Harpur's Bizarre

Me Leering behind a cheerleader

I spent three years of my life studying performing arts.

The only job I got out of it was the mascot for the Hawkes Bay Hawks Basketball team.

This is me dancing behind a cheerleader.  I look like I’m planning on following her home.

That’s because I did.

Didn’t really know what to do once I got there.  Just hung out on the lawn for a while.

She eventually threw me some stale bread, I ate the rubber seals from around the windscreen on her car, and went home.

But look, it goes both ways- here, the basketballers are fully checking me out.  Objectifying me.  As a woman.

Me being objectifyed for my hot body

Not really.  They didn’t have a bar of me.  I think my perceptions were altered by inhaling the mould spores growing on the inside of my helmet.

It gets so hot in there, it has its own microclimate.  Rain everyday at 4pm.  And monsoon season is just hideous.

Be nice to mascots.  They don’t want to be there.  They want to be the new lesbian nurse on Shortland Street.  Who has breast cancer.  And gives all her patients involuntary double masectomys.  Before garotting them with their IV line (whoa, I should be the head writer).

But I took the role of Hawky very seriously.  I was magnificent out there.  Because I researched my role.  I wore my wings every day.  I learnt to fly.  And ate roadkill.

A mascot is basically a glorified babysitter, which is weird, because no one trusts anyone with their kids these days.  You need a degree to work at a crèche.  “Yeah I’m going for my PhD in nappy changing.  My thesis is on ass wiping.  My hypothesis is just get right in there.”
So of all the people to trust with your kids, why the sweaty, giant bird who does the robot at half time?

You can’t see its face!  Only the eyes- which they say are the window to the soul, but that’s bull.  It’s the mouth you want to see.  Under that chicken head could be a raging paedosmile.

I can tell you from experience mascots can’t be trusted.  I abused the shit of those kids.  Not sexually!  Jeez!  I had wings instead of arms.

It’s amazing what you can’t do without opposable thumbs.

No- I had giant feet, and I couldn’t see where I was going.  When you can’t see and something like a kid touches you, you go into survival mode-  the whole flight or flight dilemma.

In hindsight, I should have picked ‘flight’.

I kicked a lot of kids.

I do live in fear though.  I read the papers every day, waiting for allegations of ‘abuse by mascot’ to surface.  Because you know that as soon as one kid complains, they all come crawling out of the woodwork don’t they?  Mascots will be the new millenniums answer to the catholic priest.

Eventually I did get the fame I craved.  Was going to be the front cover of the ‘Hawkes Bay Today.’  Got bumped off though.  To page 6.  For the London bombings.

It says I have my ‘wings crossed for my heroes’.  But as you can see, I really had my eyes crossed.

Thank god that one stayed off the front page.

Terrorism has its upsides.