Your Princess is in Another Castle

by Richard Fore

  I passed Sabrina’s query about my name on to Chris to avoid the question and that was a mistake. I should have told her myself. Told her and just kept things friendly. Now Chris and Seth know about her. I don’t need their constant vocalizing about what they think I should do.

  “All right gentlemen, make some noise for Starry Nights!” bellows the DJ. Starry enters onto the main stage to Poison by Alice Cooper. She’s a leggy redhead in platform heels and a bizarre silver outfit that calls to mind what a sleazy woman from the future might wear in a B-movie. We all look at her, but I also see in my friends that an answer is expected of me.

  “No. I’m not,” I say.

  Seth doesn’t respond, looks across the room and gestures to Stephanie that he needs a refill. He lights another cigarette, looks at Starry. She’s a good dancer.

  “Why not?” asks Chris. He adjusts his chair in order to look at Starry and me simultaneously.

  “Because I’m the guy who always had to be Dazzler,” I say.

  “Dazzler?” asks Chris.

  “Yeah, Dazzler.”

  “As in the X-Men character?” asks Seth.

  “If you can call her that,” I say. “Remember the X-Men arcade game from the early nineties? There were three versions. One was two-player, one was four-player, but for the full experience there was the six-player version, with your choice of six selectable X-Men characters. Now first you had Wolverine. Everybody wanted to be Wolverine. It didn’t matter who else they may have put in the game, Wolverine’s your star character. The movies centered around him. He’s in all the animation, every videogame. You’re not gonna have any X-Men media without Wolverine. More so than even Professor X, Wolverine’s your perennial character. Of course, you’d probably think that since everyone wanted to be Wolverine, everyone fought over who got to be Wolverine. But no, no one did. Because everyone understood that the alpha male of the group would get to play as Wolverine. The alpha male would be the first to approach the arcade cabinet, first to put in his quarters. He’d have the honor of getting to be Wolverine without fight or fuss.

  “The other five players would then have to divvy up the rest of the roster. Now on the male side you had Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Cyclops. They may not be Wolverine but nobody’s really going to complain that they have to be the big strong guy, the demonic looking guy, or the guy who’s been with the team since issue one. Now as far as the women go you had Storm and Dazzler. Now when you have a group of six kids all of whom are boys, you’re going to have all six of them wanting to be one of the guys.

  “You could argue that they included female playable characters in the game to appeal to female X-Men fans. Look through any comic book from that era and you’re going to see a lot of ads for videogames, board games, pen & paper RPGs, and CCGs. Pretty much all of those ads are going to have a group of boys playing the item being advertised, but there will be one girl smiling and playing along with them. But that’s an outright lie. It didn’t happen that way back when we were kids, and it doesn’t happen that way now. Maybe there were all of a dozen girls back then who wanted to play the X-Men arcade game with you, but there certainly wasn’t a need for two female characters.

  “However, if you happened to be the boy who had to play as an X-woman, there was no shame in being Storm. Weather powers, part of the second generation of X-Men who really brought the book into the spotlight; there was no shame in being Storm. But for God’s sake why’d they go and put Dazzler in the game? A character born from an early eighties marketing concept to create some kind of disco singer mutant with the power to convert sound vibrations into light energy that serves to enhance her stage shows, and you’re seriously putting her into the arcade game?

  “Now most people don’t dislike Dazzler. Because most people don’t even know who the hell she is. Are you telling me that Jean Grey, who’s also been with the team since issue one couldn’t have been in the game? She could have telekinetically hurled enemies around as her special move. They screwed with everyone’s powers anyway. Wolverine and Colossus both had energy based attacks for their special moves. Or what about Psylocke? Rogue, maybe? Or Jubilee, even. Why Dazzler?”

  Stephanie returns bearing drinks, providing an intermission to my speech. Again she hands my friends their beers first, then me my Coke, which I hadn’t realized had been ordered. She takes away their bottles but leaves my almost empty glass for me to finish off. The monetary transaction between her and Seth is silent this time. Perhaps she’s overwhelmed, the place does look fuller. Perhaps she realizes I’m explaining something important.

  “I think the arcade game was actually based on that animated pilot Pryde of the X-Men that predated the Fox animated series,” says Chris. “Maybe Dazzler was part of the roster in that. I can’t remember.”

  “I think he’s right,” says Seth.

