The Clown at the Bottom of the Well
a short story
R is sitting at the bar looking stiff and restrained while his body broils his guts. Around the stool’s cheap metal legs, he is lacing his legs at awkward angles, searching for anything to anchor him in place when he’d prefer to be running as fast as he could carry himself into a welcoming warm night.
If it were up to R, he’d be at home like every other night, curled up tight on the couch like a nervous pill bug. He’d be struggling against himself anywhere but he’d prefer to be alone while swallowing his hunger. But it was Michael who had angled his tunneled eyes at him and said, ‘you have to come axe-throwing. It's team-building and you’re a part of the team.’ Never mind that axe-throwing is entirely uninteresting to him and a very strange thing to do while drinking, he simply does not want to be at a bar. He’s only been sober for two months and every day he is unsteady on his new feet. He is hungry. He eats and eats and he’s gained a bit of weight so he knows that he really is eating more than normal but every evening his stomach seems to empty and ache at the edges and plead for poison.
R hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks and though he knows what he’s doing is good for his mind and body—that emptying himself of a self-inflicted poison can only be bold and brave—it has only brought him more exhaustion; more guttural presence in a body that feels at times as though it is growling with ghosts; more pain running up and down his bones like electricity in the shape of memories that he has spent much of his life trying to press into still submission. He hadn’t told anyone he’d made the decision to go sober and didn’t think anyone even knew he’d been struggling. Not his parents, not his handful of friends who he only saw at bars when someone was hanging some new milestone around their neck. Certainly he had not told the ex who ended things because he was convinced R had a problem—that man for all his want to help R was still not a very good person and would be receiving no personal satisfaction. R was alone in his pushing at the confines of his body. This isolation, too, was a sort of self-inflicted poison though he wasn’t quite ready to admit it.
R was at his desk in a windowless office pulling at the folds of his torso begging the ache to subside when Michael had rapped on his doorframe to ask if he’d be interested in Ubering to the bar together and he’d replied, ‘oh, I can’t come, actually,’ and Michael had said the calendar e-vite had not been optional and everyone was going and then he said the other thing about team-building and on a normal day R might have been able to pull an excuse out of his carefully groomed ass about his mother’s illness or his sister needing a dog-sitter but his stomach was in control and he’s a bit obsessed with Michael who is also his boss and so he said ‘okay sure, let’s ride together.’ It was not the outcome he had wanted but he thought maybe his knee might touch Michael’s in the car and that would be worth the pain.
R often finds himself reasoning things out like this. If a, then b, in a world in which a never happens and so b is just something to masturbate to in the dark. But it’s easy to do things that other men tell him to do even if he doesn’t get anything in return. Giving up agency willingly is much less exhausting than having it taken from you. And for R, the unattainability is shamefully hot. R doesn’t value himself very much and so the fact that he’s attracted to his boss who has a wife and isn’t interested in men feels par for course in his gutter-trash mind.
Which is why it came to him as a surprise that he wanted to get sober. It hadn’t been a decision really, but something he’d simply done because it was something to do. He woke one morning two months ago and the exhaustion of having drank himself to sleep was just as monotonous and distantly intimate as every other morning but the hue had changed and the colors of his life were all ugly and so he buckled down that evening and writhed in his bed like a junkie and he did not sleep but he did not drink either and in the morning he was still exhausted but the hue had changed once more and this color was worth fighting for. This color was new and warm like light filtering through a bottle of whisky, but not at all like the cold and black feeling of that whisky melting his guts. The two months that followed have been a desperate grasping at that warm hue, an attempt to drape it over his shot nerves like a blanket and settle everything sweetly, but like all silky ethereal things it has evaded R’s tight hold.
The bar is draped in that velvety brown warmth but it is not a comfort here. R is wiggling in his seat like deep ocean seaweed at the whim of outside forces and yet it is all happening inside of his traitorous body. The hunger in his stomach feels bigger than him as though if anyone were to turn to him then, the hunger would be a physical presence hanging around him from head to toe like a pillar of static smoke. His back is to the bar counter and the wall of shelves lined with liquor and liquor and more liquor. In his crossed-wires imagination the bottles are dancing behind him like men stripping their clothes on a stage and they all look like Michael who is examining the axes with a focused eye, his hands stroking the wooden handle, the sort of phallic imagery that is too obvious to be anything but deeply erotic.
R is so inside of his body that he is also exploded into bits all over the room, both watching himself struggle and inhabiting the struggle entirely. The more he winds his limbs around the cold metal of his stool—the round legs are pressing into his skin with cruel intent—the more foreign his body becomes and the more sure he is that he will give into temptation just to remember what having a normal body feels like. The only question is which temptation will he sink his teeth into and the likelihood that it will be both is too large but he is anchored to his stool in feeble resistance.
