Fucking Daphne (15 page)

After being born and suckled in Germany (to get rid of that Nazi hangover, no doubt), the Love Parade was
boom-chikking
its way to San Francisco. I mean, thinking about it, the timing was perfect. After all, the country was a conflicted place—the United States had invaded Iraq for nonexistent weapons. The paranoid government was trying to “protect” its citizens from anything darker than a shade of milk. Goddamn government-supported Christian supremacists were trying to stick their bible and their ways of life into mine. Fucking W. Fucking Rumsfeld. Fucking Cheney. Fucking war. Fucking won't-stay-out-of-my-sex-life-we've-gotta-protect-the-children government. You might get the idea that I was a little angry. You bet your black ass I was. I also knew I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Into this little ball of hatred, the Love Parade was coming, with folks spreading their peace, love, and Ecstasy-fueled goodness across San Fran.

My dear Daphne, bless her demented heart, subverted the whole happy-little-raver image with one beautiful little statement:
what i wouldn't give to be a bondage bunny at the love parade.
She was kidding, of course—or was she? There are some who would say that the Love Parade is a subversive act in itself, and for some folks, I'll admit it's probably true. However, most of those pacifier-sucking, floppy clothes-wearin', trust fund muthafuckin' club kids wouldn't know what an Ashcroft was if they were detained at an airport as enemy combatants. They were sleepwalking through the most tumultuous time of their pampered little lives, and I wanted to be their alarm clock.

The bunny idea made me hard. A grin crept across my face like the Grinch taking candy from Cindy-Lou Who. I had to know
how far my friend was willing to go. When we dated, we pulled all sorts of pranks: the human-pony parade through the playground; the nativity scene with me as a black Jesus and her as a dreadlocked Mary; the kissing booth at the dyke march (okay, maybe that one was a bad idea on my end). I missed that playful element of hers after we stopped dating, and here was a chance to rekindle a little of that magic we had, even if only one more time.

“So, how far are you willing to go with this bondage bunny thing?” I asked over the phone.

“If you're in? All the way.” You could hear the smile in that snarky answer. Goddamn, I love it when smartasses flirt.

“So let me get this straight.” I couldn't help but ooze wannabe porn director at this point. “You'll dress up in a bunny suit, let me restrain you, and let me smack you around at the parade? For show, of course.”

“Well, we have to negotiate what ‘smack me around' entails, but yes, I like the sound of that. Especially for show,” she said.

And there, my friends, is why I like Daphne: darkness, humor, and subversion, all wrapped up with a tall, pretty, black bow.

We set off to the costume shop one cool San Francisco summer evening, giggling and skipping like kids at recess. “This should be fun,” I said understatedly. “All this war going on, and their idea of protest is to dance the night away? Yeah, we need to show them what time it is.”

“With pink bunny ears!” she added gleefully.

The goth chick behind the counter of the costume store eyed me up and down when I said, “I need a pink bunny suit.” You could tell she was amused at the idea of me, a 240-pound black man, in
a bunny suit. “It's not for me,” I said, pointing to Daphne. “It's for her.” The bunny wannabe stood on her toes and waved her hand as innocently as possible.

“How long do you need it?” she asked, not hiding the smirk on her well-pierced face.

“Just for this weekend. We'll bring it back Sunday afternoon,” I answered as straightlacedly as possible. I had no intention of bringing the suit back.

“Let me guess,” she deadpanned. “The Love Parade?”

I grinned.

“There'll be a lot of pink bunnies there,” she said with disgust.

I chuckled. “Not like this one.” One pierced eyebrow went up.

We got the goods and left the store. If we were to pull this off, it'd be one deposit I didn't mind losing.

Sunday morning came and it was time to set our plan in motion. “You ready for the best fucking time you've had since last week?” I joked over the phone.

“Yay!” Daphne squealed. “Bunny time!” She then sang “U Can't Touch This” with “Stop! Bunnytime!” as the break. “Heathen's tow truck is ready. He says be careful and have fun.”

