Daddy's Mold
| Adina slumped along the gravel road where the circus was being set up, eyes blackened like a raccoon, pendulous lip throbbing—she had read about children running off to the clowns and always thought it silly, but she wasn’t a child anymore, she had stopped sucking her thumb when she was sixteen, and that was a year ago. She walked up to a large red tent with a swooping dome top and hit the slit of a door with her palm as a form of knock. No one answered. She could hear laughter and the sound of a trumpet coming from inside. She pat harder at the slit, and the slit opened for a second, long enough to see a large mirror with bare bulbs lining the top and the flicker of a clown’s reflection. Adina shrugged and entered. A woman stood in front of the mirror, shirtless, with her face half covered in white makeup. Her tits looked perky and cold. A black man dressed as a clown, with no makeup and a perfect round afro, stood next to a small radio listening to Miles Davis, a fast paced jazz tune that made Adina’s heart pound. He bobbed his head, snapped his fingers, and slid from side to side. Another man tried to pull up striped pants that jutted out at the waist and made him appear fat. His thin penis dangled like a lifeless worm. A large table in the middle of the room sat full of wigs and polka-dot ties and white gloves. The inside of the tent’s red lining glowed. A clown tapped her shoulder; smoking a joint and wearing a rainbow fro, he smiled down at her with crooked teeth. “Hey there little lady,” his dirty fingernails caressed her swollen cheek, and he made an oh with his red painted mouth. “What brings you round here?” The other clowns turned and stared at her. “I want to be an entertainer,” she replied. The clown standing before her chuckled and the joint almost fell to the dirt and grass patched ground. “You hear that?” he asked loudly. “She wants to be an entertainer!” And he laughed a he-he-haw-ha. The black clown stopped dancing and nodded, daffy. The topless woman clown paused with a lipstick tube to her lips and gazed at Adina through the mirror. The man still struggling to pull up his pants jumped and clicked the heels of his big shoes together. His thin penis made circles in the air like a helicopter blade. “Young Sue over there did the same thing couple years back,” the smoking clown said. “Now look at her. She’s one of us,” he put a pale hand on Adina’s shoulder. “You wanna be one?” Adina looked at the woman’s face, one side painted to look happy, the real side curved down into a permanent frown. The woman gaped back with red eyes. Adina bit her lower lip in thought and accidentally reopened a cut. She cupped a hand over her mouth. “Yes,” she muffled. “Yes I do.” “Well then, you got to be initiated, just like ole Sue with her beautiful perky tits,” he grinned and opened the collar of Adina’s shirt a bit. “You got perkier.” Adina crossed her arms around her small chest and looked down at her dirty feet. “What I do?” she asked. He blew smoke, “You got to take the train,” he said. “Tell ‘er about the train, Sue.” “Yea, Sue!” yelled the pantless clown with the big shoes, nodding fast and swooshing his bent elbows through the air like a seesaw. “Tell ‘er about the train!” “They’re going to fuck you,” Sue replied with her hands on her hips. “They’re all going to fuck you.” She said, “It’s all love here, baby,” and turned back to the mirror. “Well I done it many times before,” Adina slowly nodded. “Many times,” she smirked. “Long as it ain’t my daddy.” The clown at her side clapped, “Oh, then follow me, little lady,” and sauntered with weed smoke drifting from his rainbow fro. “Right this way,” he lead her to the big table in the middle of the room and instructed her like a teacher. “Pull down your slacks, grab the edge, and stick your ass in the air,” he ambled to her back. The black clown turned the wild jazz up. The hyper clown with the big red shoes grinned like a fiend and pretended to be riding a bull, kicking up dust on his way over, dick flapping. Sue continued putting on her makeup and didn’t watch. Adina did as told. She bent and curved her dirty back. The clown pants clanked and plopped to the ground all around her. The black man’s elephant trunk of a dick swung at her side, and she felt the callused hands of the smoking clown grasp her love handles. “You sure you’re down with this, baby?” asked the weed clown. “Was it really that bad?” The black clown put his penis on Adina’s shoulder. She frowned at Sue who now looked completely happy with the fully painted face. “Yea,” she replied. “Yes it was.” |
| Photo-- "At a small American Legion carnival near Bellows Falls, Vermont"Delano, Jack, 1914- photographer. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USF33-021089-M1] |
Mathias Nelson