Greetings of hello and balloon animals to all you nice people! The locals of Green Bay have taken to calling me Gags, but to be honest, I’m not a fan of that name. It’s too unpleasant. So please, call me my real name: Dahmer the Clown.
Now, dressing up like a clown has enhanced pretty much every aspect of my life, but recent events have brought something to my attention: I’m raising a lot of suspicious eyebrows by putting myself out there and doing some freelance clownin’. Turns out, many of you think clowns are “creepy.” I guess mugging like a sideshow misfit and casting an eerie shadow on your neighborhood Walgreen’s just doesn’t mean what it used to mean in this country. Clown appreciation’s gone south. A recent study reported that 85% of Americans disagree with our slogan: “Clown Lives Matter.”
Sinbad
This is news to me! And bad news, at that. Gettin’ my clown on just brings me so much joy, and it’s hard to accept the fact that others see things differently. So, if me lingering around a Kwik Trip at three in the morning with my face caked pale as a corpse and my getup resembling that of a grimy Sinbad—if that’s causing problems, I apologize. But I beg you, listen to Dahmer the Clown’s side of the story.
There are two important things to bear in mind here. First off, I have not hurt anyone, and I’m not even gonna add the word “yet” to that sentence—because the chances are pretty low I’m gonna harm somebody with the machete I keep strapped to my back, strictly for self-defense (and also I just think it’s a pretty cool machete).
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Secondly, it’s tough being a clown in today’s dating scene. When clowns experience our mating season, it can be hard for us to mingle through the more common, not as clown-accessible pipelines of society. We don’t have the same social graces as some of you “non-creeps.”
Put yourself in my oversized rubber shoes. I go to the park, on the prowl for single clown moms, and everyone runs away from me even though I’m in a peppy mood, giggling incessantly, and I could talk to your kids for hours about Pokémon. I get judged. Sometimes the pepper spray gets in on the act.
In my quest for that special clown lady of my dreams, I go to the superstores, the Wal-Marts. But the sad fact is the greeters at Wal-Mart hate clowns more than anyone else in the world. They’ll sock me right in the red ball and shove me out the door. And again, it’s like there’s a pepper spray convention in town. Many a brokenhearted night have I flushed volatile chemicals from my eyes in a truck stop bathroom and said with a sigh, “Always with the pepper spray...”
It’s all because of misunderstandings. Citizens of Wisconsin, when you see me toting four black balloons beside your car in the Taco Bell drive-thru, it’s not because I want to murder you. Truth is, the four black balloons are part a mating ritual in the brethren of clowns. As a male harlequin in heat, if I spot a single clown lady in a drive-thru and I don’t have balloons to offer her as a token of my love, that means I blew it. Goodbye forever, my sweet clowny soulmate.
It’s a shame, but not even the Four Black Balloons of Clown Mating can land me a date. I turned to the internet, but Match.com featured zero clown ladies, and to make matters worse, an alarming number of the women described themselves as “totally not into clowns.”
In conclusion, I didn’t mean to go on and on about my plight, but it’s not easy being Dahmer the Clown. Would a name change help? Dahmer the Jester? I don’t know...
Anyway, I promise to retire from the unwanted public appearances, but not until I give my balloons to that one elusive, perfect harlequin with a bra made of those cone-shaped party hats.
Love.
Until then, donate to my Kickstarter campaign. It’s for an all-clown dating site: BoinkTheClown.com.
Author’s note: If they soon find me dead with a machete wedged in my skull, the clown did it.
