WEAPON

Popped into a local bar for a quiet pint before meeting a friend at the cinema to watch Weapons, only to be greeted by a red-faced, grinning 'weapon' from my past (a nemesis of sorts). He ushered me over for a conciliatory hug that felt as uneasy as Michael and Fredo’s embrace at their mother’s funeral in The Godfather Part II.

We started with a random conversation about colostomy bags and ketamine overuse, which quickly shifted into him telling me about driving a fire engine for a circus in Italy at the age of 15—before being pulled over by the polizia with machine guns—then somehow onto helping an obscure Native American tribe reconnect with their lost language stolen from them by the British which led to him spilling copious tears that topped up his pint. He then warned me not to tell anyone that a head clown was possibly being replaced at a local circus, as though some sort of clown Illuminati/mafia might hunt me down and have me whacked for leaking the secret info.

“What are they gonna do—send Bozo the Clown around to beat me to death with his clown shoe?”

“They might. They just might!” he replied earnestly.

I reassured him that I could hardly remember what I’d had for dinner, which seemed to put him at ease. Then I looked him dead in the eye and said, “I had orzo,” at which point he nearly spat out his beer, laughing and choking at the same time.

It was around the time he told me his sister was a witch living in the United States—who, apparently, had been watching ghosts have sex—that I made my excuse to leave. As much as I could entertain his Fellini-like psychosis for the duration of a pint, any longer and I felt my head would explode from his 'who's to say' tales.

Needless to say, Weapons never stood a chance of entertaining me after that bar encounter—its insane plot seemed far more plausible than most of what came out of the guy’s mouth.

That said, it’s true: I keep looking over my shoulder in case I get taken out by a drive-by clown in a passing clown car.

You just can't take any chances in this crazy town. ^^