Last week the mangled body of 16 year old Wayne Wibtoft was recovered by paramedics from the lion enclosure at Los Angeles Zoo, California. Wibtoft had scaled the 20ft fence surrounding the enclosure and tried to embrace Zorro, a ten year old male Asiatic lion. Zorro had bitten off both the teen's arms at the elbow and one of his feet. Wibtoft's ears were also missing - although one was later recovered from the penguin pool after having been dropped there by a robin. Paramedics noted that Wibtoft was wearing a t-shirt bearing a logo for controversial punk band White Diarrhoea. The t-shirt was promoting the band's new single:
Hug a Lion.
"So a kid imitated the song. He was an idiot!" says White Diarrhoea's frontman and principal songwriter, Stanis Dunkeld, lounging on a sunbed on the patio of his modernist home on Mulholland Drive. He leans over and spits into his swimming pool before lighting another cigarette. His pool cleaner, a young Hispanic man, lets out a sigh and skims the spittle off the surface of the water with a long-handled net. "It's a big fucken country out there, man," Dunkeld continues. "I have to get grief every time some Looney Toon decides to act out my lyrics? Fuck that."
White Diarrhoea were America's biggest grossing alternative act of last year. Formed in Austin, Texas in 1999, they rapidly acquired a cult following for their outrageous stage antics and tasteless lyrics. Despite numerous line-up changes, the band's core of Stanis on guitar and vocals, and his brother Pebbler on bass has remained consistent over the years - as has the Dunkeld brothers' love of gambling.
"Shoot, we'd bet on just about anything," says Pebbler Dunkeld in his pleasant Texan twang. He is older and balder than his brother and considerably more reserved. "Time was when we were itty bitty kids we'd sneak into our parent's bedroom in the middle of the night and bet on which one would fart first in their sleep!" They laugh.
"Then I took to slippin' laxatives in momma's coffee in the evenin' to kinda fix things in my favour," says Stanis, grinning evilly. "Put in way too much one night and she damn near fucken drowned my pa in shit!" The two brothers laugh raucously. Stanis spits into the pool again.
#
I log on anonymously to a White Diarrhoea chatroom on the Internet to try to discover their fan's reactions to Wibtoft's death. A person calling themselves RudeLizard tells me they know the full story of what really happened. We arrange to meet at a diner on Hollywood Boulevard.
She is thin nearly to the point of emaciation, her hollow eyes made even more cavernous by thick black eyeliner. Her hair is the colour of blood and she's been pierced more times that Saint Sebastian. When she talks, it's like every sentence ends in a question mark.
"OK, I like knew Wayne Wibtoft from my school? He was like totally such a fan of White Diarrhoea? He entered this radio competition where you had to name as many of their songs as possible in like 30 seconds or something? He totally won it? He named like a hundred songs or something? Got to meet the band? Spend the weekend with them? He was like totally fucken stoked? And the weird thing was, the band all liked him?"
The girl calling herself RudeLizard beckons me outside and leans against the wall of the diner. She takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights one, exhaling the smoke hurriedly, as if it might contain calories.
"He told us about it? Everyone at school? He like started spending time with them? The band would say he was their greatest fan and give him drink and pot and stuff? Invite him over to their parties to meet other musicians and people? Wayne said he was like their mascot or something? Like they adopted him?"
"Did you believe him?"
"He showed us photos and stuff and it all looked real? 'Cept this one girl called Angelique at school? Wayne was like totally sweet on her? She said he was fakin' it all. That drove him nuts?"
"What did he do when he was with the band?"
"General rock'n'roll shit, I guess? He said they would get him to sing their songs and then act them out? Like they have this one song
Fuck The Sofa? They get Wayne all high and tell him to sing the song and then act it out? They like totally made him fuck this sofa at a party in front of loads of people? Like, how fucken fucked up is that?"
"You think the band told him personally to climb into the lion's enclosure?"
"I'm like fucken certain of it and stuff?" says RudeLizard.
#
I confront Pebbler alone with this information at his Santa Monica beach apartment the next day. He laughs and blusters, calling Wibtoft a "clueless fanboy fuck," but refuses to meet my eye. I take out a photo taken at Wayne Wibtoft's autopsy showing the grisly extent of the boy's injuries and slap it down on the kitchen counter. Pebbler stares at it in silence for a good five or six seconds and then his large bottom lip begins to quiver.
"It was a bet, wasn't it?" I say.
"It was Stanis's idea," says Pebbler quietly, turning away from the picture. "He claimed he could make the kid do anythin' and he wagered me a quarter million bucks he could get Wayne to hug a lion, like in our new song."
"But why would Wayne agree to do it?"
"The kid kept asking us to turn up at his high school 'coz there was this chick there he wanted to impress. We'd never fucken do that in a month of Sundays, man, but Stanis used to promise Wayne we would only if Wayne would do loads of funny fucked up shit for our entertainment. He used to dangle that promise over the kid, tantalising the poor little fuck. So Stanis tells Wayne the band'll play at his Senior Prom if Wayne hugs a fucken lion in the zoo and takes a picture on his camera phone."
"So you lost the bet - and Wayne lost his life? You must feel pretty bad."
"Not really," says Pebble. "I get half the song writing royalties for
Hug a Lion. The extra publicity Wayne's death has given us will push the single into the top fucken five. I'm gonna buy a fucken Porsche."
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