By one of those rare coincidences in life, that tend to define one's youth, a house in my street had been taken over by a gang of motorcycle outlaws. Large custom bikes came and went at unlikely hours. Piloted by leather and denim clad maniacs with beards down to their knee-caps. Strawberry blonde beauties loitered on sparse pillion pads. The heady roar of unsilenced engines shattered the calm of suburbia. As did the fearsome howl of Dobberman and Alsatian dogs, wolf-sized creatures that had thrown the immediate neighbours into a state of total terror. It was all enough to turn any eighteen year old's head.
The police came often, went away with disappointed frowns when they evidently didn't find a hoard of guns, drugs or stolen motorcycles. They often came in three of four patrol cars when the deep bass rumble of heavy metal music at three in the morning became too much even for those neighbours so elderly that they ought to be able to escape aural injury just by turning off their hearing aides.
In the summer of my 18th year it all became too much for me. I had to get in with this crowd. I viewed the scene, the bikes and the women, with hungry eyes, like an addict deprived of his drugs. The parents had already given up on me, although they would've preferred me to play out my adolescent fantasies out of sight and mind.
The first step was obviously a motorcycle. Not some nasty Japanese learner but a big 650 Triumph hitched up to a Watsonian sidecar. I tried hard to find a place to hide the L-plates. This fearsome device had been delivered to my door by the erstwhile owner, with instructions to watch out for the way it pulled to the right under acceleration and to the left under braking. I didn't take much notice of the old fart, who was chomping on a pipe that gave out more pollution than a CZ 125 with knackered rings.
I'd found some old leathers, boots and denim at the local Oxfam shop, and together with three day's growth of bristle, I decided that I looked the part. I'd already run a wimpy 125 around a training park so I knew what I was doing. The Triumph, a big soft single carb Tiger, came to life without much trouble on the kickstart. Throb, throb, throb, what a glorious sound she made. I backed out of the drive, muttering under my breath at the 750lbs all up weight and the stupid builder who'd given the drive what felt like a vertical camber.
Finally making the road, I dropped the clutch and blipped the throttle in anger. The blockhead bike twitched towards the pavement with a deathwish, twitched the other way when I hurriedly smacked the throttle back home. It reminded me of those American movies with the bronco riders fighting enraged, desperate animals.
I'd done maybe a 100 yards in a series of twitches when I decided it would be a good idea to get back down to, say, 5mph. Hitting the front brake it was like some gigantic force had hammered into the side of the bike. I'd planned on giving a nonchalant nod of my head as I passed the outlaw's house, where someone was almost invariably working on their Harleys. Instead of that I found the combo charging at their fence, thundering over the pavement, smashing the wood into a million pieces before slewing to a halt inches away from about 15000 quid's worth of prime Harley Davidson custom cycle.
I felt sick to my stomach as the guys rushed out of the house. My face must've given me away, because the nearest outlaw burst into howls of laughter which was soon taken up by the rest of them. Talk about embarrassing, at least it was better than having the shit kicked out of me.
They each insisted on taking a turn on the combo. Although there was the occasional wobble, they all managed to ride the thing in a relatively straight line. The general consensus, though, was that it was a rolling death-trap but that the sidecar was big enough to be useful as a dog kennel. They'd swap me a fake driving licence for it! How could I refuse? It seemed a lot easier than taking the test.
Two days later I had my 'full' licence. I was pretty pleased with myself as I seemed to be getting on well with them, though I couldn't stop my tongue from hanging out every time I saw one of the blondes. I was helping them carry the sidecar out to the back when a donkey sized dog bounded across the garden, butted me in the chest and laid me out flat on my back.
The next thing I remember is having a foot long tongue, attached to the ugliest head outside of hell, licking away at my face. I was told, once I'd been helped back up to the vertical and they stopped shaking with laughter, that Thatcher, the chief dog, was just being friendly and that the fact that I was still in one piece meant he must like me. My legs were still wobbly when I crawled into bed that night.
The solo Triumph was still well weird, the general consensus being that the frame was as bent as a twenty year old Honda camchain tensioner but its mere 400lbs was a lot easier to handle than the combo. I wasn't yet allowed to go on runs with them but they were happy enough to let me do some errands. I never asked or looked at what was in the parcels I had to deliver, discretion and a closed mouth being mightily appreciated in these circles.
I soon ended up spending most of the night and early morning there. Loud music, plenty of free beer and the gobsmacking women. It didn't take me long to figure out that the latter were hookers, being run by the outlaws at five hundred smackers a night. In between customers they were available for the free use of the gang, though not, alas, myself.
