So There Was This Clown in a Coffee Shop

Note: References to sex

I sat in the stuffy car, watching and waiting, drinking room temperature La Croix. My fingers drummed randomly on the steering wheel and shortly came away with remnants of the bean burrito I had been eating moments before. It was gross, but I licked my fingers anyway. Refried beans were only good while they were warm. As soon as they cooled, they took on the consistency of ear wax, which triggered my gag reflex—which was also why I didn’t eat hummus. Hummus actually did look like ear wax.

Another car pulled up next to me. It was a Smart Car. No one was driving Smart Cars anymore. A man (I could only assume it was a man based on height and build) of around six and a half feet seemed to be ejected from the car. He was dressed as a clown. He entered the coffee shop. I followed.

At 10 pm on a Sunday night, the people frequenting the coffee shop were desperate hangers-on. There was a tweaker who was clearly waiting for his dealer. There was the girl who’d been waiting for two hours for last night’s one night stand who’d said he’d call her or meet her at the coffee shop or whatever. The guy was a bastard for not telling her straight up, “Babe…I just wanna fuck you and never see you again.”

If a guy were as upfront and honest with me, I’d be like, “Cool. Let’s skip the drinks, banter, dancing, and all the come on. Let’s just go to your place, my place, the parking lot, any place and get down to business. You don’t even need to roofie me. I’m down with whatever you want.” But most guys wanted to go through the hunt, chase, and charm. Seldom did they ever weave a spell, and they could save so much time by showing me a couple things: a dazzling smile, good hair, broad shoulders, and the forthrightness to ask for what they wanted.

I sat next to the clown, not across from him. “Hey, clown,” I said.

“You Ruby?” the clown asked.

“Yep,” I answered. “I’m going to coach you.”

He looked me up and down. “Buddy, I’m going to tell you now: I don’t fuck clowns. I don’t fuck anyone in a costume, unless it’s Halloween, which today isn’t that day.”

“Okay,” the clown said in three, maybe four syllables. “Geez.”

“Your first coaching session is free. Here are the takeaways: Do not whine. Do not turn a two syllable word into some polysyllabic thing that takes on a plaintive, whining tone. Ick.”

The clown nodded. “What else do you have to tell me?”

“You want more? Okay. Fine.” I raised my hand and using my opposing index finger began ticking off. “Do not eyeball a girl while you’re dressed as a fucking clown. Who the hell do you think you are? John Wayne Gacy?” I moved on to my next finger. “Go home and change out of your clown getup before you go out to meet any member of the opposite sex. Um, hello, John Wayne Gacy?”

Then I looked him up and down. “Why are you dressed as a clown anyway, and why do you drive a Smart Car?”

He looked at his white gloved hands (he was still in full clown regalia!), trying to scowl, but his painted-on smile and twisting lips looked like an angry sanitary napkin. I had to look away. He was a disgusting giant of a clown—not like the freaky demon clown, Pennywise. Nope this guy’s nasty bloody red mouth with the freaking lips doing weird things was like a reject from a Kimberly Clark Kotex casting call. He was the poster child for what not to do if you wanted to rep the feminine hygiene industry.

“My sister has a company that does kids’ birthday parties, and her clown canceled on her at the last minute. She begged for my help,” he looked sheepish. “She did my makeup. And the car is a rental. Someone hit my car last week, and the only thing my insurance would pay for was a sub-compact, hence the Smart Car.”

“Well, this session has been a bust. Go home. We’ll do this again tomorrow. No weird coffee shop with fringy burnouts. Text me a better place where I don’t fear for my safety or want to tell that dumb girl her one night stand isn’t going to show up, and she really ought to preserve the nanogram of dignity she has left and go home. Remove the smudged eyeliner and running mascara. Have some pride, woman.” I heard my voice rising, and the sad, chucked girl, looked over at me, meeting my gaze.

I went to her table. “The guy from last night isn’t coming. You’ve been sitting here for over two hours, right?” She nodded. I gave her my card. “Text me. I’ll make things right for you. I’m a coach. Your first session might be free, depending on if you’re a good listener. Once I hear from you, I’ll send you a time and location for our first real session.” I handed her a tissue from my handbag and a small pocket mirror. “Fix your face. Listen, if you don’t respond, no hard feelings, but I can fix your situation, which is damned pathetic from my vantage point, girlie.” I went back to the clown.

“Clown, what is your actual name? I wrote it on a receipt, and I think I used it to wipe the refried beans off my steering wheel.”

“Collin,” he answered. “I was Collin the Clown tonight. I juggle.”

“Nuh-uh. Be still, my quivering ovaries,” I exclaimed. “Never tell a girl you juggle on the first date. Juggling is catnip. Text me a location and reasonable time for tomorrow. Bye.”

