by Eric Schenck
It’s Christmas of 2013. In my family we usually have some kind of white elephant gift exchange, and this year the theme is “Bizarre of the Bazaar.” The weirder the better.
All the presents lay stacked on a table, ready to be unwrapped. We play with dice and booze. Around and around they go, and I end up with a miniature treasure chest.
I don’t know what’s inside, but it’s my turn to open it up. I unlock the chest, and there, staring back at me, in all his glory…
Is an 18-inch long clown. His face is white, his cheeks and nose cherry red. He wears an eternal smile.
The game proceeds, but I’m drawn to him. I know which present I want. 20 minutes later, after countless laughs and a few stiff drinks, the clown is mine.
We sit around the table and brainstorm names. His happiness seems to hide something. This clown looks jolly, but to us, he knows more than he lets on. There is a certain sense of melancholy. He looks at you, and as you look back, you realize just how much those little eyes have seen.
It takes a while, but we finally settle on what to call him. A name to match the melancholy. Something that says “I’ll laugh at your jokes, but the pointless nature of existence is always in the back of my mind.”
We have a new member of the family…
And his name is Floyd.
*
To call this “weird” doesn’t do it justice. Adding an 18-inch clown to our family tree is strange. So much so, that I dare not share it with anybody outside of my immediate family.
Is it abnormal? Yes. But somehow, it fits. Some families have secrets they can’t possibly share. Some families have dark boxes they’d rather not open.
We have Floyd.
To this day I’m not really sure where he came from. My older brother Mark claims he purchased him on eBay. But that’s just how he came to us. Where was he before? What was the path that led him into our family?
Floyd’s origin story, like everything else about him, is left to the imagination. He looks like he could have been a ringmaster’s right-hand man. Or the plaything of one particularly disturbed 18th-century child. Or the logo of the cheapest cigarettes you can imagine.
Spend all of ten seconds looking at Floyd, and the questions start.
Only one thing is certain: Floyd has been around longer than we have. He could be anything from 70 to 400 years old. Where has he been? What has he seen? If he could talk – what would he teach us?
None of this matters. After that Christmas, he becomes my little homie. I pack Floyd in my bag, and back to college we go.
*
This isn’t to say I’m proud of him. Or that I’m somehow thrilled at displaying Floyd for all my roommates to see. Let’s be honest:
What the fuck are you supposed to do with a clown doll?
I get back to my college house and unpack him. I put him on my couch, and for a solid minute we stare at each other.
There’s a moment of hesitation, but I know what I need to do. My room makes me look weird enough. I sleep on a mattress without a bed frame and have piles of books with no shelf to put them on. Displaying Floyd isn’t going to help.
I pack him away in the back of my closet, and for the better part of a year, that’s where he stays.
I remember a girl coming over one night. I’m looking for a shirt that she can wear, and open my closet to find it.
Floyd pops out.
Suddenly, my whole life is right in front of me. What is she thinking? What does this new development mean for me? Am I officially “that guy?” What will she tell her friends? Most importantly – am I ever going to get laid again?
I have to think quickly. I look at her and offer up the first thing that comes to my mind.
“Sorry, it’s just… a weird gag gift.”
Emma is unconvinced.
I still remember the feeling of guilt I had the next morning. Did I betray my family? Was there some sacred trust that I had broken? Worst of all – had I embarrassed Floyd? I had called him an “it” right in front of his face.
Would my little homie ever forgive me?
*
Sometimes I imagine Floyd as a real person. His personality, his quirks, his voice – the essence of the clown in the closet is only limited by your imagination.
Who would he be? The friendly neighbor that mows his lawn every Saturday morning? The likeable uncle that was in jail once and buys you beer on your sixteenth birthday? The creepy guy down a back alley that tries to sell you cocaine?
I’ve spent enough time with him to have an idea. Out of all the possibilities, I think Floyd is an old black man that loves to smoke cigars.
He sits on a rocking chair on his front porch. He loves iced tea. He laughs louder than anybody you know, and has no problem telling you how much of a dumbass you are.