It was still a kind of heaven, with the lower half of the house knocked right out, walls covered with photos of raunchy motorcycles and naked women. A couple of stripped down Harley engines littered one corner on pristine workbenches, had to be approached with the utmost reverence. I was soon overwhelmed with the lust and need to own some American Iron of my own. You had to get righteous.
It so happened that they had a stock 883 Sportster that was to form a project bike for one of the gang members until he'd been knocked off by a cager and was still in a coma somewhere within the confines of the NHS. The car driver had been beaten to a pulp by the gang members and then left to the dogs to sort out. He, too, quite fittingly, ended up in some dank corner of the NHS mumbling away to himself. Anyway, the Harley was mine for £3000 if I wanted it.
The Triumph, on a lucky day, might fetch a thousand notes. How could I raise the rest of the dosh, muttered I to the chief bandit, early one morning in a drunken haze of motorcycle dreams. All I had to do, it turned out, was take a package over to Amsterdam for them. Nothing to it, get cleaned up, wear a suit and I'd flit through the minimal customs as if I didn't exist. I demurred even when he insisted it wasn't drugs and I wouldn't end up spending the next twenty years in jail. I only gave in when he agreed to let me have an hour with Charlene, the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, on my return.
Anyway, I did the deed without any trouble, rushing back for my just deserts I didn't know if I was more excited over the thought of the woman or the motorcycle. Charlene turned out to have such exquisite muscle control that my groin ended up bruised with lust and the Harley, bloody beautiful thing that it was, needed another grand spent on lights, brakes, exhausts and carb to make it useful.
At least with the Harley I was allowed on the runs, accepted as a probationary member of the gang. The rides were a fantastic experience, a pack of twenty bikes roaring across the landscape - the fury of noise, power and our presence blasting everything out of the way. I especially liked the times when one of the girls decided to come pillion.
The pigs were less impressed, pulling us over for document and machine checks. Even doing body searches for illicit substances. We always got a kick out of the way the fat cops eyed the cortege of women with open envy and dismay. It was obvious by the expensive machinery that we were into something highly illegal but they never seemed able to pin anything on us.
The fights with other gangs were even more harrowing. As a probationary member my proper place was at the front, in the thick of the battle. Fists, boots and knees I could've taken but the violence of the times meant knives, tyre irons and even axes were sported by demonic, crack heads only intent on inflicting the maximum violence in the shortest time. My reaction was to snake back behind some worthy veterans and scream them on in encouragement.
This lack of mettle and true grit were soon noted. I had to spend the mornings practising my fighting skills with twenty stone primitives whose idea of fun was to pretend to smack me in the mouth then kick me in the balls. These antics more than anything else marked the beginning of my disillusionment.
The final nail in the coffin wasn't even seeing the second-in-command come a cropper. He rode one of those huge police style Harleys that I couldn't even lift off the sidestand. As usual, we were all showing how macho we were by riding down deserted country lanes without helmets. I was two bikes behind when he hit a plume of gravel, that ricocheted back at us and felt just like having sand kicked in your face.
His bike went into a wild wobble, the rider sort of standing up above the bike before the whole scene collapsed before our eyes. Bike and rider went separate ways. I had a lot of trouble keeping control of my own bike so it was a little while before I was able to pull over and saunter back to see the extent of the damage. The state of his broken up head was bad enough to have even some of the real hard-cases throwing up, let alone a relative innocent like myself.
I was able to put that down to a case of bad luck and foolishness in not wearing a helmet. For a couple of weeks after that death there was an undercurrent of violence and madness in the gang, which was even picked up by the hounds who spent their days destroying old tyres, sharpening their teeth on a decimated minor forest of trees, and snapping up any animals that dared to venture into the garden. The rumour was that a big fight was brewing.
It came ten days after the accident, completely unexpected, at least by me, until the dogs started howling and head-butting the fence trying to get out. The next thing I heard was a series of screams from the beasts, missiles thrown through the windows and lots of noise outside. I curled up under the nearest workbench until it was safe to come out. Somehow every damn dog, except for a completely berserk Thatcher, had been killed, heads chopped off, blood and brain everywhere. It seemed to me that this was a warning and we'd be next.
I was obviously suspect, not being a full member of the gang, to their suddenly paranoid minds. They wanted to find someone they could tear limb from limb and I was the handiest victim. I was given the choice, go through the initiation rites or get the f..k out of town. There was no way they would tell me what I'd have to do but there were strong hints about Thatcher, being covered in shit and having to ride naked through town. I was never able to work out if they were just taking the piss or the next best thing to a blood cult. Even the charms of Charlene failed to entice me, I got out whilst I was still able, just suffering a few kicks and punches. Within the month, they'd sold up and moved on, much to everyone's relief.
