A Trip to the Circus pt. II

the clown saga continues

Read Part One of the Clown Saga Here

…Next, the president removed his glasses and set them on the table next to his discarded clothing. The president took a white cloth and started rubbing it on his face. His black skin began to vanish. He rubbed it on his chest, face, and neck, erasing the man he used to be and all in attendance thought he was. The transformation was complete. Underneath the person Kony and his forces thought was President Yoweri Museveni was a clown. The clown was wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit. It had a pale white face with a shocked, painted red expression. Removing the bald cap showed an afro of unruly green hair.

A million arms raised a million guns and pointed them at the clown.

"As you have guessed, I am not President Yoweri Museveni,” said the clown. “I am here to tell you my story, and you will listen.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not everyone is fortunate enough to experience a rebirth. Some people are born again as Christians, others decide to stop putting harmful substances in their bodies and lead a healthy lifestyle, but I tend to think of my rebirth as more literal. The solutions to all my problems and anxieties had been right in front of me the whole time, but I was so blind. It was Einstein who said the true definition of insanity was doing the same thing a hundred times and expecting different results. That was where I failed.

I needed to stop thinking like a scientist. I was already thirty-one years old when it hit me that I had never had a sexual encounter. Everything in my life had been about discovery, discovery that would lead to solving the lifelong mystery that haunted my every waking moment. I didn’t go out of my way to not have sex. I wasn’t a homosexual, nor was I actively asexual. It was just something irrelevant to my day to day. Part of my rebirth was to experience things I had been neglecting.

I went to a bordello in one of the rough parts of Naples. The woman I selected could have been anywhere from twenty-seven to forty. She was a bit rough around the edges, but I figured she’d suffice. After ten minutes of aggressive tugging, it became clear I wouldn’t be rising to the occasion any time soon. The experience left me sore and unamused. The lady asked if I would prefer a boy. I said I didn’t think it’d make any difference. That’s when I got the idea to dress her up like a clown. She wasn’t enthused by the idea, but an extra fifty dollars swayed her.

Even with the baggy parachute paints, colorful makeup, and frizzy purple wig, I could not get excited. There was something still missing.

I decided to drop the idea for the time being and pursue other aspects of my new life. I started watching a lot of movies. I had no bias towards any genre or time period; I merely wanted to get lost in new worlds. I started doing impressions of the actors on screen. I noticed I was particularly good at doing accents of black people. I wasn't racist, but my talent for it was undeniable. I would call acquaintances, former classmates, and colleagues from burner phones or payphones using one of the dozen black character voices in my repertoire. They bought it completely.

I decided to temporarily live as a black person in Oakland. I would hang out around Mills College. Mills College was famous for being the first women's college west of the Rockies. There isn't much near the campus itself. I would spend time loitering in front of the Seven-Eleven shop window while college girls would come by to stock up on booze and cigarettes. White women were greatly attracted to me. From 2000 to 2003, I slept with over 170 white women from Mills College. During those sexual encounters, the women always walked away incredibly satisfied, but I never came once. I got good at faking it.

During all those liaisons, I had one nagging thought: why aren’t there any black clowns?

Once I felt I had gone as far as I could go as a black man, I decided to become a white man, but not the white man I was, a new white man. While still in the mindset of being Trae, the black man from Oakland, I labored for hours learning about makeup effects and applied a white full-body mask and suit over my black mask and suit.

I was pretty ugly to look at. I looked far older than I was, and for some reason, I was angry. I was angry at the world. I was angry at black people and immigrants. It was a hard life. Women didn't want to sleep with me. I wasn't respected by other white people either. I moved to Alabama and joined the Ku Klux Klan.

I instantly fit in. The community loved me. I spent the next four years as a member of the Klan, committing hate crimes and taking part in demonstrations.

One night me, Phil, Merv, Clayton, and Cliff were at the Country Western bar drinking some cold beers and talking about Barack Obama. The music at the joint was usually quite mediocre, but it was a fun place to hang out, and blacks wouldn't be caught dead there.

By the time the third musical act came on, I was pretty deep into the liquor, but something interesting happened. The music was really good. It was so good I bothered to look on stage to see who was making such good music. To my shock and horror, it was a big black fella.

Mind you, none of this made sense. How was a black fella producing such authentic, soulful country western music? I eyed Merv and the boys to see if they were in as big a state of shock as I was. After finishing their drinks, they decided they couldn’t bear the blasphemy any longer and booked it out of there. I stayed.

