I was building lobster traps for
a living, circa 1992, '93, in York, Maine, when I was 33, 34 years
old. I was extremely good at
building these traps, which were primarily constructed of
vinyl-coated wire mesh. I was literally the fastest trap-builder in
the world, setting and breaking my own records on a regular basis. I
could do a trap start-to-finish in 6 minutes or less, avg., for 8
hrs. a day. When I first started building, it took 8, 9 minutes
apiece, but I got on an adrenalin-fueled level, I reached and
surpassed the 7-minute-per-trap ideal – which I had been assured
was possible, for my boss had seen it done by an expert. Without the
adrenalin infusion, it was not possible. One had to go crazy
to build a trap in 7 minutes
flat. Once I caught that revelation,
I went into orbit. The best my boss had ever actually seen done at
the place I worked, was 25 traps in one 8-hour period, accomplished
by a 2-man team that included my boss himself and a helper. That was
the standing record for a day's work, when I started. Soon, though, I
hit 25, then 30, 35, 40 traps per day, alone. Then 50. For quite a
while, my record stood at 61 – just like Roger Maris, whose
home-run record inspired me to hit that number one day. Eventually, I
developed carpal tunnel in both wrists, from the ridiculously
over-the-top pace, working with hand tools and lots of bending,
twisting, etc.. I had to quit this line of work in fact, because of
the carpal tunnel syndrome. My last day, though, I decided to set a
record sure to stand forever – and I'm confident that it has. That
day, the last time I ever built a lobster trap, I singlehandedly
built 73 of 'em. Top
that, Superman!
Chris
Boyle told me that, shortly after this, he would be sitting at home
with his wife, watching TV, when suddenly he would explode into
laughter at the memory Rory's boom-box and me.
Anecdote #3:
Scott, Eric, the Gun and the Shopping Cart
I save for
later the full story of the first time I got high on pot, but this
adventure is connected to that. The part you need to know now is that
I'd hurt my testicles badly in a fall on a trampoline, and the two
guys that got me so high and who were with me when I got hurt, had
laughed at me – a lot – and mocked me while I was crawling
around, crippled with agony. I had vowed I would get them, and once I
was back on my feet, they'd fled from me on their bicycles {I was in
no shape to ride mine}, still laughing at me.
The next
evening – though I was still hurting, and would be for a week – I
went on the hunt for them. They were easy to find, the two of them –
Eric and Scott – in Scott's apartment, the usual hangout. He lived
there with his mother – we were all 16 years old – but she worked
nights, and wasn't home. Just Scott and Eric were there when I
knocked. His apartment was on an end of an apartment building, ground
floor – which was actually a few feet below ground level,
and featured a nice, large picture window, starting at just about
ground level, about 6 feet wide, and rising about 4 feet.
The guys knew
I was gunning for them, and they were very much afraid of me. When I
knocked, they probably figured I knew they were there – most
likely, I'd already seen them through the window – so they didn't
try to hide. Scott cracked open the door, but with the chain-lock
across the opening, as though that little chain could hold me out. I
demanded that he let me in {so I could kick their asses}, but he
wouldn't – so, not prone to haggling, I simply kicked the door
open, the little chain bursting like a bubble.
Scott
immediately went into hysterics of fear, and dashed away into a
corner of the living room and sat down, trembling. Now I was faced
with Eric, who stood there – holding a handgun on me. This was
different – and, yes, it gave me pause. I remember looking at the
barrel, that black hole in the center, where a bullet might come
exploding out – I wasn't sure if it was a trick, or what; but it
did stop me in my tracks, at least for the moment.
“This is a
.38,” Eric warned me, in a nervous voice, with as much authority as
he could muster, which was meager. I kept staring at that gun, near
his waist, pointed right at me. This all depended on whether that gun
was real, or if it wasn't – whether it was a real threat or a hoax.
Both our lives seemed to hinge on that question! I h ad my
suspicions – and if I'd been paying more attention around my father
with all of his handguns and books on guns, I would have had more
intel to go on. I couldn't be sure about Eric's “.38” – nor,
then, could I gamble on maybe getting shot. I knew that if the gun
was real, he would shoot me, to keep from the beating I was
here to give him and Scott. Still, though,
he kept backing up – slowly, gradually, but surely, he was
retreating from me as I negotiated with him, trying to talk him into
putting the gun away. Of course, I lied a lot, assuring him that I
would not beat him up, and repeating that I wouldn't
hurt him or Scott, but I just really wanted him to put the gun
down before we could just talk. Soon, he had backed up through
the kitchen where the door was, down a short hallway and into a back
bedroom, which door had been open as he back-stepped bit by bit,
maintaining a steady distance from me {of about 6 – 8 feet} as I
kept crowding him, urging him to put the gun down.
Finally, able
to retreat no farther and deciding to believe – or at least hope
– that I was telling the truth about not hurting him, Eric set
the gun down on the bed behind him, and, repeating his agreement that
now we could get together and just have a chat, he began to walk past
me toward the living room, where Scott say very quietly, shitting
bricks and smoking a cigarette.
The fool!
Now I had the fucker. I let him get just past me, before I lit
into him – that way, he'd have to go through me to get back to that
gun. I gave him a pretty good beating, making sure to kick his balls
sufficiently to remind him of his laughing at me when I hurt my own
last night. Yes – I kicked his balls good. I figured he'd be out of
commission for a couple of days by the time I was through with him,
then I went straight to Scott, still seated on the deep, comfy chair.
He immediately went into his
hysterical-unintelligible-ranting/pleading/crying routine again {a
defense mechanism – like a skunk's stench}, with his arms up. I
brushed them aside and delivered three powerful, downward punches to
his balls. Then I beat him up a little bit, but his loud,
pathetic pleading probably did shorten the attack.
Then I went
and got the gun, and walked out with it, as the two of them moaned
and writhed in their injuries. Outside, I pointed it at the ground
and fired it – it did seem real. Click. Nothing in it –
and obviously a very small caliber, I could tell – I had fired
enough of my father's handguns to know that – like a .22.
Pissed at having been bluffed with that, I carried it back inside,
and hurled it hard in a backhand motion, from the kitchen, across the
living room where it thudded into the plaster wall near the corner,
gouging the wall deeply, messing that up pretty good, too. Then I
left again – they were still moaning, sobbing, all curled up in
agony.
As I walked
past the apartment outside, still in a fury, I came to a shopping
cart from the department store nearby, just standing there all alone.
I seized it, yanked it over close to Scott's apartment, picked it up,
and threw it right through his picture window.
Yaaaaaaa.
Now, that settles that.
Epilogue: It
was a pellet gun, and they were both up and walking around again the
next day. They didn't “tell on me”, Scott didn't tell his mother
who trashed her apartment. I wasn't worried about it. I rarely
worried about any of the crazy stuff I did. I did what I had to do.
That was all. Why worry? Hey, we were
sixteen – what could
happen?
Close Calls
Close Call #1 The Live Wire
I don't know
whether a live wire that breaks loose from a utility pole shooting
sparks will hurt you if it falls onto a car you're in, but around
1981, at the age of 21, I figured it would. So did the other two
occupants of the car in which I was riding.
David Patstone
was driving, a nice '70 Buick, I think it was, which he'd had painted
black very professionally, costing him in the thousands. His older
brother Kevin was in the passenger seat in front, and I was in the
back seat by myself. The three of us did lots of drugs, drinking and
general carousing together. Kevin was my age, and we'd been friends
since we met in school in freshman year of high school. The Patstones
lived in Kittery, as I did. Dave was two or three years younger than
Kevin, and was merely a kid when Kevin and I started hanging out
together when we were 13 or 14. {I could write about the Patstone
family and my times with them for a long time.}
David, as he
matured, excelled Kevin and I in a couple of ways. He made good
money, an had fabulous drug connections. He had become our dealer,
and now we were in his car swooping through the streets of
Kittery heading toward Sanford, Maine, to visit a drug connection of
Dave's – a dark-minded, strange and rather menacing figure I'll
call Roger {because that was his name}. He was into serious coke,
hallucinogens, weed, and very much into the black arts.
On this
particular night, as we started down a small hill in Kittery, just
ahead of us – say, fifty feet ahead – a giant flash occurred, at
a transformer or something, bringing loud exclamations from David and
Kevin, as the line blew up and flew off the pole, in a hail of
fireworks, just as we passed beneath.
As I looked
straight up through the rear windshield of the Buick from my vantage
point in the back seat, all was aglow with the fiery explosion, and
the spark-shooting wire was dropping right down onto us. It missed us
by inches as Dave stomped on the accelerator, and as we cried out in
horror and looked back, the line was shooting sparks all over the
road. It just missed us.
I've never
forgotten looking straight up into that blinding flash as the wire
dropped, headed right at us. That was a shake-up, and left us
all mind-blown. Just missed us!
Close Call #2 The Giant Shade & the Crushed Turnstiles
During one of
the few and brief periods of my adulthood when I've been “single”,
I met a woman on the telephone, via a Personals ad in a local
newspaper. This was, I'd say, 1996, probably springtime, but I'm not
sure.
I've never
liked hockey, but this woman suggested that our initial meeting be at
a UNH hockey game, because someone had given her free tickets – and
neither she nor I had much money. So, we met at UNH, and attended the
game together. I have no idea what this woman's name was, for we
never got together again. As I recall, she was a health nut, and I,
an avid smoker, had little in common with her.
When the game
would have normally been over, according to the clock, the game was
tied, so they said there'd be overtime, after a break. I was dying
for a cigarette, so I went out to smoke one during the break, while
my date stayed inside with just about everyone else. I went out the
way I'd come in, through the turnstiles and out the big glass doors.
Just as I stepped out through the door, there was an enormous,
shocking SMASH right behind me – about three feet away. I looked
where I had just stepped through the turnstiles inside the
door, and the turnstiles were demolished. A huge cylindrical object,
about twenty, twenty-five feet long and three feet in diameter, had
fallen from above – missing me by about one second. It
turned out to be a giant, rolled up window shade, weighing probably
around a ton. I saw the steel turnstiles it crushed.
A woman who
had exited just ahead of me, who had already had time to get her
cigarette lit, casually remarked, seeing how stunned I was that the
thing had just missed me, “Boy, can you imagine that – you
get killed just trying to have a cigarette.” It happened so fast
and was such a shock, the real “Holy shit!” kicked in only
later. At the moment, I smoked my cigarette and watched a whole team
of employees rush to the scene, and at least a dozen men hoisted the
giant log up off the smashed turnstiles, and away from the
entrance/exit area. Minutes later when overtime ended and the game
was over, thousands of people were heading through that area. Had the
game ended at the regular time, people would have been killed, others
gravely injured. As it was, about a one-second lag in my timing would
have probably meant my death.
I've heard
people say, “If I went to church, the roof would fall in.” Now I
know what happens when I go to a hockey game. I won't
do that again.
