The Kid Named Labrador

The kid named Labrador did not change my life. The events that surround his introduction to my life did, sure, but the actual kid didn’t have much to do with it. What I mean is any kid with any kind of name could have produced the same results. At least I like to think that’s the case. As it is, “the kid named Labrador” has become a kind of code phrase or euphemism for this new chapter in my life. The chapter I would otherwise dub “the minimum-security prison years.”

Labrador was a boy. I could just as easily say “the boy named Labrador,”  but that’s too peaceful and too specific. Boys do boyish things. They have boyish smiles and boyish hair. The connotations the word “kid” brings about are much more appropriate. “Kid” denotes a raucous, menacing motion that zips around two or three feet above the ground. Kids are more prone to flurry, to playing the roles of harbingers of irritation. Boys don’t try our patience, kids do. Labrador tried my patience, alright. He called me a “shitface” and bit the hell out of my leg. Then he sprayed me with a water hose and popped all my balloons.

 My balloons—yes, I’ll explain: I’m a clown. Or I was a clown. I was a new clown, an amateur clown. A professional clown probably wouldn’t have reacted the same way I did. A professional clown might not have thrown Labrador—Oshkosh B’gosh overalls and all—into a swimming pool. The deep end, no doubt. I was spared the embarrassment of having to perform mouth-to-mouth on this little fucker, though, because, as you might expect, a kid with a name like Labrador could swim like a goddamn Polynesian. Labrador shot like a hooked mako over to the ladder and climbed up out of the pool with nimble aggression. He casually picked up his towel, dried off his little play cell phone, stripped to his undies and draped his overalls on the fence to dry—

 —and then started up with the wailing. He wailed for his mom. Too bad for me his dad that got there first. The black eye’s all better, but the insult still lingers: Labrador’s dad called me a “fucking clown.”

 What an unlikely situation I’m in here for, but let me tell you what lead to that day at the pool. It all started with an epiphany…

 An epiphany, I now know, can sometimes be a real rotten thing. Thanks to epiphanies, those supposed lightning storms of glorious genius, bursting through the rigidity and mediocrity of our day-to-day, brandishing what-the-heck-ever in the name of fortuitous, glamorous insight—yes, thanks to one of those bastards, I found myself at the age of thirty-five enrolled in clown school.

 Who am I? I’m a clown. That was the result of my epiphany, or, if you get down to it, my moment of existential trepidation

I was on the Metro one day, heading back from Old Town Alexandria. I’d had a smoked salmon wrap drenched in creamy onion/dill sauce at this French restaurant there. The thing had wreaked havoc on my breath, so I sat in my seat, nestled into the window, trying to shield the vaguely pretty woman next to me (my peripheral vision is always quick to give the benefit of the doubt in these moments) from the toxicity of my breath. I passed one of those sleek electronic ads they put in Metro tunnels now, the ones that seem to supernaturally hover outside the window. I forget what the ad was for, but remember quite clearly what it inquired of me: Who are you? Actually it was in the form of some queer statement. It had periods after each word just like this: Who. Are. You. It didn’t register at all at the time, but that trite, contextual little phrase took a nap in the corner of my brain and awoke a little later as a ten-foot-tall monster, all claws and fangs and supercharged with violent mischief.

 Who am I? I’m Benny Caddo. Who am I? Ah, let me think about it. I have different identities, therefore I have no identity. Bona fide shapeshifter, this alleged identity of mine. My identity, just like that troublesome little phrase hovering in the Metro tunnel, is totally contextual. It’s all about perspective. Different people know me as different Bennys. I’m a lot of things, and all of them are not so solid. Not even so much a person as I am an event. Motion all over me, cells are falling off, new cells replacing them and then new cells replacing them. I’m different everyday. I play different roles for different people. I leave movies verbally and mentally influenced by a good protagonist. These flashes of supposed insight led to the mother lode: I began to fear that deep down I did not like who I was therefore I took every opportunity possible to not have to be myself.

 I nearly lost my head because of that seemingly innocuous inquiry. Some might even say I did lose my head. But my new colleagues tell me that this is good news because losing one’s head is a prerequisite to becoming a clown.

 So there you have it. I questioned my solidity, my presence, and ended up in clown school. What kind of job title has presence? Instead of the words “culinary artist” or “massage therapist,” my mind had simply exclaimed “clown.”

 You have to fill out an application to enroll in clown school. Did you know that? I didn’t know that. Do you consider yourself funny?—that’s one of the questions on it. Have you ever been charged with a felony?—that’s another. I was there six weeks and I took not one pie in the face. And my shoe size didn’t increase one bit.

