The American Dream, so far, has been more of a nightmare punctuated by glimpses of nirvana than the gloss painted by the films and novels. What I have reported so far has only scratched the surface of the degeneracy I have encountered, this being a family magazine I have been restrained by the editor’s penchant for merely discarding bits he deems too salacious, libellous or merely unbelievably insane... There is nothing worse than spending hours over a rattly typewriter only to find that your brilliant prose has disappeared because it might offend some dickhead whose objections make Mary Whitehouse look like Cynthia Page.
Even here, 4000 miles away across the Atlantic I can hear the editor scream, this is a f..... motorcycle magazine, so get on with it. Ho hum, I don’t have that much to report, in the past two months I’ve been so busy chasing skirt and working for a living (fourteen hour days, seven day weeks at some incredible rate of pay) that the big Z1300 has been used merely to carry me to and forth work and to various romantic assignations (apart from the past few days, more of which later).
A total electrical failure provided hours of amusement at 2am, at least for the leathered jacketed youths who should have been in bed with the Beano (or at least Penthouse) who seemed willing to do weird things with baseball bats until my lady companion pulled out a revolver and fired a few shots between their legs.
The main fuse had blown but for some reason we had plenty of silver foil to hand. Ten days ago the usual happened, I got the sack. I was so messed up from lack of sleep that even quaffing huge quantities of amphetamines failed to keep me together. I was in the depths of some CAD, trying to figure out just what the hell I was doing (if your aeroplane suddenly falls out of the sky, blame me) when the system failed. This so enraged me that I picked up the terminal and threw it across the room. As it was connected to various expensive bits of equipment at the time, this more or less wrecked the whole room. I thought the boss was going to have a heart attack.
These Americans are violent creatures, happy to get physical and ask questions later. Anyway, I got out while I was still in one piece. Riding the Z home after that was sheer hell. I just couldn’t synchronize the clutch and gear lever, the Kawasaki’s back wheel skipping up the road in a series of terrible lurches that wrecked havoc with my by then frail frame. In the end I just left it in second and screamed along at maximum revs. It was hard going to throw the bike through the gaps between cars that appeared to be weaving all over the road and the suspension had tightened up so that every road deflection was monitored by my spine, but my right hand had assumed a death grip on the throttle. Further amusement resulted when I reverted to riding on the correct side of the road.....
I left the Z propped up against the wall as I didn’t have the energy to use the stands and crawled up a few flights of steps to what the Yanks call a cold water apartment and what you or I would term a cockroach infested hell hole. Two days of sleep seemed to help. When the girlfriend suggested going camping the thought of fresh air almost made me throw up but she persisted and I reluctantly gave in.
What she forgot to mention was that I had to ride 350 miles along a boring highway to get there. I amused myself by trying to put 150mph on the clock but the chassis eventually disuaded me from such acts of suicide, although the feeling of being aboard a small ship in wild seas stayed with me for a long time after more moderate velocities were attained.
What was really amusing was that we had to share the campsite with a bunch of angels. I mean, shit, these guys (if there were any girls they were indistinguishable from the men) were the dregs, if they weren’t covered in more hair that most werewolves then they looked a dead ringer for convicts who had just been let out of the highest security, meanest, badass prison the Yanks could invent (and as many of their penal institutions are private, they can get pretty damn bad).
Judging by the letters from readers of hardcore chop mags this was probably a correct observation. Their behaviour was pretty much par for the course for a group of mentally subnormal, sexually repressed, drunken and drugged sub-humans. When they saw that my lady friend was dressed in shorts so short they could have passed for a bikini they crowded around, making strange grunting noises obviously desperate to graduate from reading Screw and humping their canine pets that were slobbering between their legs. I doled out some pills and they went off to disturb a family foolish enough to turn up in a huge camper. After they had turned this and extracted the younger daughters from the chaos there was relative quiet for the next hour, save for the odd scream and gun shot.
So much for fresh air. The whole atmosphere was a thick fog consisting of open exhaust fumes mixed with ganja. The girlfriend was already moaning about moving on but having achieved the remarkable feat of erecting the tent, I was having none of that. Some time back, I can’t recall when, I had swapped some narcotics for a gun - not any gun, a huge Magnum revolver that I could hardly lift. I was living in fear of the kickback it was bound to give if I ever needed to use it.
I wandered over to have a look at the choppers which were parked in a long line. I ran a hand over the chromed sissy bar of one and almost immediately all hell broke lose. A pack of hounds bounded across the field and before I knew what was happening I was pinned to the floor by three of them. I literally had the shit knocked out of me by these beasts who must’ve weighed 200lbs a piece. After what seemed like hours of pain and terror and trembling they were pulled away and what was left of me roughly lifted off the floor.
I’m not sure if the angels were beginning to look like their dogs or if the dogs looked like their owners or if I was hallucinating, but they snarled just like the canines and warned me that I’d be beaten to a pulp if I tried to steal their machines again. I refrained from pointing out that they would do a lot better in the world if they spent as much time on their personal appearance as they did on their bikes.
I managed to stagger back to the tent only to find the frail in tears and the tent collapsed into a heap. The last thing I needed was an hysterical woman, I was feeling pretty damn hysterical myself if it came to that. I took some more medicine (although not any a doctor would prescribe unless he was terminally bent and desperate for easy cash) which took away some of the pain of what I assumed (by the amount of blood I was spitting up) were broken ribs. An unprintable stream of obscenities followed whilst I abandoned the tent, gained the saddle of the Z and persuaded the frail that she would be much better off leaping on the back than joining the tent in its abandonment.
I had intended to beat a quick retreat and find a suitable luxury hotel in which to lick my wounds but when I saw that the Z was pointing straight at the hounds rather than the exit a strange and desperate conviction overtook my mind. The Kawa rattled into life and with massive wheelspin churning up huge chunks of mother earth, I dropped the clutch with the revs in the red. I thought the massive motorcycle was going to loop the loop, but I managed to shove the bike a few degrees away from going vertical and screamed insanely as we slithered towards the dogs, who were already upright, snarling brutally.
Before they could scatter and before I could attain even second gear I was in their midst, bringing the front wheel deftly down on the first’s head. The other dogs scattered and the bike went into a massive skid, crashing over on to its crashbars, going into a wild and wobbly circular tour of what was left of the campsite. We sat on the bike perfectly balanced between personal exultation and premature extinction.
With almost super human force (at least the pain that shot through my chest made it seem that way) I righted the Z and hit the throttle again. I can’t say I was in control, it was just a matter of letting sheer momentum take over and sitting there waiting to see what happened next.I couldn’t believe my trajectory, it was too divine and it almost made me believe in natural justice. We were headed for the chops!
I could see angry angels running towards their beloved possessions and could feel the hounds tearing up the ground behind me ready to pounce if I backed off the throttle. The bike cleaved through a gap between two righteous hogs, sending them over and then we skidded on to what passed for a pedestrian walkway. I flicked up through the box, pouring on the power and the revs. I knew, like I knew little else, that I had to get out of the area as quickly as possible.
The ride that followed was even crazier, if anything, than the events that made it necessary. A full throttle thrash for the next 350 miles until we regained the safety of our apartment. I was chased by two patrol cars at one point, but crossed the border into another state before they could organise a road block.
Most of the time I was riding on auto pilot, I was so dazed by what I had done and how crazy things had become that I just sat there holding on to the bars, wincing with the pain and enlightened by amusing internal flashes of what the angels and their pets would do to me if they ever caught up with us. It seemed time to move on and I knew I was going to be forced to sell yet another motorcycle.
Johnny Malone