Old Boffin’s Menagerie of Rubber: A Memoir
The story of an old clown, told in prose.
Written in 2019 for my collection, Sampler Box. It’s still one of my favorite experimental pieces. I love a queer clown!
Happy Friday, sweet readers. I hope you enjoy it.
“Old Boffin’s Menagerie of Rubber: A Memoir”
by Erica Kitch
Part I
A.
Old Boffin wasn’t always an old,
gnarled man
caked white with paint
and lips overdrawn into a smile.
Jaunty and genial as he was, the life
he had always lived—
—well, Old Boffin would say, there was
no such thing as “always.”
B.
Boffin was “Amos” originally—
not that Amos ever existed
past the brief window of time
his mother called him by that name.
“Boffin” was a word he heard on
the television.
A scientist a sea or two over.
The name resonated,
felt good on his tongue.
His mother didn’t find it funny:
“Boffin rhymes with coffin.”
Part II
A.
Marriage never came for Boffin—
—not in any tangible,
acceptable kind of way.
He met a man,
Daniel,
who went by “Dandy.”
A man after
his own heart,
and a heart he did win
one night after a class about
commerce or
some other inanity,
crossing the bridge to the next town
while the air was frigid and crisp
and Boffin breathed through a tartan scarf
Dandy lent.
And Dandy
oh perilously sweet Dandy
held his hand and talked about
commerce or
some other inanity
when all Boffin could focus on
was the heat of his palm
and the delicious way
Dandy’s lips glistened
as he licked the dryness away.
B.
Marriage never came for Boffin,
but a fall morning some two
years or so later,
Boffin and Dandy slipped golden circles on each
others’ ring finger
surrounded by a group of mutual friends,
trustworthy and sworn to secrecy
on the peak of a dusty mountain
before the morning air had cleared.
C.
Dandy passed away first
some forty years later
of complications
relating to his brain,
something that made it hard to understand
faces or identity,
but he always knew who Boffin was:
“Sweet husband.”
Part III
A.
Boffin’s desire
need, really,
to entertain the masses
started with two bright-eyed kiddos he called
his niece and nephew.
Angela-Marie and Theo
only ever wanted to giggle at their tender ages of,
well, Boffin was never good with numbers.
Boffin was a visualizer, an artist
with a good sense of colors,
aesthetic choice,
and fun.
So when he found a cheap pack of
balloons in a beautiful pastel rainbow for five cents
(an absolute bargain at the dime store, he remembered)
he twisted and tied them up for
Angela-Marie and Theo
who giggled at the failed attempts
at a balloon dog and coiled snake
and thought the way Boffin “ye-ouched”
at the rubber snapping his fingers
was funnier than any animal
he ever successfully made.
B.
The sadism of children is
vital to comedy,
Old Boffin thought in his old age,
because children liked to see
adults in power
in pain
and vulnerable for a flash,
just as long as they stood back up.
Part IV
A.
Boffin’s first job was a car salesman,
something he was never good at
because of the numbers, you see.
His boss, John-Joseph,
stepped into his office
to yell at Boffin and
inevitably strip him and Dandy of
a second source of income
one day in his second month there
and happened upon Boffin twisting rubber
into the shape of a crown.
John-Joseph yelled at him anyway,
even though Boffin wore a rubber crown
atop his head and smiled like he was too proud
to work here
selling steel deathtraps.
John-Joseph ceased yelling,
fired him,
and asked him if he did parties.
B.
Boffin was mindful of makeup
and how he presented himself
with shades of white and black
and the way he exaggerated
the natural bags under his eyes
and the perma-smile stretching his lips
like red rubber.
Angela-Marie and Theo signed off
on his signature look,
and Dandy guided his fingers
in the creation of the costume,
comprised of pastels and flowers.
C.
Boffin transformed into
Boffin the Clown,
Wearer of the Rubber Crown,
on a dusty afternoon in the backyard
of his sister’s home.
Part V
A.
Old Boffin,
in the innate loneliness of widowhood,
sat by the granite gravestone on the cliff side
and twisted rubber into flowers
for Dandy in his favorite colors—
green and blue, like Boffin’s eyes.
B.
Old Boffin never had children
of his own
or Dandy’s,
but Dandy had always told him
that Boffin belonged to the world
and the world belonged to Boffin
so why limit himself
to one?
To two?
C.
As Old Boffin, he traveled
alone and not by choice,
but the wanderlust of his elder age
overtook the need to stay home.
Old Boffin walked the country
carrying the restlessness of his partner
here and there
and this way and that.
D.
Old Boffin happened upon
a honey stand by the roadside one day,
a white daisy in his pocket,
picked fresh by the highway.
The woman behind the stand
was slightly red,
as if she was a bit pickled.
She asked for payment
and Old Boffin asked for the price.
The pickled lady gave him a number
and Old Boffin offered a dance.
She accepted the dance
and together Old Boffin and the pickled lady
danced by the quiet road
and near-empty stall.
Once they were done,
she gifted him with a mason jar
filled to the brim with
that sweet, golden substance
made by Old Boffin’s bee friends.
He held up one finger before
accepting the treat
and showed the pickled lady
how to make a bee from yellow and black rubber
and his breath.
She applauded him and
accepted the tip.
Old Boffin accepted the honey and
was very alone.
Part VI
A.
Boffin once entertained
nearly two hundred kiddos
in one go-around underneath a tartan tent
in the far-left ring.
He was at the height of his
natural talent for clownery,
and his routine was filled to the edge
with precise slapstick he perfected
over years and years of children’s parties,
railroad shows,
and many a small circus tent.
It went like so:
Boffin entered the ring
within a shower of flowers,
appearing like smoke
and dazzling the audience
before he tripped
over his own shoelaces
and ripped the laughter out of them.
Boffin went through a sequence
wherein he
fell from the tightrope,
caused chaos for the jugglers,
tripped some more,
and narrowly escaped
being mauled to death by a tiger
after popping his orange rubber brethren
right before his eyes.
And once Boffin was thoroughly humiliated
he would take out his balloons,
carefully filling each one with his breath,
and constructed a bouquet of flowers
larger than his own head.
Boffin would search the audience,
exaggerated with a spyglass,
and pick the child
who hadn’t laughed at his faux-misery
to gift the rubber bouquet
just to assure them that
Boffin was okay.
B.
Boffin continued his routine
until his twilight years
when Dandy passed
and Angela-Marie and Theo married
two other good people
and had children of their own
and Boffin turned into Old Boffin
and had songs written about him
at the circus he retired.
And after a year of walking
the earth’s crusty layer,
Old Boffin returned to
Angela Marie and Theo
with stories of entertaining
a cantankerous queen
with an inept husband
and
a troupe of dancers who
only knew of pain
and
an artist who
created an impressionist painting
of Old Boffin’s wrinkled appearance
and
a sick child he held the hand of
until she moved to space
and became a star.
Angela-Marie and Theo were
just as enthralled by the stories as
they were at
some indeterminate age
and begged Old Boffin
to please make their children
the terrible dog and snake
he once made for them.
C.
Old Boffin sat on the porch
of his family home
sipping orange juice
and writing his memoirs
as the chickens roosted
and the pack of balloons he
just bought at the 99 cent store
melted in the sun.