As if America isn’t suffering from enough anxieties in 2016, you may have noticed the country is gripped by a nationwide epidemic of creepy clown sightings. In fact, someone in a clown costume carrying an axe was recently spotted in a park a few miles from my house. This isn’t technically illegal, but in Mark Hemingway’s America, punishment for indulging in these sick amusements will be meted out with swift frontier justice.
A friend informs me that one theory gaining currency is that the clown sightings are the “manifestation of America’s liminal fear of immigrants” or some such nonsense on stilts. Regardless, it sure seems like we woke up one day and collectively decided clowns were scary. More popular explanations for this involve childhood trauma or the realization that clown humor, with its broad affectations and ridicule, reminds us our sanity is more tenuous than previously thought. Stephen King and the serial killer John Wayne Gacy probably didn’t help. Personally, I can’t say I’ve ever been fond of clowns, but I now have acute adult-onset coulrophobia. And its origins aren’t a mystery.
Some years ago, I went home to visit my parents. At the time, I hadn’t actually been back to my childhood home in years. Visiting my parents 180 miles outside of Portland, Oregon, was always an expensive ordeal, and they’d either come to visit the grandkids or we’d meet up elsewhere.
The house had undergone some minor changes, two of them notable. One, my dad had set up an easel in the room off the back of the house. He is pretty much the opposite of the sensitive artist type—an engineer, M.B.A., and Marine colonel—but he never lacked creative talent. I’d never actually seen him paint, but I grew up with a painting he’d done as a young man of a bullfight he saw in Spain. It won’t be hanging on a wall at the Met anytime soon, but certainly it was impressive for a self-taught artist.
The second notable thing was that my mother, who’d always had a soft spot for certain kinds of collectibles, had sprinkled the house with some clown figurines and the like. It turns out this was related to my father being roused from his artistic slumber. After some gentle inquiries, I learned my mother had found a painting of clowns that she liked, but my dad decided it was too expensive. So instead he painted one for her: Tucked in the corner of the living room was a small rectangular painting of clowns parading down Main Street of a small, nameless American town.
I found the clown decor a bit off-putting. I tried to tell Mom and Dad that, at best, it seemed downmarket for the otherwise tastefully appointed home of two people with graduate degrees. At worst, I reminded my father that clown paintings were Gacy’s preferred artistic medium. But they are strong personalities, and, whenever I register non-life-threatening concerns with my parents, their response is usually somewhere between diffident and amused. I shrugged it off and headed upstairs to my room to sleep.
The ceiling at the top of the stairs is slightly low, and I’m pretty tall, and I’d long since learned to be careful not to bump my head on it. Except this time, I got near the top of the stairs and saw another new painting brilliantly illuminated on the wall across the hallway. This one was fairly large, maybe three-feet high. It’s a portrait of me, shoulders back, expression solemn. And I’m dressed as a clown.
Naturally, I lost my bearings, hit my head, and fell halfway down a flight of stairs. I picked myself up and ran screaming back into the kitchen, demanding answers. I honestly wish I’d stopped then, because when Dad actually explained himself, he told me, “Well, I didn’t set out to paint a picture of you. It’s just that everyone says it looks like you.” The fact it was entirely subconscious for him to paint his own son as a clown makes it so much worse.
For my parents’ sake, it should be said that they are kind and wonderful people and at least outwardly normal. But the older I get, the more I realize that no amount of ruthless self-appraisal will allow me to escape their eccentricities. I can only focus my energies on not screwing up my own children. So when, the other day, Grandma asked my kids if they wanted some of her clowns to be boxed up and shipped out along with the Halloween decorations she was giving them, I ran in from the other room shouting “NO!” I love my parents, but the cycle of generational clown terror ends with me.