“Oh hells yeah, we will!” I was hyped for the mischief we were about to create. “See you in a few minutes.”

We enlisted several friends to help with the mayhem. Charlie, the friend who posted in her blog about the Parade to begin with, would be our driver. Lori and Steven rounded out the group, based on their knowledge of S&M and their extensive collection of uniforms. We gathered at Daphne's. Daphne and I negotiated what “smack her around” entailed, then she went into a back room to get dressed.

When she emerged, we all fell out in fits of laughter.

There she was, Donnie Darko's vision in the flesh. Six feet of pink, furry, dreadlocked attitude. One of the ears flopped over. She was the complete antithesis of the
Playboy
icon. When she lit a cigarette, it burned her image into my brain completely.

“Let's get this Popsicle stand on the fuckin' road!” she howled.

Once there, we “decorated” the X-shaped St. Andrew's cross we had on a trailer with Christmas tree garlands, just to make it seem a little more festive. Lori, Steven, and I wore Hawaiian shirts, shorts, leis, and flip-flops to look touristy and nonthreatening. We tucked our real gear in the truck. Charlie wore a form-fitting, sleeveless, full-length pink dress, and had done up her face as a beautiful geisha's. When I saw her, I really started to get excited for the mayhem we were about to cause.

“Who are you with?” the parade monitor asked when our motley group got to the staging area.

“Happy Fun Time,” was my reply.

“Okay, um, which one?” he asked. I could barely stifle a laugh.

After giving him my name to show which particular Happy Fun Time group we were with, we were placed behind a Pink Man Group with DJ setup, and in front of a group of ravers dressed in balloons. I don't think the balloons contained helium.

“Oh, dude, this is soooo off the hook,” one of the balloon-wearing gents said, his voice rising as his sobriety lowered.

“No, I think this will be quite on the hook,” I answered, with as straight a face as possible. Balloon Man cocked his head to the side, the same way a dog does when it's puzzled. I smiled to set his pickled mind at ease. A grin crept slowly across his face, and he began to nod
to the
boom-chik
beat provided by the Pink Man Group. “Yeahhhh,
all right!”
he said. He high-fived me, then zigzagged his way back to his group of Fruit of the Loom grape wannabes. What I would have given for a blow dart.

“All right, let's set the mood,” I said as I turned to the others. Steven had the perfect outfits for this occasion. The SS uniforms he had for himself, Lori, and me were exact replicas of the old Nazi guard, with one significant change: Stars and stripes replaced the broken cross of the swastika on the shoulders.

I took out a hunting knife. “Daphne, time to get you ready,” I said, taking hold of the suit and, with smiles on my face and hers, putting a nice slice across its belly. She squirmed and giggled as if being tickled. “Hold still,” I said. “The blood will come soon enough.” I made two more slices across the suit's back. I thought about cutting the ears, but decided to leave them alone. They were just too cute to touch, even for me. I completed the gashing with one on each thigh. Daphne's alabaster skin showed through the cuts on the pink fur as I strapped and locked her wrists and ankles onto the cross. I planted a kiss on the now-beaming bunny's cheek.

“Blood!”
I ordered. Charlie grabbed the bucket from the back of the truck, ran up to Daphne, and tossed the gooey red contents all over the sad, cut, pink lump of fur. The little girl in Daphne screamed and laughed as if she'd been hit by water balloons. Charlie dribbled the remaining contents over her own head. Carrie would have nothing on her.

“We're moving!” someone in front of us yelled. Perfect timing.

By now, the two groups bookending our contingent had seen our transformation and were a little unsure of what to think. However,
their drugged-out haze kept them from really comprehending what they were actually witnessing. We grabbed our instruments of torture out of the back of the truck, and our five-mile-per-hour freak show started on its way.

