Prolog

In some parts of ourselves, there is only the lie. And the lie is sufficient. Complete to provide food, drink, home and companionship. All we lack there is a conscious and a future. We have only the present and a past, for our futures' are built from yet other better disguised lies. They hold only an unending forward distortion of what we are like, what we used to be like and what we can never be again. This is all that can be known of ourselves, and we in general show little concern over the matter having built ourselves this way, day by day. We all simply go the way we go and land where we land.

- polycarp kusch January 1, 1998

1/4/98

I'm homeless. I'm unemployed. I'm 2876 miles away from anything that even resembles a home. I had a dime, but I gave it back to the person I borrowed it from. This is Norwalk, CT - January 1998. It's four days until my 33rd birthday, the standard year of crucifixions. I'll be spending my birthday on a greyhound bus heading West to the beautiful landscape of Phoenix, AZ, but it's here in Norwalk I decide to make the simple statement:

The World is Bad,

Therefore

I will wear a Bunny suit.

Who else has the time or inclination to explore the true American psyche of the latter 20th century but a homeless, jobless, chain-smoking alcoholic? And from what better vantage point can one view the terror of modern Americana than from inside a harmless bunny suit? It makes no overt political statement of hate. It's a bunny suit.

I do not seek to destroy nor even change the world, merely to observe the Stepford children we call Americans, from inside a festive pink bunny suit.

I do not think I am a bunny. I am not insane. I am simply a man who wishes to challenge his society to accept what is and not what is merely pretended. By pretending.

Bunnies are not dangerous, but America will cynically ask, "Are men who dress as bunnies so equally innocent?" I will most likely be beaten and arrested or, more likely, be sent to a psychiatric facility. So here's the real question:

Are any of us innocent anymore?

Will the world beat and lock away men who choose to dress like bunnies? And if they do, what does that say about us all?

1/7/98

Oh well, one day to 33 and I'm sitting in a piss stinking jacket at Port Authority, NY NY yet again. I just spent the last of my money on one bottle of coke that's already half gone.

Spent last night with Alexis and Julia on 80th and Amsterdam. I didn't have enough for the subway back to Times Square so I walked the 50 (give or take) blocks down the island of Manhattan. Not all that bad: 53 degrees, brown sooty rain, dying of thirst, stinking like cat piss in my little Russian hat and smoking Pyramids and Newports and god knows what else from the giving passerbys. Right straight down B'way wishing like hell I had a spare $2.00. (Actually even crap cigarettes are $2.85 out here) This is the mecca of mankind's achievement-- New York City!

Anyway, yesterday we bummed some bags of cheesey-ma-doodles from a nice Paki cheesey-ma-doodle truck driver and walked over to Central Park to hurl the nasty orange styro-sticks to the passing swans. The water was a beautiful prism of oil run-off and spilled anti-freeze. The swans hovered and bobbed-up the cheesy chunks and with each pass their asses and wing tips became more black. You could see the birds' skin through their feathers rotting from the detergents and settling car exhaust. Being from NYNY, this is what Alexis called nature. She hated it.

Slept most of the way out of Jersey and whatever the hell is South of Jersey. I woke up at the Delaware toll gate, like Delaware is worth paying to get into.

We stopped in Baltimore, MD at mini-mall called 'The Travel Center'. No one would buy the Walkman. I smoked up the last two cigs that the rich black couple at Port Authority gave me and bummed another menthol.

Leaving Baltimore, there was a purplish glow over what looked to be an old cemetery. A 20 foot angel stood at the entrance, arms outstretched and bathed in the purple halo. As we past, I saw the light was coming from a 6 foot deep above ground swimming pool plopped right dead center of cemetery grounds. Truly heartwarming.

The nice fat lady next to me climbed on at the Travel Center with a box of KFC. The entire bus wreaked of chicken and pizza and hot sandwiches. There were chewing noises both in my ears and my belly. I am dying. The nice fat lady gave me a chicken wing and I told her it was the first thing I'd had to eat in two days. Her response, "Oh, really?" and she went back to eating her biscuit. She did give me another wing. I sucked every drop of meat off that little bone, gristle, coating and rolled the leavings around in my face for a good 20 minutes just to get a taste other than tongue in my mouth.

Couldn't really sleep heading through DC and upper VA. Pennsylvania Ave. exit passed. Andrews Air Force Base exit. VA (where's Leanne?) etc. etc. My feet hurt and my ass is asleep.

The station in Richmond is directly across from some big ass sports arena. Isn't interstate travel exciting? Nobody wanted to buy the Walkman there either. I bummed a smoke off a black guy who looked really pissed off about the whole affair. Menthol. I tried to buy another a little later from this really shaky crack mama who refused to even talk to me. She just shook.

Passing exit 144 to Temple Ave. in Somewhere So. VA., I turned 33. It’s now 12:04 a.m. 1/8/98. I thought about how ridiculous it was to get (or even expect or want) gifts on your birthday. People on cross-country buses don’t care. Some are even irked by the fact of you telling them, Too personal I guess, Too much information from a stranger. At first I thought, why should anything be different for me today? What exactly should successfully completing (in the not being dead sense) my 33^rd trip around the sun entitle me to? Then I started remembering other 1/8’s.

