Me and Cecily hopped in the car were on our way to Las Vegas once and we
stopped at a desert town that is a popular way-station for the Las Vegas hordes that
come and go to LV from SoCal.
It’s a hot gasping oven of a town and used to have just two eateries but time changes things and now there’s dozens. Time hasn’t changed a few things though and one of the places is kinda scary-lookin and attracts lifer inhabitants of unfactoryfresh motorcycles and their riders. I like to stop there because the Diet Cokes are always icy and the – it’s basically a dive bar – and the BTL’s whoever the fuck owns the place makes are monuments to bacon, lettuce, tomato and REALLY good bread. And the women that work there are salt-o’-the earth, unless you give them crap, And I don’t give crap to serving personnel, even if they have it coming. I’ve BEEN serving personnel: I know that customers are often begging to be murdered.
So we pull up, always against Cecily’s wishes since she is real uncomfortable around
Motorcyclists, who delight in appearing totally ruined. Until they start talking to her, which invariably happens. Then oh my, she gets this fucking glow of life because they make her think she’s who they have been waiting to talk to all their life. So anyway we’re
heading in there and there’s a lone biker with ID on the back of his “clothes” that
proclaims him to be one of the official Bad Boys. I ain’t sayin’ which men’s association he was in but the producers of Gangland would have been interested in sending out a film crew to follow the fellow.
So he’s there sitting sideways on his bike and smoking a cigar and we pull in and then one of his associates shows up looking worse than the first one as far as “viable life forms” is concerned and me and Cecily are heading their way on foot and then an SUV full of whatever is going to follow the generation of “millennials” pulls into the area and stops somewhere nearby on the property and five very energetic total assholes rush into the visible atmosphere from inside the SUV and come toward the entrance and they are all laughing at these two motorcyclists.
These two motorcyclists by the way were not at all “brawny” type lads. They were rail thin, very badly groomed coteured and quaffed and I would not have attempted to address either one of these two individuals under any circumstances I can think of. They did not at all look like they could possibly ride the bare-bones large bikes they were riding. But they were.
And they had no goggles, no thick leather garments, they were wearing actual motorcycle boots that looked older and worse than even them two and they had no wind inhibitors, no fenders, they had shit wrapped around sissy bars, gloves with no fingers……..
This told me a lotta things. The main one bein’ they were probably pissed off just from the eternal road debris they were subjecting themselves to night and day forget about what the fuck must have been goin’ on in their PERSONAL lives, which hadda be very fucking dangerous if not just out and out suicidal. Call it a hunch. But to the oncoming pack of idiots they LOOKED like useless vagrants too poor to have their own SUV’s. Or delirious wasted bums in other words.
I’m good in two languages: English and body language. The body language of the oncoming group of post-teens told me that they were a unit of semi-proficient sociopaths used to getting their own way in public via keeping everyone normal on edge.
The two bikers who both looked like they both had been chased off of morgue gurneys for looking too dead had the body language of feral ocelots with short fuses.
So these two semi-ghastly bikers are sitting on their parked bikes shooting the shit
and smoking cigars like they needed to use smoke for security blankets. I mean, they
were not nursing those stogies, they were seriously smoking their cigars.
We’re downwind and Cecily goes “PEEYOU!!!!!!!”
The two bikers dudes just look over at us comin’. I raise my eyes to heaven and
silently talk to jesus of nazareth king of the jews for a moment and then aloud I stop and
gesture with this kind of helpless arms-to-the-side thing and say, “Hey: It ain’t your fault
that on our side of those stogies they smell like 50 years of dried piss, shit, and puke in
a Boston subway. It’s the CIGARS’ fault.”
APPARENTLY this made sense to them. One of them I THINK almost smirked. Very hard to say.
Their reaction to the group oncoming from the opposite direction was different. One
of the crew who I shall name Stupid shouted, “Hey you fucking assholes, you’re fucking
up the environment with those things. Ain’t it illegal smoking cigars now in public?? Do
you think maybe you can take a moment to consider something other than yourselves
for once? Like, maybe the earth??? Do you think our planet LIKES what you’re
doing????”
