I’ve smoked so much weed Jimmy Hendrix is speaking to me personally from heaven, telling me to hold my head up. That if I don’t stand up straight, I’m going to go out choking on my own vomit, just like him. But standing in this field in Illinois, with the music so fucking loud I feel it in my marrow?
That shit is way, way too hard right now. So Jimmy goes on fussing at me, calling me a dumb mother fucker as hundreds of gallons of Faygo gets sprayed out over the crowd. Somewhere else, in another time, my body is being ripped to pieces by fire ants. Someone is screaming that they dropped their phone. Another is throwing up their funnel cake. It’s all real and happening feet from me, but I’ve been floating on sour diesel since before my friends and I parked the car. I’d turned down the coke (never was a fan), but right about now was really wanting to come back to earth.
Sometimes, when I get ridiculously high, I hyper fixate. I can stare at a spot for hours. One time I pet my cats for damn near forty five minutes straight (Batcat was thrilled). It’s an anchoring point to bring me back down. So, I started looking around. A point. A banner. A bathroom. Something, anything to ride out the storm in my guts and head.
Then Juggalo Homies came on through the speaker as Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope sprayed the crowd again.
Oh, right.
A concert. I was at a concert. Also I was now on the ground, my ass joining my ankles as a feast for ants. I was caught in the middle of sensations-the pounding bass of the speaker, the searing pain working it’s way from my taint to my cheeks. I couldn’t decide which gave me worse vibes. I probably would still have been stuck there had a hand not shot in front of my face. I followed it from it’s finger tips up to a massive pair of bare breasts and ribbon fistoned dreadlocks.
“Hey man, are you okay?” she said. Only, her face was weird. It was way too white to start with, but also way too colorful. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it until she snorted, and leaned in. Inches from my own, I finally realized why she looked so unquestionably strange. A realization that was hammered home as she pinched her giant red nose.
“Dude? You okay?”
At that moment, I could have said anything. I’ve thought back to it a hundred times. In the hellscape of that pounding crowd and my head in a vice, she was the most beautiful fucking thing I’d ever seen.
Instead, as elsewhere in life, I fucked it up.
“You’re a clown,” I said. A reply that made her smirk.
But she shot her hand forward, and took mine. She hauled me to my feet, and dusted the ants off my ass.
“Aren’t we all in our own way?” she said, muttering “shoo!” as her hand clapped those insectual vagrants off me.
“I mean I guess. But you’re like, a clown clown,” I said. Too dumb struck to move, too fixated to think.
I don’t know if it was the make up or the fact she was near naked, but somewhere between came the urge to kiss her. I held it in check. I was high, sure. But I wasn’t a fucking monster.
She snorted, and when she did I swore her nose honked. She stood up, and wiped her hands on her stomach. She tilted her head, and watched me for a long second as the crowd danced around us.
“Hrm. You’d look cute in facepaint,” she says at last.
“I think it’s gonna take more than face paint to-like, fix all this,” I said, waving my hands over my face. Something that nearly sent me tipping backwards again. She shot a hand out, gripping me by the wrist.
“That’s the best part-it always does. Want me to take you somewhere quiet and paint you up? So you can maybe relax?” she said.
Now, “waking world” Jack knows a lot better than to say yes to these kinds of propositions. Even if they’re from really cute, well meaning people. He’d also somehow stutter and squirm his way out of it, going on a no less than ten-tweet rant about it. But “Sky High” Jack? Even at eighteen, he wasn’t the most inhibited sort.
“Yeah, that’d be great. With you, right?”
She smiles, giving me a nod as she tugs my arm. We’re ten, thirty feet away. The crowd is growing to a distant dream as she says “I’m Holly, by the way. Holly Havoc,”
“Oh, uh. I’m Jimmy?”
“Sure you are. Come on, my tents right over here,”
It was the first time I’d ever even thought about painting myself up, much less as a clown.
But it wasn’t the last time, and I doubt there ever will be a “last time”.