  “So what if Dazzler was in it?” I ask. “Why didn’t they have Jean Grey in the pilot then? And it was called Pryde of the X-Men because it had Kitty Pryde in it. Why not make her a character in the arcade game? Surely she has more fans than Dazzler.”

  “I dunno. She might have been too similar to Nightcrawler what with her phasing and his teleporting,” says Chris.

  “What the hell does any of this have to do with our own little Kitty Pryde, Sabrina?” asks Seth.

  “I was getting to that,” I say. “Like I said, I was always the kid stuck with being Dazzler. It’s like the developers knew that there was bound to be some poor loser in every group that would have to be the character nobody else wanted to be and that they stuck Dazzler in there as some sort of sick life lesson about getting used to disappointment in life.

  “Sabrina isn’t just a geeky girl. She actually works in a comic book store. Who knows what else she’s into? She’s also quite cute. She’s like the geeky equivalent of getting the prom queen. And the guy who got to be Wolverine in the heyday of the X-Men arcade game is the guy who’s going to be Sabrina’s boyfriend today, not the kid who was stuck being Dazzler. It’s Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation is probably the correct one. Sabrina’s just out of my league.”

  “You wouldn’t know Occam’s Razor if someone took it and slit your wrists with it,” says Seth.

  “Nice bit of nostalgia there,” says Chris. “And maybe in a different context, I might even agree with you. It isn’t easy getting a girl who’s surrounded by admirers day in, day out. But Sabrina actually likes you. I know because I was the one she talked to about you. Now if you won’t act on that, then you deserve a lifetime of self-inflicted orgasms. Seth, try and talk some sense into him. I have a few ones I need to give to Starry Nights.”

  Chris gets up and approaches the stage but comes back. “Oh, and I preferred to play as Nightcrawler.” Watching him reach Starry, I see she’s now nude except for her heels. She’s moved on to a rap song that appears out of synch with her and her dancing. Classic rock suits her much better.

  Seth puts out his cigarette. “I always got to be Wolverine, actually. I hated the fact that they never ported the game from the arcades to the consoles. It would have been killer on the SNES.”

  “So you do see my point then, Wolverine?”

  “No, I don’t see your point at all. But you’re like Hannibal Lecter behind the glass. You’ll either do something or you won’t. There’s no persuading you. I’m not even going to try. Just like with whatever noose is around your neck right now, you’re not going to tell me about it. Now I don’t take that personally. Because I know you want to confide in someone. But you also don’t think you deserve to ease your burden, so you’ll carry it around all alone and deliberately make yourself as miserable as you can. If they were readily available you’d buy a hairshirt. But like Chris said before, you did come out with us tonight. All I really expect of you is to blow some money on a stripper. And that’s all. But if you wanted to share, I’d listen. But you don’t and you won’t. So let’s just try to enjoy the evening, shall we?”

  Seth turns his attention to
the main stage, watching Starry Nights drape both of her long legs over Chris’ shoulders. Two other men are at the main stage with him, but she is focused on Chris for the moment; the price has been paid in one dollar bills. In one gulp I finish off my second Coke, trying to come up with a way to articulate how Seth is wrong. There’s no reason to explain to him about Sonya, the event has come and gone, and what could he say anyway? Supposing they are right about Sabrina, there’s no reason for her not to just ask me out if she likes me. If that’s what she wants, and since she instigated our first conversation anyway, let her ask me. No rejection that way. No misinterpretation of intentions.

  “Sabrina can ask me out, right?” I ask. “Isn’t the notion of boy asks girl, boy decides what to do, boy pays, boy initiates sex for the first time, boy proposes marriage just a little old-fashioned? If she’s into me as much as you say, I’ll let her start things up.”

  “Ah, okay. Sure, go on ahead and construct a series of Rube Goldberg machines to gradually draw the two of you together while always making sure that Sabrina is the one to set in motion each step. She’ll definitely prefer that to some other guy and his hey, let’s go out sometime direct approach.”

  “Yeah, well, I liked playing Mouse Trap when I was a kid. Sometimes the situation calls for a little complexity.”

  “Everybody played Mouse Trap exactly once and then lost integral pieces that made the game impossible to play without them. After that it sat in the closet gathering dust, a lot like the destiny of your dick. And dude, look what Chris is doing.”

