I have done some stupid shit in my life. Epically, stunningly, and gronkingly stupid. Like, even at the time I was doing it, I knew it was slap-me-Jesus stupid. Went right the fuck on and did it anyway. It’s like I felt the rules against doing dumb shit when you know it’s dumb shit did not apply to me. Yeah. That must have been it, right?
I guess I’m wired differently.
Many years ago, when the world was not as it is today, and men of my ilk rode freely through our cities, visiting various inns and wetting bitch-panties like manly firehoses, a dumb thing happened one night.
In retrospect, it was also good thing despite its dumbness. Because had what was going to happen actually happened, many terrible things would have followed.
It’s fairly evident no good could ever come from stabbing someone outside the old NSW Police Academy, so it’s probably just as well it didn’t happen.
And it’s all thanks to cowboy boots. If it wasn’t for two slightly scuffed pairs of the very finest pointy-toed, Cuban-heeled bastards, the ending to this tale would not have been happy for everyone involved.
So, on this fateful Friday night, five of my very dearest friends and I decided we would ride into a part of Sydney we didn’t normally ride to. Our quest, as always, was a few laughs, a few drinks, and some interaction with as many giggling girls as possible, with the hopeful view to maybe nailing the odd one in a spacious toilet, and being gifted her panties as a keepsake.
Yes, I know. This all sounds so impossibly sexist and man-piggish today. But in the Eighties, this is how people met, had sex, and sometimes formed relationships. Before dating apps, social media, virtue signalling, and all that wonderful modern shit, things were a lot simpler. Girls would pretty themselves up, put on their tightest jeans or shortest skirts, and head for where there was music playing and alcohol flowing. Blokes would shower, put on clean underwear, add a splash of Old Spice, or Paco Rabbane if they were from the fancy eastern suburbs, and head for the venues where the girls were. Both parties lived in constant hope of forming a short- or long-term relationship, and having a good time.
I know all of this sounds like some misogynistic anti-#MeToo, rapey, patriarchal nightmare today, but that is pretty much how it went in the Dark Ages of the Eighties. We were all clearly far less enlightened back then.
On this evening, my mate PG and I were wearing cowboy boots, and feeling fancy as fuck. Some months before that night, PG appeared among us sporting the very cowboy boots he was wearing that night. We shit-stirred him savagely, of course. Only an arse-hunting, cock-smoking, pillow-chewer would swap his Johnny Rebs for a cowboy boots, we told him. He told us to get fucked. We all moved on.
We ordinarily lived in Johnny Rebs. They were part of the uniform, and absolutely de rigeur footwear for all deadshit bikies everywhere. They were comfortable, durable, looked a bit dressy when they were new, and could kick seven shades of shit out of car doors and dickheads when the need arose. Which it did with tedious regularity. So many dickheads…so little time.
Anyway, a while later, I began to covet a pair of cowboy boots. They sure did look the business to me. And by that, I mean they made you look like you were a bit more dressed up. A cut above, as it were. You looked less like a hapless piece of bikie shit, and more like a flashy piece of bikie shit.
This was around the time when bikies in general were kinda cleaning themselves up a bit. They were trading in their magnificent, very worn and berserker-looking denim vests (originals) for much sharper leather jobbies, wearing less ratty jeans, and bathing with greater frequency. No, not all bikies, and there were still a few evil old-school fuckers who would no sooner clean up their act than they would buy a poofter Softail, but the times were a-changing.
I was still a way from buying a poofter Softail, but I was part of the new leather vest brigade, and now cowboy boots were calling to me.
To hear PG tell it, they were way more comfortable than Johnny Rebs. Sure, there was a brief nightmarish break-in period as they formed themselves around your foot, but once your feet and the boots got used to each other, they could not be beat. They also, according to him, didn’t work loose like Johnny Rebs did after a while and flubbed about on your feet. This certainly contributed to Johnny Rebs coming off your feet when you had an accident, and when you walked in older pairs, you tended to kinda clomp around like a Clydesdale.
So, I got me a pair of cowboy boots. A week later I could not walk. I had weeping blisters and savage toe-cramps, and every intention of cutting PG’s face off when, if ever, I recovered the use of my brutalised feet. But I persevered, and about three weeks in, everything became wonderful. The cowboy boots were now a part of me. My feet loved them. And girls would always say “Nice boots” as they helped me off with them. Thus did I become a devotee to the pointed toe, the Cuban heel, and the glove-like fit. I love cowboy boots to this day.
But they do have their limitations, as PG and I discovered that Friday evening.
We’d decided to go to the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills. We’d heard that lots of girls go there to play pool and drink at pub prices, before heading to the various gay clubs up on Oxford Street to dance with homosexuals. What? You didn’t know girls love going to gay nightclubs? You never got out much, huh?
Anyway, that was the plan. Go to the Clock, see what kind of flouncing and sashaying the bitches might be up to, maybe play some pool – because few things in life are more inspirational than playing pool with girls in short skirts – and maybe the gay clubs would miss out on a few girls that night.