You start out thinking that Floyd is kind of a jerk. Live enough life, and you realize that maybe he was right all along.
*
Floyd spends a solid year in my closet before my roommates find out about him. The terror quickly turns into a strange kind of fondness. At a certain point, just like my family, he is accepted.
He doesn’t have a job and he sure as hell doesn’t pay rent, but he is an alright guy. At this point I’m even starting to think that Floyd likes me back.
But then it happens.
We are drunk and tossing around a tennis ball, and I bring him out. After enough beer, we convince ourselves that Floyd needs a little bit of excitement. So we do what any group of wasted college kids would do…
And start a game of hot potato with my miniature friend.
It starts fine. But inevitably one of us drops him, and Floyd’s head cracks wide open. There is a sudden quiet. None of us can really believe what we’ve done, but soon enough, the silence is replaced by a dark kind of laughter.
If Floyd was inhabited by an evil spirit, we have released it. Less than six months before we graduate, and we’ve doomed ourselves with the clown version of a Ouija board.
I grab some electrical tape and get him patched up. Floyd is (almost) as good as new. He goes back into the closet and we head to the bars.
Floyd’s injury (I lied to my family about what exactly happened) is something I will never forgive myself for. Still, he has once again proven himself to be the best friend imaginable. Always there when you need him, always smiling at your jokes, incapable of voicing any disagreement…
And utterly indestructible.
*
Before I move to Egypt I find Floyd a new home. I can’t imagine any of my siblings are thrilled at taking him over, so I ask my parents. They’re not convinced either. But with an empty house, Floyd could practically have his own room. They take him in.
With this new arrangement, Floyd is born again. His role becomes “mom’s potential boyfriend in old age”, much to the dismay of my dad. They joke about Floyd’s miniature shoes. His bendable legs become an object of delight. They sit him in weird poses first thing in the morning to scare each other.
It’s all hilarious for us.
For a weird family like ours, the stranger something is, the more impressive it becomes. And like any new addition to a group, Floyd has become more accepted over time.
About a year ago my five-year-old niece came to visit my parents. She took a particular liking to Floyd. She’d drag him around the house and dress him up. She even took naps with him.
I like to think this kind of thing gives Floyd a new lease on life. He seems a bit happier. Perhaps a bit lighter in the step (at least, if he could walk).
Over the years Floyd’s role in our family has changed. He used to be terrifying to look at. One of those clowns from a scary movie. That first Christmas night he arrived, we took turns hiding him around the house. It was true terror when my mom found him in the microwave.
After that he became more palatable. If not exactly pleasant to look at, certainly easier on the eyes.
But now? He’s no longer a spectacle – much more an “in the background presence.” The novelty has worn off.
Every now and then when I’m at my parents house, I’ll take him out of the closet. He’s still funny to look at. Part of it is certainly the strip of electrical tape that’s still there ten years later.
My siblings periodically ask about him. With how much joy (is that the right word?) he’s brought us, surely he deserves a passing thought. It’s taken over a decade, but at this point, we accept him. Like it or not, he’s become a part of us.
*
Before writing this, I reach out to my brother and ask him where exactly he found Floyd. It’s still a mystery to me, and I don’t buy the line about eBay. His response tells me everything I need to know.
Maybe, like his smile, Floyd really is eternal. And perhaps that’s the lesson behind it all. Floyd will exist long after we are gone, and every time we look at him we are reminded of our own mortality.
That’s probably a bit dramatic. Maybe the true importance of Floyd is that he’s taught us the value of positivity. Just look at him: he’s had a traumatic head injury for over a decade, and he’s still smiling.
More likely, though, Floyd has reaffirmed that it’s perfectly fine to be a little weird. That it’s OK to hide a clown in a microwave if you’re trying to scare somebody you love. That it’s alright to use him for a game of catch, even if you drop him. That keeping him in your closet for a decade does indeed serve some purpose, and that even if he is evil, at least you’ll always have something to talk about.
Floyd may very well be as old as time itself, but for this brief moment in his life, he’s chosen to spend it with us.
And for that, Floyd, I am forever grateful.
***
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