Afterword:
This was at the Whittemore Center {University of New Hampshire},
which had been open to the public for only a year or two at the time.
I heard later that they had had some serious mishap there, such as
falling bleachers, in which people had been injured and killed. The
one that nearly killed me, however, got by unreported – since I
lived. Had that hockey game ended on time, this would have been
headline news. The wife from whom I was separated at the time {we
later got back together for a few years} would no doubt have gotten
some satisfaction from the fact that I was killed the first time I
went out with another woman, I think.
Close Call #3 Black Jack
The first time
I ever really “did drugs” – other than pot and beer – was on
July 4th or 5th of 1977. I think it was the
4th.
I
had turned 18 on July 3. I was arrested that night – not taken to
jail, but placed in a cruiser and issued a summons, for drinking in
public. What happened there, while I'm at it, was that my friend
Kevin Patstone and I were hanging around drinking beer on a sidewalk
at Long Sands Beach, in York, Maine, close to Kittery where we lived.
We had joined a group of other teens who were also drinking. When the
last beer was gone, I – who never knew the word, “enough” –
begged and borrowed and scraped up enough change to buy one more
beer. I did so, and merrily returned to my party on the beach
near the sidewalk. It was my 18th birthday, but
actually it was no official party, of course, just hooligans hanging
out. Just about the time I took my first swallow of that hard-won
last beer, the cops showed up – three or four of them approached us
on foot. I don't know if we didn't see them coming, or whether we
basically froze when they showed up, or what. Hey, I was 18 now –
the legal drinking age at the time. The cops kinda surrounded us, on
the sand at the uppermost beach area where we were, close to the
sidewalk along Long Sands Road. One of the cops told me to dump out
my beer – to dump out my last beer, that I'd just opened! No
fucking way. I pleaded that it was my last beer, and that I'd
just opened it – couldn't I quickly finish just this one?
“NO!” Dump it out now, and put the empty in that
trash can.” No fucking way. “Can't I just drink it on
the way to the trash can?” Now I had the attention of more than
just one of the cops. NO. DUMP IT OUT NOW, and THEN PUT THE
EMPTY IN THE TRASH CAN.” No fucking way. Taking my first
step toward the trash can, I rapidly hoisted the beer to my lips,
threw my head back and began guzzling.
Three of them grabbed me. I was placed under arrest, probably
handcuffed, I don't recall, and walked up to the road and placed in
the back seat of the cruiser.
The
cop that wrote me up was pretty cool, let me go after giving me the
summons. He said it would cost me $35.
Back with Kevin, on the beach, drunk, I went into a dramatic sobbing,
wailing routine about, “35 dollars! How'm I going to get $35?!!”
Kevin did his best to console me, but I was in high drama mode, now,
on my birthday, the 11th beer gone, party over – and now
I'd need $35 to pay the court. If I had a job, which I don't
think I did at the time, that would have been about my weekly pay.
I
decided to throw myself in the ocean and end it all. Now I was Norman
Maine, in “A Star Is Born”. Kevin went into the Atlantic with me,
pulling me back. It was quite a scene. In high dramatic fashion, I
afterward concluded that Kevin had “saved my life”.
Within a couple of days, that would be very close to the truth.
On
July 4th, Kevin excitedly told me that Steppenwolf was
playing a concert at Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts {about a 30,
40-minute drive away}, at a venue called, the Frolics. I was game for
anything, though not yet a big Steppenwolf fan, as I hadn't yet
developed a taste for “hard rock”. Kevin was a metal-head for
years, already. I was more into Elvis and Charlie Rich – I'd just
seen Elvis, live, in May! The party aspect of this trip to
Salisbury, though, had my full interest. Kevin assured me that we
could get some drugs – DAHRUGGS! - in Salisbury. Oh, boy!
FINALLY! - DRUGS!! All I'd had was pot and beer, and had eagerly
sought for “Drugs” for years, without success.
Kevin's cousin, Mark Smith, and a friend, Charlie Courmier, were to
come along, the four of us in one car. Thus it was.
Cutting to the Close Call aspect of this very eventful day: The
Steppenwolf concert had just ended – the band had just walked off
the stage, to great applause and drug-fueled {oh, yes – we
found Drugs} enthusiasm. I was right at – against – the
front edge of the stage, with Kevin, Mark and Charlie close at hand,
beside and behind me. Some crazy guy from the audience, a
short-haired freak with a headband around his head, yelled, “Let's
get on the stage!” and grabbed my arm to bring me with him,
as he headed up that way. Knowing no better, and in a drug-zombie
state myself, I figured – or didn't figure – why not, and took a
climbing step in that direction, myself. I had ascended a mere foot
or two, when there was yelling of alarm behind me, and six hands
yanked me backward, pulling me quickly back into the crowd on the
floor. I didn't know why, but my three friends were all yelling at
me, white-faced and wide-eyed.
It
turns out that they thought they'd just witnessed a miracle – of
which I was the ignorant recipient. They had basically saved
my life, but even they couldn't believe I'd been spared from the fate
they'd seen about to befall me. For the rest of the night, and into
the following weeks, they repeatedly stressed how incredibly lucky I
was to be okay, and that, “If we hadn't grabbed you and pulled you
back - - !”
Their repeated and pointedly-stressed, deeply imprinting descriptions
of what had happened, left me with a mental picture of the event, the
actual sight of it having eluded me at the time.
It
turns out that it was like this: As soon as Steppenwolf had exited
the stage, several large, beefy, no-sense-of-humor stagehand/bouncers
had stepped onto the stage, in order to protect their turf
– in case some rowdy fools – victims – decided to try to
encroach upon the stage. These were the types of gorillas who hope
to at least hospitalize a few people, as often as possible. They
love it, it's how they get their fun, and adds to the
list of savored recollections when they get to kick back over beers
together, later. “Aw, a broken knee? That's nothing! I fucked up
one guy so bad, he'll never walk again! Aw, haw-haw-haw!”
So
anyway, these types are now in control of the stage. Do I know
that? Have I any awareness at all of what the fuck's going on,
other than this genius-type grabs my arm and says, “Let's get on
the stage!”? Nooooo, I don't fuckin' know anything. I don't
even know, as I'm getting up onto the stage, with this other guy I've
never even seen before, that a gorilla, whose foot my hand is nearly
touching, has just raised a black-jack above his head, and his eyes
are on a bull's-eye he's seeing on my skull. He's got a big
ball-bearing in a sock, and he's a fraction of a second from
putting it into my brain.
This is what the guys were seeing, when they all screamed and grabbed
me in a desperate attempt to save me from that – and even they
couldn't believe they'd succeeded. It was That Close. My
three friends looked at me from then on like I had an angel on my
shoulder.
Close Call #4 Ducking Bottles
I was walking
home one night from downtown Portsmouth {New Hampshire} toward where
I lived, also in Portsmouth but way out on the southwest end of town
near the border – I had about 5 miles to walk, I guess. I did it
all the time though, sometimes more than once a day. I was about 17
years old, at the time {this would put it around 1976}.
I was just
blocks from downtown, still in a heavily populated residential area,
on Middle Street, one of the main venues in and out of the downtown
area. I was on the sidewalk on the right-hand side of the street. It
was summertime – pretty late at night. I was alone.
From just
behind me, as a car came up fast, I heard loud outcries, wild
high-schoolers screaming wildly. I quickly turned to look, and just
as I did, heads and arms came up from three windows, with bottles in
their hands. I ducked in the nick of time, into a low crouch,
covering my head. Bottles whistled, just missing me, smashing onto
the sidewalk. The kids were good shots – I'd've been hit for sure,
had I not ducked the moment I did.
As the car
passed by, and they saw that I was un-hit, I could see that they were
about to turn around quickly at the next street just ahead of me, so
I sprinted across the street, hoping to lose them, as they
turned around. I dashed into a driveway and crouched behind someone's
parked car, right in their yard, hoping I hadn't been seen by my
attackers. The perpetrators' car passed by again, looking for me. It
passed a couple of more times. The miscreants weren't through with me
– for whatever reason. They didn't find me, however, and after a
while I hustled on home as quickly and as vigilantly as possible,
looking over my shoulder a lot. I remember stopping at a telephone
booth {they had public pay-phones, in booths, in public areas, in
those days} on the way home, and telling a close friend, Jim Wilson,
about the attack. Together we speculated upon whether I was
previously targeted, or whether it was random. I was a wild one and
running with other wild ones at the time, and I did have a kind of a
bad-guy reputation. Lots of people – people I didn't know –
seemed to know me back then, and strangers sometimes said, “Hi,
Jim.” There was no way of knowing whether or not I'd been
previously targeted or not.
___________________________________________________________________
Close
Call #4-A The Whale, the Moose and the Blind Road Runner
In another
incident of the same period, I was definitely targeted for attack,
and I did know my attackers.
This adventure
involves two close calls, really. The first is kind of a
lead-in to the second.
I started this
one. I was 17 or so, hanging around with a group of other teenage
boys, on the steps leading into and out of an apartment building
where a friend of mine lived – Ledgewood Apartments, Portsmouth, a
place where there was lots of trouble. We juvenile delinquents
were hanging around on a hot summer night, nothing to do at the
moment, just outside an end door of one of the buildings.
A not tall but
very large woman, let's say conspicuously overweight, and
mean-looking, came out through the door, walking toward the rear
parking lot where she kept her car. I'd heard a good line a few years
earlier, a fat person insult, but had never had a chance to hurl it –
'til now.
“Harpoon
that whale!” I yelled, as she was passing through a gate in a fence
that surrounded the buildings. {Yes, I know this was wrong of me.
I've learned a lot since my teens.} She stopped in her tracks, now on
the other side of the four-foot-high chain-link fence, about twenty
feet from where we boys were.
“Who said
that?” she demanded. Of course, at this unexpected,
confrontational moment, none of us owned up to it. There were at
least five of us – why offer one's head to the guillotine? She
again demanded to know who said it, and now people were
starting to squirm. This was at a point where began to look cowardly
if I didn't own up to it, for now we were all under hot
scrutiny, and they didn't do anything to deserve it. She wasn't going
away, so the longer it took for me to speak up, the worse it would
be.
“I did,” I
told her.
She menacingly
suggested that I come over to where she was, and repeat my utterance
to her face. {I know, I know – as I write this, 40 years later, I'm
basically on her side in this, too!} Oh, boy. Now I was in it.
I was kinda wishing I hadn't said what I'd said. What to do now –
in the presence of so many witnesses? Fuck. I strolled up to
her, kinda liking what I had to do next, for it did take
a lot of nerve, and made for a movie moment. When I stood very close
to her, face-to-face, with that little four-foot fence between us, I
said loudly, “Harpoon that whale!” By the time I go to
“whale”, her hands were grasping my shirt, as she attempted to
haul me right over that fence – she was a rough, tough,
roller-derby kinda woman. Her powerfully clutching hands were pulling
my shirt up, and she was clawing at me as well, and I was in great
danger of being hurt by this enraged woman. I couldn't let that
happen. I was ready to strike; but she was a woman.
