I hate clowns. In fact, I have a not-so-secret terror of them. While my fear most immediately stems from a childhood experience of reading It (my parents kept a lock on the cable box but allowed me unfettered access to books), I have a deeper, irrational fear that I can't quite articulate. I'm simply scared of clowns, like a child is afraid of the dark. You just can't be sure what is going on there.

My brother, who is well aware of my grease-paint phobia, sent me this picture a few weeks ago. I'm dressed as a clown for a dance recital. He thought it would be hilarious to see me afraid of myself.
I recently went to the Starke fair, and I was struck by just how horrifying I found the dunking clown. He sat on his perch, screaching out thing like : "ha!ha!he!he!water, fat boy!" People are often surprised when I mention my fear of clowns; I seem like such a happy person. I reply that I am relatively happy and that is precisely why clowns frighten me. Clowns, with their white faces, the greasepaint cleansing away the person so that the jester can be born anew, are dangerous creatures. This is the marginalized freak who can tell the monarch where to shove it. That is scary stuff.