My First Clown, Ruby
(& She Was Spooky)
Somewhere down a dirt road in the middle of Northern Utah where a spooktacular aficionado lives with her dare-devil/stunt-man/recent-encounter turned recent-husband in a basement below her parents, beside fields and fields of potential (also known as nothing), a loving, rag-tag crew of midnight movie-makers toil through the un-expectedly rainy evening with hearts screaming of perpetual hope.
We would make this short film happen.
We would come together until dawn hit us o’r the head, and our day jobs sucked us back into the world of the living, and we would guide this local nightmare into fruition.
I love Utah and its array of spooky soldiers. Salt Lake City's commitment to creating in the 2013 I knew of it was more than admirable. It was unassuming. I can appreciate that component all the more; now that I’ve worked in the world of filmmaking across other lands for nearly a decade since this memory etched its image into my reality.
Fog rolls into frame.
Then, as if now, drying raindrops glisten on vast open plains that disappear into darkness. A small set of a podunk carnival has popped up 200 hundred yards from a little house shrouded in night. There are bails of hay; a dilapidated, vintage car; a little theater frame with red curtains strung with lights; a dunking booth filled with water, awaiting a siren and a sitting duck; a man moseying among it all while being hugged by a giant, yellow boa constrictor. A couple of generators buzz life into big lights that throw this spectacle into a spotlight.
Across another mass of darkness sits a modest RV. The dried residue of my boots up their stairs listen in as I excuse myself from conversation and plop onto a dainty, floral reclining chair rimmed with a peach, ruffled skirt.
The smell of latex and glue pulses through the trailer. Red velvet bloomers draw tight on my tummy, trapping my young womanhood behind Elizabethan buttons; made just for me. Matching, puffy sleeves grip my biceps like an old maid to their captured bridegroom in 1642. My armpits are suffocating. I imagine the designer fancies my movements as small as my stature. Ah, the narrowness of humankind’s viewpoint strikes again.
A black vest pulls the ensemble together, as stiff as gristle, sprinkled with glistening bits like broken souls scattered throughout a new moon’s sky. A red ribbon encircles my neck, humping the arteries below with each controlled breath.
I lay my painted face back. My pupils to the whites of my eyes are concealed in black. The edges of black-out contacts are always hard, akin to a playing card, so they always hurt. Hurt for extended periods of time, no less. For they must always be step numero uno in transformational creature-character work, for the delicate makeup of an imagined being must go on after the artist wrestles those big boys into a performer’s skull. And then you are dressed. And then you wait.
“Hurry up and wait!” is a common colloquialism in filmmaking.
It would be some hours before the camera swung in my direction, but I was ready nose-to-toe nonetheless. And so, I closed my lids like little coffins to protect my blood-red sockets from the sting of existing, like vampires from light.
The laughter and loudness of performers, the makeup artist, and the costume designer mingled into a jittering social cocktail I was already far too full of to want to feel. So, I found asylum by obscuring myself into stacks of costumes and tools, hiding away in a discrete nook of the rented motor home. Letting the hum of creator confidence waft into the backdrop, I meandered through the various ponderings sitting crouched in the corners of my mind.
I thought about my tiny 3-person-team tech start-up I felt all-too loyal to. I thought about the brilliant boss who loved flirting and pumping us with drinks on the company card while giving sage professional advice and slapping butts, embodying every cliché of your average, mid-thirties, inappropriate but “woke” midwesterner. I thought about my recent art exhibit, where I sold a solid grip of miniature canvas paintings I made with my pussy for $5 a pop. As I reached through the clatter of my consumerist, millennial mind, I noted the oddly neutral emotional state I found myself in. Odd, considering I could feel myself slipping away from the ability to love romantically within a relationship I’d fought for for years.
The adrenaline of muted stress coursed through me, and I let my blood drink it in like a thirsty Brad Pitt on a young Kirsten Dunst.
The black edges of my contacts began grazing the dark edges of my psyche. I walled off lingering memories of uninvited fingers from cursed “friends” and belligerent body parts from trusted collaborators that had un-consensually pushed their way into me this season. I chose to channel all feelings of filth into the beating heart of this new clown creature I was hired to create and embody on this eerie, wet midnight. Fall was upon us, though I had been falling for weeks.
“Ready?”
A slow smile sliced my face into pieces, cheeks rising like mounds of freshly dug graves. Lashes striking my brow, the darkness of my optics seized the room.
If I am ever anything, it is ready to consume the world in a character that creeps.
Jolting up, I joined my clown brother for the night, cascading down and out of our holding cage, grumbling and screeching and tickling the tension of the joyful fear we extracted from anyone near. Dancing and leaping and creeping, we crossed the field to the carnival that lay in wait, where characters kidnapped from their dreams lined up to be toyed with by our director and his minions.
"The Black Balloon” ensued, and this is how Ruby came to be; my first clown. The script named her Zaney #1, but I found her true name. When I began her character research, I was genuinely unnerved by the videos I found on YouTube of adults who moved like children. After we filmed this ditty, she came back around for a live show in Salt Lake City’s favorite Halloween festivity, An October Evening.
As the show wrapped, I found myself grieving for having to say farewell to Ruby. It is not in my best interest to hold on to characters once their time has come. In my goodbyes, I couldn’t help but face the reality that Ruby was the most fun I’d ever had with someone. She was me in a way that wasn’t about her project or even her character; it was about her soul. She was clown, and what did that mean?
For years following, I kept my nose to the wind, sniffing out any trail of clown folk I could find along my path. I’d be mesmerized by mimes in the circus, loiter after shows to ask them where I could go to learn this trade, and they’d always say somewhere seemingly unreachable, “Amsterdam!” “France!” “Canada!”
As my film career commenced and my resumé lengthened, I felt more aware than ever of how important Ruby was to me. No amount of IMDB credits would fill the space she had so cunningly carved into my ribcage.
Time went on, life and death commenced, tragedy and comedy and bare feet in foreign places left trails that were all meant to be. It didn’t seem evident at the time how I would find my way back to clown, but I knew deep down that I would, somehow, someday. I am not the type to hunt down desires, do a google search and jump into an experience by my design. I find my truth by following the flow of the universe with my ear to my heart and eyes on the prize.
While it didn’t seem obvious for a time, my organs were indeed conspiring to lead me to where I would find my destiny and step into the defined world of the clown nose.
Alas, that story will come another day.
Until then, auf wiedersehen.
And here is a treat for my paid subscribers! A little read of this story for you below. Thank you deeply for your support!