Shit! I was in a real spot, now. All of these guys knew me as a
super-tough, highly skilled martial artist, and here I was besieged
upon by this – big, fat woman. I couldn't punch her. I
couldn't really be very rough with her – yet I couldn't let
her pummel me, either, which she was well on her way toward doing, as
we struggled, her grip very solid on my upper body, especially my
shirt. Uncertainly, I kept my right hand open, in what is known in
karate as a “ridge hand”, like a backward “shuto” {karate
“chop”}, wherein one strikes with the area on the thumb side of
the hand, near the base of the index finger, and delivered it sharply
and quickly to the side of her head, or upper jaw, and wrenched
mostly free at the moment of impact. She cursed and tore at me anew,
but by then she had only my shirt, and I let it go as she ripped it
off me, holding her prize on the other side of the fence and tearing
it up further, in her rage.
I didn't let
her get her hands on me again, and it was all over soon thereafter,
except for the, “holy shit, did you see that?” aftermath, and my
regretful feelings over had had a physical confrontation with a woman
– a confrontation I'd started. Not only so, but I had
severely jammed/sprained my thumb, when I'd hit her with the
uncertain, open hand. I hadn't sufficiently tightened my hand into
the weapon it was supposed to have been, because the blow was
regretful and unsure to start with, and my hand was loose when my
thumb area collided with her skull. Now my thumb was swollen,
throbbing in agony, so that I had little use of my right hand at all,
for the next day or two – and I was highly uncomfortable,
with all that agony. I got some ice from my friend who lived there,
and held it on the base of thumb. I was pretty much out of
commission, now, and certainly in no mood or readiness to fight. I
was really hurt, like a bird with a broken wing. Fortunately,
however, my legs were working; I'd need them soon enough, and not for
fighting.
I was just
inside the door of the apartment building, standing in the hallway
nursing my injury, when the door swung open and there stood my main
nemesis at the apartment complex, Moose Johnson. We'd had a
confrontational run-in or two before, and there was wide speculation
throughout the neighborhood on who'd win if we should fight. The
first time I'd met him was when I was sent to him as an emissary
representing my friend Scott and his sister Shari, who had been
offended by his bullying ways, and his unwelcome amatory advances
upon Shari, who I “liked”. I had been close friends with Scott
and Shari's brother, Ray, who had been struck by a car and killed in
the recent past. When I befriended them and they'd told me about this
menacing bully named Moose Johnson, who was older and bigger than us,
I set my mind on removing this threat, this murky menace I'd never
seen. Scott assured me that I could take him, for though Moose was
tall, Scott said, he was very skinny and would break in half like a
piece of spaghetti when I hit him. {I was later to learn that Scott
lied a lot, in his varied and devious attempts to lead me into
ruin. He'd directed me to Moose's apartment in a separate building,
where he lived with his mother and younger brother. He'd be home
alone now, Scott said. So, gallantly and feeling like a hired badass,
I went and knocked at “skinny” Moose's door. He answered it, and
as he stood there, I took note of the difference between Scott's
description of Moose, and Moose. Yes, he was significantly taller
than I – but he was also relatively ruggedly built, somewhat
athletic, certainly no toothpick – and his two or three years'
difference in age made him seem quite manly and formidable, indeed. I
think he was 19, while I was 16 or barely 17 that summer of 1976.
Still, though, I kept my cool, figuring I could take him –
but it was no sure thing, to me. I went right into my “message”to
him, telling him that I'd heard he'd been bothering Scott and Shari,
and I told him to leave them alone from then on. He stepped out of
the apartment and came out into the hall with me, and sat down on the
steps leading to the second floor, and crossed his arms across his
knees, where he was a ball of defense against any sudden attack. He
was sizing me up as we spoke, and the tension was very high. It was
almost like a weigh-in to a boxing match. He explained to me that his
little brother “beat the shit out of a 40-year-old man, right here,
under these steps.” He pointed to the little area beneath the
freestanding stairs on which he was sitting. “And I can take him,”
he concluded, suggesting that he was a fearsome fighter, himself.
My reputation
had preceded me, however, so he wasn't going to take any chances by
making the first move.
I let him know
that I wasn't afraid of him, and was ready at all times in case he
attacked without warning.
It ended that
way, though, with me standing there telling him firmly to leave them
alone, him explaining not only that he was a tough fighter, but that
when he'd sexually manhandled Shari, he said, “If you'd've seen her
face, you'd know she was liking it.”
As I walked
away, never having actually introduced myself to him, I said over my
shoulder, “By the way, I'm Jim Paradis.”
“Ya, I know
who you are,” he answered.
Now, standing
there with my injured right hand, I was faced with a
head-of-steam-built-up Moose Johnson, cohort in tow, and he'd gotten
pretty sick of hearing how tough I was, and the continual irritation
of the thought that maybe he wasn't the biggest fish in the tank
anymore. He wouldn't take a chance on getting beat – and he'd noted
my lack of fear of him – but if my reputation was inflated
beyond reality, he was itching to kick my ass. Now, freshly
angered by a new report of me causing trouble on his turf, and
catching me momentarily in no mood or condition to fight, he decided
to get it on right now.
He started his
fightin' words with some stuff about how he was suspicious that my
reputation was a fake. I mentioned my “busted thumb”, and he
said, “I'll give you a busted head!”
Uh-oh, this
was a bit of a spot.
He heatedly
removed his shirt, and handed it to his cohort. He was going to
attack right now, right here. I gave some quick thought to a
method of taking him down, then took a safer option, things being as
they were – though it was not the without its own risk. At a time
like this, all options will include serious risk. It gave me a
chance, though, to get out of this spot quite painlessly, and without
further injury.
I bolted, in a
sprint, choosing the lower hallway {we'd been standing on the landing
between the upper and lower hallways}. My hand was killing me, but my
legs were working good. The element of surprise really helped
me, for there was a half-second's delay before he, opting for the
upper hallway, gave predatory chase.
I had one main
thought as I raced for the door, on the landing between upper and
lower hallways: that doorknob had better be unlatched, and the door
ajar, 'cause if it's shut tight and I have to take the time to turn
the knob to open that door, I'm dead. I could hear his big
footsteps giving chase on the hallway above, and knew he'd reach that
door very close behind me.
I leapt all
five steps up onto the landing – he'd leap too, but down –
advantage his. When I hit the door, very fortunately it
was ajar, and flew open when I hit it at full sprint, having just
made that five—stair {spectacular} leap.
Then it was a
leap down over the cement steps outside the door, and a free run from
there, across the gravelly parking lot toward the shopping center
parking lot – toward home, miles away. He couldn't and wouldn't
follow me far, for I knew he couldn't keep up with me on an extended
run – nobody ever had, yet, so my focus was on reaching that
parking lot; just give me 100 yards.
On a slight
downward grade from the apartment buildings to the gravel parking
lot, my footing got tripped up – with Moose hot on my heels – and
I started to fall. My hands, my fingertips, actually met the gravel,
in a fall that I was determined, with a life-preserving
insistence, was not going to happen.
My feet outran
the lost balance, my hands came off the dirt, and I was back into
full stride again – he had no chance now, and he knew it. A
tightly-shut door, or a fall, had been his only chance at catching
me. He was a very good runner, but well outclassed. “You'd
better run!” was the best he could do now, as he quit the
chase, and I zipped away. He'd won bragging rights, but still hadn't
been able to lay a hand on me. This wasn't over – he hadn't seen my
blood yet.
No, that was
not the Close Call about which I set pen to paper {yes, pen and paper
– before I type this out} here. The real Close Call stemmed
from this one, thought – and yes, eluding Moose in this
prelude, was indeed a mighty close call, in its own right;
agreed.
Later –
perhaps later that same night, if I'd doubled back toward downtown
Portsmouth after running from Moose, then passed by again; or perhaps
a night or two later, but soon thereafter, anyway – I was walking
past the area of the apartment complex, next to Route 1, a very
busy 3-or-4-lane main route in and out of town, nearly always
teeming with swiftly-moving traffic. I was on theoutskirts of a
department store parking lot, directly across Route 1 from a doughnut
shop, when I noticed a car pull up, a few yards away, in the parking
lot. Looking, I recognized the driver – it was the lady who'd torn
my shirt off, in that particular episode. She motioned for me
to approach, but said nothing. I decided to take the opportunity to
apologize to her, and I walked over to her, peaceably, to do so. I
did feel badly about that whole thing – and my thumb still
hurt, too; it had been ugly, and I regretted it.
When I got up
to her driver-door and began saying, “I'm sorry....” movement in
the back seat caught my eye. The first thing I saw was Moose's
cohort, ducked low in the back seat, holding a lit cigarette, trying
to keep out of sight. Then I saw Moose, also crouched
low, and now slipping out the back door, passenger side, to
attack!
GO!
I spun and
sprinted – straight across all lanes of Route 1, without
looking. I died a thousand times as I crossed those lanes, got
slammed and creamed and squished by cars, a dozen times an inch, in
my screaming mind. How particularly dangerous was this section
of road, which I'd very carefully crossed, countless times
before, always with a wary eye for cars coming up over a hill
from one direction, and entering and exiting all over the place,
speeding to and from the downtown Portsmouth area. One had to use
extra caution in crossing Lafayette Road, as it was called, here.
WHOOSH!! I ran blindly right across that road.
Still alive
and reaching the doughnut shop parking lot, I sprinted on inside,
borrowed a dime from the cashier, panting breathlessly and in total
panic. I'd just run across Route 1 – without even looking! I
couldn't believe it. I called the cops, told 'em the spot I was in –
the lady and her posse were now right outside the doughnut shop,
parked right near the door, and Moose was leaning on the car, ready
to attack when I walked out. He had to be a little careful; he was
19, and thus no longer a “minor”, legally.
The cops came
{you don't have to ask them twice to come to a doughnut shop –
haha!}, and observed as I took off on foot, headed homeward, warning
my attackers to stay away. {I would have more doings with Moose
Johnson, later.}
Later, the
Juvenile Officer, who I got to know quite well, Officer Ray LaBrie, a
nice guy, skeptically showed me a Polaroid photo of the “lady”,
which had accompanied a complaint she'd filed at the police station,
against me. In the photo, she was bruised and had her arm in a sling.
She claimed I'd worked her over pretty good, and wanted me arrested.
Even Ray LaBrie knew, before showing me the photo, that she was full
of shit. He'd gotten to know me pretty well, too. {The cops
also knew Moose Johnson pretty well – and knew him to be a
woman-beater himself.}
____________________________________________________________________
Close
Call #6 : Flying Across Route 1 In A Car
Twice,
I sped right across a busy Route 1 – once on foot in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, and once in a car in York, Maine. Both times I got
very, very lucky. In
the first, on-foot instance, I most surely could have been killed. In
the second, behind-the-wheel instance, any number of people could
have been killed – and it would have been entirely my fault.
