7/3
I rode with an outlaw motorcycle club again yesterday. It had been a while since my last run with such characters, and I almost forgot what a rush it is.
90 mph, blasting in the breakdown lane, white-lining vehicles (aka, cruising between two lanes of traffic), weaving, screaming, frightening everyone and everything. Including ourselves.
I then stopped at the club's joint to see the improvements made there. A jacuzzi and a fatty horseshoe bar with a nice brass rail. Then we went to the cycle chop shop, and I made a steel bracket for a guy's bike.
The weather was splendid. Noise in the streets. Puerto Rican girls facing off against a gaggle of overweight black chicks. Almost surreal. Me, coming straight from work in a pair of $110 slacks and a Brooks Brothers button-down, and a handful of greasy don't-give-a-fucks hooting and hollering at the down-trodden citizenry. Out of place in the throes of the ghetto, but belonging. Feeling safe.
I told the brothers to tell anyone who asked that I was their lawyer. This, to them, was about the funniest fucking thing they'd ever heard.
"You should come around more, man," my comrade said, just after I told a tweaked-out junkie to stick his hand in his ass to get the dollar he asked for.
"Why?" I inquired. "You want an insolent outlaw genius in your dirty midst?"
"Man," he replied with a roar of laughter, "I don't know what the fuck you just said, but those clean clothes don't make you less dirty, motherfucker."
"Fuck yeah," another said. "We need a fucking genius."
Surprised that my initial complacency was so well received - after all, a REAL genius would be home reading - I got to thinking:
They know I'm dirty? In those few moments, the guys who hadn't known me before KNEW that behind the diplomas and career and home and hearth I AM a piece of shit?
Wow. Are we all this transparent?
Moreover, now that my cover is blown, can I reconcile who I have become with whom I was destined to be? Can I be Dr. Outlaw? Should I be? Or should I just accept that my destiny is, after all, Dr. Bland and press onward?
Who ARE we?
