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RABBIT JONES by
Peter Dean Rickards
On
October ninth, nineteen-ninety seven, I was walking along
the street wishing I had been one of those paparrazzi
people who had been lucky enough to snap some pictures
of Lady Diana just before she crashed into a concrete
pillar when I came across a costume store.
I
didn't have a job or anything to go to so I went inside
to look around. At the very back of the store I spotted
a white rabbit head hanging on a nail beside a devil mask.
It was an ugly looking thing.
I
had to have it. |
I
knew a mask like this one probably cost a lot of money to
make. It had rubber shit on the inside and coat hanger wire
in the ears to keep them pointy and poseable. But I didn't
have any money ( still don't), so I decided to borrow it...for
life.
I
looked around the store to see who might be watching and sure
enough there was a video camera up on the wall that had seen
me come in. I decided to come back later.
On
October tenth, nineteen-ninety seven I went back into the
costume store wearing motorcycle helmet and a big jacket.
I went straight to the back of the store and took the rabbit
head from its nail. I shoved it into my jacket but it was
huge. I walked out very fast with what looked like a basketball
bulging out of my coat.
Nobody
saw me or followed me , but if they had, I would probably
have hit them with the empty Snapple bottle I was carrying.
But
like I said...I had to have it.
It
wasn't the first time I had stolen a rabbit. I had stolen
an entire outfit in nineteen-ninety using a credit card but
I got caught and had to give it back to avoid prosecution.
I
went home and tried on the rabbit head and looked at myself
in the bathroom mirror. It fit me perfectly. I liked the rabbit
head so much that I started walking everywhere with it on
all the time.
I
rode the subway with it. I drank Pepsi through a straw in
it. I waited for people behind bushes and when they got close
I would stand up slowly and stare at them.
People
reacted differently to my rabbit head. Some people liked it,
particularly children. but others were cautious, or outright
frightened.
Often,
people would see me coming and cross the street so they wouldn't
have to pass me. I think that the fact that my exposed skin
was brown made them uncomfortable as well. It was bad enough
that there was a guy wearing a rabbit head sitting on the
bus seat across from them, much less a BLACK guy wearing a
rabbit head.
I
decided that I was not the same person when I wore the head.
When I put it on I was much more anonymous, less restrained
in my thoughts and deeds. I decided to give my new alter-ego
a name that would reflect this new found anonymity.
I
chose 'RABBIT JONES.'
'
The 'RABBIT' part is obvious.
I
picked 'JONES' because it is a common name. And commonness
is another way to become anonymous, particularly in a large
city.
Nothing
else to it but that.
These
are my thoughts.

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THE STINKING GREYHOUND
BUS
The bus trip
to New york City took 12 hours. I sat at the very back,
near the chemical toilet.
During the
trip, a Somalian woman managed to lock herself in the
washroom.
She started
screaming and kicking the door and everyone in the bus
turned around to see what the problem was.
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That's when most
of the people on the bus first noticed me sitting there, looking
concerned for the woman.
As the kicking
got louder, I stood up from my seat and started kicking the
door back.
I said:
"The driver
told me that you have to stay in there until we reach Buffalo."
She really started
screaming after that.
Eventually the
bus pulled over and the driver opened the emergency exit window
from the outside so he could get at the lock and the hysterical
woman.
I stuck my head
out the window to see what was going on.
The bus driver
was a FUCKING ASSHOLE.
He told me to
get back in the bus before he slammed the glass on my head.
I didn't get
much sleep that night because I couldn't stretch out.
I tried to sleep
by curling up on two seats but people kept jumping over my
legs all night on the way to the toilet.
The seats also
smelled like the sweaty asses of the last thirty people who
rode on this stinking Greyhound.
Besides the asshole
driver nobody else spoke to me on that bus.