In
Portsmouth, I can scarcely think of a worse, more dangerous
spot to have blindly run across
the road. In the Kittery-York area of Maine, I can scarcely think of
a worse, more dangerous spot to have sped across two lanes, than the
spot where I did just that.
It was where
Route 1 intersects – dangerously – with Beech Ridge Road, on one
side, and South Side Road, diagonally across on the other side. There
was a blinking light placed impotently above the juncture, and a stop
sign at the end of both Beech Ridge and South Side roads. Route 1 was
nonstop past there – though there is now, I think, an actual stop
light at this intersection. Too many accidents. These roads intersect
near the crest of a large hill, with imperfect visibility in all
directions, so it's a tricky one.
1986 or so,
roughly: I was speeding up Beech Ridge Road, in my mother's
Oldsmobile Cutlass, that I had borrowed to drive to church. I don't
remember the circumstances of why I was using her car, or why I was
alone. I was married with two young daughters at the time, and my
mother rarely missed a church service, so I don't know why, but there
I was, alone, driving my mother's Olds – very fast, and speeding up
– as I climbed the hill on Beech Ridge Road toward the stop sign
I'd totally forgotten about – and toward both lanes of busy Route
1. {I had driven this same section, thousands of times.}
It
was a special church service, very well attended but perhaps not on a
Sunday. Sometimes special, whole
weeks of church
services went on, with guest evangelists, etc.. I was about 27 years
old, had been a regular at this church since I was 9. It was a
fire-and-brimstone, Pentecostal, Holy-Ghost-speaking-in-tongues,
“miracle services” type of church – very intense –
and it had a lot to
do with whyI was so fucked up, personally. Not knowing this yet,
however, I thought it was the focal point of my one Hope: being
SAVED, and staying
“saved”.
Just
before I left the church that night, probably about 40, 45 minutes
before I was watching my mother's speedometer rising, 55, 60.....as I
approached that intersection that was not on
my mind at that moment – I had been on my knees at the “altar”,
at the front of the church, weeping and praying very fervently that I
could be righteous, be
holy – be GOOD!
I had been a chronic “backslider” ever since first
“getting saved”, by the time
I was 10. I couldn't be good!
So,
I'm praying and crying and beseeching God to really, fully
take me over, cleanse me, etc.,
etc., and I felt like I'd really had
a breakthrough. Several young students from some Bible School or
other were putting their hands on my shoulders, praying with me,
blah, blah, blah. Then, though,
by the time I was ready to go home, I'd taken just a few
steps toward the door when some
old, ultra-familiar dark weight, like a costume of filth, came back
onto me, and I knew I
was the same old me – STILL.
By
the time I got into my mother's car in the parking lot{perhaps my
wife and daughters and mother had gotten a ride home and I'd stayed
later, praying at the altar}, I was desperately upset. I was very
angry to be feeling like “the same old me”, after only minutes
of feeling “free at last”
{to be GOOD}. I was also desperately sad, to
be so rotten and evil that even Jesus Christ with his Holy Spirit
couldn't break away all the crust of wickedness that surely had me in
its well-entrenching possession. I was going to stay the
same. I was very, very upset
about this; profoundly disappointed
to have to go on living as – me, when
I had hoped for so much
better, and thought for a few precious minutes that I was going to be
a better me from now on.
I
pulled out of the dirt parking lot of the church onto Beech Ridge
Road toward Route 1, onto which I'd turn right as I headed home to
Kittery {about 5 miles away}. I was raging at myself, mainly, maybe
at the devil too – and weeping too. Frustrated. I
started going faster and faster in my state, and as I reached the
foot of the long hill toward the intersection that I wasn't thinking
about, the speedometer was climbing, from 50 to 55, to 60 – faster,
dammit, stomp on it!
Holy shit, the STOPSIGN!!!
I was doing at least 60 when I finally remembered
that I had to be at a full stop in about 15 feet from
now, to make the stop sign, to come to a halt on the white line that
stood between me and north-and-south-bound lanes of always-busy
Route 1.
I
jammed the brake pedal to the floor, and a very loud,
ultimately-desperate, fully-panicked yell came soaring out of my
mouth, from my deepest innards: “FATHER!” as,
tires locked and screeching, I hurtled across both lanes of Route 1.
{Abba = Father = God. Hebrew-CHristian thing, obviously very deeply
imprinted in me.}
In
the fraction-of-a-second by fraction-of-a-second slow-mo that we
experience in such moments, I was aware that I hadn't collided with
any cars, but there was a phone-pole dead ahead on the other side,
and I'd have to veer about 25 degrees to the left, doing 50 with the
tires locked and screaming, in order to make it onto South Side Road
and avoid a serious craxh {hoping, too, not to run into anyone on
South Side Road, if I
could get there at all}.
Couldn't
do it – too fast to remove foot from brake, had to
continue to bring the speed
down, yet could not veer far enough left, to make it onto that road
on the other side.
Off
pavement, into dirt, into growth, trees, noting larger and larger
trees being mown down in front of me, in great suspense to see
whether a big tree
will appear to kill me.
Finally,
and with incredibly lucky arrangement of slightly-larger, then
slightly larger trees
slowing the car bit by bit, it was over. I was sitting still –
looking at what I would have plowed into, about another 10, 20 feet
directly ahead of the car: a giant, city-truck plow. Ever
see, “Vanishing Point”, the final scene, where the Dodge Charger
smashes into the plow? Well, this was an enormous, solid steel,
must-weigh-tons, city-truck PLOW – just ahead of where I finally
stopped. The trees caught me gently like a baseball glove, bringing
me to a safe stop; that PLOW had
been hoping to have me for lunch!
The car was
totaled. Yes, I totaled my own mother's car. She was without one for
quite a while, as I recall.
I
walked back to the church, told my friend the Pastor what had
happened, and he helped me talk to the cops when they showed up, just
after I did. They'd come into the church asking about the smashed,
abandoned car. It was obvious, I guess, from the skid-marks, where it
had come from. They must've said, “Holy shit!” when they saw that
some lunatic had hit the brakes at full speed – at more
than legal speed – at
that stop sign, and skidded all
the way across Route 1 and on into the trees on the other side,
without killing anyone.
The cops took
me back to the scene, where I was interviewed, given a sobriety blood
test by the State's special lab-truck, and lectured sternly about,
“That car is a weapon!”
This
episode is one that will always be
with me. SO close!
Hey
– church can kill you
– and others! You've been warned. Be wise – avoid them.
Epilogue: It
would be another decade before I finally realized that I am
responsible for my own life, and nobody else is; not God, not
the devil, not the angels nor demons. If we're screwed up, we've
gotta use our brain, get help if needed, but your life is
all yours – you are not a pawn, of anyone.
________________________________________________________________________
Close Call #7: Looking Up At The River
“Faggots!”
Is he yelling
at us? Yep, he is. That guy in the car going by just called us
faggots.
“Fuck you!”
I yelled back at him.
The car
stopped. Brakelights, then backup lights. He's coming back.
Bob Dwyer, aka
Emmett Blotter, and I, in full punk regalia as always, were walking
from my home in Kittery, to Portsmouth, NH, across the Piscataqua
River. We had just started across the Memorial Bridge, on the
left-hand side, when the car in the right-hand lane, also headed into
Portsmouth, had encountered us. Bob and I had recently met and formed
a hardcore punk band – which included the two of us, period –
called the Murderers. He was a punk's punk, and so was I.
1981. Hippies
didn't like punks – when they saw them anyway, which in the
Maine-New Hampshire area in 1981, was very rarely. We were
probably his first. Yes, an aging hippie was driving that little
Subaru two-door mini-car. When he reversed his car back to where Bob
and I were, and stopped to have words, it became apparent at a glance
that he was a very large, very ass-kicking, mean hippie.
When I say
“hippie”, he was 1980s post-hippie, who hadn't managed to squeak
through the disco era without getting a gold chain around his neck;
he got that. His shoulder-length black hair and considerable beard
were 1981-manicured, too, so that he still had the hippie creds, yet
was passable too to try to pick up chicks in a disco bar.
“What'd you
say?” he was asking me now.
Seeing his
size and ill temper, I decided to try a whole, intelligible,
explanatory sentence on him: “Well, I just meant that we're
not faggots.”
“But WHAT
DID YOU SAY??!” He was glaring at me with his Doberman-hippie eyes.
Oh, shit, he
really wasn't going to let that go.
Okay, you
fucker. “Well, I said 'FUCK YOU' – but I just meant
that we're not faggots.”
“Well, you
better watch out who you're sayin' that to,” blah, blah,
finger-shaking, then he was gone.
Sheesh.
Fuckin' asshole fuckin' hippie fuck – and on we walked.
Nearly to the
other side of the bridge, now walking on the right-hand side, we
spotted the hippie – and a cohort {why do bullies always have a
cohort?} – walking toward us, on the old-wooden-plank
sidewalk along the guardrail of the Memorial Bridge, crossing the
menacing Piscataqua River, known for its killer current.
Ya, this guy
was pretty fucking big – close to a head taller than I; big, rugged
and ill-tempered. Now he'd parked his car on the Portsmouth side of
the bridge, and gone to all the trouble of walking onto the bridge to
meet us, cohort and all. Can't be good. I think Bob and I both kinda
gulped as we continued to walk toward the menacing pair. The big guy
was clearly in charge, and he's the only one I remember pretty
clearly. Bob and I had just left a little party in Kittery, and were
on our usual heavy dose of speed and beer, and probably weed too. We
were “up”.
There were
words. The big guy approached me specifically and directly, since I
was the one he'd been “conversing” with. He was gonna beat me up
– right on the old-plank sidewalk, thirty feet or so above the
shallows of the Piscataqua. How I know we were over the shallows,
was, he was about to give me a good look at them.
The words I
don't recall, but while his cohort kept Bob at bay a few feet away –
just stood guard over him, while the bigger brute dealt with me –
the big galloot punched me once with a right hook to the heart or
solar plexus area, where I'm quite muscular, his fist directly
meeting a large 3-or-4-inch-in-diameter button I was wearing , and
the button went flying out over the rail, and into the river. {The
button, and another just like it, I'd gotten from my friend David
Patstone, who worked at the state liquor store. It was a promo for a
kind of liquor – until I made it over, into a “KILL RONALD
REAGAN” button – it was 1981. Its twin, also on my attire
somewhere, said, “BURN THE WHITE HOUSE” - which was also a
Murderers song I'd written.} The bully followed his punch with a
somewhat clever blow, taken from the fighting arts of Asia; probably
the cobra style of kung-fu: with rigid, open hand, the thumb away
from the fingers so as to form a “Y”, the “Y” area of the
hand, between forefinger and extended thumb, is rammed into the
windpipe or Adam's-apple of an opponent. His execution lacked,
however, and it wound up being a glancing blow off my upper
breastbone/collar bone, doing no damage to my trachea. He hadn't hurt
me at all, but I made what I hoped would be a satisfactory show that
he'd hurt me pretty good, hoping to satisfy him. “Oh, my stomach!
