Fugatives & Refugees

(a postcard from 1988)

This year I'm living in a two-story town house at 1623 SW Montgomery Street—with severed heads and hands hidden in the back of every kitchen cabinet. Some are male, most are female.

My roommate, Laurie, works as a window dresser at the downtown Meier & Frank department store and tells me about meeting guys and fucking them in the store's big display windows along SW Fifth Avenue. You have about two feet of dark, filthy room to maneuver, she says, between the inside wall and the scenic partition that the mannequins stand in front of. Beyond the mannequins is nothing but plate glass and a zillion people walking past. The narrow space limits your sex positions but it's private. Plus, Laurie says, you get the thrill of rush-hour crowds waiting for their bus only a couple feet away.

Unless you want to get fired, she says, you can't go too wild or you'll make the mannequins shake.

When we drink, Laurie tells me about her childhood. How her mother used to get up every Sunday morning to cook a hot breakfast. While her mom was busy, Laurie would crawl into bed with her dozing father and suck his cock. This was every Sunday morning for years, and after a few gin-and-tonics Laurie can see how this might color the rest of her life.

At home our severed hands and heads are mannequin samples, and Laurie shows me how the dummy industry designs them for each market. Mannequins made for California have bigger breasts. They're sprayed to look tan. Mannequins made for Chicago aren't. The creepy clutching hands. Or the bald heads with high cheekbones and staring glass eyes. We stash them everywhere. Under the bathroom sink with the extra toilet paper. In the cabinet with the breakfast cereal. The one time Laurie's dad comes to visit, he goes hunting for coffee filters and almost has a heart attack.

The only mannequin Laurie has all of is a female she calls Constance. Connie's made to sit, with both legs stretched out in front, her knees bent a little. She's made for the Portland demographic: pale and small breasted with a dishwater-brown wig. Laurie dresses her in a pink chiffon gown from the thrift store St. Vincent de Paul on Powell Boulevard. It has yards of flowing pink chiffon that hang down, like angel wings. Up the back of the dress, you can see thick black tire treadmarks that suggest a very ominous end to some prom night.

One Saturday, we're drinking gin-and-tonics before watching the Starlight Parade. The official kickoff event for the annual Rose Festival, the parade features lighted floats and marching bands and starts at dusk, moving through downtown in the dark.

It also features the year's crop of Rose Festival princesses, all of them in pink prom gowns, standing on a float and waving with gloved hands. The more gin-and-tonics we drink, the more important it seems to make a political statement. You know, attack the idea of women as objects on display. We have to put Constance on the boot of Laurie's MG convertible and sneak her into the parade. We have to reveal the Rose Festival for the sexist institution that it is.

Really, we just want our share of the attention.

In the North Park Blocks where the parade assembles, we tell the officials we're part of a local car club but we've missed our entry time because of traffic. Near us, the parade float full of real princesses glares at our dummy with the black tire tracks up her back.

As troublemakers, we cannot be more obvious. But as each official mentions a real car club or a detail like parade entry dues, we latch onto said detail and roll it into our story. Each time we're passed up the ladder to another official, our story has more heft. More validity. Yes, we say, we're with the Columbia Gorge Car Club. Yes, we've paid the $200 entry fee. As extra proof we show people a map of the parade route that an earlier official has given us.

Our every exhale is a lie.

At the edge of the parade one last official gives us the go-ahead. We're in. We're ready. Heady stuff. Then he warns us, two blocks away is the judges' platform, and if we aren't an official entry, they'll hit us each with a $1,000 fine. And then arrest us for trespassing.

By then, our gin-and-tonic political enthusiasm has worn off. We don't have the spare two grand to risk. But the crowds love Constance and people run out into the street to touch her stiff fiberglass hands. The real princesses glower. Those willing tools of sexism. A block away the police are waiting to catch us, Laurie and me, but for just these few minutes, people wave and smile at us. They laugh and applaud. Despite all the terrible shit we've done, these total strangers seem to really want us here.