A.F.
The police came often, went away with disappointed frowns when they evidently didn't find a hoard of guns, drugs or stolen motorcycles. They often came in three of four patrol cars when the deep bass rumble of heavy metal music at three in the morning became too much even for those neighbours so elderly that they ought to be able to escape aural injury just by turning off their hearing aides.
In the summer of my 18th year it all became too much for me. I had to get in with this crowd. I viewed the scene, the bikes and the women, with hungry eyes, like an addict deprived of his drugs. The parents had already given up on me, although they would've preferred me to play out my adolescent fantasies out of sight and mind.
The first step was obviously a motorcycle. Not some nasty Japanese learner but a big 650 Triumph hitched up to a Watsonian sidecar. I tried hard to find a place to hide the L-plates. This fearsome device had been delivered to my door by the erstwhile owner, with instructions to watch out for the way it pulled to the right under acceleration and to the left under braking. I didn't take much notice of the old fart, who was chomping on a pipe that gave out more pollution than a CZ 125 with knackered rings.
I'd found some old leathers, boots and denim at the local Oxfam shop, and together with three day's growth of bristle, I decided that I looked the part. I'd already run a wimpy 125 around a training park so I knew what I was doing. The Triumph, a big soft single carb Tiger, came to life without much trouble on the kickstart. Throb, throb, throb, what a glorious sound she made. I backed out of the drive, muttering under my breath at the 750lbs all up weight and the stupid builder who'd given the drive what felt like a vertical camber.
Finally making the road, I dropped the clutch and blipped the throttle in anger. The blockhead bike twitched towards the pavement with a deathwish, twitched the other way when I hurriedly smacked the throttle back home. It reminded me of those American movies with the bronco riders fighting enraged, desperate animals.
I'd done maybe a 100 yards in a series of twitches when I decided it would be a good idea to get back down to, say, 5mph. Hitting the front brake it was like some gigantic force had hammered into the side of the bike. I'd planned on giving a nonchalant nod of my head as I passed the outlaw's house, where someone was almost invariably working on their Harleys. Instead of that I found the combo charging at their fence, thundering over the pavement, smashing the wood into a million pieces before slewing to a halt inches away from about 15000 quid's worth of prime Harley Davidson custom cycle.
I felt sick to my stomach as the guys rushed out of the house. My face must've given me away, because the nearest outlaw burst into howls of laughter which was soon taken up by the rest of them. Talk about embarrassing, at least it was better than having the shit kicked out of me.
They each insisted on taking a turn on the combo. Although there was the occasional wobble, they all managed to ride the thing in a relatively straight line. The general consensus, though, was that it was a rolling death-trap but that the sidecar was big enough to be useful as a dog kennel. They'd swap me a fake driving licence for it! How could I refuse? It seemed a lot easier than taking the test.
Two days later I had my 'full' licence. I was pretty pleased with myself as I seemed to be getting on well with them, though I couldn't stop my tongue from hanging out every time I saw one of the blondes. I was helping them carry the sidecar out to the back when a donkey sized dog bounded across the garden, butted me in the chest and laid me out flat on my back.
The next thing I remember is having a foot long tongue, attached to the ugliest head outside of hell, licking away at my face. I was told, once I'd been helped back up to the vertical and they stopped shaking with laughter, that Thatcher, the chief dog, was just being friendly and that the fact that I was still in one piece meant he must like me. My legs were still wobbly when I crawled into bed that night.
The solo Triumph was still well weird, the general consensus being that the frame was as bent as a twenty year old Honda camchain tensioner but its mere 400lbs was a lot easier to handle than the combo. I wasn't yet allowed to go on runs with them but they were happy enough to let me do some errands. I never asked or looked at what was in the parcels I had to deliver, discretion and a closed mouth being mightily appreciated in these circles.
I soon ended up spending most of the night and early morning there. Loud music, plenty of free beer and the gobsmacking women. It didn't take me long to figure out that the latter were hookers, being run by the outlaws at five hundred smackers a night. In between customers they were available for the free use of the gang, though not, alas, myself.
It was still a kind of heaven, with the lower half of the house knocked right out, walls covered with photos of raunchy motorcycles and naked women. A couple of stripped down Harley engines littered one corner on pristine workbenches, had to be approached with the utmost reverence. I was soon overwhelmed with the lust and need to own some American Iron of my own. You had to get righteous.