The rest of his coworkers have drinks and are laughing, their faces already flushing red with alcohol’s warmth. There are about a dozen of them here from the office though they’re sort of morphing together into one mass of pleated pants and conservative tops. They look like ugly, caricatured versions of themselves, their mouths contorted into funhouse mirror shapes that they never show in the office. Do they like who they are when they drink? Is it that easy for them to let go of themselves? Where do they store all of the shame?
Michael chooses his axe and looks back at R, offers a wink so self-effacing and charmless that it circles back around to being erotic and then he moves his arm like having a body is easy for him and his axe spins blade over shaft before sinking into the target just shy of the bullseye. R smiles but Michael isn’t looking.
A finger presses into his shoulder and all his limbs surge like live wires. He turns around and the bartender, a blunt-looking woman with slicked back hair, is leaning across the counter, looking at him knowingly. She slides him a stout glass of something clear and sparkling. His mouth falls into a haphazard O. The sound of axes spinning, sinking, laughter cutting, glasses clinking, is a much larger assault without his eyes to confirm their sources.
“It’s ginger ale,” the bartender says. “You do not look like you should be here.”
R sniffs the drink as if she is lying and then deflates in apology and takes a sip. It’s ginger ale, of course. “I didn’t order this,” he says, stupidly.
“It’s for your stomach, friend. You should take it and stand by your group. I promise sitting at the bar is the least helpful thing you can do for yourself. Let some people who will actually buy shit and tip me about it take this spot, alright?” She says nothing unkindly. She offers a terse nod and then sweeps herself away to the next customer.
R does as he is told with barely any room for shame amidst all the hunger. There are hard imprints in his skin where he’d abused himself against the stool and part of him hopes that the impression never lifts. He cradles the cold glass in his sweaty palms and joins his coworker, Jo, who thinks he’s fun because he is gay and mean to himself. She jumps up and down and calls out to no one in particular, “R—— is here, shit’s about to get crazy!”
R is scared that this is true. He knows that he has gone to these kinds of office gatherings before but he isn’t sure that he could recall how he’d behaved at any of them even if the memories had not been selectively erased from his mind. What is factual is that he probably got very drunk and acted like a different person in order to make his coworkers think fondly of him in their own muddled memories, at least for a few days before everyone settled back into their office personas and everything got boring again. But he does not know what kind of person he acted like or how to act like him again.
Michael claps his shoulder and pulls him into a strange side hug and spills some of his drink down R’s back. There’s alcohol on Michael’s breath and beading on his skin in dewdrops of sweat because he’s still wearing his suit jacket for some reason and the heat coming off of his body is oppressive. Beneath it all, he still smells like a man and so R breathes him in. “You gonna toss some axes, buddy?” Michael says, not noticing that a large portion of his drink is soaking R’s shirt. His slackened stature suggests that he’s already on his third drink but they only arrived ten minutes ago. In the car their knees had not come close to touching but Michael kept finding reasons to make them look at one another. It made R feel like a gross little bug to be observed closely by a man he wanted but did not admire. When they got out of the car, Michael had grabbed his arm and twisted his fingers into the sleeves of R’s cardigan as though he were digging for something in the fabric and then said, “I wanna see you have fun tonight, R——, drinks are on me, okay?”
Michael’s hand grips his shoulder now like the shaft of an axe and though he is taller than R, he angles his head so he’s looking up into R’s face. “I wanna see what this guy looks like tossing some axes.” He speaks as though he’s not talking directly to R and somehow the conversational distance he puts between them only draws R closer. He holds his drink close to his chest and hopes that Michael cannot smell how useless it is.
Jo and some other hags cheer as R tries to ‘toss some axes’ and it really isn’t much more than just tossing. He’s lucky that they even reach the opposite wall but it’s okay that they don’t meet the target because he is gay and it’s funny. Maybe that’s all he has to do is act a bit pathetic and that’s what makes him likable. The relief of that satiates the hunger if only a little–R knows how to feel pathetic.
When he’s tossed enough axes, poorly, to satisfy the people, he bows for some reason and it feels so stupid that he knows it must be what they want. Michael places a hand on the small of his back as he passes. R’s shirt is still wet and though Michael must feel it, he doesn’t say anything. He just presses the cold wet against R’s skin and lets him pass with a grin.