It’s true: People are not just afraid of clowns, but goddamn terrified of them—especially kids, which is a real drag since they make up an overwhelming majority of our demographic.

 And contrary to popular belief, this is also true: Clowns and mimes are actually allies. Like aging pugilists, clowns and mimes have shed their differences and formed a sort of amorous camaraderie amidst the collapse of their collective sphere. Mimes aren’t the best of company, I admit. But I’m able to relate to them better than say a bank teller or an accountant…or a defense attorney or a prison guard.

 Part of the program was my complete immersion into clown culture. No amount of anything could have prepared me for this. I now know everything in the world there is to know about clowns. And my default emotion is now melancholy.

 Being a clown put me in perpetual proximity to children. I never liked kids which is why I never wanted to have one. There are already seven billion people on the planet: an airplane crash of a fact for a softcore sociopath like myself. Some kids are ok, granted Labrador was not one of them. Eight years old, I think he was, but seemingly much dumber than his peers (these things are difficult to tell as any kid anytime, without warning, can brandish a flamboyant lack of intelligence). Labrador had all sorts of problems with making an “R” sound. And he had a terrible stutter that he unleashed freely and loudly and with a kind of myopic confidence that prohibited you from feeling sorry for him. He was severely freckled and had a set of ears that wrapped nearly halfway around his head. And the clothes he wore were the obvious residue of his nouveau riche parents’ desperate attempt at making him look like a somewhat normal kid. Labrador’s hair was boot camp all the way and did well do showcase his swollen misshapen head. When Labrador was completely still you might mistake him for being handicapped in some way or another.

My colleagues at clown school told me that Labrador’s mom always wanted a dog but an allergy to furred beasts prohibited her from ever owning one. They said she birthed a child to compensate. I’m not sure I ever believed these colleagues of mine. Clown gossip, I’ve learned, can be comically unreliable.

 Minimum-security prison is actually not that bad. There’s tetherball, a couple of rugged pool tables, and even a little trap kit I bang on every now and then. Altogether it’s kind of like an enhanced vacation bible school for adults. And there’s no barbwire to be found anywhere. In fact, technically we can leave anytime we want. Just like that, we could hop the little fence and trickle into the horizon. Only problem is when we’re caught—and we would be caught, with their dogs and their choppers—we get shipped to a medium-security prison which is a heck of a lot worse than a maximum-security prison. Let me explain: In a maximum-security prison, all the serial rapists and wife murderers are compartmentalized—their crimes so respectfully and transcendentally terrible to merit them their own solipsistic little worlds. Not so with a medium-security prison. A medium-security prison is like a zoo where all the animals are thrown together in one giant pin. Not much fun if, like me, you’d find yourself playing the role of some timid round-eyed herbivore.

 I’m set for release in 2027. I look at those numbers and, man, they seem distant. I’ll read a lot until then. Maybe wrangle with those classic cinderblocks of yesteryear that everyone aspires to read but never does unless they end up marauded by a surplus of free time. Maybe I’ll finally learn how to play cards. One drawback about this kind of prison is that there are no criminals around. It’s embarrassing what most these guys are in here for. I’ve learned nothing about gang, nothing about the mafia. No one here has ever smoked banana peels or constructed a bomb out of household appliances. No one even reads the Koran. I lied for a little while about what got me in here, but like loose change in a dryer, the truth has a way of coming on out and making its presence known. They laughed about it at first—maybe the first genuine laughs I’ve produced as a clown. They’re not an imaginative bunch hence my nickname is indeed Bozo. But they’re amiable enough and, like I said, they’ve got their own flimsy renegade personas to deal with. Porn got a lot of them here—porn and marijuana and manslaughter.

 I can wear a belt in here, and I have access to all sorts of screwdrivers. At first, I approached this fact with optimism. Surely, I thought, it just means that they trust us. I mean, who would want to kill himself because he got busted with some stacked-up misdemeanors? Now, I think just the opposite. I think it means: Go ahead and do it, jerk-off. See if we care.

 The guards here are a dreamy, humorless bunch. They carry themselves with an air of mild concern, like someone who has just drank a glass of questionable milk. I think they’re actually worse off than us in a lot of ways. Essentially they do the same thing as us except they can run off at night and make love or fuck somebody or another. They don’t carry batons, but they do have whistles. Supposedly there’s a guy with a rifle somewhere, but nobody’s ever seen him.

 I’m going to go to sleep now. Some high school kids are coming by tomorrow for a field-trip. The guards told me not to smile or laugh so much while they’re here. They even confiscated my fake doggie-doo and all my balloon animals, granted they’ll give it all back as soon as they get burnt out on their blackjack.