Erk, my throat!” He considered it, but was decidedly unsatisfied.
Bummer. His next move was to grab me by the collars and hoist me into
the air, bringing my upper body up and over the railing of the
bridge, while he then lowered me so that I was basically dangling
upside-down – looking “up” at the rocks just below the
surface of the edge of the Piscataqua River. {I never liked that
fuckin' river.}
“YOU
WANNA GO FOR A SWIM?”
“No,
man!”
“No,
MA'AM?!!”
“No –
NO, MAN!!”
Jeez, this was
a spot.
In point of
fact, I had one of my arms wrapped firmly around the rail, and a
serious attempt by him to throw me into the river would have been
very difficult to pull off – as difficult as pulling off my arm,
which is what he would have had to do to get me into that river.
Eventually, I
was back on my feet on the planks of the sidewalk – but he still
wasn't satisfied, and his campaign of terror continued. Now he
stepped over to Bob, who'd been patiently waiting his turn, under the
cohort's watchful eye. {The cohort was big too, but mellow, and not
as huge as his leader.}
Bob Dwyer was
the quintessential punk. This guy was born a punk. I've never
seen anyone who looked so much like a punk – even without
the garb. The big bully post-disco hippie was now quizzically
regarding all the pins, tags, chains and stuff attached to Bob's
leather jacket and shirt. He asked Bob what this was all about; what
were we, bikers or something? “No,” responded Bob as deadpan as
always, “We're in a punk rock band called the Murderers.” He said
it like he might have been talking to a newspaper reporter, all
business and no apology.
About this
time, I made a firm decision. If this hippie thug is not done with
me, he's saving the worst for last – and I don't want to be
in his hands again. I didn't want to abandon my friend, but
self-preservation is the first law of the living. If that bully takes
one step back toward me, I'm outta here. I was
going to run – there was nobody behind me, both thugs {and Bob}
were about 15, 16 feet away, in front of me, toward Portsmouth. One
step, I determined, and I'm gone like a gazelle, back toward
Kittery. I mean, shit, I've just been dangling over a rail. I
gave. Enough.
After his
barely-comprehending exchange with Bob, the bully decided that I was
definitely the one he wanted to pulverize, so – yup – he turned
back toward me, taking his first step.
I spun, and
floored it. As I've mentioned in another entry, I've never yet been
caught when running from an assailant. This guy, though, I've
gotta hand it to him, he could run – with endurance!
A disheartening amount of endurance, actually. I did not like
the sound of his obviously athletic footsteps still with me, a
couple of hundred feet into the chase. He wasn't fuckin' giving up.
Shit. Well, I determined, I've got a lot more high-speed running
where this came from – and I hoped he was nearing empty, and making
that decision I was waiting for: that he just wasn't going to catch
me, so time to give up the chase.
At the end of
the wood-plank sidewalk, where the bridge met Badger's Island between
Portsmouth and Kittery, I was running on dirty pavement, and could no
longer tell by hearing, whether he was still on my heels. So, I just
kept it matted, across Badger's Island and onto – and across –
another, smaller bridge into the mainland of Kittery. Spotting some
trees that one might be able to hide in if climbed, I shot a quick
glance behind me – I mean, the chase had begun about 250, 300 yards
ago – and saw nobody. Up a tree I clambered, sat on a branch
concealed by leaves {it was quite dark out, with just streetlights
and the big, neon Warren's Lobster House sign casting their glow. I
clung to the trunk, seated on a branch with my heart jackhammering
from doing the 300-yard-dash-for-your-life on speed and beer. I was
sure that even if the bully couldn't see me, he'd locate me by the
heavy panting I could not stop. I was scared to death.
I was in that
tree for a long time. I'll bet an hour went by, and probably more.
Eventually, Bob came by, I heard him calling my name, and his
repeated assurances that the bully was gone, got me down from my
hiding place. With all that speed in my system, and the trauma of the
event, and all that had been going on in my life, I'd gone rather
hysterical on paranoia, there. I'd also changed as a person,
while in that tree.
Running up
that tree and sitting there terrified and very thoughtful, I'd made
some decisions. The main decision, or at least the first
one, was regarding the way I dressed, the way I looked
in public. My whole fucking attitude. Was this what I
wanted? I thought a lot, while in that tree, about Johnny Rotten
getting his face slashed by razors in England, assaulted by thugs for
what he represented. That was Johnny Rotten, that wasn't me. He
started the fucking thing; I was a follower. Was
following and representing the cause of hard-core punk, what I
wanted to stand for, to be a target for? Was I that
much into the cut-out punk ideology, to devote my life to
that trend? No, man, fuck no. This ain't my fuckin'
war. I done started up the wrong road. It was time to get the fuck
off it, and find out what I, Jim, was going to do.
I was never an
obvious-to-look-at punk again.
I had been way
too much on the front lines of the punk-edge war on society. I'd
had my neck stuck out there for well over a year, Fuck Youing
the general public very openly, from the “We Hate You!” van I
drove, with the swastikas and the graffiti, to my spiked, red hair
and offensive slogans attached to myself, I had made myself a
“culture club” {bashing civilized society with a very contrary
mindset} and a worm on a hook – only there was no real hook, just
me out there as bait for the savage conservative.
My typical
attire at the time, 1981, was, for example, one blue tennis shoe with
one black sneaker, mismatched socks, torn jeans, maybe with a few
punky buttons attached to them, some sort of chain drooping belt-like
around my waist, torn T-shirt, whatever raggedy shirt or jacket I
could come up with, usually a chain-&-padlock collar around my
neck, a safety pin jabbed through one earlobe, large and offensive
buttons on belly and chest areas, sometimes featuring pornographic
photos, and my hair spiked up with sugary soda or kool-aid or water
from a mud puddle, or spit from my hand, and food-color-dyed red.
1980 and '81,
nobody in Portsmouth, NH – and certainly not in Kittery,
Maine – looked like that. The only other punks I knew locally were
2 or 3 guys, 2 of them Chinese, who had a band called The Immigrants.
That was it, 'til I met Bob Dwyer, aka Emmett Blotter – who was the
only punk in Rochester {NH}. When I was with him there, we were the
two. We looked punk, walked punk, talked punk – often in a
British-punk, Sid Vicious-type of brogue, especially when we were on
acid, which was often.
After 1981, I
was never, as I say, such an obvious punk again.
Close Call #8 Meeting Jim Anderson
1973, '74,
Kittery, Maine. R.W. Traip Academy, where I went to high school for
just over a year – all of freshman year, and just a few weeks of
sophomore, when I quit school altogether at the age of 15. {Got a
G.E.D. in 1978, when I was 18 or 19.}
My experiences
with bullies in school started just about the time I started going to
school; and lasted 'til I stopped. Probably the last, at least one of
the last, involved a guy named Jim Anderson. This guy was a
real menace. I'm not even sure what he was doing at the high
school on the few occasions I saw him there, for he was certainly
over 18 years of age, and had already been in the Marines. The word
was that he'd been thrown out of the Marines for beating up his drill
sergeant. At first, I didn't believe that, but some reliable, older
authorities confirmed it; Jim Anderson could, and would at the drop
of an eyelid, beat up just about anybody. There was no question that
I was no match for him, as a 13- or 14-year-old.
As always with
bullies, Anderson was not alone – he had a little group with
him, or at least a couple. I'd say he had two or three guys with him;
and as always with bullies, he was the unquestioned leader of his
group.
I'd never met
Jim before this occasion. His younger brother, Jeff, however, was my
age – and had bullied me since around the 1st or 2nd
grade. He wasn't very smart or good-looking, but you had to respect
the fact that Jeff could kick your ass – and he had a shitty
attitude. Mean. Years later, I saw a local Anderson in a kick-boxing
match on TV, and I could tell by looking at him that he was from the
same family – and he was incredibly tough. I also met Jim and
Jeff's mother in 1988 when I was 29 and worked at an auto parts store
where she was the secretary – Jane Anderson. She too was tough as
nails, and frequently put any man in the place, in his place. Once
when someone tried to wisecrack back at her, she cut him off cold
with, “Who put a nickel in your slot?” Don't mess with an
Anderson – not in this part of the country, at least.
Jim Anderson
was a real problem; a real big bruiser who didn't give a shit, had a
chip on his shoulder and wanted to have rough fun all the time
– and mean fun was his favorite.
He looked
apish to me – like a blond-haired gorilla. His hair had grown since
boot camp, but was still short, just long enough to be wavy. I'd
never seen a blond Anderson; Jeff was a red-head.
It was after
the last class had ended at Traip that day, that somehow I wound up
alone in the hallway in the center of the building, in the clutches
of Jim Anderson and his cohorts. I had no friends around {not that I
had more than 2 or 3 friends at all - & all of them, wimps}. In
fact, almost nobody was around, definitely nobody in sight
other than this gang.
Jim decided he
needed to get me downstairs, into the basement of this
building, to do to me what he really wanted to do to me. I was
certain that this was something for me to avoid in any way possible.
There had always been some way out, before; I just had to find
a way now. The odds sucked. Three or four boys way bigger and older
than I, with their hands on me, grouped around so that I couldn't run
– and the lead ape had just decided to force me down the nearby
steps to the basement of this old building; in order to do
things that were too horrible to do here in the hallway of a
near-empty building.
Thinking
quickly – motivated by that almighty instinct for self-preservation
once again – and remembering my lessons from watching and mimicking
Jim West, gadget-laden secret agent on the Wild Wild West TV series,
I glanced around to see what was at hand that might offer a hope of
surviving this encounter.
I noticed that
the big, steel trash-can I was next to, was chained against the wall
and it looked like that chain could hold back an elephant. I further
observed that the way the lid on the trash-can was designed, I could
run my arm through it – which I did, instantly – and hook it in
my crooked elbow – which I also did – and get this trash-can
lid-bar into a kind of headlock that would be very arduous for my
attackers to un-do. Certainly, there would be a lot of commotion in
these guys trying to tear my arm loose of that heavy, steel garbage
can. It would flop around on its chain and make lots of noise. I
might even start yelling. Up to this point, I had been silent as a
mouse, saying nothing at all, keeping my mouth shut since being set
upon by chance, by this group of ruffians.
Ordered by
Anderson to dislodge me, so that I might be abducted, the goon
henchmen tried to get me loose. No way. I tightened up hard,
and they had no chance. After a couple of minutes of thir
embarrassing futility, to my great, welcome relief came along my
home-room teacher, Mr. Estes, attracted by the scuffle in the
hallway. We were about twenty feet from the door of his classroom.
The students were gone, but he was – hooray! – still around. Mr.
