Bunny was the name of the schoolgirl tragedy we witnessed on Prom Night, 1993. You didn't remember all of it - you'd been huffing charred Cocoa Puffs since 10am - but we had made a pact that said this: if we couldn't get anyone to go with the prom to us, we'd act like we didn't care while inside we'd feel like we'd never do anything greater than killing ourselves. Since we weren't terribly motivated, we planned instead to eat as many sandwiches as we could without looking at one another. That was the plan. But as you know, human beings make plans while rabbits laugh. The night turned into a tragicomedy.
At the time, the woman you loved was working as the bass guitar in a psychobilly band. The woman I loved was married to the drumkit in the same band. We weren't old enough to get in the bar, but the kindly bouncer let us sit across the street & listen. Across the street was the halfway house, & we only thought about it insofar as we wondered what exactly it was halfway between. We figured it was something like, halfway between the bar & the house behind it. Something like that.
Louie Crazypants was a convicted felon with convictions. He didn't believe two homosexual boys like you & me should be so unhappy on our Prom Night 1993. I explained we weren't so much gay as sensitive & he beat the living shit out of me for sassing him. I still remember his kind eyes as he explained to me, apologizing, why he had to do it, baby. Then he gut-punched you to show you he loved you, too. He handcuffed us to the back of his truck & drove us to the prom.
Wow, were we fucked up that night! Louie bought us beer & grapefruit, & he told us to drink up, only hitting us when we accidentally squirted him with grapefruit juice, as you will, trying to forced a piece out with a spoon. We arrived at the school in time for the crowning of the King & Queen. Looking around, you & I noticed the same thing - for some reason, Louie had taken us to a school not in our city, but in the neighboring suburb. We also noticed he had covered himself in gasoline & was laughing madly as he moved toward the school door.
Oh Bunny! You were the cutest Prom Queen I'd ever seen, & I'd seen at least one before. Louie ran straight for you as you sneaked a cigarette, balancing your tiara so prettily as you attempted to light a smoke in heels. Your light came on as Louie came on & the two of you went up, up, up. The school, which had earlier that week had all of its asbestos removed & so was feeling a little vulnerable, caught fire as if in spite. Handcuffed to the truck, holding grapefruit rinds to protect us from parts of the school flying at us as the it blazed, we barely saw the class come flying out of the school, virtually every one of them horribly burned & screaming.
The police weren't entirely understanding - we were beaten repeatedly & forced to answer to the name "Betty" - but in the end, they couldn't explain how we could be handcuffed to a truck & also able to start a fire. When we tried to show the cop how we could have done it anyway, our lawyer stopped us, & he was beaten repeatedly. We enjoyed that.
We found out about Bunny years later, when the story was made into a made-for-TV movie that you saw on a plane. You wrote to the producer about how unfair it was that they cast Anthony Michael Hall as you, but I was perfectly happy with the brillaint casting of Paul Dooley as me. You called me that night - the first time we talked in years - & my mother yelled at you & then went across the street & threw eggs at your window. Those were the days!
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