By the time the band got off stage and was putting their gear away, the bar had mostly cleared out. I sat nursing a whisky. Most of the ice in the glass had already melted.

“Hey, black fella,” I said.

The black fella looked around, then pointed at himself. “Who, me?”

His smile made me realize it had been a silly question.

“How you learn to play that music so good?”

“What do you mean, my brother?” he asked.

What did I mean?

"Mind if I join you?" he asked, indicating the chair beside me.

They always said it’s a free country. That was the law anyway, so I let him take a seat.

"You asked how I learned to play that kind of music?"

“Yeah, that’s what I’m asking. You’re a black fella, but you play just like Jerry Lee Lewis.”

“I’m going to let you in on a secret,” he said, leaning in real close to me.

Ordinarily, I’d never let a black fella get that close to me.

“Jerry Lee Lewis learned to play from black fellows. Yeah, all them cats did. Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly. Black brothers had been playing the blues and boogie-woogie for years before white folks started paying attention.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Black people listened to rap, but here was this man telling me otherwise. That was how I got to know Daryl. Over the course of the next two months, we developed something of a friendship. Daryl was on a mission to befriend members of the Ku Klux Klan and show them how hatred and bigotry had led them astray. He never judged nor criticized them; he merely showed them kindness, compassion, and friendship.

Just within my community alone, Daryl managed to convince seven of us to leave the Klan.

While I was glad to have Daryl as a friend, I was in severe need of psychiatric help. I had too many contradicting thoughts and preconceived notions about race and other ailments refusing to give me a moment’s rest.

I initially took my therapist, Doctor Bogosian, for a Jew because he looked like one, and I wasn't familiar with Armenians at that point in my life. Even after Daryl had broken my chain to the Klan, I couldn't get rid of all my notions on race, but I learned Armenia was the first Christian nation on Earth.

The Armenian Doctor did the usual thing by asking about my family and trying to put all my blame on them, but I loved my mommy and my daddy. It wasn't Daddy's fault that he lost his job to a bunch of lousy, no-good immigrants, and therefore, it wasn't his fault that he took out his anger on me and Mommy.

At about the midway point into our second session, Doctor Bogosian grew stern.

“I’m going to have to stop you right there,” he said. “If you want to see any kind of progress, I’m going to need you to stop lying.”

“I’m not lying to you,” I said.

“To yourself,” he retorted.

“What do you know about skeletons, doctor?”

“I know everything about skeletons,” said Bogosian.

“Have you ever seen a person turn into a skeleton?” I asked.

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“I was a little kid when my dad took me to the circus.”

“In Alabama?”

“No, this was in Detroit,” I said.

“You told me you were from Alabama.”

“Let me stop lying, Doctor. You’re right. I apologize for what I’m about to do.”

I took out a rag and started dabbing it on my face, removing the Caucasian facial makeup so I could reveal my true self.

"My name is not Griffin; it's Trae, and as you can see, I am a black man."

The Doctor started scribbling away in his legal pad. He asked me why I pretended to be white and joined the KKK. It wouldn't be until my next session I was able to tell him about going to the circus. You see, growing up in the hood, going to the circus wasn't really a thing black folk did. Black people don't really get the appeal of clowns; that's a white person thing. But my dad surprised me one day by taking me to the circus. That's when I saw a clown turn into a skeleton. Every time after that, I saw a person walking down the street or driving in their car; all I could think was what they would look like as a skeleton.

After becoming the youngest black man promoted to captain in US Army history, I decided to devote my life to discovering the mystery. Our current arsenal didn't have the means to replicate what looked to be a natural freak phenomenon, so I would just have to build it.

No matter how many times I tinkered with my gadgets or added a bit of this, or removed a bit of that, I was never able to get the bombs to do what I wanted. I killed so many clowns for no reason.

I fell into a deep depression, the type a white person could never understand. Doctor Bogosian called on the weekend, asking if he could reschedule a regular Monday meeting for a Thursday. I had nothing better to do with my life, so I agreed.

I arrived on Thursday morning, but there was already somebody there sitting in reception outside the Doctor's office, a young white woman.

I smiled at her and sat down on the opposite couch. I was aware that my presence was often frightening to white women, but she smiled back. I eyed the magazines on the table next to me, but they were primarily things for white women.