It so happened that they had a stock 883 Sportster that was to form a project bike for one of the gang members until he'd been knocked off by a cager and was still in a coma somewhere within the confines of the NHS. The car driver had been beaten to a pulp by the gang members and then left to the dogs to sort out. He, too, quite fittingly, ended up in some dank corner of the NHS mumbling away to himself. Anyway, the Harley was mine for £3000 if I wanted it.
The Triumph, on a lucky day, might fetch a thousand notes. How could I raise the rest of the dosh, muttered I to the chief bandit, early one morning in a drunken haze of motorcycle dreams. All I had to do, it turned out, was take a package over to Amsterdam for them. Nothing to it, get cleaned up, wear a suit and I'd flit through the minimal customs as if I didn't exist. I demurred even when he insisted it wasn't drugs and I wouldn't end up spending the next twenty years in jail. I only gave in when he agreed to let me have an hour with Charlene, the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, on my return.
Anyway, I did the deed without any trouble, rushing back for my just deserts I didn't know if I was more excited over the thought of the woman or the motorcycle. Charlene turned out to have such exquisite muscle control that my groin ended up bruised with lust and the Harley, bloody beautiful thing that it was, needed another grand spent on lights, brakes, exhausts and carb to make it useful.
At least with the Harley I was allowed on the runs, accepted as a probationary member of the gang. The rides were a fantastic experience, a pack of twenty bikes roaring across the landscape - the fury of noise, power and our presence blasting everything out of the way. I especially liked the times when one of the girls decided to come pillion.
The pigs were less impressed, pulling us over for document and machine checks. Even doing body searches for illicit substances. We always got a kick out of the way the fat cops eyed the cortege of women with open envy and dismay. It was obvious by the expensive machinery that we were into something highly illegal but they never seemed able to pin anything on us.
The fights with other gangs were even more harrowing. As a probationary member my proper place was at the front, in the thick of the battle. Fists, boots and knees I could've taken but the violence of the times meant knives, tyre irons and even axes were sported by demonic, crack heads only intent on inflicting the maximum violence in the shortest time. My reaction was to snake back behind some worthy veterans and scream them on in encouragement.
This lack of mettle and true grit were soon noted. I had to spend the mornings practising my fighting skills with twenty stone primitives whose idea of fun was to pretend to smack me in the mouth then kick me in the balls. These antics more than anything else marked the beginning of my disillusionment.
The final nail in the coffin wasn't even seeing the second-in-command come a cropper. He rode one of those huge police style Harleys that I couldn't even lift off the sidestand. As usual, we were all showing how macho we were by riding down deserted country lanes without helmets. I was two bikes behind when he hit a plume of gravel, that ricocheted back at us and felt just like having sand kicked in your face.
His bike went into a wild wobble, the rider sort of standing up above the bike before the whole scene collapsed before our eyes. Bike and rider went separate ways. I had a lot of trouble keeping control of my own bike so it was a little while before I was able to pull over and saunter back to see the extent of the damage. The state of his broken up head was bad enough to have even some of the real hard-cases throwing up, let alone a relative innocent like myself.
I was able to put that down to a case of bad luck and foolishness in not wearing a helmet. For a couple of weeks after that death there was an undercurrent of violence and madness in the gang, which was even picked up by the hounds who spent their days destroying old tyres, sharpening their teeth on a decimated minor forest of trees, and snapping up any animals that dared to venture into the garden. The rumour was that a big fight was brewing.
It came ten days after the accident, completely unexpected, at least by me, until the dogs started howling and head-butting the fence trying to get out. The next thing I heard was a series of screams from the beasts, missiles thrown through the windows and lots of noise outside. I curled up under the nearest workbench until it was safe to come out. Somehow every damn dog, except for a completely berserk Thatcher, had been killed, heads chopped off, blood and brain everywhere. It seemed to me that this was a warning and we'd be next.
I was obviously suspect, not being a full member of the gang, to their suddenly paranoid minds. They wanted to find someone they could tear limb from limb and I was the handiest victim. I was given the choice, go through the initiation rites or get the f..k out of town. There was no way they would tell me what I'd have to do but there were strong hints about Thatcher, being covered in shit and having to ride naked through town. I was never able to work out if they were just taking the piss or the next best thing to a blood cult. Even the charms of Charlene failed to entice me, I got out whilst I was still able, just suffering a few kicks and punches. Within the month, they'd sold up and moved on, much to everyone's relief.
A.F.