We parked our Harleys on the footpath out front, because we could, and we were all full of strutting magnificence. The bikes, ratty as some of them were, all looked pretty fucken beaut at night under street lights. Bright and shiny things attract people. And since half of those people were girls, and this was not our first rodeo, we knew exactly what we were doing parking them there.
In we went to look around. And we looked and we looked, but there seemed to be some kind of girl-drought that night. We saw a few girls, but they were all with their boyfriends, and tightly leashed immediately upon our arrival. The rest of the clientele was blokes.
Oh well. Maybe things would change if we hung around a while. So, we bought some drinks, and went to play pool. One or two of us could play really well, and before long, we got into a series of games with four blokes who could also play really well. We won some, we lost some, and we drank enough for a few of us to get ornery. The blokes we were playing with were also getting a bit ornery. They’d stand too close when you were having a shot, laugh too loud when you missed, and quite simply getting on our tits. We had seen this many times in the past. Familiarity always breeds contempt.
A bunch of outlaws walk into a pub. Everyone is a bit on edge. Then, when no-one is murdered in the first half-hour, people begin to relax. They come and talk, everyone buys everyone the odd drink, and as they get lubricated, they tend to forget everything they’ve ever heard about outlaws. Or they think what they’ve heard is an exaggeration. Or they’re just drunk and getting stupider by the schooner. Or all of the above.
In their heads, we’re all now the very best of mates. That being the case, all sorts of liberties might be taken. We’re all mates, right? Hell, we’ve been drinking and playing pool, and telling jokes and stuff, and why don’t I just throw my arm around you, or maybe go and sit on your bike?
That’s pretty much when the good time they’d been having with their new best friends ends. You see, outlaws don’t go to pubs to make friends. They go to pubs already friended-up as fuck. Outlaws go to pubs to have a good time, and chase some girls. Sure, the more approachable outlaws will chat to you, let you buy them a beer, have a line with you in the toilet, and even play pool with you.
But the moment you climb into the dickhead tree and start chimping out, forgetting what they are and what you are, you’re evening is heading for ruin.
I can’t remember what time it was when the dickhead tree started shaking. But I do remember we were all suddenly fighting. Who hit who first or why did not matter. Once this shit starts, all that matters is for you to get hurt as least as possible, while hurting your opponent as much as possible, thus precluding him hurting you.
It was messy. I do remember that. Alcohol makes everyone brave, but it also makes for some shitty-arse fighting. Almost everyone ends up on the ground, wild punches and kicks are thrown, glasses get broken, chairs and tables get knocked over, and people start throwing things at each other. It’s a fucken chimp-cage.
We had an extra soldier, and violence wasn’t as alien to us as it was and is to most people, so we were somewhat on top of the situation. I did get pushed into a chip-dispensing machine which shattered loudly and rained glass all over me. Somehow, I remained completely uncut, and I actually hadn’t been hit in the face, so things weren’t too bad. I had been lashed from behind with the thin end of a pool cue a few times, and I remember thinking: Use the thick end next time, dickhead. Happily, the blows all fell on my upper back and shoulders, and while that stung, it wasn’t the back of my head.
There was no security back then, so the whole thing pretty much petered out quickly, except for one bloke, who thought this small break in proceedings would be an excellent time to glass PG. So he did. He went for PG’s face, but PG got his arm up in time and the broken schooner glass went into his wrist. Then the fucker turned and ran out the door.
PG and I were right behind him. “Get here, cunt!” PG yelled, and I remember thinking: Yeah, that always works. It’s like when the cops yell: “Stop! Police!” and the perp just keeps on booking. Who the fuck is gonna comply with that?
Our mate was straight across Crown Street and legging it towards the very busy Cleveland Street. We were straight after him. In cowboy boots. And fresh out of a fight. And PG was bleeding like an abattoir hog. He was holding the stabbed arm with his other arm, so when he ran, he wasn’t very good at it.
I was unglassed, but I was even more shit at running than PG was. Always have been. It was the reason I had to learn how to fight. I could not run away. But in cowboy boots, running was a disaster. Of course, not at first.
PG had pulled out his buck-knife as we pelted across Crown Street after the bloke who’s glassed him. He had maybe a thirty-metre head-start on us, and when we caught him PG was gonna stab him. He said so over and over, as he “ran”, knife in his blood-covered hand, while his other hand covered the gash.
I was “running” with him because…fuck, I don’t even know why. It just seemed a good idea not to let PG stab this fucker all by himself. So off I went.
And we ran and the fucker ran ahead of us. We could not gain on him, but he could not lose us. He maintained a steady thirty-metre gap, and he’d turn his head often to see where we were. When we stopped to catch our breath – twenty Winfield Reds a day do not help your track career – he would also stop to catch his.
PG would then scream at him.
“Come here, cunt!” he’d shriek.
“Get fucked!” the cunt would scream back.
