…my mom died, and then my brother blamed me for it, also because of the surgery. You know like all my family started to blame me for it but you know it’s like, my stupid ass cousin Bob says like Mike you’re such a piece of shit, you should move and do this and that and it’s like, don’t be stupid.
Yeah dude…
you know…
how about California,
it’s alright, i miss the snow
-‘stupid ass cousin’ is this voice he made when he tried to dumb down his speech. Like when you talk like an idiot.

Santa Monica was cold that night, we were sitting in fancy 3rd Street and Promenade, cigarettes were prohibited by shop managers, encouraged by old folks, the regular customers. And we saw his figure. He was talking to some guy, about problems for sure in a loud New Yorker type accent.
that must the saddest clown
i need to take him a photograph
lets just walk back and i don’t know, say hi, he sell things i guess

She took a bunch a photographs from every angle, captured him with every scratch of sweaty make-up, flashed his face, hands and every scar in his soul, yet he never looked at anything but my eyes when he proceeded to tell me the saddest story we’ve ever heard from a clown. Might be the saddest story ever, but he was a clown.

We sat down on the empty beach in the dark, rolling cigarettes against the chill winds of a winter californian night. I come from the tropics, being this cold by the sea is a new thing to me. We were waiting for a repeatedly delayed rocket launch coming from the Vandenberg Space Station, expecting to see the thunderous fire on the horizon but as previous attempts to put that thing on the sky, it was cancelled seconds before. We walked back looking for some coffee, but instead we ran into this off-camera Krusty the Clown kind of figure on the sidewalk, hunched over and next to a pot full of things. On top of it were four animal balloons, the kind that are long and have to be molded and transformed into animals to amuse kids in parties.
…my girlfriend died, because of smoking. I was always telling her, stop smoking, stop smoking but she never listened.

Next to his pot of things with the balloons on top, there was a bag, the kind of bag that lawyers use to fill up with papers and bureaucratic crap, classic brown leather. A briefcase. He leaned over and grabbed a photograph that was almost falling over from the outside pocket and showed it to us.
That’s her, my girlfriend…

We smiled at the black and white picture. He took the photograph back and put it back in the briefcase.
…my stupid ass cousin Bob was like Mike, you should move, but I mean why do I have to move? it wasn’t my fault, and now here it’s like, i’m sharing this place with this girl and I have this problem because my sister died, she was smoking and drinking too. I never put one of those things in my mouth, why do you have to smoke, can’t you see it’s so bad?.
Where are you from?
I’m from Chicago, i moved to California ten years ago. And it’s ok you know…
How long ago did your girlfriend die?
Ten years ago…

As he was talking to my face and Maria was taking photographs, he grabbed one of the animal balloons and untwisted it with no remorse, then proceed to explode it and threw it to the ground. His speech was convoluted, he mixed his stories and made it difficult for us to keep track of the events of his life. We were just speechless, morally unable to pull out our tobacco to roll a much needed cigarette.
…I live a couple blocks from here, some place that I share with my brother. But there’s this thing that I have to deal with, there’s this girl that knew my sister and she also has cancer.
Can I take a photograph with you? I asked
Well yeah, I mean, why would you choose this clown?…why this clown?

I posed next to him and smiled to the camera. Smiling was weird given the nature of the situation, the story, the cold and the sadness around him. He kept talking and grabbed another one of his animal balloon and squeezed it. The pot that held what seemed to be lot of crap with those rubber animals on top was an old stained paint can. He never said anything about it.

For a moment a dad and his kids walked close to us, the kids seemed excited to take a photograph with the clown and maybe get one of those animal figures but the dad saw the big picture, the discomforting truth that kids are still unable to see; The unpleasant and awkward shadow of an old man dressed as a clown with no purpose or joy in life. He grabbed his kids and left as we continued listening. He exploded the rest of his animal balloons, closed his can and put his briefcase on top. He never said anything about it.

We never knew what he was doing, we never asked, we never found out the reason he was dressed as a clown, he never mentioned it. He never smiled, not for a second, except for that red smile drawn on his face. We just said hi because we wanted a photograph.
Do you think that was a performance?
No i don’t think so. If that was a performance, he’s good, fucking good, but that was not a performance. What we just heard was the most insane, bizarre, saddest fucking tale from a clown.

We laughed. I mean, what can you do when you face such a bleak, random encounter on the street?. We felt bad for doing so, we were feeling dismal about the whole thing. We never saw the rocket going up into space but we met Mike instead and I should clarify that I forgot most of the things he said. What I do remember, is that weird sensation and morbid fascination we felt while walking to take the bus back to L.A. I think the pictures can speak for themselves and fill up the void I got from listening to Mike on a sidewalk of the fanciest commercial street in Santa Monica, California.

January 14, 2019

Photography: Maria Quigley
maria@taquigley.com