I would take my dating tire iron and fix the shit out of Collin the Clown and Clara the Cryer, and I would bring John the Jackass with me and fix him, too. Well, I wouldn’t bring him. I was better than doing human show and tell. John would meet us.

The next day, Collin the Clown, Clara the Cryer (whose name I later learned was Denise), John the Jackass and I met at another coffee shop. The Jackass would arrive fifteen minutes late, while I laid the ground rules for this coaching session…which was in a grocery store. These fucking people. They were hopeless.

“Collin, why are we meeting in a grocery store?” I asked. “I get that you like coffee shops, but you are shit at picking locations.”

“It’s by my work,” he said. “My office is in the hospital across the street. I’m a pediatrician. This is convenient for me.”

Denise asked, “You’re a clown doctor? Do you do magic tricks?”

“I juggle,” he said turning pink.

“Stop with the ovarian kryptonite, Collin. You don’t bust that one out until the second date, and you never tell your dates you moonlight as a clown. That’s creepy,” I said, and then I did something I never do. I wagged my finger in his face, and then booped him on the nose like he was a three-year old who had managed not to poop his pants and I was saying something like ‘good boy.’

Denise asked, “Can I do that? Can I just call out a guy and boop him on the nose?”

“If you’re going to do it, you do it within the first five minutes of meeting the guy if your aim is to fuck him and run. You get your message across quickly, and you show your coquettish nature, and save everyone a bunch of time, and you get across the finish line.”

“What if I actually like the guy?” she asked.

“Do not boop the guy on the nose. Wrong message. And if you like the guy, you don’t fuck him the first time you meet him. Do you never watch rom coms? Do you live in a cave? Do you have any female friends?”

“Well, clearly, I’m doing something wrong because I came here today,” she replied, and I saw I had gone too far with the tough love. Collin smiled, taking in the exchange.

“Ruby, do you have a boyfriend?” he asked. “Your coaching came highly recommended, and I was told your methods were unorthodox, but I can’t help wondering if you yourself are successful in love.”

I deflected, “John the Jackass is going to be here soon. Denise. He’s your usual type. He will want to fuck you. You decide if you like him enough to want to spend more than fifteen minutes with him. If not, then you can boop him on the nose. If you can tolerate him and want to get to know him better, then you are going to disarm him. Allow the hunt, chase, and charm. It’s a longer game, but you’re not dropping your panties for him today.”

“Collin, you’re going to observe. Watch the game play out. John the Jackass is going to try to get her into bed. He’s going to see if she’s down. The guy is a junkyard dog in heat. Denise, though, has all the power because she has what he wants, that hungry little clam in her drawers.”

Collin was stunned. Everyone was stunned by my sexual vernacular. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I do this with all my clients. You will finish my coaching in two or three sessions and find a meaningful relationship, if that’s what you’re looking for, or you will find a bevy of babes with wet, willing, woman parts lining up around the block…if that’s what you’re looking for. My methods are sound, clown, sound.”

“Ruby!” John the Jackass had entered the grocery store. “What gives? A grocery?”

“John, I would like you to meet two of my friends. This is Denise, and this is Collin.” John and Collin shook hands, and John trained his jackass gaze on Denise. I watched her closely. She sized him up. He was wearing a suit and had come straight from court. Her eyes were like volleying tennis balls while she decided if she was banging this guy or giving him a chance to win her over. She offered her hand. He took it in his, shaking her hand, and looking her in the eye. Jackasses always gave good eye contact. He was like a cartoon snake whose eyes mesmerized their prey before they swooped in and sank their fangs or choked the little field mouse to death.

As it turned out, I nearly died of boredom listening to John and Denise talk about where they went to summer camp as kids. She went for the long game, and as long as she didn’t offer John breakfast at the Y, or decide she wanted to have a wiener roast in his pants, she was going to get what she wanted (if it was a decent non-one-night stand). I checked out for a minute before I heard John say, “I can’t believe you used to go to that restaurant. My parents emigrated here from Italy, and they opened that place before I was born. You hungry?” Denise was nodding, and I looked at Collin and shrugged my shoulders in the universal, ‘what you gonna do?’

John took Denise by the hand and turned to chuck me on the shoulder. “Ruby, girl,” he said, “thanks for the introduction. Really. I owe you one.” And then they were off.

“How do you even know that guy?” Collin asked.

“He’s my cousin,” I said. “I know people. I can read people. I know what they want, and that’s why I’m successful. Have you decided what you want, Collin?”

“Can I backtrack here? You booped me on the nose. Do you want to fuck me?”

“Probably,” I said. “But I’m retracting my boop. You’re a homestand, not a one night stand.”

“Huh,” was Collin’s answer, “Want to get some dinner?”

“I’m never riding in that clown car,” I said.