I Am A Clown: 5 Truths You'll Wish I Didn't Tell You

By Anonymous,  Ryan Menezes 

We're starting to come to the conclusion that there is a seedy underbelly to every single job and industry in the world. "What about clowns that show up to children's birthday parties?" you say. "Surely they're not hopped-up on speed and having lots of nasty sex behind the scenes!"
Oh, how wrong you are. We talked with "Ken," a birthday clown for hire who assured us ...

#5. Birthday Clowns Get Birthday Clown Sex

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You wouldn't think that a child's birthday party would be a place where drunken adults would start surreptitiously throwing their genitals at strangers (or maybe you would; we don't know what kind of childhood you had). But as Ken points out, if said stranger is a performer in costume, they're playing to somebody's fetish. His company sends out male and female performers in pairs, and there's a pretty good chance at least one of the two is triggering a weird boner at any given moment.

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To learn more, type "big feet" in your favorite porn search engine.

Ken does double duty as a traditional clown and any number of costumed characters -- whatever the parents ask for (he's done superheroes, Dora The Explorer, the Cat In The Hat, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, etc.). So, while the kids run around in the yard, says Ken, the adults get drunk in the living room, and when the main performance ends, the grownups ply the performers with vodka and come-hither stares.
He recalls one time when his partner was dolled-up as a redhead Cinderella and a sloshed father cornered her and repeatedly demanded her personal number. Ken himself has had the pleasure of dressing as Mickey and having a grandmother grind against him. "You a real man in there, right, Mickey?" she said, as she pawed at the costume's folds, because occasionally things happen in our world that serve as compelling evidence that we are living in a parallel dimension to a more sane and just reality.

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"D-I-C, K-S-I, N-H-O-L-E."

Performers go out in pairs -- one male ("Bobo," when it's a clown) and one female ("Bubbles") -- so they can keep an eye out for each other. But when they're not protecting each other from sexual advances, they're sometimes doing a little sexual advancement of their own.
"Clowncest is absurdly common," says Ken. These Bobo-Bubbles hookups often happen in the car, right after the show. "Because of our tight schedules," he says, "I'd say with confidence that costumes are mostly kept on. The guy's wearing the vest, rainbow plaid pants, and bowler hat, and the girl still has her rainbow polka-dot dress on and hitched up."If you've ever wanted to see what it looks like when nightmares breed, hang around a clown's car after a performance.

That's why those dozens of clown-car performers are always grinning when they pop out.

With that specific scenario in mind, Ken's company makes every employee sign a (frequently violated) contract barring them from bumping bike horns with their show partner. They don't want some child innocently stumbling after Baloo and Elsa for an autograph only to discover them punishing the upholstery of a Toyota hatchback.

#4. Your Clown May Very Well Be High

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"I take Adderall and Vyvanse, plus any other stimulants I can get my hands on, like it's candy," says Ken. "Most clowns I've spoken to personally have clowned on Adderall more than once throughout their careers." They feel they have to. A bunch are actors between gigs and have other jobs like waiting tables, adding up to 50 to 70 hours of work a week, sometimes on top of classes. "We don't sleep! We simply don't have time to sleep. And coffee doesn't cut it after a certain point."

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All that snorting explains the nose, anyway.

Speed, says Ken, brings out the best in him as a performer, and we see absolutely no reason to doubt someone self-reporting what they're like when high. "It really comes out in the sing-alongs," he says. "I'm a quiet guy by nature, but when sped, I'm singing at the top of my lungs to the limbo song, to the cha-cha slide, and I'm the loudest person singing along to the chicken dance."

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"And now, let's sing about Bobo's friend Lucy, and her diamonds."

During the magic show, his general routine is to act stupid, because children find stupid adults hilarious. On speed, Ken's "stupid" routine is cranked up (pun intended) to a degree that in all honesty is probably alarming to the parents in attendance.
For instance, his "rabbit out of the hat" bit involves first pulling out an obviously fake stuffed rabbit, letting the kids be disappointed, then pulling out the real one as a surprise. On speed, the whole thing gets turned up to 11; he implies the bunny has probably died.* "On the first pass, I say I LOST bunny foo foo while playing hide-and-seek, and play up the fact that it's been days since I last saw him, and brought them a foam bunny to play with instead. On amphetamines, I run through the whole show with the volume and outgoing-ness of a TV show announcer mixed with the slapstick of Jerry Lewis and all three Stooges combined."

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They used old-timey drugs. They couldn't possibly compete.

So what happens when the drugs wear off? "Fuck, I just wanna go home," Ken says. "Stupid kids."
*Speaking of bunnies, at least one animal did in fact die in the process of waiting to be pulled from the hat (or, in that particular case, a box). "[The mother] shrugged and said, 'Just turn it around in the box and let the kids pet it. They won't know the difference.'" She was right, says Ken. The kids had no idea they were stroking a dead animal.

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They heard "abracadabra." He was actually saying "rabbit cadaver."

#3. The Cotton Candy Machine Is A Death Trap

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The most innocent parts of the clown routine can often be the most injurious, both to performers and to kids. Balloons, twisted into swords, are the absolute safest play-weapon out there. Soap bubbles are similarly harmless. However, if you have a bunch of kids running around popping soap bubbles with their balloon swords, and then one kid pokes another kid in the eye with a soaped-up balloon, it's going to burn like shit. Ken himself has fallen victim to this Joker-esque combination of delightful party favors and dangerous chemicals. "It hurts like hell," he says, before going on to tell us about the time he lost control and started screaming at a group of kids after they stabbed a wad of soap into his cornea.

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"You get in that habit now, you're gonna have a REALLY pissed-off girlfriend in 10 years."

The cotton candy machine is more insidious. Kids want to help with everything Ken does -- soap bubbles, balloons, whatever -- but when they ask to help with the machine, he says, "Don't stick your hands in there; you'll lose a finger," and that is in no way an exaggeration.
The inside of the machine is intensely hot. Its rotors spin thousands of times a minute. It's like the demon laundry machine from The Mangler. One time, Ken let his finger inside, and the rotors ripped it open. He screamed, and his partner covered for him while he ran away to patch himself up. The candy kept spinning out, now with his blood mixed in as pleasing scarlet swirls against the usual pink. We imagine situations like these might be worse for repeat business than finding two gasping costumed characters desperately fucking in the backseat of a car.

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And yet the result was more nutritious than regular cotton candy.

That said, sometimes the cotton candy machine is all Ken has to depend on as far as sustenance during a performance. Shifts run 10 to 12 hours, and it's inexplicably common for party hosts to deny the clowns a share of the birthday feast. Consequently, there are days when he eats nothing but cotton candy. At the time of writing, he has three cavities that need filling.
And then there is the other lurking danger, and this one involves lawyers ...