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RABBIT SITS DOWN
WITH THE PIGS
After wearily staggering
off the bus I asked a toothless security guard where a
good spot to have 'breakfuss' might be and he told me
about a place called "Missus Eggs" which was
across the street from the station. Then I asked a weary
looking cop if there were any lockers around where we
could put my bags.
He said that
the city was virtually lockerless since several recent
terrorist attacks in New York had made lockers a security
risk.
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"Fucking
terrorists", I muttered.
So, I dragged
my bag with me across the street into the diner where the
toothless guard had directed me.
The place was
packed with New York's finest sitting around eating big plates
of runny eggs and smelly pink bacon. The conversation of the
morning seemed to be about the Haitian guy that was suing
the Police Department and the City of New York because some
cops had beat the shit out of him and rammed a toilet plunger
handle up his asshole.
That week a few
hundred people , many of them waving toilet plungers, had
walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the attack. Apparently,
the incident had made a lot of people angry, most obviously
the Haitian guy who needed something like 40 stitches to close
up his asshole again.
I remember how
pissed-off he looked on TV as they wheeled him around in front
of the glaring lights and asked him questions like:
"what were
you thinking when they inserted a toilet plunger handle into
your anus?"
I was tempted
to ask one of them if they actually knew any of the cops who
had done the ramming. But then I wondered if they would think
I was being a prick and drag me into the back of Missus Eggs
and shove another toilet plunger handle up my black ass. So
I didn't say anything, but they still made me uncomfortable
as I sat there watching them stuffing their faces through
the noxious clouds of cigarette smoke that was making my top
lip stink.
I'll be honest,
I don't like cops. They've never done anything to help me.
In fact, they've always done the exact opposite. I remember
when I lived in Toronto this one cop got blown away by a black
guy and the entire city freaked out.
The man who shot
him is what the authorities called a "landed immigrant."
He had lived in the cuntry since he was 6 years old but the
family of the dead cop tried to sue the Department of Immigration
for compensation ,even before they tried and convicted the
bastard!
They argued that
if the Department of Immigration had sent his black-ass back
to Jamaica years ago, he would never have had the opportunity
to shoot their son's brains all over a wall in an underground
garage.
They held a huge
funeral for the dead pig and every cop on the goddamned North
American continent showed up in their Sunday-best (a uniform)
to follow him to his grave. Everyone was talking about how
bad the city was getting even though he was the first cop
to get shot dead in 20 years.
I remember how
I reacted to the event as well:
I invited all
my friends over, shared out an ounce of high grade weed; turned
down the volume on the TV, and served pie!
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BRYANT PARK MAKES
ME ILL
I walked
across Fifth Avenue until I came to a big park full of
little rickety green chairs and unemployed people (like
me)..
I grabbed
a chair and sat down to relax for a while. I had spent
the last two hours walking around in a pair of shitty
shoes and my feet were beginning to feel like Chrisopher
Reeve's-numb.
I walked across Fifth
Avenue until I came to a big park full of little rickety
green chairs and unemployed people (like me).
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My stomach didn't
feel too good either on account of the fact that I always
get an upset stomach when I don't sleep properly and then
eat grease for breakfuss. The combination of walking and my
upset stomach made my ass feel like it was on fire.
I have always
called that condition 'sour-ass.'
You can't see
it in this picture because its in black and white but as I
sat there a cloud of noxious green gas hung in the air around
me and poisoned everything within ten metres of me and my
rickety green chair.
With that in
mind its easy to understand why the woman in this photograph
is scowling like that-she had just inhaled a deadly carcinogenic
fart.
After about an
hour of sitting there doing nothing, the freak sitting behind
me with no shirt (or bra) came and sat beside me. He reached
into a plastic bag which I noticed was full of dead flies.
He started to
eat them by throwing them into the air and catching them in
his mouth.
I left after
that.

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THE CALL OF NATURE
The New York
Public Library is right beside the park of green chairs
and farts.
I went inside
to try to find a washroom to relieve my bladder which
had not been emptied since breakfuss but I discovered
that it was closed.
SUDDENLY,
I had to
piss very, very badly and sweat started to run down my
forehead as I searched high and low for a place to let
it out. |
Just as I was
about to rip off the rabbit head and piss in it, I saw the
statue in this picture.
I noticed that
there was a crevice behind the statue and I managed to scramble
up the stone structure and get behind the statue just in time.
I whipped it out and pissed my brains out.
While I was up
there I noticed that somebody probably lived behind the statue.
There was a filthy
mattress and four empty bottles of Chinese cooking wine.
I felt sort of
bad for having pissed there because I wouldn't want anyone
to come and piss near my bed.
If someone pissed
near my bed I would probably do something like try to piss
back on them.
I didn't want
anyone to piss on me so I zipped up my fly really fast and
jumped down from the statue.

