I fucken love old motorcycle outlaws. Wretched and glorious bikie filth, the lot of them. They burned…hell, they blazed with a vicious, eldritch magic that knew no equal. They were their own crazed whirlwind, far too awful and terrifying and incandescent to even stand close to. Best you beheld them from afar.
I speak of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Those decades, as it turned out, were like the last hurrah for one percenters. One last, beautiful, and almost orgiastic, middle finger to normal society, before it turned on them, and they turned on themselves, and that paradigm changed forever.
But by all the fucks there ever were, those decades were just spectacular. Outlaws rode the world like it was a meth-packed dirty-girl in full high-heeled, pull-my-fucken-hair, slut-mode, and condoms be fucked. They could back then. There were fuck-all CCTV cameras, the cops understood how the game was played, and society quite relished its very own easily identifiable bogeymen it could point at and revile.
Things were simple and basic and everyone knew how the program worked. Here were a bunch of blokes, all different shapes and sizes, all wearing a variation of the same uniform, and obviously bonded by the stupidest motorcycles to ever turn a wheel. Obnoxiously loud motorcycles that could not be ridden really fast without death and catastrophe immediately attending upon them, but were ridden like that nonetheless.
None of it made any sense to anyone except the mad-eyed gronks who were doing it. That was just fine. It was meant to be like that, doncha know? What did make sense to everyone was that violence attended upon all who chose to see if these fuckers really were what they were dressed up to look like. Real violence. Immediate and harsh. With no reprieve.
You transgressed. You did something or said something you might have thought was clever, or smart, or you were just a natural smart-arse all braved up on too many beers, and your jaw was broken in the first punch. And you never saw it coming. It just came. It was a consequence – because life was full of consequences in those three decades.
And it often kept on coming. Because you pissed the wrong person off. And here you were maybe thinking him and his mates were all playing dress-up, huh? All those tattoos and rings and knives and strutting was just for show. And then there you were on the floor having all the shit you were packed with being flogged out of you. You were being epically de-shitted.
No teacher was going to stop this. No well-meaning mate was gonna put an arm out and inform anyone the bloke vomiting his bloodied teeth up on the floor had “Had enough”. The only one who decided when enough was enough was the bloke handing out the de-shitting. And if he felt you needed that chair to land upside your head a few more times, then that chair landed upside your head a few more times. If you had any luck, the fucker would have tired out quickly, because let’s face it, lots of them old outlaws were overweight, smoked a lot, and didn’t compete in triathlons.
Which is why God invented speed. Or meth. Or goey. Call it whatever the fuck you want, just know that it’s a lot more fun than cocaine if you want to bash idiots, fuck bitches, and ride your stupid motorcycle like your arse was on fire. It might have been invented by the Japanese in the late 1800s, and later synthesised and pumped into both sides during WWII, but it was tailormade for outlaw motorcyclists. Why? Simple, stupid. Bashing idiots, fucking bitches, and riding stupid motorcycles was what they were all about, right? Yes, they were about other things as well, and there are nuances to every generalisation. But, come on. When you’re in your twenties, bashing idiots, fucking bitches, and riding motorcycles has pretty much everything to recommend itself to some people. Speed made all that ever so available.
As an added bonus, speed allowed you to drink lots of piss and not appear too drunk, talk vast amounts of utter shit and thus be very interesting and amusing to like-minded drug-fiends, have lots of energy, and be able to focus like a retard on shit. Like bashing cunts, fucking bitches, and riding motorcycles.
So, there was that to take into account when you went out in the evening. Because there were always consequences. Old outlaws knew about these consequences. They may have been crazy, but they weren’t stupid. Well, most of them. But if you bought the ticket, you got on the ride, right? Of course you fucken did.
Because it was the best ride ever. Old outlaws knew this, just like they knew about the consequences. They lived lives of impossible highs and crushing lows. And while those low times were crushing – physically, emotionally, legally, and everythingly, those highs…Lord Sweet Baby Jesus, they were fucken high. Normal people could not even see that altitude. They had no idea it even existed.
When old outlaws were jamming up the road, ten-, twenty-, thirty-strong, at the-speed-limit-be-fucked, tightly packed like a single metal organism, it was a fast-rolling, get-fucked thunderstorm. It defied laws and rules, and pissed hard out of a big cock right into the face of an always shocked society.
When they arrived somewhere, it was an occasion. Here it was. The storm itself, incarnate. People got nervous. Panties got wet. Shit would, in all probability, happen. Men with “GET FUCKED” written all over them had arrived, and what you did about that was all up to you. This was a tribe you could not join. This was a tribe unlike other, lesser tribes. And it made you a little dry-mouthed and a lot wary. Good. That’s what what was meant to happen.
When they left, there was a vacuum. Always. Something primal had gone. Monkey brains stopped squirting “Beware!” and went back to compliance, obedience, and servility. As the storm rolled off into the distance, possibly leaving some wreckage behind, everyone breathed a little easier. Everyone was a little safer. The bland had returned to them all. Praise be. The panties would dry off in time.
Fuck yeah, I loved them old outlaws. I loved them for all the above reasons and for a whole bunch more, even if the above-mentioned reasons were more than enough. I loved their generosity. I loved their loyalty. I loved their sense of honour. I loved their commitment. I loved their great good-humour and resilience. I loved their infernal otherness. I loved their simplicity and their dedication to that simplicity.
And I loved the way they loved me. And of course it wasn’t perfect and of course shit went to shit from time to time. And it was fucked. And there was treachery and betrayal. And fuckers died. Like I said, crushing lows.
You learn to deal with it. Or maybe you just accept it. Or a bit of both. Or you fuck off and do something else. There’s a primalness to it all that makes perfect sense to some people. And you have a choice. You don’t have to do it. It’s not compulsory. But if you’re gonna do it, then fucking do it. Properly. All the way, or no way. You can’t even really taste it if you don’t eat the whole fucken meal and then order desert.
You can try pretending. You can imagine you’re just like they are if you dress up like they do, and go riding with your mates. And you all have similar little badges and you call yourselves a club, and normal people might even mistake you, at a distance, for the other thing. The real thing. But you know you’re not. And normal people will quickly work out you’re not either. Old outlaws won’t really give much of a shit. Wolves never give poodles much thought.
Things have changed. Nothing stays the same because the only constant is change. There are still old outlaws around. They’re all a good sight older now. Many have left the game, or the “chat” as kids now call it. They’re all still old outlaws, of course. That shit never goes away.
The paradigm itself has changed. We now live in a surveillance society that has outlawed outlaws. Well, certainly the overt appearance of such creatures. The outlaws are, of course, still there. They are not the same as they were, obviously. For they too have changed with the times. The drugs have changed. The cops have changed. Everything vibrates on a very different frequency today. But that’s OK, even though it’s really not. The world is gonna do what the world is gonna do, right?
None of us have to like it. Few of us do.
But nothing can change who and what I love, and always will.