With the halloween season upon us, I think it’s high time to pop the balloon-animal of fear surrounding a popular niche kink so many of you have joked about.
Let’s talk about clowns.
God Wears Face Paint
This is going to sound like hyperbole and god I wish it was:
Clowns have existed longer than Jesus Christ.
I want you to re-read that sentence and ruminate on it just a moment. Clowns-jesters, tricksters, whatever shade they may come in-have been around longer than a major religion. Some of them were even gods.
Even just reading the word “clown” conjures up a vivid archetype in your head. Maybe it’s Pennywise, maybe it’s Bozo or Arthur Fleck. But the power in a single word is that strong in the collective consciousness. You know a clown even if you don’t personally know a clown. They’re no longer a profession or person-they’re an entire psychographic archetype. That, dear friends, is because clowning itself is transcendentalist art.
No, really.
Clowns, jesters and more existed before written language as a foil in oral tradition. For every hero there was the sneering, smirking counterpart. Loki, an openly pansexual genderfluid shapeshifting disaster of an entity, dared to laugh in the face of Heimdall with a sword in their gut at Ragnorok. Brother Crow, Brother Coyote, and even Brother Anansi all used their cunning and laughter to their advantage. Often, it rewarded us-the crowd, their ever captive human audience.
In the middle ages, clowns served as foil to nobility. There was a very long period of history where they were the only ones that got to mock the king. Imagine all of us being summarily executed for our political memes. Sounds fun, right? Comedians are the latest iteration of this, albeit with a lot less decapitation.
And despite it all-clowning survived. Clowning shrugged off nuclear bombs, plagues, and the machinations of capitalism. It survived John Wayne Gacey, endless horror movies and even the clown sightings of 2016. In the social media era, clowning is more pervasive than it’s ever been.
I mean, you’ve got a twitter account, right? Point proven.
Clowns have been around longer than abrahamic concepts of god.
Coulrophobia doesn’t just make sense. It’s a very logical response to an overwhelming, society-agnostic force that regards us with a laugh. Clowns have more in common with the unspeakable, eldritch horrors of cosmic fantasy than the humans beneath the makeup. The act stands eternal, even when we don’t. Long after the last of us has drawn a final gasp, a clown will likely be standing there. Smiling through the irradiated fallout, waiting.
Surviving that long takes more than simply being tough and terrifying, though. Just as clowns use balloon animals and those damned cars, they tap into the undeniable human element of their craft to connect with us. A clown is nothing without laughter, warmth, and even love regardless of how scary they may appear. As such, it’s unsurprising that clowning has even made its overly-large steps into kink. The hows and whys of this overlap are far more commonplace than you would think.
Let’s dive a little further.
Twist my Dick Into A Poodle
A jester, regardless of their tricks, is best when they take their craft with professionalism, sincerity and integrity. Kink clowns are absolutely no different, and I was fortunate enough when I threw the Splat signal up on twitter to get in touch with a professional.
Maggie McMuffin kindly answered some burning questions I and many of you have about clowning, and I’d like to feature those here.
Jack: why clowns, and why the appeal?
Maggie: The fetish appeal of clowns ties in to a lot of the general appeal (and fear) of them. Clowns are spontaneous and their own beings. They aren’t quite human, which puts them vaguely in the uncanny valley. This can either help someone get into a friskier mindset or ‘oooof what’s gonna happen’ or in a prime state for some fear play.
Beyond that, clowning can intersect with all sorts of kinks: balloons, sploshing, phobias, makeovers ala bimbofication and sissification…and then of course anyone can engage in any kink while dressed as a clown.
For me, being a clown opens something up inside of me so that I can engage with the world more genuinely and openly. I’ve done clown makeovers for people at kink events and have seen the same thing happen for them. But of course clowns are out to spread joy in the world, not menace, so it also gives you a sense of responsibility in terms of engaging with the consent of those around you and being a safe place to have some fun.