Then we’d all start “running” again. My boots were tearing my feet to shreds. I could feel heinous crimes being committed inside my boots, and just as we turned and started “running” up Cleveland Street, savage sharp paints started shooting through my feet and up my legs. Then PG tripped and fell down. He screamed like an animal as his glassed arm skidded along the footpath and his knife went skittering ahead of him.
I lacked the strength to help him up. I was puffing and panting, and spots flashed before my eyes as I watched PG lever himself to his feet. Through the spots, I could see the bloke we were chasing had also stopped and was leaning against a shop window.
“Got…pant…the…pant…cunt…pant…now…pant…” PG gasped, took a few steps forward, picked up his knife and lurched ahead. I lurched right on after him, my feet flensed and screaming. The bloke looked up, saw us wobbling towards him ten-metres closer than we’d been all chase, and started running again.
Fuck, I thought, as he scrambled across Cleveland and into a side street. At times like that all you do think is “Fuck”. There’s not enough oxygen in your body to think of other words. And “Fuck” seems entirely adequate for what’s going on, ie. You’re dying, your shredded feet are on fire, your mate has lost litres of blood and is waving a knife around, and any minute now, a police car will pull up and the fuckers inside will have lots of questions.
Still, he had closed the gap to twenty-metres. PG had stopped yelling for the cunt to get here, and was now just concentrating on running him down. Except there was not much running going on anymore. There was just the three of us lurching and wobbling and panting and gasping.
We stopped again so I could throw up.
“Fuck…pant…this…pant…” I said. I could barely spit the bile out of my mouth.
PG’s breathing was now so ragged and hitched he could not even reply. He just nodded. Or he was having a stroke and it looked like he was nodding.
The bloke we were chasing was now leaning on a wall twenty-metres ahead of us, just down from a Police sign. We were outside the Police Academy. I had no idea if it was an active police station or just a building full of embryonic shitheads, but I had a clue us being found outside it looking like we did was not a positive thing. Security cameras were still decades away, but who knew when a cadre of wannabe pigs would come wandering out of the place.
“Fuck you!” PG screamed at the bloke. I was impressed he had enough air to do it. The bloke put his hands up. He was panting hard. “Sorry,” he squawked.
“Did he just say sorry?” PG asked me.
I nodded, hands on my knees and staring at the footpath with my wrecked feet seething in agony.
“Fuck off!” PG yelled, waving his bleeding knife-hand at the bloke and spraying me with blood.
The bloke levered himself off the wall and hobbled off. We watched him go. I was seeing him through eyes slitted with pain, and peppered with spots from my melting brain.
We stayed there, leaning against the wall for a while. I knew if I sat down I would not get up again. Eventually our breathing calmed down enough for us to light cigarettes. We smoked them as we started limping slowly back the way we’d come.
When we got to Cleveland Street, we could see better and I looked at PG’s gashed arm. The blood had stopped pouring out, but it was still bleeding. He took off his T-shirt, and I wrapped it tightly around his arm. We had another smoke, and then limped on.
Each step was a stabbing pain that shot straight up my leg into my pelvis. The pain was sharper in my left leg, but somehow deeper in my right. PG was also unsteady on his cowboy boots.
“How are your feet?” I asked.
“Can’t feel them,” he grunted. “Can’t be good.”
“I can feel mine,” I said. “That’s not good either.”
We didn’t dare try and take our boots off. I swore it felt wet inside mine, so that was probably blood. Or my toenails had all fallen off and been turned to goo.
It had taken us fifteen or so minutes to run to the Police Academy. It took us a good hour and five durries to walk back.
Our mates were all waiting for us. They told us the cops had come because of all the broken shit inside, but no-one would talk to them, so they asked everyone for their names, were given a whole heap of the usual made-up ones, told everyone to leave, then left themselves. We’d come upon our mates in the process of “leaving”, which was them smoking and standing around the front of the pub waiting for us. Everyone examined the bloody T-shirt wrapped around his arm.
“Did you get the cunt?” PG was asked.
“No,” he shook his head. “He got away.”
Everyone allowed how that was a shame.
“But he apologised,” PG added.
“And then you all kissed, made up, and had a root?” Mark grinned. “You’re both limping like his cock was huge.”
“I sure feel like I’ve been fucked,” I sighed.
I rode home very carefully that night. Each time I changed gear, I whimpered. Each time I applied the back brake I gasped. If I did nothing, my feet just throbbed. If I did anything with them, they screamed. And I would mewl and close my eyes. Don’t even ask me how I managed to get the bastards off my ruined feet. I think I lost consciousness a few times trying to lever them off.
I spent the next few days soaking them in warm, salty water. They were torn to shreds. Toenails had fallen off. The blisters were almost to the bone on the heels and near my big toes. I could not bend any toes, which was probably just as well. I would have fainted from the pain.
I came kinda good in about a week. Bought a new pair of cowboy boots to celebrate. What? Like I was gonna surrender?