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YOW PUSSYHOLE
JUST DRIVE THE WAGON AND SHUT THE FUCK UP
I ever get
enough money , I'm going to get a licence to operate a
horse-drawn buggy in Central Park. I couldn't believe
how much those drivers were making.
Let's put
it this way, its cheaper to hire a whore in Times Square
to carry you around on her back than it is to travel one
city block in a horse-drawn carriage.
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Despite all that,
I still wanted to see what it was like to sit in a horse drawn
buggy. I looked around and found an empty carriage. I jumped
into it and just sat there for a while. Overall, it was pretty
boring.
Just like sitting
in an elevated chair behind some smelly horse's ass.
I was there about
five minutes before the driver returned.
He didn't see
me at first because I kept very still, but then he noticed
that people were staring at something behind him.
This picture
was taken as he turned around and saw me there.
He was pretty
angry. He said:
'Get the Fuck
out!'
I didn't obey
right away and he jumped down from his perch and moved towards
me. I ran off through the opposite side of the buggy into
the park and dared him to follow me into the bushes.
He's lucky he
didn't too because I would have given him the worst beating
in Central Park since those niggas bashed that joggers head
in with a brick back in the 80s.

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TAKE IT TO THE
BRIDGE
You
can't go to New York City unless you take at least five
minutes to go hang around on the Brooklyn Bridge.
It's
a nice place to go once you've realized that you hate
everyone in New York City. That's because nobody who actually
lives in New York City goes to hang around on the Brooklyn
Bridge.
If
I lived in New York City though, I bet I would visit it
a lot.
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It's
pretty high off the ground and every other week somebody flings
themself over the edge into the river of radioactive slime
three hundred miles below.
People
are constantly getting run over by bicycles that come speeding
down the left side of the pathway hitting the morons who can't
read the signs that say " Pedestrians stay right."
Of
course, its fun to irritate the many tour guides by interupting
their explanations with phrases like :
'You're
making that up as you go along!", or " Nice lies.
got any more lies liar?'
It's
even better when you're wearing a rabbit head though because
all the tourists want to take a picture beside you and its
a great opportunity to feel up women or pick someone's pocket.
While
I was on the bridge a German woman came up to me and asked
me to let her take picture with me. She asked my name and
I said:
'I
am Klaus de Aryan rabbit..would you like to buy a lampshade
made of real human flesh?'
She
was really offended by that and gave me this emotional lecture
about how she wasn't responsible for the crimes committed
against humanity in World War II. As she talked I just stood
there and nodded my head till she was finished.
She
was actually crying by the time she was done. That's when
I leaned over and whispered into her ear:
'Okay..gimme
ten bucks then alright?'
She
stomped off after calling me a 'filthee hoont. (I think that
means 'DOG' in German)
'I'm
a rabbit you blind Nazi bitch',I retorted, ''not no fucking
smelly dog!!!'

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BREATHING PROBLEMS
AND THE FACTS OF LIFE
As
I stood there on the Brooklyn bridge I began looking for
that part of the bridge where the Facts of Life girls
had visited. They were always travelling-those Facts of
Life girls.
They
even took the retarded one with them when they went to
Paris. I didn't really like that show but I know I used
to watch it more when the retarded girl was on it. She
was always bawling to Blair about how all the boys liked
her better because she (Blair) didn't have Cerebral Palsy.
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Blair
always told her some crap about God loving her and then the
show would end with the retarded girl telling some shitty
joke and everyone laughed.
Suddenly
I felt very unbalanced, standing there on the Brooklyn Bridge
, thinking about old Facts of Life episodes and developing
a massive migraine headache in the process.
Take
a couple deep breaths , I thought to myself, the mask is cutting
off your regular supply of oxygen and making you delirious.
So,
I breathed in deep and steadied myself on the bridge but I
really felt like collapsing in a heap. And then...it happened...