1/8/73 and Yuma rain and a paper town and late for 3^rd grade and spaghetti. 1/8/79 a guitar and a six month dead dad and pizza. 1/8/85 in a mental hospital cut to pieces, drunk and scared and 2000 miles from home and snow through the window gratings and alone and fish sticks. (A first glimpse of my birthday’s declining ability to inspire, in others, happiness for me.) 1/8/90 in calculus and coffeehouse chats with a teenage girl from Spain and a first wife who left for good and beer for dinner. 1/8/97, a second wife gone and an upscale job (I would grow to hate) and three different sets of couches and floor beds in the preceding month and another floor to sleep on and Kung Pao chicken. And now I’m here, twice back and forth across the USA (almost) and hungry and broke (almost: net worth 27 cents). The story of a person’s life can be told in birthdays (in any particular day you remember though. I think that was my point).

You’ll notice each of the entries above ends with reference to food. This isn’t merely because I’m starving and switching again from sex dreams to food dreams. There’s a well-known family by-law in my clan of the birthday person choosing the birthday dinner. Given my wildest choice right now, I would pick Western Bacon Cheeseburgers, fries and the largest coke I could get my hands on. Now I’d settle for a pack of Starbursts, but today I get nothing. Wait, that’s not altogether true. I did get a present. I’ve got both seats to myself now and I’m going to sleep. My feet really hurt.

4:30am. Charlottesville, NC. Just like Jen was talking about. Tried to bum money from some guy selling pot. No go. Changed socks into the umbrella ones me and Julia found in NY. The pair I was wearing were little rotting shredded scraps of stinking death that actually pulled away chunks of skin when removed. They're going to go live at the NC landfill now. Bye bye old and faithful friends. Everything is soaking wet here and my feet are swollen up about double. Not gonna be any food here. Maybe in Atlanta? Ha!

Tried to buy a smoke off a dumb-ass redneck boy with a reverse hat. He said he didn't want my 'Damn Dime!' and gave me two with an arrogant poignancy I don't think he even understood he was emitting. People on the road hate what they see as the unprepared. They brought cigarettes and food money, why couldn't you? Loser! Bunny! Bum! Wait, quantify that... bum with no shoes or socks on in the Carolina morning rain and a strong wafting cat piss stink smoking spit covered butts off the ground! There. I feel better now.

Cigarettes are way easier to bum up at bus stations than food. It's the preparedness thing again. I'm saving my cough drop as long as possible. Now it's like a good luck piece. Another 15 minutes and we'll reload. Maybe it's 30. Probably going to lose my good seat, but maybe I stink enough to hold out to GA.

South on 85. Crossing to N. GA. We stop at a convenience store in the middle of the most beautiful valley on Earth. I looked out the window half asleep in night sweat and an ass full of pins and needles onto heaven. I don't know its name nor do I really want to. It was a no-deposit no-return Shangri-La in the midst of my own personal hell and I staggered from the bus to simply stare. It was a moment when hunger didn't matter and pain didn't matter, where the future stopped and held its breath to stand alongside me in awe of what quiet and happiness could be if just given half a chance. Indescribably green hills to and through nowhere, rolling in delicate asphalt poured across the top like the highway was dripped from a fine tipped cake decorator between the fresh painted crash barriers guarding the dips and turns welling up with the fog that comes when friction hot tire rubber meets Georgia moist January air. Need and want passed away. The drive I had for objects and people going down the Great White Way vanished that birthday-day as the rednecks spit their Redman and careless Egg-a-muffin wrappers blew by and the fog rose up in a fury and chased the bus from the parking lot back into inevitable Westward motion away from everything good and calm and, at that perfect time, I balled up back to sleep. My feet are swelling. The place never existed. You can't get there from here. Anymore.

We just past over the Chatahochee river into Cobb county, GA. Interstate 20 finally going West, which is where I think I want to be. Only have one smoke, a menthol. Shit. I can't wait to get out of the goddamn South. Menthols. That's what they all seem to smoke down here.. Atlanta was useless, foodwise. No one is going to buy that beat up Walkman and NO ONE will spare change you in a bus station, at least nowhere along the Eastern seaboard.

Welcome to Birmingham AL. The land of Chrissy and many brands of non-menthol smokes. I bummed a menthol off of Chrissy and she asked exactly why was I eating packs of ketchup. I explained. She was going from Huntsville, AL to somewhere, FL to stand trial for a burglary she didn't do, then she had to come back to AL for a heroin possession charge that she did do. Chrissy was an AL junkie who found God in jail. She gave me enough to buy 2 burgers/2 fries at the Birmingham station Burger King. I breathed one burger in immediately in an accompanying flurry of rock salt encrusted fries. I told her about the bunny suit. She said, "Som body'll keel ya, ya do dat." Wonderful AL accent.

Perhaps we are driving towards civilization, at least the cig's are getting better and more plentiful and I have something to eat for later or tomorrow.

Look for 120 Days of the Bunny to continue in the next issue of The Dream People!