The night grinds on like bone against bone. All anyone can seem to talk about are the coworkers who didn’t make it tonight. They have to know that when they don’t show up themselves, they get talked about too and so they’re stuck in the contract of getting drunk with people they don’t like very much and see more often than their family all because they don’t want to be spoken about unkindly by these same people who already don’t like them. Is that what team-building is? R is exhausted trying to keep up with who everyone likes and who is an idiot and wondering whether he is liked or not. He holds barely any meaningful opinion about any of these people but what has he said in the past while drunk? Luckily, no one seems to stick to any one story, rather just returning quiet unkindness with the same sort of gusto as the person who handed it to them. It’s exhausting watching them all make up opinions on the spot. But with so much liquor in the blood, things seem to slip out with little effort. Such malleable little creatures, why has R ever cared what they think about him? Why does he still feel the need to put on a silly little show to satisfy them? Why is the hunger rotting his guts and making him tremble inside of himself?
R finishes his ginger ale and takes a moment in the bathroom to steady himself. He places one hand against the wall, holds his dick with the other over the urinal. It’s a strange feeling to be doing this without swimming in brown drunkenness. He’s slightly hard though he couldn’t say why. The door opens, letting music and garbled conversation crash through the quiet for a moment before the closing door cuts it off again. Michael plants himself firmly at the urinal next to him. His boss makes himself weirdly small again as he looks under R’s arm and up into his face.
“Man, you look fucked up. How much have you had to drink?” His smile is laced with Jack Daniels.
R is shaking a little bit but only because his insides are banging at the inside of his skin, trying to escape from their prison. The hunger is a tremor, all the little fault lines in R’s body grinding against one another so tiny mountain ranges are cutting up his insides. He pulls his arm away from the wall, stands up straighter and looks Michael in the eye while they both hold their pissing dicks. “I am very fucked up,” he says.
The eye contact he holds is intense enough that he thinks he can actually make Michael feel the sharp pain cutting through his body, the screaming of his mind that could be dulled by something boring and stupid like blowing a straight man in a bar bathroom. And then, because his gaze is too intense or because R’s boss is very drunk himself, Michael’s eyes slip lazily from his hold and land on R’s dick held loosely in his hand.
Is that all he had to do? Shove his hunger through his eye sockets with enough force that Michael could feel it and that’s all it takes to connect two hungry, lonely men? Michael’s gaze lingers on R’s semi-softness. His eyes are red and he is more alcohol than man. It’s always been that easy, maybe. R is struck with the horror that maybe this has happened before and he doesn’t even remember it. How foreign he has made his own body to himself.
He shakes his dick, tucks it away and zips up his pants. There is nothing about that sad little man that could sate the kind of hunger eating him up.
In the mirror, as he washes his hands, R can see Michael watching him, sadly. Maybe everyone is pathetic and hungry. It makes R feel a little less lonely. “Back to tossing axes,” he says to the reflection of Michael, and then dives back into the clamor.
At the bar, he holds his own hand and waits for the bartender to make her way to him again which takes a while. He watches her work and she has an effortlessly intentional groove in which she moves her body like she owns it. In an instant, R sees her survey the bar, note who has been waiting the longest and decide if they are going to tip her well for providing good service. She serves them all regardless, but only the ones with softened faces and patient spines get a smile and a quick but thoughtful conversation. Her arms move from glass to glass to lime wedge to soda nozzle to beer tap to lit up screen while her face never falters. There is no pillar of smoke devouring her. She looks more like a person than anyone he’s ever seen.
He waits for so long that he begins to assume she’s just ignoring him because his presence is simply bothersome, which he can’t help but agree with–he is a hungry thing and the longer he fights his body, the closer he is coming to slipping out of himself entirely and letting whatever is going to happen, happen. And then, after some time, she’d cleared most of the bar and came to him as though she’d been waiting to make it to him the whole time, another glass of ginger ale slid across the counter toward him.
“R—— is here, shit’s about to get crazy!” she says with her chest.
R grimaces. “How could you tell I was…sober?” He was struck with the same sort of dripping shame that he’d felt as a boy when another boy at camp noticed the pitch of his voice or the lilt of his body and called out a perversion he hadn’t even yet known he possessed. He had wanted to ask her this earlier, how it was possible that anyone could see him so clearly, and he still felt bad occupying her time now but her frank honesty was the only thing that had kept him from leaving his body earlier.
“Takes one to know one and all that.” She tosses a rag over her shoulder and puts her elbows on the counter, and it’s a clear dedication of her time to him which feels like more kindness than he deserves.
“You’re a bartender in recovery? How does that work?”