Estes – Steve – was still in his twenties, and not ruggedly
built, but he was tall, and – well, he wore a tie, so he was a real
sdult, and carried authority. Seeing my arm threaded through the
trash can and surrounded by these guys, he immediately and
accurately assessed the situation. He was smooth, shrewd, cagey and
carried a quiet firmness in his exchange with “Mr. Anderson” -
and he suggested that I head out, as he stood firmly, “chatting”
with the larger boys. I hit the door running and ran – and ran and
ran and ran – about half of the two miles to home
Epilogue:
I don't know what ever happened to Jim Anderson, but Jeff's rogue
life ended badly, in the 1980s. He was part of a team of thieves who
stole a rock band's equipment, and were speeding in a box truck with
all that stolen equipment inside, when they plowed into the side of
an old brick building on a narrow street in Portsmouth. Jeff was
decapitated.
The teacher who saved me, Steve Estes, later got into local
politics. I'd vote for him. {In fact, I think I did.}
Close Call #9 Attacked By
A Mob
Circa 1976: I
had quit school and eluded the truancy officers in 1974 by moving out
of town and into a different state {Maine into New Hampshire} with my
mother and younger sister, when I was just 15. {The law said you had
to go to school 'til at least 16.} Now I was 16, and was standing
along a pathway in a marshy area behind Traip Academy, where some of
my friends still attended. It was time for the school day to end, and
I was awaiting my friend, Kevin Patstone, to walk this pathway toward
his home.
Along came a sizable group of boys, led by an older, bigger lad
they called Cudgie. Cudgie and the group were there to beat me up and
throw me in the nearby creek. There were a lot of them at first, and
more and more within minutes. I'd say at least ten to fifteen boys
were ready to get their hands on me. Their hesitation – and my
survival – stemmed from the fact that none of them was willing to
be the first to touch me, because chances are he'd get hurt, and we
all knew it. A number of them, too, probably lacked the required
anger at me, because they were there on behalf of a smart-assed
little asshole named Tom Blake, who I'd beaten up the night before.
Granted, Tom was small, but if anyone deserved to get beaten up
in order to have his wise-ass mouth shut, it was he. As a school
student, throughout most of the time I attended school, I was very
shy, timid, ultra-nervous, and a target of bullies. This began to
taper off as I got older and got very heavily into the martial arts,
weightlifting, and the anger of the mid-teen delinquent. I stopped
taking so much shit, and started hitting back by the time I was in
8th
grade. Then, in high school with lots of bigger older boys, I got
pushed around a little bit now and then, again. I always protected
myself from getting hurt, but would take a little shoving and stuff
if that's all it was, as a rule. During my final days in high school,
Tom Blake started mouthing off to me a lot,
and on at least one
occasion, as we filed out of gym class, and he was in front of me in
line, he turned and just opened
up on me, with a
series of punches to the body. None of them hurt, but I was impressed
by the quick flurry of blows – to the point of placing him on my
list of hated enemies.
Tom was all redhead, with the spit and fire that goes with that,
had hair past his shoulders, a terribly shitty attitude, and stood
about five-two. Just a little guy with the cocky and aggressive
attitude befitting one twice his size – and he'd punched
me – repeatedly!
In my book, it was
fitting that I punch him out if the appropriate situation arose.
That situation had arisen one night when I, with two friends, was
prowling the streets of Kittery, looking for trouble. We came upon
another group of three, who were basically doing the same thing. A
conversation began, all friendly, but Tom Blake, one of the three
we'd encountered, started in on me with his provocative, ridiculing
mouth. There was no reason for me to take that, here,
on the streets at
night. We weren't in a school classroom, now – and by now, I had no
hesitation with my
fists. By this time and at this ill-developed stage of my life, I
loved to
beat people up – it took little-to-no provocation for me to
commence a beating. Some nights, in Portsmouth, I'd go out looking
for someone to beat up
– didn't matter who. One night, I'd encountered nobody, 'til I
spotted two guys my age walking down the street, minding their own
business, and I just walked up and started a fight, and set into both
of them. I was a mean, angry, violent and dangerous kid, when I was
16, 17.
So, why take shit from Tom Blake, now? There he was, smirking,
saying my name in a scoffing manner that made it,
alone, sound like a
dirty insult. He had that glimmer of wise-ass punk in his eye,
smirking away, looking right into my eyes defiantly.
“Ya wanna fight
about it?” I asked
him – my favorite phrase, I think, in those days.
“Yaa,” he
shot back. That was all I needed.
“Alright,” I said, stepping toward him, “Go.”
I then punched him
hard in the mouth, or jaw. Whammo!
I don't recall him
even taking a swing at me – if he did, it wasn't noticeable – as
he began spewing a series of insults and invitations to fight,
backtracking rapidly and getting hit every few seconds. He was really
stupid; I guess he just couldn't
stop his mouth. Whereas I would have been satisfied with one punch or
so, he kept inviting more, more, and wouldn't shut up with his
insults and put-downs. I just kept up hitting and kicking him – I
favored action, not words – as he backtracked, ran away briefly,
then turned to invite more punishment. I punched and kicked him all
the way down a narrow side-street, from the downtown Kittery area all
the way down to Warren's Lobster House, near the river, all the way
down a hill that covered the distance of a whole street! Just about
every time I hit him and he reeled, I'd ask if he was done, and if
that was enough, if he was going to admit defeat and shut the fuck up
at last. No! He
kept right up, calling me names, threatening me. So, I just kept it
up, bam, bam, slugging
and kicking.
Finally, when his face was bloody and I had just landed one of my
best kicks – a left roundhouse kick to the head, striking his
forehead so hard that I fractured my toe, I could see there was no
point going on. He was still on his feet, but now beaten so badly
that even I had
had enough. Absolutely no point in going any further. It had become a
senseless pummeling. He wasn't
going to shut up,
period – and I wasn't going to hurt him any more.
"I win,” I declared, thereby declaring an end to his
beating.
“In a pig's ass!”
he screamed, still
utterly defiant,
making no sense at all, bleeding and battered.
This did piss
me off, so I took another step back toward him. He just broke and
ran. That was it.
Now his friends and associates – all dozen or more of them –
wanted satisfaction, and they had surrounded me in this marshy-ground
area behind the high school, close to the creek that ran into the
Piscataqua River. Their leader, Cudgie, was about as much bigger than
I, as I was in comparison with Tom Blake. This was fitting, sure –
only I hadn't asked for this, and I didn't have a dozen henchmen
ready to help me out.
This was
a spot. How
you gonna talk your way out of this
one? Do you see any
way out of this
one? No. This
was a spot.
They were
there to beat me up, and throw me into the creek. They told me
this. That was their plan, their mission, their goal, and their
agreed-upon purpose. Beat me up, throw me in the river, done. {I
couldn't swim, either, and was rather afraid of water – especially
if I had broken limbs, and stuff.} Nothing in the world would stop
them. Hmmm. Shit! What the fuck am I gonna do now?
Don't panic.
Work it. Stay focused, stay present, be ready for anything. This is
survival, here and now. I saw no way out, but I'd been
in such places before, and had found a way out – or made
one.
There was the
incident in grammar school, something like 4th grade, when
a mob of bullies had managed to capture me. That was not easy –
large groups were always chasing me, and this was the one
time I'd been caught. They'd dragged me down the side of a hill
among the old apple trees, out of sight of any teacher or adult.
Several of the boys had a grip on my arms so that I couldn't get
away, as their ringleader of the moment, a boy named Peter Gitschier,
tall and rugged, told me, with his clenched fist displayed, that he
was about to give me a “gut acher”. Not able to simply outrun
this assault, I knew that this was it – I had to act,
to avoid the dreaded “gut acher” from Peter. Pressed by
desperation, I suddenly jerked and squirmed my arms free, and sunk my
own fist hard into Peter's gut, taking the wind right out of
him and doubling him over, and then used the utter shock of my
action, which stunned the whole group, as an opportunity to run away
from them, again. I wasn't caught a second time – not by them.
As the crowd
got larger, school having just let out, I scanned the mob for a
friendly face, someone that might help me. I saw Ray Cressey, who was
a friend, but he was looking at me noncommitally, as though he
figured I must've done something to get myself into this, and he
wasn't helping me out of it. Even if he'd been willing to help, it
would have been just the two of us against a dozen, and he probably
would have suffered with me. So, no help was to be offered.
As usual, I
had my cassette tape player-recorder with me, as I was always
listening to tapes. One particularly bold member of the mob kicked my
tape player out of my hand, and it landed in the marshy earth,
batteries scattered. When I deliberately and cautiously moved to pick
it up, the heavy-set boy who had kicked it, stepped on one of the
batteries when I went to pick it up, and stood on it, not moving.
This was a key moment. What could I do now? I knew that the
moment I showed any weakness, I'd be set upon. So, with slow menace,
I stood straight up from that boot that had pressed the battery into
the soggy ground, and stood face-to-face with the heavy-set boy, as
though I was about to knock him off that battery. He then
stepped back, and I picked up the last of the batteries. I'd won that
key encounter.
Things were
still extremely tense, however, and taunts and fighting words were in
the air.
One guy told
me why don't I just go ahead and start fighting: “We won't all jump
on you at once – not at first, anyway,” he threatened, to
scattered laughter.
Then it was
mainly me and Cudgie, the oldest and biggest, facing off. I thought
I'd attempt some reasonable communication, and “Billy Jack”
was strongly on my mind as I stood there surrounded by the
bloodthirsty mob, confronting the tallest member.
“How tall
are you?” I asked him, and he answered. {About five inches taller
than I was.}
“How much do
you weigh?” {Much more than I.}
Here, we had
some dialogue going, anyway, and I was pointing out the fact that
this was really not a fair match, especially since he had that mob
for backup.
Using the
obvious flaw in my argument, Cudgy pointed out that I hadn't asked
Tom Blake, who was smaller than I, how tall he was, or much he
weighed. True, I pointed out, “but he started that
fight,” which was true, and nobody doubted that, knowing Tom.
It wasn't
going to help, though. I'd beaten Tom up, and they were here to beat
me up, and that was that – I wasn't going to be able to talk
my way out of it. Into the creek I'd go, regardless.
Okay, time for
a different tack.
I could see
that the mob looked up to Cudgie, put their faith in him, and his
reputation was on the line now, too. I could also see a
note of uncertainty in him, a quiet gulp in his throat, as
though he knew he might have a serious fight on his hands. I was,
most definitely, a force not to be taken lightly – and I could see
that he wasn't certain he'd beat me. It was the mob that gave
him complete confidence. Ahh – that's it, that's what I need to
use, to get out of this in one piece. I'd found the key – to a
chance for survival.
“All right,”
I told him, so that all could hear clearly. “I'll fight YOU, but
not in this swamp, where we can't even get any good footing.
How 'bout up there on that basketball court?”
