10,551, RUDIMENTS, pt. 232

RUDIMENTS, pt. 232

Making Cars

I never had an alias, presumed name,

nom de guerre, or any of that stuff.

That was all more like wartime and

the self-importance given to 'will'

oneself over to someplace where you

wished to be or be seen as. I was

always more or less just class-B

junk, and OK with being that. It

took the pressure off. I used to

have to listen to the otherwise

miserable takes and stories of all

the high-achievers  -  which also

somehow got to include (by his

invasive and false self-inclusion)

my crazy friend Fred : early entry

into Harvard, high-attainment on

this or that test, connections to

elevated-status people who'd clear

the way. It was all frivolous and

all BS too. He ended up with his

story line of being in Boston Univ.,

or as he colloquially referred to it

as 'B.U.', where the elite hung out.

I ended up not knowing anything

real about it, because it was all

bunk. Even his crime stories and

supposed sting in Rahway Prison

I ended up doubting. His mother

used to beg me to watch out for

him. We lost each other somewhere

along the line, and that entire

family ended up in Las Vegas.

They're all dead now, except for

Fred. I guess he's OK.

-

I knew any number of Biker guys

who really did do the prison scene.

Ugly stuff  -  the crimes that did

them in involved everything  -  drugs,

murder, high-speed, organized crime,

interstate transport, trafficking, etc.

Biker club stuff and they didn't care;

they had fronts for lots of things  -

van delivery companies, go-go bars,

girls, (and then later, the go-go bars

were elevated into 'Gentleman's Clubs.'

Which meant supposedly an entry fee

at the door (private club, allows for

more), totally nudity of thee girls and

hostesses, varied arrays of back-room

shenanigans  -  again for pay  -  and

(also supposedly) NO alcohol. The state

somehow makes the (to them, logical,

I guess) conclusion that sexual

exploitation WITH alcohol is OK if

the girls are scantily clad, (that's a

go-go bar), but if the girls are

completely disrobed , instead of

g-strings and bras (right, yeah),

AND an entry fee is charged at the

door, ALCOHOL cannot be served.

OK, that works  -  a bunch of ginger-

faced droolers drinking Sprite, Coke,

and Ginger Ale. Hey? Wanna' buy a

bridge to Brooklyn? It's all about

payoffs and corruption in your local

municipality. That's where the Biker

world sometimes got very weird.

-

Half the time anyway what people

called me I never dd understand. When

I was growing up, you just did your

growing up stuff  -  fights, mistakes,

injuries, odd habits,  and let it go

at that. You were what you were. But

now, every little quirk of a kid's act

has a syndrome, a name, a drug, and

a school diagnosis. I've been called,

once or twice, an idiot savant. No

freaking idea what that means, but

it had the word idiot in it, so I never

liked it, thanks. I've been herded in

with the bi-polar crowd, the autistic

crowd, the obsessive-compulsive

crowd. Each crowd has a different

dance, and none of them did I like.

It was all like doing the polka with

a broom handle up your butt, and

someone always pushing it. What

was the use of that? I just got away,

moved away from it. I've never had

any prescribed pills and medications.

That stuff just wasn't around. What

really used to piss me off was the

apparent attitudes of, like, teachers

and school people  -  obviously they

were mis-diagnosed. They were the

ones who were obsessive about

being compulsive, demanding that

something is this way and this way

only. Strange behavior for people

considered wise. Same with church;

same with recreation groups, and

even family stuff. What the hell was

ever up I never knew. People would

rip down hundreds of acres of nice

woods and trees, denude and ruin

everything, put up 50 or 100 houses,

and then go around extolling it all,

nay, making money off of it, and then

begin preaching, in the front of a

classroom how you're supposed to

be re-cycling, conserving, going

easy on the chemicals and landscape,

use less power, remain frugal. Etc.

I ask you  -  who's the jerk around

here? And who's obsessively lying

and despoiling everything. That

includes parents, actually. They

should be the ones teaching their

kids revolution and personal

insurrection. Instead, everyone's

preaching 'murder, mayhem,

death, and violence,' as a real,

bona-fide career choice.

-

So, anyway, all it ever came across

to me as was a big hole. A hole

I neither wished to fall in nor stick

any part of myself in either. I had a

no-compromise attitude, but I kept

it pretty easy  -  even keel, cloak

of invisibility and reason. That's

probably why I went nuts  -  it's a

bad way to live. You can't repress,

can't always keep it all in. The

trouble is, society works against

you, and the things that need to be

said about things never get said.

Here's a for instance, right now  -

you tell me, you go ahead and

count them, all this Hollywood

and entertainment and corporate

and political sexual deviance and

exploitation stuff, you tell me

how many of those last names

aren't Jewish. Just go ahead. It's

never mentioned, never touched

on (no pun), never even brought up.

Why? Because no one has the balls

to stand up to the entrenchments

and call things out for what they

are. Because you'd simply get

slaughtered, media-wise, because

the very same people doing the

complaining are the same sorts

of people who are first to the

barricades of protesting about 

anti-Semitism or common

political  incorrectness. I don't

know where any of it ends. I

guess the self-destruction of

society and culture actually IS

the desired end, because they're

all well on their way to that now.

-

You remember how, in the previous

chapter, I mentioned the jumping

clock hands and how I used that

concept as a means of diving in

to the spaces created, the inner and

cosmic gaps it all represented, to

begin writing and filling that

space with details and facts

and situations? I meant it. I

enjoyed the details, and they came

easy to me. It became a way

of writing that I worked on, over

and over, endlessly. That, with

the added companionship of

'Art'  -  which basically allowed 

me to do the same thing with line 

and color and content, in a different,

abstracted (meaning WITHOUT 

words), less linear way than even

writing was. It was like a fine,

double-barreled shotgun of a

large caliber  -  in my hands and

which I controlled. Mischievously

touching; tenderly adroit. Like

watching the condemned man,

on his last walk to the scaffold,

avoiding the puddle before him,

and climbing the scaffold, after

being blindfolded for the drop,

putting his hands behind his neck,

and pulling to adjust the blindfold's

knot, where it was just a bit too

uncomfortably, tight.  You notice 

stuff like that and realize even a 

condemned man, at his very last 

moments, has a common and

simple human impulse. Those

things are details, the details

of being alive. And still one

other thing I noticed - in reading

the Bible, there's no detail. There's

no description of anything, just the

jump-act of activity : Most detail, 

if it's there, is functional or symbolic.

Ancient storytellers seemed to have

no pressure to invoke a lifelike passing

of 'real' time. Their time, too, passes

jerkily, swiftly. I figured it was part

of the plan they rope you with,

nothing being what it seems. First

they say Time is continuous, and then,

 just when you settle in, they lock you

up against your wishes, in a crummy

school, and hit you with a jumping

clock. Nothing is ever what you've

been told. If the self, as it turns  out,

is a fictional character (parented by

life and written by ourselves), it's all

ours to make  -  and you make it,

I surmised, by filling in those 

(equally fictional) gaps...with 

things and with details.