Antkind

by Charlie Kaufman

I suspect there are some gaps in my comprehension. Were the gaps always there? I can’t recall. That’s the thing about gaps.

“Everything is a clock: A clock is a clock; a person is a clock. Everything changes according to a predetermined schedule. Everything tells the time. Rocks tell time. Everything. The only thing that does not tell time is nothing. Nothing cannot change—this might at first glance sound like a double negative, some sort of streetish parlance, but of course it is not. Nothing exists outside of time.

I am worried. I am almost certain none of this ever happened. And yet I remember it.

I discreetly adjust my penis.

“I do love clowns,” I say. It’s testing the waters. There is plausible deniability if she were to take it the wrong way, which would be the right way. “Do you?” she says. I have no idea how she means that. The clown makeup makes it difficult to read subtlety of expression. She is forever smiling like a monster from hell. “I do,” I say.

“His shoes displaced, he became discalced” is a clever little bit I’ve been trying to work into a conversation for several decades now. It’s not really that good, as I hear it in my head again. In truth, I just want someone to know I know the word.