11,450. RUDIMENTS, pt. 556

RUDIMENTS, pt. 556

('he'd give you the shirt off his back')

You know what's funny? How

I never get provoked. I've

been punched out, and

beat up too. It never much

bothered me. It's a pretty

useless endeavor to have to

witness some jerk popping

of on one's self. A lot of it, in

1968 had to do with Avenel.

Yep. Most every visit there

was some sort of problem;

besides having local police

Officer Crilly bag me nearly

every time I'd step off the

NY bus at the White Church

and start walking along Rahway

Avenue towards Avenel Street.

He'd stop me nearly every time

like I was some crowd-killing

terrorist secreting myself into

town. Where was I going?

Who knew I was here? How'd

I get here? An entire rash of

questions. Another time, at

the corner of Avenel Street

and Cornell, these two Rutgers

dweebs in their little MG with

the top down, see me. They'd

ground to a halt, backed up a

bit, parked the car and hopped

out and and began pounding

on me.  Long hair mother-fucking

faggot. I wasn't that at all, well,

the faggot part, but I did want

to get up and say, 'Yeah, you

fella's are right; but, by the

way, I've been doing both of

your mothers. Quite nicely too.'

Then they ran off, once I hit

the dirt. Another time, down

in Hazlet, at Airport Plaza, in

those same late 60's years, the

guy I'm with (he's driving),

and his sister, they pull into

a Wetson's Hamburger joint,

and they go inside to get some

food-to-go. I'm sitting there,

in the passenger seat, just

waiting, and Bam! two creeps

flip open the rear door, and that

quickly, grab my head, from

behind the seat (before there

were headrests) and pin my

head backward while they

start pummeling my face. It

was hopeless. Fortunately,

the other two came back

out, and the guys ran off,

screaming in their inimitable,

shore-points, monkey accent

about how the next time they

saw me, if and when, I'd not

be left alive. Bastard creeps;

jumped into their Mommy's

Mercury and sped off.

-

It's a wonder I'm not a crazed,

mass killer by now. I think I've

mentioned that before. There

were other incidents too, but

I won't bore you with the early

days stuff. I never lost a tooth,

nor did I actually get, ever, a

broken nose, though it may

look as if I did  -  but that's

where I made all my money,

as a sparring partner for

Muhammed Ali. What was

even worse, thirty years later,

was how even my own kind,

in the nineties, were beating

on me. Biker-to-Biker shit.

What a crock. 'You can't come

here because we own this part

of Jersey,' or 'you're with the

other guys,' or 'this is for

showing me up last Sunday.'

Yep, got all that crap too,

kicked when down, punched

in the head, flattened. I can

name every place and person.

One time my head was bleeding

like a gusher and I was left in

Hoboken. Had to get myself

back in a hurry to Woodbridge,

to a bar then named Oliver's.

We used it as a way station, and

telephone notice had me to be

met there by two friends for

Biker First Aid. Which mostly

meant ice, beer, rags, and soap.

I lived. Another time, some

homo biker from a trailer court

down Monmouth way who was

living in a pine grove camp with

a fellow 1967 Woodbridge High
School babe I remembered, bagged
me. (She came to me, all friendly 
like; he'd used her as my sucker

 bait). We said hi, then got to

talking about the old days, etc.

They invited me back to their

trailer abode for some food.

Little did I know, fool-ass that

I was, that it was right into an

ambush. I had a NY Club support

shirt on and this guy was with

some Jersey shore/Asbury bunch

of 'others.' The funny thing was,

I usually never went anywhere

alone, for just these reasons, but

that day I had. It gets pretty bad

when Bikers act like fashion

police too, but that shirt did

me in. They had dimed me 
out. Twenty minutes later, this

huge guy shows up, going by

the name 'Tiny'  -  really  -  and 

surprise-takes me down, tears the 

shirt off me,  and gives me a tee 

shirt to wear home. I didn't

even resist, just rolled over again

and took the wallop. 'Well fuck me 

dead,' was my initial thought, 'Here 

I go again. Can you imagine being

suckered and schmucked because

of the shirt you're wearing? Truly, 

there aren't any friends in a 

friendless world. You can always

get away from trouble. I shouldn't

really say that, because in

Manville once another friend,

with club affiliation, shot and

killed a guy across the bar from

him, for the very same reason.

The poor guy was simply out

on a date with his girlfriend, but

I guess he sure wore the wrong

shirt. The assailant here, a

Biker dude, believe it or not,

from Westfield, is still doing

time. I never knew what kind

of fantasy life would take

all this crap serious, but you

could die from it.

-

It's often been said that

ignorance is bliss  -  it's

not though. Ignorance is

ignorance. One of the

problems is that no one

ever gets called out; there's

no real accountability. Guys

can skip along for years,

picking the public purse,

telling lies through their

teeth. They just keep on

running. It takes a Biker,

I guess, in one respect, to

point out to others what

accountability really is.

-

There might not be much to

say for that, or that might be

a lot. Depends on your

perspective. Like when I

was in NYC, all these people

running from the Army, on

their high-tailing way to

Canada and all that. I used

to wonder what sort of effort

that fleeing was, really. Was

it a bona fide effort, instead

to just take care of your own

ass? I thought it was. These

kids were scared. No ideology

involved. If it was coercive

orange-picking they were

fleeing from, it would have

been the same thing to them.

I just never saw the sort of

commitment and anger that

there should have been  - 

about killing people and

pushing one's way into

another culture and tradition

and all that. Whatever the

Vietnam war meant, it was

more than like shirt stuff, and

no one really treated it any

differently than that. The 11th

street bomb factory, a year

or so later, that was a little

different, but it too was

basically just rich-kids

on some self-ordained

righteousness mission. I

never knew what Kathy

Boudin had going anyway,

ideologically. It was more

about pizazz, money, and

style. And anyway, blowing

up a nice townhouse, even

accidentally, was more a real

estate crime to me. Any

expendable people who

got killed, well, that was

always their patterned risk.

It came as a shocker. Nails.

Gunpowder. And Percussion.

-

That was the trouble back than;

America was consuming its own.

That negated the entire past  -

any promise or hope of goodness

or achievement was frittered away

and wasted in the muck and mire

of dead brains and people turned

into zombies. One time I went out

to JFK Airport, in the dead-cold

of a deep January, to pick up a

friend whose enlistment time

was up and was returning from 

a tour in Vietnam as a Medic.

The car, my '57 Jaguar, had no

real heat to speak of, or nothing

really adequate anyway, and 

this guy got in after waiting out 

in the cold for me - who'd gotten

lost for a good hour in that endless

shit-maze of traffic out there

by the airport. He got in the car

expecting all the comforts of 

home. Warmth, and probably

hot cocoa too. When he realized

the car had little or no heat, and

his frozen state would pretty

much remain all that way back

to Minna Ave, he freaked. And

then, when he told me that instead

of being done he was only home

for a little furlough, because he'd

re-enlisted, it was my turn to

howl. 'You jerk! What the hell

were you thinking?' Truly, I felt

like rolling down all the electric

windows (except they probably 

wouldn't have worked either) and

freezing his too-used-to-the-tropics-

warmth ass. But, I just let it go. It

was like a Biker with a guy in the

next seat wearing the wrong 

('Army') shirt. I shoulda' beat 

him. He'd wanted to become a

brain surgeon all the time I'd

known him. He went to Upsala

College, when that was still around,

and all it ever got him was the

crummy fake title of 'Doc' in

the field Army as a medic. His

stories were grand and magnificent,

but our strange ideologies were

suddenly in deep clash.