RUDIMENTS, pt. 450
(homing in again : iselin tabloids)
I was never surreptitious
anything : all that I did by
the time of this long demise
of Iselin, of which I've been
speaking, was done out in the
open. I don't know quite how
it all happened, but there came
a time when I couldn't pee and
not have someone at my elbow.
It's really not that much fun to
have to do everything and go
everywhere with 14 others.
Even though I always enjoyed it
all, and all my friends were great,
it wore me down sometimes to
have to be tending to every
little thing. I was a pretty hard,
fearless (and stupid) rider, and
my friend Neil scolded me more
than once about having to stop
the shit, the cutting lanes fast,
the breaking between cars, the
slipstreaming, because others
would follow my lead, not quite
as skillfully, and the penalties
would be deadly mistakes. (Yeah,
motorcycles are very unforgiving).
I'd have another beer and say,
'Yep, Neil, you're right. I promise
I'll stop tomorrow.' Another
friend of mine (worse than me
anyway), swore I'd be dead in
two years. Ain't dead yet, but
I'm getting there, I suppose.
I had, over periods of time,
two distinct motorcycle/biker
headquarters. The first period
was the Pioneer and Iselin. It
just so happened that at that
time the changeover was
underway and soon enough,
maybe after two years,
everyone bailed on the
Indo-influx (certainly
not friendly to the Biker
element and heavy too with
police presence). At this time
I had two friends in Sewaren
(transplanted back from
Minnesota) who occasionally
took their drinking nights
to an old man's bar they'd
found : The Maple Tree. I
made friends with the owner
some, got in tune with the place,
and within a year most all of
our action had moved there.
No police presence, out of the
way, a regular snaggle-toothed
place where we were left to be.
It worked, and for a long time.
I'm sure we extended the life
of the place 7 or 8 years. In
fact, I'd bet blood on it.
-
In any case, just before that
Maple Tree biker era began,
we had some unfinished business
with Iselin. There were a lot of
things happening, like a new
brood-clutch of hatchlings or
something cluttering up the
old farmyard. Before my final
days of - as I said - Hank's,
Flip's, and the Pioneer, there'd
been a few other, even crazier,
old days places, like this one
called Jack's. I can't tell you
anything of it, because I'd
not experienced it except to
say that Iselin had never been
bush-league in the tough and
nasty department, and neither
was Jack's. OK. In the Pioneer
parking lot, one was most apt to
find anything going on. Late night
extravaganzas were something to
see : how about stumbling outside
for an air break and being greeted
by a friend's ass-cheeks squished
inside the car window as, it always
turned out, some little dish quivered
beneath him. The Pioneer was run
by a Polish guy named Stanley.
Nice enough guy but always on
a row about something or other,
and always barring one friend or
another for 30 days or 6 months,
or forever, for something or other.
It was a joke, pretty much. It
wasn't as if we were gunslingers
taking target practice (besides,
we usually dropped so much
money in that place buying
his crummy beer that we
couldn't hit a horse barn
from ten feet off). The joke
around in the biker world
was to be sure that, on a
job application, when it
asked for 'Hobbies' you
put 'Recreational Drunk
Driving' as yours. The Pioneer
had a little package-goods
front door section, with
lottery stuff too, and
anyone who came in
there was usually afraid
to venture any further in,
to the loud and raucous
bar area. They'd buy their
six-pack and skedaddle.
With all that, maybe he lost
as much business as he
gained. Don't know. I can
say, though, that once the
Indians began coming in as
a local influx, things changed
rather quickly and a sense of
hostility got pretty high. At first
they never drank, and then, soon
enough we'd begin to be seeing
Indian business types lurking,
watching things carefully, and
you knew they were figuring,
in their little Hindi-Heads what
sort of profit and loss statement
they could garner out of feeding
these stupid American white-boy
Bikers their requisite foods and
beers. To excess. They began,
slowly, buying everything up.
It was curtains - sweet shops
and diners folded, reappearing
in six months as 'Asaluma's
Chaat house' or 'Marjana Pizza,'
or any crazy crap you could think
up. Bangalore Saris and Mubamo's
Indian Foods and the rest all
began slamming in. The gas
stations and bars, grease pits
and repair shops, motorcycle
tenements, all those places we
white dudes hung at, and
revved, and burned out from.
G-o-n-e. In a year it seemed
the crowd on the street was
all new and all foreign. As
it was back in the 1950's, when
the Greenwich Village Italians
hated the influx of all those
'fag, weird beatniks,' there'd
be conflicts. Fights. Screaming
matches. A lot of those Iselin
guys viciously hated what had
happened to their town. Green
Street soon became a real
problem.
-
There's a certain level of good
thuggishness that you should
never let go of (if you have it
to begin with. If you don't have
it, please don't try and fake it).
It's the mark of a man, outdated
and coarse as that seems. The
whole of society now has been
feminized to death. I have long
hair and a beard, and the geeks
are always trying to send me
up on conditioners for beards
and hair follicles. Like I was
some kind of freaking Breck
girl from way back. Or they
want to sell me 175 dollar
shirts with no tails, or madras
that runs. Please no please.
Get lost and get real. These
Indian dudes, from what I
saw, possessed a lot of that
as an inherent quality. It
didn't work in this land. As
a quality, generally, one
should stick intuitively to
what one came with. Know
Thyself, and all that.
-
Here in apple-limbo land
things had to remain different.
We were sure we could outlast
this new rabble. We were wrong.
Most of the biker dudes, in any
case, couldn't see any difference
between a Muslim and a Hindu
anyway. No matter to them.
They took to calling the place,
instead of Iselin, Islam. Even
though it wasn't at all. They'd
nailed it in their mind. It should
have, maybe, if anything, been
Hindilam. If you're going to
get something that basic so
wrong, it was a fair bet the
rest of the equation was
screwed up too. Oh well.
Like that wrong way football
guy; the touchdown was
made, but for the other
team. One time, just to
mess with everyone's head,
I made up a batch of 10 dollar
tee shirts, black, with my own
pathetic markings on them -
Yes, the words Islam, NJ,
a crescent and a moon, with
as I recall a scimitar too. They
sold like hotcakes, and I'd see
people around, wearing them.
It was all very cool. We showed
them bums, we surely did.
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