Guide to Clown Sex.

There are people, very kind people, in this world who will tell you that a thing they like very much to do is dress up like clowns and have sex with somebody who is also dressed as a clown. You can question their motives all you want, call it a sex dare, or an avant-garde off, or “potentially raped by a clown,” or even “just crazy in that very specific way.” But it won’t matter in the end. What matters in the end is that there are people out there in the world who would like nothing more than to dress up like a clown and dress you up like a clown, and then have sex with you. Clown sex.

I’m not going to say that there are a lot of these people. There are very, very few of these people. You might not ever meet one. You probably won’t ever meet one of them. But you might. Worse things have happened.

If you’re really looking to meet this type of person, by the way, it’s likely that you already are this type of person, and you would know better than me about the kinds of forces that combine to create such a creature as yourself. I’d imagine your best bet would be to look in places where people such as yourself gather. The stage door at the circus, perhaps. For everybody else, it will likely be an accident if and when you meet a person who would very much like to dress you up like a clown and then dress up like a clown and then have clown sex with you.

Art school is a good place to start. Just in life. It’s a horrible waste of money (generally, unless it isn’t), and it churns out a mix of total weirdos, lazy uninspired rascals, graphic-designer-by-default careerists, and general New Balance sneaker-wearers of every stripe who would likely be the same people they are now if they had just gone to state school. But art school is a funny place while you’re there between the ages of 19 and 23ish because you’re an idiot and everything’s new. And everybody there is trying weird things that seem interesting and calling them “a project” because they’re pretentious and 22 and whatever it is seems like a fun/funny idea. Basically, art school is school for young people to learn how to come up with funny ideas. Clown sex is a funny idea.

So if you’re lucky enough to meet somebody who’s whizzing through funny ideas of varying effectiveness and one of those ideas is currently to have clown sex with you and you’re similarly whizzing through funny ideas of your own because you’re also in your early 20’s and you’ve got a funny bullshit theory about life that you came up with this one time when you were baked and watching kung fu movies, I say you should go through with the clown sex. You don’t have these opportunities often.

Let’s say you’re hanging out with somebody in a semi-dating mode and they let slip that clown sex is one of their current funny ideas (that they don’t think is funny–that’s an important distinction when we’re talking about funny art school ideas, they’re only funny to the outside world, but to the person who came up with them the funny ideas are deadly serious). Let’s say your initial reaction is, “That sounds like my worst nightmare come to life.” This is a pretty common reaction, so you’re good. Let’s say all of this happens.

What should you do?

You should do everything in your power to ensure that you get to experience clown sex. That’s what you should do. That’s what I did. It may have been just about as uncomfortable for me as I thought it was going to be, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, and I have nothing but the utmost gratitude and respect for the person I met who told me that a thing they like very much to do is dress up like a clown and have sex with somebody who is also dressed as a clown. What a treasure to the world she is. What an interesting opportunity she provides to us lowly scum who aren’t creative enough to come up with an idea as funny as clown sex and then really stick to it. God bless that woman and her amazing ideas about what she’d like to do.

So I advocate seizing the clown sex day. Simply because from the second clown sex happens your life will never be the same. In a good way. For one thing, you can no longer possibly be impressed by anybody’s story about how crazy a party is going to be and how hard they party. And that’s a sort of funny secret thing to have inside of you, when some fratty dude is telling you about how wild things get on a regular basis when the booze starts flowing between he and his friends, you can think in the back of your mind “I had clown sex, dude. And believe me, you won’t brag about being wild as much when you’ve done something so wild it was actually too wild for you and you had to take a long, hard look at yourself in some art loft’s bathroom mirror and say, ‘Self, you’re too wild right now. We’re going to have a serious talk about this. But for now, wipe that sex-smeared clown makeup off your face and get going because you’re supposed to be at work in five minutes.’”

Going too wild for your own good is a fantastic sensation. You get to know your limits. And after it’s over and you’ve got the relevant amount of perspective on what’s happened, you become sort of untouchable, like the party equivalent of that old man in horror movies who quietly lives by himself in the cabin up in the woods and you dismiss him as being crazy and think he’s kind of scary until later that night he comes down in the rain, nonchalantly saves everybody from the lake monster, and quietly goes back to his cabin. That’s what you get to be for the rest of your life (party-wise) if you agree to have clown sex after purposefully losing a bet that you made with the clown sex person about which one of you is better at skee ball. I’m telling you. You want this. Maybe even especially if you don’t really want this.

Maybe clown sex is a metaphor. Maybe it’s just the time I did something that made me realize I couldn’t (and didn’t even want to) do everything. I choose to think not. I choose to think that I’m just talking about dressing like a clown and having sloppy, drunken sex with somebody who is also dressed as a clown and who is purring things you’d never thought you’d hear during sex, like “you’re such a cute clown, you’re such a cute clown,” and really meaning it. I advocate that. That specific experience.

If you’re trying to extend this outward as a parable for life about trying things and finding joy in the unexpected, even in things that terrify you and test your limits, then you’re out of luck. I’m nobody’s super baked kung fu marathon. I just think you should consider fucking a clown at least once in your life. That’s it.