I can't really
explain why it happened or what I was thinking when it did.
But I knew this much...It was time to get off that goddamned
bridge.

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THE POSSESED WOMAN
ON THE BENCH
I walked down from the
bridge and headed back uptown to find something worth
doing. I felt a lot better after leaving the bridge but
now I was tired. I spotted a stone bench with a Indian
woman sitting on it.
I wished she wasn't there
because I wanted to stretch out on that bench for a couple
hours and have a nap.
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She looked harmless enough sitting
there but she looked like the type that might get mad if I tried
to lie down on her lap. Eventually she looked up and noticed
me staring at her bench, but she didn't budge.
I walked down
from the bridge and headed back uptown to find something worth
doing. I felt a lot better after leaving the bridge but now
I was tired. I spotted a stone bench with a Indian woman sitting
on it. I wished she wasn't there because I wanted to stretch
out on that bench for a couple hours and have a nap.
She looked harmless
enough sitting there but she looked like the type that might
get mad if I tried to lie down on her lap. Eventually she
looked up and noticed me staring at her bench, but she didn't
budge.
Not even an inch.
So, I walked
over and sat down on the opposite end and waited for her to
get up and leave since that's what most people I had encountered
had done whenever I had sat down beside them.
But not this
woman. She really didn't give a shit.
I began to sing
quietly under the mask: some tune that I had heard on TV sometime,
somewhere.
'Drugs...Drugs..Drugs...which
are good...? Which are bad...?'
She glanced over
at me for a second but turned back around and looked out at
the street.
'Drugs...Drugs...Drugs...ask
yer mom...ask yer dad.."
Suddenly she
sneezed and a large string of phlegm dangled from the end
of her nose. There was an uneasy silence between us and she
sat there not sure what to do since she probably didn't want
to look like a pig and wipe it on her sleeve.
I reached into
my pocket and pulled out a flyer I had found for some stupid
nightclub and held it out to her but she just looked at me
like I was from Mars and let the string hanging from her nose
break and fall onto the floor where it made a sound that made
me want to projectile vomit right through the eyes of the
mask.
I swallowed down
the puke feeling and gripped the bench tightly and then...
I began to bark
loudly under the mask.
"WORF! WORF!
WORF!"
She turned around
and muttered something but I couldn't hear her over my own
barking.
"WORF WORF
WORF WORF WORF", I continued.
I could see her
through the perforated eyeholes in the mask...she was getting
angry.
She started waving
her hands around in front of my face and saying a bunch of
gibberish in a language that she had invented.
I was feeling
quite happy with myself. She was obviously getting upset.
Not long before
she leaves, I thought to myself, and then I can stretch out
on this stone bench and have a nap.
All of a sudden
the woman leapt up from the bench and stood in front of me.
She started to bend over backwards, arching her back- limbo-style-
until her body was bent into a perfect U-shape. Her palms
rested flat on the ground behind her head and then: She made
the sounds of every barnyard animal I have ever heard...and
then some.
I jumped up from
the bench and ran across the street without looking left or
right. I just had to get out of there.
A taxi blew its
horn as I fled across the street with the sounds of the woman's
many animals chasing behind me.
I ducked into
a subway entrance and leaned up againt the wall where I waited
for the first train to arrive.

