Mistress of Pain
by One-eye
I awoke to sounds of pots and pans clattering... where?
My head hurt. My throat was dry. I opened one stinging eye to see where
I was. Whose tent was this? I struggled for consciousness.
The tent fly was partially folded back. I opened my other eye and shifted
my body so I could see outside. As I watched, Hank walked past with a
bottle of stove fuel. Hank...What was he doing here? And how did I know
him? I sat up with a start. A searing pain ballooned in my skull and I
almost fainted. I sat very still for several breaths and it retracted
into a thick knot at the top of my spine. Very slowly this time I looked
around the tent. There was Dave and that other guy... tangled in their
sleeping bags, snoring. Wait a minute... how did I know THEM?
As I sat trying to drive the fog from my brain I noticed a plastic medallion
tied around my neck with a thin leather thong. I fumbled at it with sleepy
fingers and read: "Submit to the Chicken" It began to come back
to me.
I had been at the Warm Yellow Fussy camp listening to the whining radio
thingy Suddenly everything went silent and I followed the crowd's eyes
out to 6:30. There she stood, all straps and spikes with a little black
leather g-string and a mean looking riding crop. Even in that outfit there
was no mistaking the Playa Chicken.
She scanned the crowd and I held my breath. Our eyes locked and I felt
my knees go weak. The press melted away as she strutted slowly toward
me. I swear she never blinked. She stood before me for what seemed like
forever, looking me up and down, slapping the riding crop against her
rubber thigh. Walking around me once, twice, she scratched and pecked
suggestively at the playa. Then she turned and moved slowly toward the
bar looking back over her bare shoulder at me. I followed her, hypnotized.
I couldn't remember anything remotely funny about rubber chickens.
With a flurry of plucked wings and a small cloud of dust she hopped up
on the bar. Looking at the bartender she pointed at me with her riding
crop. I was immediately presented with a large plastic goblet filled with
blue slush and an outlandish yellow umbrella. The crowd began to murmur
and move around again as I nervously downed the drink. It was instantly
replaced with another. The Chicken hadn't uttered a word. I tried to nurse
the second a little so I could make a plan. I couldn't believe what was
happening. This was the Playa Chicken and I didn't want to do anything
stupid.
I started to feel very strange, very light headed and it seemed like I
was looking at everything through a tunnel. At the time I thought I was
just giddy but in retrospect I'm sure that she had colluded with the bartender
to drug me.
Her silence unnerved me. In my growing confusion I guess I felt that the
opportunity of a lifetime was slipping through my fingers. I blurted out
a pick-up line I had read in a book: "So, I have a feather duster back
at my camp..." Her limp body tensed and I knew instantly that I had made
a mistake. With a squawk she was leaping and flapping, pecking furiously
at my eyes. The drugs were deepening my stupor and I could barely hold
her off long enough for the crowd to subdue her. I apologized profusely
and there were hugs and more drinks but it seems to me now that the smile
on her beak never reached her painted eyes. I should have known there
was something very wrong but when she hopped down from the bar and tugged
at my pant leg, like a fool, I followed her.
After that things got really weird. I remember crawling through forests
of legs, naked, on my hands and knees with a collar on my neck and the
Chicken holding the leash. With relentless pecks and vicious lashes from
her crop she drove me to the next club and then the next. The Temple of
Ishtar, Biancas, all around center camp. There were hundreds, thousands
of camera flashes. I talked for a long time to a man with a microphone
and an Italian accent while his buddy with a giant video camera circled
us. I think I gave my parent's address to someone who said she was from
The Seattle Weekly. In my last memory that makes any sense at all, I was
plodding toward the giant Jiffy Lube sign with the Chicken riding on my
shoulder clucking and squawking softly.
Now here I sit with hundreds of welts and what I can only assume are peck
marks all over my body. My neck is chafed from the collar. My hands and
knees are cracked and bleeding from the alkaline playa. I'm dehydrated.
My fiercely heterosexual psyche is reeling at the possibilities of the
last few hours.
Hank appears in the tent door and smiles. "Isn't she something?"
"What?" I croak.
"The Chicken man." Hank looked a little closer at me, shook his head
a little and smiled. "Every morning since we set up camp this year
she's brought one of you whitebread boys over to sleep one off. I guess
she figures you're as safe here as anywhere. You still had some left when
you got here though. I see that you don't remember but you made quite
an impression. Would you like some hot granola?"
"Uh no... no thanks very much...no." I mumble. "But umm... do you think
there are some jeans or something around here I could borrow for a while?"
I limp toward my camp in Hushville hiking up a pair of giant floral parachute
pants every few steps. Will I be able to tell the guys back at the office
about this? I don't know. I don't know... but for now I can only stew
about last night and about the Chicken. God help me, I think I love her.
