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Kristen Arnett writes a hell of an opening scene.
Could you use the clown voice?
I mean, Im paying for the experience, you know?
I bet Bunkos got something just for you, her paramour replies.
Notwithstanding these moments of suavity, Cherry is an enormous mess which makes her a classic Arnett character.
Both Jessa and Cherry may be cauldrons of insecurity, but in their work they feel in control.
Her job at an aquarium-supply store has her living paycheck to paycheck.
She ultimately splits the difference: Mentoring with benefits, she calls it.
Her constant invocations of the dreams shes chasing can lapse into wearying self-help pablum.
But she uses that pablum to nourish herself, amid rising feelings of directionlessness.
And, anyway, silver linings in Arnetts fiction inevitably come trailing clouds.
The beauty of it stuns me for a moment.
Loss is all around inStop Me, and not just in Cherrys family.
Even as she moves through it in the present, Cherrys world takes on an almost nostalgic cast.
Theres a texture to the places Arnett describes, a grain, like seeing photographs shot on real film.
Its just ours, Cherry explains.
We DIY our own places here because if we dont, we wouldnt have any.
One day she comes by and finds it boarded up.
Punk spaces arent the only things on uneasy ground.
Thats the only way I can describe it, she muses.
Over and over again, violence, and then were expected to immediately return to normalcy.
But then, of course, life goes on.
Cherry doesnt have a choice the rent is due.
If this all makesStop Me If Youve Heard This Onesound like a downer, its not really.
Recall that our protagonist is a gay clown with a thing for MILFs.
Stand-up is all focused on the self, Cherry notes.
Its theI, not theyou.
Her clowning is a communal act, relying on interplay between performer and audience and oriented toward mutual pleasure.
(Both inspire irrational hatred in others, etc.)
You wont find it at Disney World.