Jack: I think the thing most will be curious about is the obvious fear aspect. I myself don’t have it, but I know it’s all too real. How would you, in the scene, deal with that? Or is it something communicated beforehand?
Maggie: So I actually haven’t done any clown fear play. And when I go to events or out in public I do not do a scary clown get up because I don’t want to terrorize people, even unknowingly.
The thing about clowning is that you have to be really mindful. You can’t break rules intentionally unless you know them really well. I feel like that kind of applies to kink too, especially edgeplay. You can’t do blood play without basic medical knowledge and you can’t go playing with people’s fears without a basic idea of what could go wrong.
Maggie taps into something central to clown kinks here, which I find universal regardless of what fetish is being explored. Consent-especially behind a disguise-is of the utmost importance. Entering into a scene or role without knowing the effects it can have on others can lead to disaster and real harm.
I myself have experienced something similar with teratophilia. Be it that I’m hired to be a boogeyman or simply asked, there’s defined limits I respect for my audience. Tipping the scale towards real fear and terror is a constant high-wire balancing act which requires communication. Some prefer the harder things, some don’t. Knowing your partners and those limits takes clear, concise communication beforehand. You wanna make someone cum, not have a panic attack.
Likewise, the ability to step out of our own identity as clowns (or monsters, or whatever) is a powerful form of introspective exploration. Slipping on a mask (physical or metaphorical) gives us the necessary mental nudge to be uninhibited. It’s like being given the green light to enjoy ourselves. Personally speaking, I do something extremely similar with my audio performances. “Show Jack” and “Real-Life Jack” are radically different people. I’m not the over-the-top, boisterous showman so many of you know.
Truth be told?
I’m a quiet geek that lives with three cats I love very much. Performing gives me a chance to let my desires and voice be heard. I equate it to baptism-afterwards, I feel so incredibly refreshed. Wanted. Loved. Clowning, according to Maggie and many others, is no different.
Clowning and clowns, like so much else in the kink community, is stigmatized by mainstream conversations and perspectives. The sure-fire way to change that is genuine conversations with people in the community, and perhaps a single honking step beyond what we frame as “the norm”.
Which brings me back to Holly.
Back to The Stage
Her lap is so warm that when she told me to shut my eyes I didn’t hesitate.
The crowd is a dull roar over the horizon. I’m still high, but Hendrix isn’t screaming at me anymore. At the moment I’m lost in the warmth of her fingertips and soft cotton of a makeup sponge. Holly hums a tune that sounds like an old love song as she spreads the cold grease over my cheeks.
We don’t say a word. We don’t have to, not really.
I still want to kiss her, but I choke it down. She’s in control here, and I don’t think I’ve the strength to question it. I don’t question the soft loops she draws over my cheeks, or the way she giggles when she asks me to turn my head and I don’t. I couldn’t help it-I nearly fell asleep right there.
I’m about to conk out again when she says, “Well, there we go. All done,”
I open my eyes, and meet hers for a moment. She smiles and pats my chest.
“Alright Jimmy. Get up. Wanna see yourself in the mirror?”
“Nah, I’m good. I trust you. Do I look alright?”
She laughs, and tilts her head as she looks at me. “You did before-but now, I think you might believe it for once,”
I feel my cheeks get warm, and I thank whatever in the universe led to my face being covered. Otherwise she’d see just how red I got. I sit up with a groan, and stretch. Holly rises, and tucks her hair behind her ear. She walks to the entrance of her tent, and turns back.
“Now remember-You can be anybody now. So be someone you love, okay?”
“I think I can do that,” I reply.
She shoots her hand out, and I take it. I don’t remember the rest of that concert. There’s pics of me in facepaint somewhere, but looking at them feels like glancing in a pond. There’s a reflection there that isn’t mine. But that guy?
He’s happy.
I’d like to thank Maggie McMuffin personally for answering a few questions-and all the clowns out there for encouraging us all to keep a smile.
Take care Deviants.
We love you.
-j
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