We sat in silence until loud footsteps echoed down the hallway walls. Doctor Bogosian came pacing down, looking a bit disheveled and then downright horrified when he saw the two of us.

` “Christ, did I double book?”

I merely shrugged my shoulders.

“Oh Christ, give me a minute.”

The Doctor ran off to deal with the issue.

“I’m Avril, by the way. What’s your name?”

She stuck out her hand. This was the first time a white woman had ever offered their hand to me. Usually, as I walk by, they clutch their purses.

“My name is Yoweri,” I said. “Avril, that is such a lovely name.”

“It means April,” she said. “Tell you what, why don’t you take today’s session. I don’t even know why I came here today. What do I have to complain about, right?”

"No, no, I couldn't do that," I said. "Please, young miss, you take the session. I will go take a walk. The weather is pleasant."

I did not know then that the exchanging of simple pleasantries would lead to something more. Avril was the most interesting woman I had ever met. Growing up in Ntungamo, we didn’t listen to much white woman music in our youth. We listened to Dan Mugula, who was about as far removed as Avril and her music as one could be. It was interesting listening to her talk about her life and the type of problems white women have. In a way, they weren’t all that dissimilar to the problems the president of Uganda has.

We drank coffee at a late-night diner and chatted away like teenagers for nearly four hours. I went to bed giddy as a school girl. I decided that I owed it to Avril to listen to her music before our next meeting.

The first song of hers I came across was called “Sk8er Boi”. I didn’t know what either of these words meant or what language it was in. I know one of the languages of the Caucasus using the Cyrillic script uses the numeral “1” as a sound, so perhaps “8” here was meant to do the same?

The song starts with the phrase:

He was a boy,

she was a girl

I let that sit with me for a moment. Modern music gets a bad rep for being dumbed down for contemporary audiences, but the more cynical view isn't that it's dumbed down, but it's meant for non-native English speakers, so fans in places like Japan and Prussia could sing along with ease. But that wasn't the Avril I knew. She never pandered to people. I think what she was doing was setting up audiences to be in the mindset of a typical meet-cute but to be prepared to have their expectations subverted. Most pop songs are about love or relationships or lust, so this opening line could be seen as a deconstruction of the format, breaking down the song and meaning to the most elemental levels.

Next, Avril proclaims:

Can I make it any more obvious?

And I'm truly stumped. I don't know. Can she? This sounds like both a declaration of war and a promise. If she makes it more obvious, will this be a subversion of the subversion? Within the first two seconds, she is already playing games with the audience. Doctor Bogosian told me that white women love to play mind games. They are obsessed with psychology, horoscopes, self-development, and essentially becoming the best versions of themselves.

The following line proves she has no intention of making it any more obvious:

He was a punk,

she did ballet

These are two completely different worlds we're dealing with. Growing up, punk was a term we used to refer to homosexuals, but it seems in the West, there is a different meaning. I believe that, in this context, a punk is someone who tends to reject authority and social norms. A male can have long hair because he is a punk and it has nothing to do with his sexual orientation. Uganda has some of the harshest laws against homosexuality in the world. Gay marriage is, naturally, illegal because, in my country, there is nothing natural about homosexuality. Same-sex acts are punished with life imprisonment, and the death penalty is handed out for "aggravated homosexuality," including but not limited to acts such as sex with a minor or the so-called labeled "vulnerable persons," knowingly having sex with an HIV-positive person (but also unknowingly having sex with an HIV positive), our assumption is that when engaging in sexual acts with a homosexual, you should presume they are HIV-positive at the onset and incest. These views are held by both the Muslim and Christian lawmakers of our nation. Ballet is viewed as quite gay in Uganda, too. When Avril was writing these lyrics, one has to wonder if she was considering Uganda. Ballet is strange, as the women who participate in it tend to be quite beautiful and feminine, and the men are quite beautiful and feminine too, so therefore, it is gay, but if you had all-female ballet, it would also be gay. Ballet cannot work with only one of the sexes, but the men involved are sinful gays.

The following lyric is:

What more can I say?

I don't know if this is meant to be a joke or not. Is what she says afterward an attempt to say more, or does she not even try? Does she decide there isn't more to say, and therefore, she will tell us about something completely different instead?

