I was in New Orleans, it must have been about fifteen years ago, maybe a little less.
It’s a beautiful day and I am standing in Jackson square. There are people everywhere. Street performers of all sorts. Musicians, jugglers, clowns, and mimes. There are caricaturists and portrait painters. There are pan handlers, Goths and gutter punks. There are palm readers, tarot card readers, maybe there are even mimes who read your tarot cards then silently act out your fate for you.
I am watching a clown, an old fashioned Emmett Kelly style clown with a three day shadow, make balloon animals while keeping up a steady barrage of vaudeville style patter. He occasionally makes a crack or directs a question at the tourists passing by, trying to get their attention. All the while he maintains a running commentary on what’s going on around him, offering asides about the curiosities of human behavior. He’s quite a clown. At one point, he says something about homo sapiens. A couple are walking by at just this moment: the guy looks like he may have just stepped off the set of a frat boy keg party. Thick set, no neck to speak of, a flat top hair cut. His lady friend looks like the mousy sorority sister along for the ride. Spying them, the clown asks him loudly if he is a homo sapien. This stops the meathead in his tracks. What did you say, he asks the clown with at least a hint of menace in his voice. The clown effortlessly kicks into a new gear. I say young fella, he says, I asked if you are a homo sapien. Meathead, revealing the limits of his vocabulary, says what’d you call me? He is turning red and the atmospheric pressure in Jackson square has increased noticeably. The clown turns up the heat, saying I don’t understand your confusion, you sure look like a homo sapien to me. If you ain’t a homo sapien then I ain’t never seen one before and accents this last bit by shooting a sly look at the little crowd gathered around and continues making his balloon animal.
Meathead quickly closes the distance between him and the clown: I’m gonna kick your ass. His girlfriend is chasing after him, trying to pull him back into the anonymity of the crowd. She is now rather red herself and I begin to suspect that her vocabulary is not as challenged as that of her boyfriend. The clown never misses a beat. He feigns bewilderment, going on about what an angry young lad this is to decide so arbitrarily to pick on a poor clown just trying to make people happy. What must have happened to make you such an embittered fellow? Meathead is clearly not quite sure what’s going on, but he knows that somehow it is at his expense. His girlfriend is still trying to pull him away, but he has had enough. He pushes the girlfriend aside and makes for the clown. I am wondering if I’ve ever seen a clown in a street brawl.
But the clown is way ahead of me. He hands his balloon animal to the girlfriend with a flourish and yanks a fake rubber chicken from his belt as though he were unsheathing Excalibur to slay a mighty dragon. He leaps into an absurdly exaggerated fighting stance and then begins circling the meathead, bobbing and weaving as he goes, all the while swinging his chicken around like a Billy club. His patter is now going a mile a minute. We’ve got a tough guy here ladies and gentlemen, likes to pick on little old clowns. He’s not a nice homo sapien this one. Well, my friend I wasn’t always a clown you know. No sir. I was a marine; fought in two wars. Bobbing and weaving, swinging the chicken. This is all too much for poor meathead, he has begun to realize that somehow he has already lost. His girlfriend, now on the verge of tears with embarrassment, is pulling on him again and he allows himself to be led away, looking angry and disoriented. The clown continues for a few seconds then resheaths his chicken victoriously, saying, you never know about those homo sapiens.