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THE SUBWAY
The
train took forever to arrive , but I occupied myself by
buying a chocolate bar from a vending machine.
I
shoved it underneath the mask and took large bites as
an old woman with one of those dumpy wire carts stood
nearby looking at me with disappoval.
I
ignored her and continued to shove my arm up into my head
and eat the Kit-Kat bar.
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Eventually
the train came rumbling along the tracks and I jumped in without
checking its destination and sat down on the closest seat
to the door.
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The
doors closed and I looked around the train car which was
empty except for a old derelict male at at the far end.
He had a plastic-looking schoolbag (probably with body parts
in it) and a balloon with a a symbol on it that looked a
lot like the MTV logo.
I
found that a little strange, but it wasn't half as strange
as the guy who entered the car in the next ten seconds.
He
was a black guy wearing a red thong and a bunch of red
thread all over his chest. His hair was braided into one
3 foot spike that scraped along the ceiling of the subway
car. |
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Around
his neck he had hung several items including a large framed
photograph of a Ku Klux Klan member sitting on a horse and a
small plastic toy trumpet which he clutched as if it was the
only thing in the world that gave him purpose.
Of course, he spotted me instantly and
came over and sat down directly across from me.
He stared at me with his fucked up blue
contact lenses and his dagger teeth. He smelled like Brandy's
scabby scalp.
"What the FUCK you doin here!?",
he blurted at me.
"Same thing you're doing",
I said.
"Oh...I don't THINK SO", he
howled.
He raised the plastic trumpet in front
of his face and waved it left...then right...and then in circles.
I didn't like him but he didn't really
frighten me. He was really skinny and since he was naked except
for that red thong and the thread and the stuff round his neck,
I knew he didn't have any weapons except for that stupid plastic
trumpet.
He stood up from his seat and continued
waving the trumpet around and doing this weird dance that convinced
me that he was high from smelling glue.
That's when I decided to move to another
part of the car but as I got up he grabbed me by my shoulder
and spun me around.
"LOOK!", he muttered as he
shoved the little green plastic trumpet up his ass.
I was repulsed. I whipped off my belt
and started to beat him with it over and over again with the
buckle part.
He fell on the floor with the trumpet
still sticking out of his ass and I started to stomp him with
the heel of my Clarke's.
I continued to beat him until the train
pulled into a train station somewhere near Times Square.
I walked over to the doors and waited
for them to open as the man with the red thong lay on the ground
in a fetal postion with the trumpet still sticking out of his
ass.
That is...until the guy with the MTV
balloon came over and yanked it out of his ass and put it into
a small plastic bag.
The doors opened and I walked left. The
guy with the balloon headed right.
I don't know what happened to the guy
with the red thong but several months later I saw him in the
crowd on the Today show holding a sign that said :
"HI KATIE...FROM EVERYONE
IN HALIFAX"

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EMERGE
By the time
I left the subway the sun had already gone down. I emerged
from the underground in Times Square which was fine with
me because I wanted to find a deal on AA-batteries for
my walkman which had not worked since somewhere called
Scranton.
I reached
into my pocket and pulled out all the money I had left:
$20.
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It wasn't a lot
but it was certainly enough to get me drunk. I walked into
a little store and grabbed myself a bottle of vodka and a
carton of orange juice. I took a few sips of the orange juice
and then poured out half of it onto the sidewalk.
A couple of cripples
in wheelchairs were passing and they stopped in front of the
puddle as I stared to pour the vodka into the carton.
"Hey asshole",
said the uglier one.
I ignored him
and plunked a straw into the carton.
"Hey asshole!!!
People have to walk there!"
"Not you
though", I replied.
"You're
a fuckin' asshole" said the man in the wheelchair as
he and his girlfriend or social worker manoeuvred around the
puddle.
I drank in the
fluid and started to walk towards the noisest part of the
square-the center division in the middle of the street where
a bunch of guys in black panther outfits were standing around
yapping on about the pyramids and UFO's and AIDS.
Off to one side
a couple of guys were spinning on their heads to some fuzzy
sounding hip-hop music blaring out of box with blown speakers.
Nearby a guy
with a huge remote controlled cockroach handed out flyers
with the words "SATAN IS KING" printed on them.
I sat down with
my carton of booze and drank.
And drank.
And drank...until
I fell asleep in a pool of puke.