He wanted her

She'd never tell

Secretly she wanted him as well

Oh, now this is a story we can relate to. Everyone remembers the famous case from the northern rural village of Kitgum. Charles was in love with Jackie Packa, but the village just couldn’t see what the lovely Jackie saw in such a bum like Charles. He was lazy, had soft hands, wasn’t good at sports, and came from a disreputable bloodline. The odds at him winning her favor were stacked against him. But that's the funny thing about love; she saw something in Charles that nobody else in the village could see, and at the end of the day, Jackie could care less if the others saw what she saw. But, in traditional societies where social hierarchies triumph over everything else, love is not enough. A suitor must pay the bride's family a bride price, and in Northern Uganda, this is in the amount of millions of shillings. Without this payment, the village elders (in this case, Jackie's uncles) would be unable to accept Charles' intentions as anything other than a joke. When Charles met with his dream woman's uncles, and they learned of his meager farmer's salary, they told him in no uncertain terms that the marriage was a fantasy, and he was to cease contact with Jackie.

But Charles did not stop seeing Jackie, and soon, her uncles made threats against his life. The couple ran away together and did something rarely heard of in their village—they decided to elope without the blessing of their elders.

But all of her friends

Stuck up their nose

They had a problem with his baggy clothes

Try as I might, I just don't think this part of the song is relatable to a Ugandan audience. I know sometimes, certain big-studio movies will change scenes for specific international markets to make them more relatable for that audience. On Avril's African leg of her tour, she might want to consider this. Kanzu, the typical men's traditional costume, is loose-fitting and incredibly comfortable. Women would have no reason to make fun of this outfit.

The chorus kicks in:

He was a skater boy

She said, "See you later, boy"

He wasn't good enough for her

She had a pretty face

But her head was up in space

She needed to come back down to earth

From this point on the lyrics get more problematic. When Idi Amin came to power in 1971, he brought with him a bunch of wackadoo conspiracy theories about UFOs and the like. His government expressed an indecent interest in UFO activity, and the president even claims to have seen a UFO over Lake Victoria.

Once I was president, I wanted to put an end to any nonsense connected to satellites, the space race, space programs, or any kind of globe nonsense. I would not and will not have it.

Even if I were to entertain the idea of space flight being possible and humans being able to go to the moon (which they haven't), they would most certainly not be sending women up there. This part of the song isn't realistic, even if it is catchy.

Five years from now

She sits at home

Feeding the baby, she's all alone

This might just be the most shocking part of the song. Already, we have a time jump with no information to fill us in on what's happened since the chorus. With no hints in the text of who the father is, we can only assume it was a ballerino, implying that she procreated with a homosexual. Now, stranger things have happened, but I scratch my head trying to make heads or tails of this. I do not know how much ballerinos make a year, but it must be assumed their income is greater than sk8ter bois. Her parents must have looked past his blatant gayness for the sake of financial stability and social standing.

Being pregnant with child means she must have had to put her ballet career on hold. Nobody is doing assemblé with a bun in the oven. She is feeding the baby, alone. This part is revealing. Either the father is absentee (due to homosexual depravity or because he was, ironically, a bigger bum than the sk8ter boi and ditched her as soon as she got knocked up). Perhaps she chose to be alone? It’s not for me to say, I didn’t write the song.

She turns on TV

Guess who she sees

Skater boy rockin' up MTV

This song is full of turns. Sometimes, it's hard to keep up with events. MTV stands for Music Television. The lyrics do not indicate whether the ballerina is watching a music video, a live concert, an awards ceremony, or perhaps an episode of The Real World. Regardless of what context Skater Boy has come to appear on television, he is on it, and people are watching him. American culture's highest values include appearing on television. The song also never tells us whether Skater Boy earned his way to make it to the platform, enabling him to be viewed by millions, but he is there.

Does anyone remember the first time they saw hip-hop group Bataka Squad on Ugandan television? Back then they were known as Bataka Underground. Their entrance into the music world was a revelation. I don't expect Avril to know this, being young and Canadian, but Bataka means “natives” in the Canadian language. The artists who made up the group (Babaluku, a.k.a. Sniperous MC, Saba Saba, a.k.a. Krazy Native [who is certifiably insane] and Big Poppa Momo MC) infused their music with revolutionary ideas, predominately that a new age had begun for the people of Uganda, whether they choose to participate in it or not.

Babaluku, a.k.a. Sniperous MC, and the crew primarily wear baggy black T-shirts and baggy jeans while sporting do-rags on their heads. If anything, this is exactly the Skater Boy Avril is singing about, so in my head, I cannot listen to this song without seeing the Bataka Squad.

