Graffiti Paint September 4, 2020

EDU 214
Ines Solano

This is the story of Estefan aka Payaso. He grew up in the Excelsior district in
San Francisco and was part of the notorious “Herdy Vatos” gang. Before he became a
super hard ese he was actually a really innocent, gentle guy. As a kid, he was obsessed
with Ronald McDonald and aspired to be just like him. Unfortunately, when you live in
the Excelsior and aspire to be a red-haired bozo you aren’t going to be well liked. The
vatos would all clown him (no pun intended) every time they saw him hop off the 14
Mission bus. They would all gang up on him and call him names: “Ronnie boy,” “Clown
dog,” “Bozo the boboso,” etc. The one that stuck the most… “Payaso.”
One day when Payaso got home from another day of clowning he found his
mother crying on the couch. After an hour of trying to get her to tell him what happened
she finally mumbled under her breath: “Ronald was a LIE, Estefan! A LIE!!!” It turns out
it was revealed that Ronald McDonald had been laundering money from the Ronald
McDonald House charity. This devastated Payaso on a profound level. His idol, the guy
who inspired him to embrace his soft side, just showed himself to be a real douche. To
make things worse, that same evening Payaso’s dad left to get McDonald’s for dinner
and never returned.
Hours later, as it was just dawning on Payaso that Papa wasn’t returning home
(his mother had passed out drunk in the bathtub) he accidentally caught a movie on
network TV about a serial-killer psychopathic clown stalking and murdering innocent
children. It was too much. He slowly cracked, watching the horrifying slow-motion
laughter of Penniwise.
Ever since that day, Payaso was never the same. No longer innocent OR gentle,
he decided to grow his hair into obscene curls, spray painting each section a different
color. He also started wearing an eye-patch, and to this day nobody knows what lies
behind it. Alcoholism naturally followed – he created a new concoction he called “Bozo
Booze” and drank it religiously.
The Herdy Vatos, who once used to bully Payaso relentlessly, now became
alarmed at his transformation, since everyone with any sense is scared of clowns. He
seamlessly became their leader, and no one questioned his authority. He silenced any
setting he entered, often carrying his boombox which played a generic clown-circus
song on repeat, his gold tooth gleaming as he grinned with a demented glint in his one
eye.