  Relieved that the subject has changed to Chris, I glance over at him to see him sucking on Starry’s big toe. She appears amused at what he’s doing, perhaps impressed at his willingness to indulge. Taking her digit out of his mouth, he begins to massage the sole of her foot just as her routine comes to an end. He looks at us then looks away, realizing in horror that he has been caught.

  “Huh,” says Seth. “I wouldn’t have thought that they’d even allow that. Maybe it never came up before.”

  “Did you know that he was into that?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Poor bastard. Probably been hiding it all this time. I guess he just lost control. Pretty mundane thing to hide though, given what all is out there.”

  Starry Nights disappears into the back as the DJ announces that for the next five minutes all dancers are available for dollar table dances. Chris returns to the table, says nothing. I’m not sure if this should be addressed. Seth simply smirks.

  “Fellas,” says Chris, his eyes darting back and forth between Seth and me like the eyes on a sinister looking portrait in a bad horror movie.

  “Chris, why didn’t you tell us?” asks Seth. “This isn’t that big a deal. Why hide it from your closest friends?”

  “What’s there to tell?”

  “Oh, give it up,” I say. “You were sucking on Starry’s big toe like it was a tootsie pop.”

  “Oh, that? She asked for it. Guess she’s into that kinda thing. Kinky, huh?”

  Seth rolls his eyes. “Please, man. Please.”

  “Who’s up for some dollar dances? I’ve seen a few that might be just your type,” says Chris to no one in particular.

  “Epic failure on the transition there, my friend,” says Seth. “Look, just admit to it. We don’t care.”

  “I do feel a little betrayed that you just feigned agreement whenever I mentioned that Tarantino’s foot fetish was becoming a little too apparent in his films, though,” I say.

  “Yeah, around Kill Bill it started getting out of control,” says Seth. “I mean you’ve got a scene that exists solely to have Uma Thurman wiggle her toes for the camera. But anybody, even if you’re not a foot fetishist, would have sucked on Salma Hayek’s toes when she poured beer on them in From Dusk Till Dawn. Great song playing during that scene, by the way.”

  “Hey, yeah, so what, I’ve got a foot fetish,” says Chris, admitting it perhaps out of agreement that anyone would have indeed sucked on Salma’s toes during that scene. “Go on, give me shit about it. I don’t care. I don’t care. And you wanna know why? Because when you have a foot fetish, every day of your life is like a fucking Mardi gras!” Chris takes a large chug of beer, as if to demonstrate the hard-partying lifestyle of a Bourbon Street regular. “You, college boy,” he says, pointing directly at me.

  “We all go to the same college, Chris.”

  “Exactly! And you’re a breast man, correct?”

  “Well, speaking purely physically, I’d say that’s what I look at the most. Yeah. But my friend Jessica isn’t busty at all and I still think...”

  “Yeah,” interrupts Chris, “well you think about this. When the warm and sunny weather comes round spring semester and all the girls start wearing lesser-covering tops, you might get the occasional side-boob or be walking down a flight of stairs and catch a nice little bit of cleavage from a girl coming up the stairs in a low-cut top, but that’s all you can really hope for. Me? I’m gonna get it all. Because cleavage-bearing weather is also flip-flop weather. Now you’ve probably never really noticed, never fully appreciated just how many women wear flip-flops in the warmer months if you don’t share my… enthusiasm. But pretty much all of them do.

  “And for me and those like me, looking at a woman in flip-flops is the equivalent of you checking out a woman showing off her cleavage. And again you’ve probably never noticed, but whenever girls are on campus be it outside studying under a tree or relaxing on a couch in the university center, there’s a high probability they’re going to just take off their flip-flops all together while they do it. Maybe even while they’re just sitting at their desks in class. And looking at the sole of a woman’s foot, for me that’s the equivalent of you getting to see a woman’s bare breasts. Only it’s even better for me, because women don’t realize this. A girl flashes you it’ll last for a few seconds. Stare at her cleavage too long and she’ll catch you. But since women don’t even know I’m looking, I can look as long as I want and they’ll never pick up on it.”

  Pausing for a breather, Chris takes another drink. One of the dancers, not Starry but an unusually tall Latin girl puts her hands on Seth’s shoulders. “Would you like a dollar dance?” she asks him.