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FEELING NASTY
IN TIMES SQUARE
BLOODCLOTH...when
I woke up, everything was blurry and sick.
I
stumbled around for a while, sometimes into the traffic
where people stuck their heads out of windows and screamed
at me about carrots and Bugs Bunny and the Playboy mansion.
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I
looked up and noticed a giant CUP-A-SOUP container balanced on
top of the huge Panasonic televison screen.
There
was steam coming out of it.
And
then, just like that I started thinking about white terrorists.
People like Timothy McVeigh.
He
was a very bad man wasn't he? I
mean, how was that for a BIG BOMB?
White
guy pulls up a van loaded with fertilizer and parks it in
front of a Federal building. Next thing you know...BOOM!
He
demolishes the entire building and everything in it.
I
wondered how a bomb like that might look right here in the
middle of Times Square on a busy night.
A
night like New Years Eve 1999.
It
wasn't the first time I was thinking of the possibility of
a terrorist attack in Times Square on the millenium New Years,
but for the first time, I felt very sure that it is going
to happen.
I'm
not sure if it was because I was drunk and feeling slightly
paranoid, but I was sure.
Suddenly
someone whipped a can of beer out of a moving car and I got
clapped in the head.
I
crumpled onto the sidewalk like a load of dirty laundry and
rolled over onto my back.
Out
of the corner of my eye I caught another glimpse of the giant
CUP-A-SOUP thing and I thought to myself:
I
wonder what they use to make the steam?

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UP FROM THE GUTTER
Life has
a funny way of throwing curves at you. One minute you're
writhing around in Times Square in a totally dehabilitated
state, and in the next, you're waking up in a dumpster
with a new outlook on life and a strange desire to go
out and do something productive. That's what happened
to me...Rabbit Jones.
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I climbed out of
the dumpster and brushed myself off. Felt around in my pockets
with little hope of finding anything but some old chewing gum
and a bottlecap from the vodka bottle that I had injested the
night before. Or was it the night before that?
I reached back
into the dumpster and tore a piece of carboard from a damp carboard
box that had six dead puppies stuffed inside.
"Whats kind
of bastard would kill a bunch of little puppies and throw them
into a dumpster like that?", I thought to myself as I emptied
them out onto the sidewalk.
Probably some sort
of psycho. I walked across
the street into a 7-eleven and asked the cashier if I could
borrow a marker.
"Sure, here",
she said as she thrust it towards me, "just don't hurt
me alright?"
What the hell did
she mean by that?
"You know
how to spell Monseratt?", I asked her.
"Huh?
"MONSERATT?!",
I repeated. "You know? That island that blew up and everyone
went to England?"
"Wha?",
she said. She seemed to be having a muscle spasm.
'MONSERATT! MONSERATT!'
I yelled as she took a step back from the edge of the counter,
"how the hell you spell MONSERATT?'
'M - O - N - S
- T - E - R R - A - T - S'
She spelled.
"No, not MONSTER
RATS', I replied , feeling quite agitated...MONSE- Look, forget
it"
So I wrote:MONSERATT
VOLCANO REFUGEE onto the carboard and then walked to Washingston
Square Park. It was only three blocks away.
I propped myself
up on the edge of that pool thing with an empty cup in one hand
and the sign in the other and waited, and waited.
Tourists came by
and looked at me.
They wanted to
take my picture but none of them wanted to pay me.
"No money,
no damn picture!", I barked.
"You're a
loser anyway you stupid rabbit. You can't even spell Monserratt
and you've got vomit on your back."
I reached around
and felt the back of my shirt. It was crispy.
'Damn vomit', I
thought out loud, 'nobody's gonna give me any money if I've
got vomit on my back'.
Suddenly a black
girl came up to me and dropped $20 into the cup.
I was amazed.
'Thank you very
much", I said as I gazed up into her ping-pong ball sized
eyes.
'It's nothing",
she said 'I'm kind of glad to see you. I thought all the rabbits
had died on the mountainside.'

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KICKIN IT ON THE
FERRY
I felt a
lot better.
After people
saw that I had a little money in my cup, they all started
to give me change.
Mostly pennies,
but before much longer I had managed to collect $34.23!
I got on
the subway and then got on a ferry.
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I was going to
Ellis Island!
I have always wanted to
go to Ellis Island.
I hear its very moving.
So, yeah.
I just got on this boat
and went to Ellis Island.
All-in-all it was a pretty
boring boat ride.
Except for this one old
lady who kept smoking cigarettes through a hole in her neck.
Oh yeah, and
I saw a fish and a bunch of hypodermic needles.