It was
actually a basketball hoop at the end of a Catholic church parking
lot. It was asphalt, though, where I could get some good, solid
footing for a real fight – a fight in which I could kick a
lot, which was my primary weapon. I was a master of kicks, not
so formidable with my hands, against a really good fist-fighter. Here
in this marsh, I'd have lots of trouble trying to get off any really
good kicks.
It worked –
Cudgie hesitated at the idea of fighting me, one-on-one. He couldn't
actually back down, or he'd lose the respect of the mob. Yet, he
didn't want to do it. I had him.
I realized
that I couldn't push him too hard, though, or he'd have to fight
me {and I didn't want to fight him, either}. So, though I don't
recall exactly what words I used, I then offered him what he was
now looking for, which was a way out of this confrontation. I'd
succeeded in turning it around – I had him gulping hard,
now, even though he and his mob still had me at bay, really.
From there, it
was just a few more words exchanged, wherein I was warned to stay
away from Tom Blake and Traip high school in the future; then
Cudgie and his mob walked away, leaving me with my tape
recorder, unharmed.
Whew!
________________________________________________________
Close
Call #10 A Bad Feeling – In The Shadow Of A Giant
Circa, 1989,
'90:
I had a
feeling that there was something bad “in the air” one night when
I had parked my car in Portsmouth and was on foot. I had wanted very
much to avoid the entire downtown area because of this uneasy sense
of foreboding trouble: there was danger in the air – but I
realized, to my chagrin, that I had no lighter or matches on me, and
it was my plan to smoke some pot once I was away from the downtown
area. So, I had to – in spite of my uneasy feeling – go into a
little store, in the heart of the area I really wanted to
avoid, which was the block of State Street that had a bad-news bar or
two, and this little store {Richardson's}. There was often violence,
sometimes even murder and rape, in this area. I justified going into
this store by telling myself it would just take a minute – and I
really needed a light. Books of matches were free, right next to the
cash register. Go up the few feet of sidewalk on that block, hit the
store, get out and get gone. Tense, but – really, what could
happen?
On my way into
the store, I noticed a large, hulky, mean-looking black man nearby.
He gave off a bad vibe, but, “I don't know him,” I thought to
myself, so he couldn't be of any concern to me. I went in, bought a
lighter or got some matches, and came out, taking a left so I could
just walk that thirty feet or so to the corner, at which point I'd
disappear, and be off on my own to quietly smoke my pot.
“Hey!” I
heard, from behind me. It sounded confrontational, but, “He
couldn't be talking to me,” I figured, “I don't
know anyone around here,” 'cause I'd already covered the
area at a glance, and there was just that mean-ass-looking big black
guy, and a couple of other scattered strangers.
“HEY! YA,
I'm talking to YOU!”
Oh, shit! The
bad feeling I'd had all along – the sense that told me to keep
out of this area tonight, was directly connected to what my ears
now heard. I felt it – though I normally do not respond to a
“Hey” or a whistle unless I hear my name attached to it – that,
“he does mean me.” I knew he was calling me
out, though I had no idea why.
I turned and
looked. Double, triple-shit! It was the huge black man,
walking very menacingly toward me – and his bad-news eyes were
locked on me.
Why??? I
don't know this guy!
“Ya, you.
YOU WANNA HIT ME?” He was pissed – at me! – and
really had a problem with me, and here he came – but why??
How could this be happening? All I needed was some matches;
and now – this?!
“YOU WANNA
HIT ME?” he asked again – fearsomely, but very mysteriously. I
had no idea why this was happening. I had no idea who
this enormous, very intimidating man was. All I knew so far
was, this just wasn't my night to be in Portsmouth.
I stood
looking at him, and he got right up to me, now hovering like a
mountain, over me. He was tall, wide and could easily have
torn me in half. If I put up a fight, he'd definitely not notice it,
as he destroyed me.
As I looked up
into his giant, mean, mean face, feeling very tiny in his
shadow, I knew I had no chance of defending myself against
him. This stranger, so large, so black, so wide, so obviously pissed
off – and loud – was about to beat the ever-lovin' shit
out of me. I'm not sure I ever felt so defenseless, as fresh out of
ideas for escape. I was his; but before he pummeled and
severely injured me, I had to know: WHY?
Wondering why
he kept asking, “Do you want to hit me?”, I solemnly, steadily,
quietly and sincerely asked him, eye-to-eye, “What are you talking
about?”
He truly
seemed to know what he was talking about, he seemed really earnest in
his challenging interrogation, so now I wanted to know what
this could possibly have to do with me.
He raised his
giant, cement-block hand, and pointed to himself with his thumb, as
he announced, loudly and forcefully, “I'M ROBERT REED, THAT'S WHAT
I'M TALKING ABOUT.”
Oh, no. Now
I understood completely. About 13, 14 years earlier, I'd beat him up.
He was much smaller then. He'd lived at the apartment complex
where I'd hung around and gotten into so much trouble and violence in
my teens. He was just one of a group of guys I sometimes hung out
with. I punched people out all the time back then, when I was 17 or
so. Robert had made a wisecrack at me that I didn't like, and I'd
punched and kicked him a few times. Not a bad beating, but I probably
at least bloodied his lip. It was nothing personal, I just reacted to
a wisecrack that pissed me off. He was my own size in those days,
maybe a little taller, but he wasn't a big guy – back then.
He'd spent his
years from that time to this, in prison on a rape charge that
happened not long after I'd punched him out. Whether he was guilty or
not, I don't know. What was apparent was that he'd doubled in
size while in the New Hampshire State Prison. Now he was going to
break every bone in my body – and I deserved it. Fuck. He
had me. He was right, and he was going to hurt me. I
didn't have a leg to stand on – and within seconds, probably none
to walk on, either.
In the moment
of silence, he saw in my eyes all that transpired in my mind after he
told me his name. He knew that I knew what I now knew, including how
very right he was, and how very defenseless I was.
“DO YOU
WANNA HIT ME NOW?” he repeated, since I would now fully
comprehend the question.
My answer was
sincerity and respect itself, and I spoke it in the trembling but
steady voice of a frightened but respectful man who knows he's
about to get hurt:
“No, I
don't.”
I had answered
his question. I stood eye-to-eye with him for a terrible period of
silence, in which I was sure his knee was going to come up
into my balls, and that would devastate me, before he commenced to
bash me to pieces. If I had tried to run, he probably would have
killed me. I just stood, eye-to-eye with Robert.
Finally, as I
looked up at him, my eyes pleading mercy and the very justice
of his cause, he slowly brought up that massive right hand – open,
to shake my hand! What a relief! I could hardly believe
it, but he was sparing me.
“I LIKE YOU,
MAN,” he said, just as loudly and menacingly as he'd asked if I
wanted to hurt him.
“BUT DON'T EVER TRY TO HIT ME AGAIN.” His
finger pointed at me for emphasis, his voice thundering, as I enjoyed
the relief of his big, warm handshake.
“You got a
car?”
“Yes.”
“Where is
it? You're gonna give me a ride.”
“Okay!” Be
nice to anyone who has just decided to not break every bone in your
body.
He had me
drive him across the bridge into Kittery, to a bar name Ziggy's.
Ziggy's was owned by a notorious, badass gangster-type {gang of one,
mostly} who owned several bars in Portsmouth, as well. He was known
as the baddest-ass of badasses, having {at least} once beaten a man
to death with his bare hands, outside one of his bars. I dropped
Robert off at Ziggy's, and that was that, as far as I knew.
Later, I
learned that Robert was paying off old debts that night, and Thank
Heavens and Thank Robert Reed, I was shown mercy. The mighty,
baddest-ass-in-town, Gator, wasn't. Gator got the living shit beat
out of him by my friend, Robert Reed.
Then, from
what I heard, that same night, Robert “borrowed” a car that
wasn't his, got pulled over by a New Hampshire State Trooper – and
beat the living shit out of the trooper. Back to prison he
went. He'd breathed free air for a day or so.
The
“authorities” call him a savage animal. I know better.
Epilogue: Over
a decade later, feeling how much I owe Robert Reed for sparing me, I
tried hard to somehow help him. At least, I really wanted to thank
him. Every time I thought of what he could have done to me –
rightfully so – and what he did to Gator and the trooper
that same night, I just had to locate him, and thank him.
In 1999, I
called the N.H. State Prison to inquire whether he was there, and how
I could go about visiting him. No. You can't call the prison and get
an answer to anything. No, they couldn't tell me if he was
there. No, I could not come to visit anyone without first being
invited by that person, and no, I could not know when visiting hours
were. Nothing. Good-bye, fuck you, and click. That's all I got
from the N.H. State Prison.
I recalled
having met a N.H. Senator. I gave him a call. He gave them a
call. They gave me a call. They were so polite
this time! They even called me, “Mr.”, and asked, “How may we
help you?”
I learned that
Mr. Reed was now in a facility in Connecticut, where he was all but
cut off completely from the outside world he'd known so little of
since the mid-'70s. I was able to write to him, and we exchanged
several letters, over the period of a year or so. There just wasn't
really a damn thing I could do for him, though. They had him, had him
good, and it was all “legal”. There wasn't shit I could do. In
all probability, he'll never get out; that seems to be the
authorities' plan for him. It's sad, frustrating to an amazing
degree. The man who shook my hand, and who I spoke with that night,
is no savage animal. There's a very good chance that he committed no
rape to start with. I know the parties involved, and am distrustful
of those involved. I just don't know what happened, I was away
from that place by the time it occurred. I seriously doubt, however,
that whatever it was, deserved a lifetime in prison.
Close Call #11 Nearly Harpooned
[This
one is taken from my, “Notes on The Jabbers”]
GG
Allin's “autobiographical” account of the rift between Rob Basso
and I was practically backwards
in comparison with the truth, and certainly fictionalized. GG wrote
that he and I, in the band's practice space, were heaping insults and
abuse on Rob as he played, and if he objected, we beat on him,
something to that effect. As I said, his account, at least in part,
is backwards. GG also wrote, “Jim Danger hated Rob, too.” It was,
as I've described, more a case of Rob hating
me, once I became very
close with GG. Not only so, but it was Rob
who threatened me, or
indicated an eminent attack on me, as follows:
GG
Allin & the Jabbers practice space, 2nd
floor office, rear of building overlooking large parking lot. Al
Chapple and Rob – I don't recall whether John Fortin was present or
not, but I'm thinking not – were working on a new song. It must
have been June now, 1980 – 'cause things were very near an end –
at least the end of GG Allin & the Jabbers, Phase 1.
There were
posters on the walls – the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Patti Smith,
the Dead Boys, etc. The Ramones poster was signed by all of the
Ramones – GG and the others had gone to see the Ramones several
times, I gathered, and had their albums signed by the band – and
this wall poster too. GG and another person or two had also signed
the poster, and at some point I had briefly decided to call myself
Nick Nayme {hadn't thought of Danger yet} and I too signed the
poster, “Nicholas Nayme”. Rob was pretty miffed about that, I
recall.
