RUDIMENTS, pt. 188
Making Cars
One thing I learned - or was
told - almost immediately, at
the seminary, was to not be,
or not let myself become, what
was called a 'tendentious' person.
For a long time ever since, that's
been one of my most personal
problems - not the being or the
not being it, but more what they
could possible have meant. It
means like 'particularly biased
in favor of one point of view.'
No, I have very strong opinions,
and, yes, I get tendentious about
lots of things, but there are times
as well when I learn from the
opposition and sometimes find
that I've ended up at the point
where, having enough information
now, I conceivably could just as
well argue their position. That
doesn't really sound contentious
to me. But at the seminary, for
instance, or at any religiously
organized operation, I'd figure
that would and should be the
very last point of view they
should have. Their entire
mission is in being contentious
so as to credibly, and with
intensity, put across their
points of view. Ask any of
those Inquisition guys how
they enjoyed NOT being
contentious. Yeah, right. I
never saw any Father Joe or
Reverend Bob get up to argue
the other side.
-
It was, thus, just another confusing
issue to me - how people could live
with two levels of being like that.
Having to be fully committed and
yet remaining nice to everyone, in
that civil way needed to advance
your cause. That's a real downfall.
As a 'church,' because of being
non-tendentious, you end up with
bake sales and Bingo games. Rubbish.
-
I've had - getting back to that previous
chapter's Biker-bar crazy scene - lots
of experience with drunken people, and
have been one myself often enough back
then (listen folks, nowhere here have I
ever claimed 'sainthood' by the term
that's used). Contentious indeed : there
are certain people for whom alcohol
overload was as rocket-fuel to anger
and 'tendentiousness.' I've seen it
explode often enough, and right on
the launch pad too - knife fights,
arguments, fisticuffs - in the street or
not - stompings, wanton destruction of
property and limb. And the extreme of
guns and group violence too. It's a mess.
And at the other extreme you get the
people for whom alcohol acts as the
love medicine - they go around
slobbering and loving everyone, all
feel-goody and warm to the touch.
My favorite kind, although also the
most annoying. These ride-to Biker
bar scenes mostly always started out
good, and then, if you observed it
carefully, it began to deteriorate over
the course of a few drinking hours,
and you could usually smell trouble
brewing, (no pun), what was about
to happen, and because of and by,
whom. It was most often the same.
Some crossed-divide you knew was
coming - sometimes it was over a
female, other times over something
said or remembered, affiliations and
club stuff (that's when trouble sometimes
returned too, in bigger numbers). It was
all very funny, because there really
are people who live just on the other
side of the curtain that divides these
two places from each other. Five
beers and two shots later, they're
crashing through that curtain in a
New York minute.
-
There were a few times, because of
something that had transpired, that
there would be 6 or 8 of us, and
motorcycles, and sometimes passengers
too, taxed with the problem of getting
ourselves home, on two wheels, in
late-night traffic, in the dark, and all
quite whoozy. The nomenclature used
was 'recreational drunk driving.' On
two wheels. But, as I mentioned, if
something had gone on, and been
started, or broken out, we, or at least
me in the front of the group, had to keep
a wary eye out, maybe for the usual
tell-tale white club van, set out on
revenge or furtherance. It had been
known to happen, and was never
nice. Driven off the road, into
accident and danger, or just stopped,
so someone could be pulled out to
get whomped but good. It was all
geared to a very tribal, brutal, base
politics of no real sense at all.
Things had been known to happen.
Up and down the state, crossing
borders, or in other places too.
I'm not going to sit here and set
out to type incidental occurrences,
but my stories are legion : in the
tunnel, outside the tunnel, in front
of McSorley's, inside McSorley's,
Hogs, Swift's, Sidewalk Cafe, Puffy's
and Red Rocks too, and numerous
other places. Trouble was always
somewhere waiting. The kind of
stupid regime we were living was
a half-in, half-out sort of thing, like
NOT being tendentious, and trying
to please the nice side of things.
It was stupid, I admit, and I
often wonder how I'm still alive
- as I think of those around me
who no longer are. Oftentimes I
got away by the skin of my teeth.
-
Over the years I've watched a lot
of things decline - all the old guys
I used to see, around fire barrels and
hunching along the Bowery, they're all
gone now and that entire scene and
way of approaching life is gone. Replaced
now by sneaker people and kids with
Mickey Mouse watch-phones, or by
well-suited and rightly attired gents
who walk about as if their balls were
chafed. Decline is everywhere. All
the butcher guys, with their dangling
cigarette ashes falling down onto fine
cut meats, they too are all gone. Probably
the dead fathers of some of the juiced
nitwits I see. The charcoal guys and
the horse-wagon guys, their sheds and
their small stables on out of the way
west-side streets, liquor bottles on
the beams and rafters, they're all
finished and done. Even the old
taxi guys are a dead species of
memory; the new generation of
drivers-on-call are apt to be just
young, fancy punksters, or their
ladies, out in a leased Lexus working
for Uber. They talk and they sound
just like the rest of their stupid
culture. I think if I owned a
motorcycle today, I'd throw
it away. But that's just me, way
different now and just cursing out
one of my many lame, and variable,
past beings. All dead now.
(Don't be so tendentious, Gar).
(Don't be so tendentious, Gar).
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