  “No, thank you. I’m about to be on the receiving end of a tirade,” is his reply. I decline the offer by shaking my head and she’s off to the next table.

  “Yeah, that’s right mister two girls at once rock star. What I said before about women relaxing barefoot? I’ve also seen a girl kick off her flip-flops and lay her legs on another girl’s lap. Just together on a sofa in between classes. And the other girl took her friend’s feet and started to massage them. Now to them, they’re not doing anything sexual. But they certainly were to me. They may as well have been going down on each other, that’s what that was to me. And I was watching the whole thing, sitting in a chair a few feet away. And they never realized they were giving me a live sex show. Never knew.”

  “I’m in a local band, Chris,” says Seth. “I don’t bang cocktail waitresses two at a time. But it feels good to have someone to tell this to, doesn’t it? Not having to hide it anymore. Knowing you have friends who accept you anyway.” He glances at me. I glare back.

  “You know, it actually is a bit of a relief now that it’s a secret to everybody,” says Chris. “A weight has been lifted.”

  “Besides, it’s not like you’re a furry,” says Seth.

  “Hey, that’s not funny,” says Chris. “I’ve got a friend who’s a furry.”

  “You’ve got a friend who’s a furry?” I ask.

  “You’ve got a friend who’s a furry?” asks Seth. He shoos off another request for a dollar dance. Both dancers have asked him if he wants one before Chris and me. That’s why he got to be Wolverine, I suppose.

  “Yeah, a friend from back home,” says Chris. “Jimmy is his name. He’s been a furry since back when he was little. It’s a serious problem for him.”

>   “All right, let’s hear about Jimmy,” says Seth.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Let’s hear about Jimmy. Unless you think he’d mind.”

  “No. Jimmy, he’d be cool with me telling the story.” Chris takes another drink. “You guys remember Robin Hood? I’m talking about the Disney film version.”

  “Yeah, where Robin and Marian were foxes,” I say. “And it had the rooster who played the lyre as the narrator.”

  “No, he played the lute,” says Seth. “A lyre is more like a harp. But I see where this is going. Robin Hood and furries, only one way for it to go.”

  “Yeah, it goes down that path,” says Chris. “But it’s even worse than what you’re thinking. So Jimmy, when he was younger, he watched the Disney Robin Hood all the time. Favorite movie. Obsessed with it, even. Now Jimmy also had this cute babysitter, Katie. Katie lived down the street, was in high school. It was a textbook babysitter fantasy. You know how when you’re in junior high or high school and a friend’s got a hot mom that you fantasize about? She’d be a MILF. Well, to a twelve-year-old, a fifteen-year-old babysitter is the equivalent of a MILF. Katie was Jimmy’s BILF. Of course, he’s too young to actually want to have sex with her, so he just crushed on her, but you know, same principle at work.

  “And Katie watched Jimmy a lot. And when she watched him, he watched Robin Hood with her, pretty much every time. Since Jimmy was crushing on Katie, naturally he was delighted that his parents had plans to go to a costume party on Halloween and had asked Katie to take Jimmy trick-or-treating. She accepted. And as I said, the Disney Robin Hood was Jimmy’s favorite movie. And as you said, Robin and Marian were foxes in it. So naturally, Jimmy wanted to go as Robin Hood for Halloween. But not just Robin Hood. The anthropomorphic fox Robin Hood. So Jimmy’s parents, they get him some green tights and a fox tail and some fox ears so he can be the Disney Robin Hood for Halloween. Normal enough for a kid.

  “Now Katie’s taking Jimmy out for Halloween. And Jimmy’s crushing on Katie. And Katie’s a good sport, so she gets a pink Renaissance-type dress from the school drama club so she can go as Maid Marian along with Jimmy’s Robin Hood. But Jimmy wants her to wear a tail and some ears, too. And she does, because she’s a good sport. Now when Katie comes over to Jimmy’s house to take him trick-or-treating, and he sees her in her pink dress with a fox tail and fox ears, well, that was the very first time Jimmy ever got an erection. And it hits him. He was crushing on Katie, yeah. But what he really wanted all along was an anthropomorphic half-Katie, half-fox. Even back then, he knew. That Halloween was the best day of Jimmy’s life. He got to spend the evening with his dream fox-girl. Of course after that night Katie goes back to just being a girl. And that simply wasn’t enough for poor old Jimmy.