Rob
was miffed, all right, and more-so, about a number of things. The LP
bombshell had lately struck. Rob had been fucked,
as
had the others, by GG. Down the drain at the same time was Rob's
imagined or hoped-for personal closeness with GG. GG, the charismatic
born leader, was a dynamic person who everyone around him wanted to
be close to, personally. Not only so, but to Rob, I think, GG
represented The
Ticket To The Big Time.
Accordingly, he was enamored.
Then I
had come along, and very quickly become what certainly appeared to be
a fast friend and buddy-cohort, with The
Geege.
At
the moment, Rob and Al {and possibly John Fortin, don't recall –
probably not, he lived a ways off and didn't drive, got rides to meet
us for important stuff} were working on a new song that Al had
written, called “Underwear Party”. {“We're going to – an
underwear party / Bring the girls – and don't be tardy....”} It
sounded pretty sophomoric, if not childish – doesn't it?
As they were going over it {I still
remember
it, quite clearly, 35 years later}, GG and I were sitting atop PA
speakers that were sitting on the floor, just high enough so that our
feet were up off the floor, and were kicking back together, smoking
pot out of my small bong. I had this same blue bong with me
throughout the time I was with the Jabbers, and was even able to load
and light it while driving, with my right hand in a cast. Didn't have
it on that CBGB trip, though, which is why I'd had to buy papers on
the Lower East Side.} GG and I were laughing at Rob and Al, quite
giddily, as we got high and listened to their efforts on this all new
song. At the moment, they didn't look like great musicians, and the
song wasn't exactly catching fire in front of us. GG's and my
laughter got loud, and GG laughingly blurted out “What the fuck
kinda fucked up song is that?”
and
I found this hilarious, as did he. The fact that it was open
ridicule, made it all the funnier. His last remark, in fact, GG had
directed more at
Rob
and Al, in a derogatorily heckling way.
Rob snapped. All
of
the late frustration in Rob's mind geysered to the surface. He spun,
grabbed a mic stand down near its base, and picked it up like a
javelin, over his head and pulled it back about to throw the deadly
spear - right into my chest. I saw where he was aiming. GG and I
both yelled as though our car was about to crash, and scrambled to
get out of the way. {Yes, folks, GG Allin was once terrorized by
someone wielding a mic stand toward him,
before
he ever did it to anyone else! Rob can be proud of that,
if
he likes – I
would
be!} Rob's eyes were locked on mine, with fury and hatred. He wanted
to
kill me – he wanted me Gone.
Had
he fired that javelin, I'd've been a hurtin' bastard – if not dead;
but he held his fire. “Jesus
Christ!”
GG proclaimed.
In this way, then, I was momentarily the focus of Rob's rage –
at GG.
Almost immediately, GG and I were in my van going around looking
to start a whole new band – Rob and
Al were out.
Close
Call # 12 Caught Off-Guard In The Park
Circa
sometime in the era of '85 – '90; guess: '86? That was my drunkest
year in the ' 80s, probably.
I was drunk enough to make the mistake of walking, alone, into
Prescott Park in Portsmouth, well after it was wise to do so, without
purpose, at around 1, 2, 3 in the morning. Let's say it was about 2.
It was just a bad idea, to stroll into the park and plop down on a
bench, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the river and the lights of
the Navy Yard on the other side, glimmering on the rough and rowdy
surface, as though it were a fine afternoon. It was fuckin' two in
the morning, and I was completely oblivious to my surroundings. In
other words, a sitting duck.
My error was made manifest – and all of my defensive and
survival skills switched back on – in other words, I was woken
up – when a young
man appeared before me, standing about five or six feet away, right
in front of me, and making small talk, while his eyes danced
nervously around the park behind me. Oh,
shit. You idiot. You don't come here alone this time of night, you
drunken fuck. Okay,
time to get the fuck out of this fix – you're
in a fix. Now, get out
of it, and get the
fuck back to Kittery where you belong.
I knew that his glances behind me were a silent communication
between he and some others who were readying for an assault on me.
I think the guy asked for a light or something, and as my
suddenly awakened mind worked on finding the survival solution, he
kept me talking and – he thought – totally focused on him,
as his cohorts
approached from behind. By the way the attack was being carried out,
I knew that this little crew was a step up from just a stupid gang of
ruffians. They were wary and executing an organized attack. They've
got their wits about them. Good. Reading the guy in front of me, I
knew that he thought he
had me, he thought I
was drunk and ignorant enough to be completely unaware that he was in
fact an attacker – and, especially, that he had friends on my blind
side. So, he was confident. I could also see that he was relatively
clever, no third-rate dummy. Good. With such a crew, such a leader,
one could play chess. It's harder to outwit really stupid attackers,
because they have no real wit to play with. They don't fall for
anything, because they're too stupid to even understand the question.
All they know is they're gonna fuck you up, and no further thought
distracts them from doing just that. You can't reason with them.
Subtlety is futile. With more intellectual attackers, however, you
can engage, mentally.
Then you've got a shot. It's just a matter of out-armwrestling them
with your brain. Anyone
can be tricked – ask any good magician. The smarter they are, the
easier they are to lead and manipulate – ask any good hypnotist.
They more able they are to see the unseen, the easier they are to
dupe – ask any good evangelist.
I had learned much about survival on the street, first by
experience, and then from a teacher, a hood-gangster-genius type who
had grown up among convicts and had run and ridden with the baddest
bikers {invited to join the Hell's Angels, but didn't want to wear
the colors, being a staunch individualist}, and had also spent years
with the mafia {the less said on that, the better}. The stunt I used
here, to get out of this fix with the crafty attackers in Prescott
Park, I learned from him. It's called, 'projecting'.
I first used my own technique, which was to break the guy's
rhythm by suddenly rising to my feet and announcing snappily and
strongly, “Well, I'm taking off,” as I took my first step away
toward the bridge to Kittery. I saw the surprise and near-panic in
the guy's eyes, and read the silent communication he sent to the
others, which was a big “?”. I had surprised him, broken his
confident rhythm, which confused him. I could hear
the others who were
ready to set upon me, their steps in the grass. I'd known they were
there all along. They were sure I hadn't known they were there, but
now none of them were sure of anything, as I began so suddenly to
walk away – and I didn't sound or look drunk, all of a sudden, no
lame sitting duck, now on my feet.
This was
the moment that I would be attacked, these first few seconds of
walking away with my back to all three or four of them. Soon I'd be
out of the park, so it was Now Or Never, and we all knew it. They
weren't sure, anymore, just what
I knew, and it was
precisely this condition that I relied on to get me those first few
steps. Interrupting their timing, their flow, and surprising them by
standing up with a firm announcement and beginning to walk, had been
a successful tactic to buy me a few seconds.
Now, with an impending attack from behind by several attackers, I
needed a second tactic. I used what the Bad, street-savvy, rebel
mafia gangster taught me.
Instead of hastening
away, as though
fearful {which would have triggered
their attack, for it
would have emphasized my vulnerability}, I actually slowed
my walk now, as though
expecting and
anticipating their
attack – and hinting that I was prepared
for it. I knew they'd
become suspicious of this, being the clever types they were, and I
was right.
What I was
“projecting” now, or indicating to them with my body language,
was that I was in possession of a very large handgun, and the second
I was attacked, I'd shoot every one of them dead. The exaggerated
slow pace of my walk, almost halting between each step, as though
about to turn back on them, suggested, “Come
on, mutherfucker –
make your move, and I'll blow your brains out!” I walked like I was
hoping they'd
jump me – inviting
them.
It worked, they held
off; I went home.
[Afterword: Recently,
I was watching one of the “Godfather” movies, the scene where
Brando is in the hospital and Pacino is anticipating an attack from
gunmen. Pacino and some innocent non-gangster are out in front of the
hospital, knowing that the hit squad is coming. Pacino tells the
other guy to “act like” he's got a gun and is ready for the
attack. The shrewd hit-squad arrives, and Pacino and his recruit use
this same trick of “projecting” - acting as though they have
adequate arms, with their body language – that I have described
here. If your attackers are smart enough, it works very well.]
Autobiographical Writings
Funny Stuff
Working At The Mall
I’ve had some really funny experiences, and one of the funniest took place in the winter of 1977, or early ’78. I was working at a mall, and my job, basically, was walking around picking up trash in the parking lot and sidewalks around the mall. I was 18 yrs. old.
I was BAKED. I’d just smoked a joint somewhere behind the mall, and had walked back into the maintenance garage area, before setting back out to shovel or something, whatever I was supposed to be doing. Anyway, I was trying to act normal - like I wasn’t highly high - as one of the other employees was talking to me about something inane & irrelevant.
This guy was in his 30s, I guess, with long, shoulder-length hair and a full beard, not very bright, kinda skinny and not graceful, some kinda very-French name, and a facial expression that seemed indicative that he was constantly perturbed, or mildly outraged. He just looked like that all the time, with his eyebrows up in a sort of pleading demeanor. He wasn’t somebody I took very seriously. He’d worked there longer than I had, but he wasn’t a boss, as far as I recall now.
It was very cold, dead of winter, which is probably why I’d gone inside for a few minutes as I passed by the area. This guy was all bundled up, big bulky coat and stocking hat, boots, all that, and for some reason, he was telling me something about a foot condition that he had. I was absolutely baked, feeling great, and this guy I didn’t take very seriously to start with, ‘cause I didn’t think he was very bright, was kneeling down, pointing to his foot, with that earnest expression of his.
When he got to the part about his “baby toe”, I lost it. Just burst right out laughing, no disguising it at all. I just started laughing at him, doubling over. He was instantly pissed. Here he was explaining something very, very important and serious, about his "baby toe", and I had the nerve to LAUGH at him!
“OH,” he charged, “So, I guess you’re one of those people who thinks that everything is funny, huh?!” {Actually, I was, yes - especially when I was tripping.}
I tried really hard to smooth it over, but there really was no cover, it was too obvious that his sincere and grave communications had simply cracked me up. So, I just had to go with it, at that point, I’d completely blown any chance of getting back on his good side, now. Laughing my ASS OFF, I returned to the snowy outdoors, walking away with a shovel or something slung over my shoulder, still laughing to myself.
There was the noise of a trash compactor nearby, so I couldn’t hear the words when I looked back over my shoulder and saw the guy now standing outside, raving at me, waving his arms, thoroughly pissed off, still yelling at me. I exploded into far greater hilarity, to see this. Now, I was screaming with laughter, while he was screaming in rage at me.
Every ten or twenty feet, I’d turn and look back, and he’d still be there, ranting, waving his arms, gesturing angrily, and I’d break into more intense hilarity than before. He was STILL THERE, I mean, this was like a movie, every time I looked back, he was getting smaller and smaller in the distance, but was STILL there, yelling at me and gesturing wildly. I laughed ’til my stomach hurt so bad I couldn’t stand up straight for a while.
He wasn’t friendly to me anymore, after that. I quit soon thereafter, so it didn’t matter.