Now she grimaces. “You’re, what? 29?” She doesn’t wait for his answer. “You know that old John Green book with the dying girl? And the boy that walked around with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth because–”
“Put the killing thing between your lips but don’t give it the power to kill you,” R finishes.
“I think that probably created more smokers than it did stop them. It’s a terrible fucking line, but unfortunately there’s some truth to it. I got sober first, then became a bartender. Take control over the place where I usually lost control. It’s corny, I guess, but honesty is usually embarrassing.”
R has never met someone so candid and, contrasted with his coworkers, her lack of shame is like a series of slaps across the face. “Can I be honest?” he asks.
She looks over her shoulder, determining her availability but not in an impatient way. She’s working and they both understand the worker’s contract. She nods.
“Being in control is exhausting. All I want right now is to get really drunk, fuck my boss, and then blame it on someone else tomorrow.”
She considers this. “Anyone in that group know you’re sober?”
R shakes his head.
“First of all, holding shame about your recovery is natural but it is not helpful. Tell someone about it. Worst that happens is they get uncomfortable and you know who to not talk to. Second, what I recommend is: go back over there, sober, and make a fool of yourself anyway. Be an idiot on purpose and it’ll either be fun or it’ll make you never want to act like an idiot again. Only having yourself to blame is gross but–”
“Honesty usually is?” He guesses.
The smirk she tugs across her face is one of encouragement. R tosses back his ginger ale like a tart shot of vodka and returns to his group with a hungry sense of vengeance. He offers Jo a wink, Kathy a winning grin, Thomas a played up handshake. With absolute control over his own sickly body, he slides past Michael without even the hint of a glance over his shoulder. Their throwing lane is unoccupied. R becomes electric. The yawning hunger, the tremor in his bones, it rises like bile. It must be excised. What he must do is be honest, and when R is honest with himself, he wants to throw an axe at a wall with so much force that it splits the world in half and shows all of these stupid people how wrong they are about everything. R is drowning in clarity—he can make the world sigh open and remind everyone that the body is a disgusting, divine and difficult thing.
With a strange sense of confidence, R picks up the nearest axe—they are everywhere, the violence so readily available—tosses it straight up into the air with a gratuitous spin, fails to catch it and for perhaps the longest and most present moment of his life, R’s body reveals itself to him through the screams of his coworkers in harmonious resonance with the throb of electricity that shoots from his foot, up his leg, obliterating the ache in his stomach and then into his brain, connecting everything in an instant. When he looks down at the stupid fucking axe perched atop his sneaker the way a lumberjack might bury it satisfyingly in a tree stump, his first instinct is to laugh and so he does.
He turns to his coworkers’ and their mouths agape and he laughs like a fool. He did this himself! All on his own! The pain isn’t real yet but he’s never felt his body so deeply. The things a person can do when he’s in control!
They’re all looking at his growling grin like this wasn’t exactly what they had wanted. It’s a party now! he wanted to shout loud enough to drown out their screams. Is he supposed to dance, too? Take his dick out? Make eyes at his boss? Or is he supposed to just leave so they can talk about him because it’s all they do–talk about other people, never about how sad and lonely and pathetic they all really feel!
Only Michael can bring himself to really look at the conclusion of the axe buried in his foot. Michael and his stupid, out of body gaze, a man so submerged in his own shame, he’s looking at R’s foot in the same way he’d looked at his dick in the bathroom. With a sense of envy. As though he knew he was never going to really feel anything and he could only hope to find company at the bottom of the well. R has been at the bottom of that well for most of his adult life and he knows there’s no company there. Nothing is more isolating than choosing to curl up in the dark and stare up through a hole in the sky, watching everyone else live their lives, stopping only to watch the well-man do a little dance for them. It should be the last thing on his mind, but the sight of Michael’s torn-up grief and poorly guarded emotions is enough to sever R’s attraction to the man like–
Well, that’s when the pain hits–and he feels it all because he is sober–and his grin turns to grimace and he feels the blood pooling in his shoe, in between his toes. And then he collapses.
Still, when the ambulance comes and they load him onto the stretcher and he’s bloodying all their white sheets like so many drunks before him, he can’t help but laugh. The spectacle of it all was enough. The hunger has quieted.
The bartender looks down at him like a benevolent god with a serene understanding. “Kid, that wasn’t at all what I meant.”
R grins and though the blood is all in his shoe, he feels it seeping in between his teeth. He tastes it, metallic. He feels it, his body split open. He sees it, the hunger pouring from his wound, making room for himself inside his own body. Color explodes from every corner. R is alive!
“Only got myself to blame,” he says to his patron saint. “Ain’t that neat?”
jw