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LEAVING ELLIS
ISLAND
Ellis
Island wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
There
were no massage parlours, video arcades or even a wax
museum.
I
ended up walking around for an hour until I came across
an unlocked door to one of the little theatres where shitty
actors put on plays re-enacting the arrival of immigrants
to New York at the turn of the century.
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On
the wall were pictures of immigrants and the props on the
stage included a couple of beat up suitcases, some canvas
bags, an old hat and pictures of Jewish people and Wops.
Just
for kicks, I picked up a suitcase and slung one of the canvas
bags over my shoulder.
I
began pacing the stage from left to right and moaning like
a really sickly east-European immigrant.
'Oh...I'm
soooo happeeee to come to Amereeeka', I said, 'in Amereeka
all the streets are flowing with buttermilk and grain!'
Suddenly
the theatre door swung and a security guard stuck his head
inside.
I
stopped moving and he looked at me for a second standing there
with the suitcase and the canvas bag.
"What
the hell you think you're doing?", he asked in an aggravated
tone.
'Acting',
I said.
'But
you don't work here' he said'
Again
there was a silence.
"You
must be a racist", I stuttered as I put down the suitcase
and canvas bag and planned my next move.
"What?",
he said.
I
didn't answer.
"Get
out of here", he said.
I
left after that.

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HEY!HEY! IT'S
ME! DODI FAYED!
I took another ferry over
Liberty Island and decided to go and stand around at the
bottom of the statue and yell at people who could afford
the entrance price to climb into the thing.
"Hey! Hey there you goddamned creeps!",
I screamed at a couple of people on the second level.
"It's me! Dodi Fayeed! I'm not dead!
I'm down here!"
One of them looked down at me and dropped
a half empty can of Coke over the edge. It landed on the
grass and I stared up at the person-awhitelady-and shook
my fist.
'When you get down from there I'll be
waiting for you bitch! I'm gonna kick your head in."
The woman spit over the edge and laughed.
Then she disappeared. Probably to climb up to the crown.
I was getting bored. The statue was okay
to look at but after the first few minutes |
...it became pretty damn depressing.
So,
I walked over to the dock and waited for the next ferry.
As
I waited I saw a couple of long haired guys with Statue of
Liberty crowns made out of green sponge.
I
wanted one so bad.
Those
guys were real losers too. Both of them were listening to
the same Walkman (two earphone jacks) and one of them was
playing 'air guitar' while the other pretended to drum.
I
guess the tape ran out after a while because they suddenly
stopped and took off their earphones and crowns and started
digging through a bag of tapes that they were carrying.
Eventually
they agreed on something and put the headphones back on their
heads and stuffed the crowns into their back pockets.
As
they stood there listening to their crappy tape, I eased up
and grabbed one of the crowns from the pocket of the one who
had orange freckles all over his face and ears.
And
walked casually away. Feeling much better.


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A RABBIT REFLECTS
My
trip was coming to an end. The rabbit head was dirty and
worn. The mesh eyes had started to come undone and the
rubber interior smelled from my sweat and the dirt from
the streets.
I
made my way to the courthouse stairs and sat down to think
a while about lessons I'd learned as a rabbit and to consider
what lay ahead. For one thing, I really needed to get
a job.
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Yes,
that was priority number one.
Don't
get me wrong.
I
like my life as Rabbit Jones even though I could have done
without the vodka poisoning.
But
now, as I felt around in my pocket for my last $1.75, I knew
that the life of a rabbit was far from a profitable existence.
I
needed to find a job.
Perhaps
I would go down to the docks and see if they needed courageous
sailors or maybe deck hands or cabaret performers or maybe
even exotic dancers.
And,
as the shadows of the evening started to creep over the city
once again I knew I had to make a decision.
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I stood
up and began to walk. Back to the subway. Back from
the direction I came.
And then I saw it. Sitting
there in a little shop window somewhere close to the
Brooklyn Bridge.
It called to me. It
beckoned me.
It grabbed onto my spirit
and shook it joyously.
I had to have it. I
went into the store.
It cost exactly $1.75.
I could manage that.
So I bought it.
I removed the rabbit
head and stuffed it into my jacket.
Picked up my purchase
and existed the store.
A new man. A
new identity.
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Luther...The
Beard

The End.
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Photographs by the one and only Katrin Clouse
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