We three stormtroopers took turns flogging Daphne as we yelled at the masses gathered along the parade route. “What the hell is wrong with you people?”
(Smack!)
“Don't you know there's a war going on?”
(Thwack!)
Don't you know this president is taking advantage of you?”
(Thump!)
Little pink clouds of bloody mist erupted from each blow on the soaked fur. The parade viewers looked horrified. Daphne bellowed and roared with Oscar-worthy agony upon each strike. Faces enthralled with the fun of seeing the bobbing Pink Man Group turned suddenly to shock, awe, and disgust at seeing three jackbooted thugs beating the snot out of a blood-soaked bunny with a cackling, blood-soaked geisha tranny driving the whole surreal procession.

For ten minutes, we owned that parade. The world melted away around us. The look in Daphne's eyes as I beat her was pure joy. Our bond returned, along with now-flooding memories of what we had once had. I stood in front of her with my hand on her pink, bloody, furry throat and glared into the face of the beaming, angelic girl. The urge to kiss her washed over me like the red gloppy ooze being squeezed from the fur. The moment was now. As I leaned in with eyes open, she suddenly lifted her head. Her eyes fixed on something soaring in the air behind me. Her lips locked in a silent
ooooh.
I turned just in time to see a tiny grenade of white shards and yellow goo exploding against the backdrop of the Pink Man Group's float.

The egg had come from the crowd on the sidewalk. I saw another fly from the mass of humanity. This one hit a Pink Man square in the
chest. I saw tears starting to well up in his eyes. The bull's-eye came from the back of the crowd. At the projectile's starting point was a group in black. Scarves covered their faces, but you could see their pale complexions glowing wherever there was any exposed skin. Combat boots, frilly dresses, puffy black pirate shirts, and colors of hair not found in nature made them stand out from the rest of the crowd. I watched as a cute indigo-haired girl in a leather bustier jumped and tossed another egg, hitting the already wounded Pink Man. She hopped up and down, clapping her hands and going, “Squee!” in excitement. Right next to her was the girl who had rented us the suit, egg in hand. “Don't worry about the deposit!” she yelled from the curb. “This is worth it.” She then lobbed an egg, narrowly missing the ducking Pink Man Group's DJ.

Daphne was laughing her ass off now, as was I. I turned toward her once again. We looked at each other and smiled. We knew this moment of chaos would be the greatest of our lives. Our satisfaction, however, was short-lived. She pointed behind me with a finger of her restrained hand and said, “Uh-oh, pig in the house.” I turned again, expecting to see some perv in a hog mask, but, to my disappointment, it turned out to be one of the pistol-packing, blue-suited variety.

“All right, show's over,” a real jackbooted thug said, as the parade monitor pointed a damning finger at our group. The overconfident authoritarian took his hat off and scratched his balding, pale head with sausagelike fingers. His dim-witted mind couldn't process the scene he was walking toward. As he approached, I backed up to protect Daphne—she was shackled in place and I would be damned if I would let that blue-suited bastard take advantage of it. As I pressed up against her, I could feel the warmth of her breath on my ear from
fear and excitement. “Thank you,” she whispered. I was about to return the compliment when something white caught my eye.

I remember the beauty of the throw as the egg traced a graceful arc toward the officer's head. I remember the almost-perfect symmetry as the exploding egg impacted the back of his skull. I remember seeing the vessels in the cop's temple and watching his eyes grow red with rage, his misplaced anger now directed at us. I remember the scream from Daphne as the cop ran up on us, baton in hand.

After that, I don't remember much else.

 

 

M
y two-tier kitty condo kicks ass. It's not just that it's made from thick, shaggy pile in a tasty taupe; it's the little details that matter. The built-in sisal scratchers, the raised box edge—so I can stretch out, sleep otter-style, and not worry about falling off my perch. And it's solid. So many of these condos just teeter. Most of all, it's the perfect height for me, as if I were measured just for this. I mount and dismount without any strain on my old hind legs. And when the midmorning sun hits, it's just the best. I sit and watch, I stretch and doze off, I yawn and watch some more, I lick and groom, and I
zzzzz.