Even I knew this was not something to be yelling about TO these two REGARDING
these two.
They’re – all five of them now – almost skipping in delight because one of them had
set the tone of the engagement and that that tone would be Hijinx and Hostility.
One of the bikers was apparently very comfortable with the hostility requirement
because he was off his bike and was running toward the speaker carrying a very large
wilderness knife with a thick metal handle but holding it backwards so that when he ran
against the fellow and the side of his fist with the little finger on it hit the fellow in the
forehead it was mainly the metal roundish knife handle that made contact.
He was unconscious before he even started the tilt earthward and by the time he was on the ground the thing that had put him there was standing near the body yelling “WAKE UP!”
This did not work. He then kicked him in the ribs and again shouted “WAKE UP!” He
started coming around but I think it was coincidental with the kicking not because of it. It wasn’t cause and effect. It was more like serendipity.
This inquiry went on for considerably more times than the two times already
mentioned. And when the person interrogated began screaming “I’M AWAKE YOU PRICK!!” the biker grunted “Good,” and pulled him to his feet.
One of his buddies decided to try and effect a rescue and grabbed the biker’s denim
sleeveless garment from the back at the same time seeing what was written on the back of the denim sleeveless garment and pulled his hands off at the same time the man in the denim sleeveless garment, without paying too much attention, pile drove his elbow into the fellow’s, I believe it was right, eye.
This put a great deal of fear into the man
because he had to suspect he was now probably permanently blind in it. I know I
suspected it.
Meanwhile the biker’s main target was now being held upright by the biker grabbing
at his clothes and lecturing him.
“You’re worried about the fucking earth? Is that what you’re worried about? The
earth? How old are you?” No response. “How old are you, shithead!!”
There was a garbled “Twenty three…..” The biker inquired, “How old is the fucking earth!!”
Seeing that no answer was even close to being on its way the biker yelled “It’s 5 billion years old. 23 years ago YOU showed up on it. If you make it past this interview you might live a total of 90 years. Probably tops. Then you’ll be gone and the earth will hang around for at least ANOTHER four billion years……and YOU’RE worried about IT!
The earth is four billion years old and you’re 23……and YOU think IT’S in trouble! And that I’M the REASON. Shit, you got here just in TIME apparently!! Meanwhile while you’re worried about how I am going to damage a planet 25 thousand miles in diameter with my
cigar…. the fucking EARTH is going to threaten YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE with
tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, volcanoes, drought, starvation, disease, bugs, micro
bugs, gravity, frost, fucking fire, avalanches, deadly animals, poisonous plants,
poisonous fish, poisonous spiders, poisonous snakes, poisonous fucking lizards,
poisonous goddamn FROGS…..and you think my cigar is going to hurt the planet.
ACTUALLY…..my cigar is going to hurt YOU. When I put it out in your fucking
mouth…..and then I’m going to toss it and it will become chemistry for some goddamn
new poisonous plant to eat and grow healthy on!!”
He then started to move the burning end of the cigar towards his face at the same
time his buddy, in a grand display of fake concern, pulled the fellow away, like they had
been involved this very performance or ones just like it a trillion times before. The five
musketeers, suddenly understanding that their world of collegiate harassment was not
in the league of Real Life Berserkers, retreated to the SUV, shuffling quickly sideways all the while, saying things like they – the bikers – would be sorry.
I proceeded into the cafe place holding Cecily’s arm, putting me between her and
them and looking at them and I said, like a scolding elder, heading inside, “I hope you
both have learned your lesson.”
“It won’t happen again. We promise,” the non-combatant said calmly, after what I
thought was an uncomfortably long pause. Uncomfortably for me, you understand.
Once inside and settled Cecily said, “I don’t know why you keep stopping here.”
I looked at her amazed. “You GOTTA be kidding,” I said in disbelief.