She calls up her friends.

They already know

And they've all got tickets to see his show

She tags along

And stands in the crowd

Looks up at the man that she turned down

This part is very revealing about the state of friendship in Canada. Her friends, the same ones who helped dictate the course of her life by turning their noses up at the ballerina’s taste in men, were not only aware that Skater Boy was on Music Television being viewed by millions from Canada to Vietnam, but they bought tickets to his concert all without telling this to someone they proclaimed to be a friend. How long had they known this? What is the acceptable amount of time that can go by before saying “Avril, by the way, I’ve known about this for months. Why did I not tell you? I cannot think of an adequate excuse.”

How could I not think of Kabila in such a case? It all comes back to Africa’s World War, The Great War of Africa, the Second Congo War, et cetera. Call it what you will. It resulted in an excess of five million deaths.

Along with Rwanda and Angola, we pledged our support to Kabila in helping the ethnic Tutsi forces against the Mobutu regime of Zaire. While dying of cancer, Mobutu fled into exile and Kabila emerged triumphant. But he would become our enemy, and we were compelled to invade and fight the forces we had helped put in power. Rwanda became our enemy, too, in the process, which resulted in the United States cutting off military aid to our country.

One of the darkest chapters in this war was the Pygmy Genocide. 70,000 tiny little Pygmies were killed in an extermination campaign known as Effacer le tableau. The poor little ones…

So the girl tags along with her friends despite the fact that they withhold crucial knowledge from her. Likely, she is scheming and planning, but outwardly, she is showing a smiling face to her friends. In the flesh she sees the Skater Boy she rejected all those years ago.

He was a skater boy

She said, "See you later, boy"

He wasn't good enough for her

Now he's a super star

Slammin' on his guitar

Does your pretty face see what he's worth?

This section is full of conflict. She refers to herself as a pretty face. Is she a superficial person at heart or does she believe the world thinks she’s a superficial person? Or, better yet, is this a conclusion she's only just now reached about herself? Is she regretting the decision of an immature little girl? But is his worth only in fame? Is she regretting giving up a guy she genuinely liked, or is she spiteful that she didn't stick with a guy bound for fortune and glory? Anyway, you paint it, these are deep thoughts for what is, on the surface, a simple and catchy pop tune.

Sorry, girl, but you missed out.

Well, tough luck that boy's mine now

We are more than just good friends

This is how the story ends

Too bad that you couldn't see

See the man that boy could be

There is more that meets the eye

I see the soul that is inside

This part isn't just shocking, but confusing. We are introduced to a new P.O.V. character without warning or proper introduction. Who is this singing? Was this person aware of the original singer/narrator from the beginning? It seems so because the new narrator is spiteful and mocking her, letting narrator number one know that she had missed out, indicating narrator number two was aware of one's lust. Here's the question, did narrator two know from the beginning what kind of man the boy would be and was a loyal follower from the beginning and therefore rewarded for her devotion and belief? Or, was she in the right place at the right time and latched onto his fame when he was available and now gets to ride his coattails and reap the rewards? These are unanswerable questions I’m afraid.

He's just a boy

And I'm just a girl

Can I make it any more obvious?

We are in love

Haven't you heard

How we rock each other's world

They rock each other’s world, but who is this new narrator? The original was a ballerina, but who the hell is this bitch? I find myself getting mad for the original narrator. Despite all her flaws and selfish, shallow worldview, I share her anger. Who the hell does this bitch think she is? But this is just the beginning. Nothing could prepare me for what was to come next.

I'm with the skater boy

I said, "See you later, boy"

I'll be back stage after the show

I'll be at a studio

Singing the song we wrote

About a girl you used to know

We are all aware of the phrase sore loser, but this narrator is being a sore winner. She’s already got her boy, so why is she going out of her way to be malicious? Why must she rub it in the face of the first narrator? Can't she just be happy to be with the boy she loves? No, that is not enough; she must publicly humiliate the previous girl and show her what she lost. This is bullying, pure and simple.

I sit in silence after finishing the song. I play it a second time and then a third.

It was then that I understood this was no mere pop song. Avril was operating on a level far beyond the likes of her peers. This song contained every emotion of what it must be like to be a little white girl. Remarkable, truly remarkable creatures. I had to see her again.

to be concluded…