didn’t know how I was going to break it to my roommates. They were so young and optimistic and innocent. I feared the news might kill them, literally.

Back at the dorm that night, I called a meeting. Jimbo, the RA, was there. So was Squiggles, my roommate. And from the other rooms in our suite: Dirty Louie, Flim-Flam, Crazy Ed the Pie Man, Hobo Joe, Blotto the Drunken Clown, and Carl. Seeing them sitting there with their funny noses and ridiculous shoes… it broke my heart. But I knew I had to tell them, and the best way was to just spit it out.

“I have something to tell you,” I said. “I was the one who pee’d in the punch bowl at that party last semester. Someone was in the bathroom for a really long time and I had to go. I’m sorry.”

With that out of the way, I moved on the serious stuff. “There’s something else. I learned today that Thomas P. Clown University of Omaha is not a clown college! But don’t panic. We’ll get through this.”

They looked back at me, shaking their heads silently in disbelief. I’ll admit I was a bit nonplussed by their reaction. I expected tears, screaming, fist-shaking to the heavens… something in accordance with my own initial reaction. Instead they were quiet for many minutes, looking back and forth at each other. Finally, I couldn’t take the silence anymore.

“Well?” I said.

Then Squiggles explained. It turns out they had always known TPCU wasn’t a clown college. But when I arrived to the dorm that first day, I was so excited, thrilled to begin my journey as a clown, that none of them had the heart to tell me the truth. Turns out the names I’d been calling them these many months weren’t their names at all; they’d tried correcting me at first, but after a while they gave up. Squiggles, Jimbo, Dirty Louie, Crazy Ed, Hobo Joe, Blotto, and Carl were actually named Anthony, James, Lucius, Ed, John, Steven, and Sprinkles, respectively. Their noses and shoes, it turns out, were their actual noses and shoes. I had no idea.

I was upset. Not at their deception, but at my own stupidity. Despondent and aimless, I withdrew from school the following day.

I couldn’t return to my family in Fresno, or even share my disappointment with them. All they ever wanted for me was to graduate from a clown college in Nebraska, and I had failed them. I had failed myself.

Alone, with only my hobo-clown knapsack-on-a-stick, standing in a parking lot in Nebraska, I used my sleeves and fingernails to scrape the “happy clown” makeup from my face. Then, using the chrome of a nearby car bumper as a mirror, I applied a fresh coat of color to my face. This time: sad clown.

To be continued someday…

Still to come: Lots of corn, Texas burlesque shows, a kangaroo in Colorado(!?), and 2003-2005. Suck it, “Equality Before the Law”!