Oh won’t you take me home tonight?
Oh down beside your red firelight,
Oh and you give it all you got
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin’ world go round
- “Fat Bottomed Girls,” May/Queen (1978)
A month or so later I was in ___________________, a bar in the center of ___________, outside Philadelphia, drinking rum and ginger ales with Karen, her boyfriend, Tim, and Martin. It started at 5:00 as a quick run for a burger and beer. At 10:00, Tim was tutoring me on basketball betting, and why I had to meet his bookie. Simultaneously, Karen was lecturing Martin about why Martin and I weren’t getting laid, smashing in and out of my conversation with Tim:
“I made $5,000.00 with my guy. I’m telling you, you have to do this.” Tim slapped his hand on the bar.
“So, you pay him for tips and he’s your boo–”
Karen’s advice to Martin clipped through our conversation. “You realize why you’re not getting laid is ’cause you never try. You’re spoiled from college. You guys never had to lay rap. Well, now you do.”
“I try. But its sooo much work. Tell her how much work it is, ________.” Martin grabbed my shoulder.
“Gimme one second.” I turned to Tim. “So how much do I have to pay for the ‘tips’?”
“Well, it’s usually–”
Karen leaned over Tim’s shoulder and pointed at me. “Your problem is you expect them to come to you. You’ve always been like that.”
“Karen, can I finish?” Tim snapped.
“Sorrrreee.”
Tim barely took a breath before Martin jumped in on a 30 second time delay, entirely unaware Tim and I were even talking. “I don’t want to play the ‘game.’ I’m just a regular guy. I don’t want to put on the act. I’m not ‘Hollywooded’ up like _________. I used to get high with hippy chicks in college and have a good time. Now its all bullshit. I want a chick in torn jeans shorts, wearing one of those tapestry looking shirts. I just want a laid back, normal chick.” I noticed Martin had an odd, angry lilt in his voice. I paid it no mind. Tim was paying for our drinks and food with $100 bills. I wanted to hear how I could make $5,000.00 with his bookie.
“Yeeeaah, well that doesn’t work anymore,” Karen drew deeply on a cigarette, chasing it with the end of whatever was in her martini glass. Another round of drinks arrived. “Girls are on a different page now.”

I finally cornered Tim about bookie situation as we were walking back to Karen’s apartment. Martin stumbled out of the bar behind us. We were halfway up the block, going over the particulars, when I heard the glass smashing. We turned in the direction of the noise and there was Martin, in the middle of downtown ______________, tearing a brass fixture from the front of the bar and stomping it.
“Duuuude! Get the fuck out of there!” ____________ was a yuppie town, but _____________________ was not an exclusively yuppie bar. It had a delicate balance full of commuters and displaced locals… loyal locals, the sort who’d love an excuse to beat a white collar flunkie like Martin senseless. Thankfully none seemed to hear. He’d been out front, smashing the fixture to bits for a minute before he even acknowledged us.
I thought about pulling Martin away, but it was pointless. I knew the gears in his head. He was carrying out a tradition we’d shared through college. We’d destroyed apartments full of furniture, hotel rooms and an entire wall of the fraternity house’s windows in this fashion. Nothing was off limits. I’d come home and find every window in my apartment shattered with a bb rifle by Harris and my then girlfriend. People would set off fire extinguishers in the living room and throw empty bourbon bottles into the fireplace to see the vapors explode in orange flashes. I’d find myself in the backyard, throwing matches at a plastic water cooler jug filled with gasoline. I figured this was over after college. I was wrong. I’d find myself standing in the hall, talking to a friend. Out of the corner of my eye I’d see Alex doing an elbow drop on an ironing board in the guest room, cracking and bending it into a pile of abstract industrial art. My roommate Spalding would kick a door off the hinges in a Glenlivet blackout. People sprayed-painted our living room walls with ketchup during a Christmas party…
It’s highly immature, and in the pantheon of things that really turn women off, it’s near the top, but destroying things in a drunken rage is a release like no other. It’s perfect, pure, and near orgasmic. The joy of shattering inanimate objects hasn’t seduced Keith Moon, John Daly, Led Zeppelin and Johnny Depp for no reason. I never considered why watching something explode, burn or crack into a million bits felt as satisfying as it did at the time, but looking back, the psychology of it had something to do with rejection. Trashing anything for the sheer glee of watching it explode is a rejection of Everything – total disregard for the value of property and the notion that the material around you stands for an accomplishment of some sort. Killing a person’s morally appalling, but it’s assumed aberrant, insane… heat of the moment… psychotic. Smashing products is pissing down the throat of the Republic’s deepest faith. Blast the totems of success to bits and what have we got to hold sacred? To a lot of people, killing a television just to watch it die is multiples more violent and frightening than beating the piss out of someone in a drunken brawl.
In this case, it was dual rejection. Karen had bent Martin’s brain. She’d explained the mind of the 26 year old Barbies across from us at the bar. She’d told him he needed to impress them because they weren’t just judging him on his looks and facility with witty lines anymore. Consciously or not, they were judging him on his bank, on where he’d come from, where he was going and whether he was Stable. They had an agenda. Martin wasn’t predatory. He wasn’t looking to be the one night fling for any girl, though he’d gladly have taken that consolation prize. He was actually looking for a real girl, and a real relationship. But to get that with the level of woman he was used to fucking in college, he’d have to meet some rigid standards. He couldn’t be a wild drunken screwhead who flitted his days away in a dead end job. He had to join the game, talk about his goals, throw cash around, show himself to be a provider. It wasn’t in his nature. Karen told him plainly – if he didn’t make himself what he didn’t want to be, he’d be fucking his hand for the indefinite future. In turn, he was expressing his rejection of that reality… all over the front of _______________.
“That’s gotta be expensive.” I listened to the fixture’s seams explode and it light bulbs pop.
“An awful lot of crunching going on,” Tim whispered back.
“Too much. Come on, Martin. Get the fuck out of there!” I shouted. He picked his head up from the pile of twisted metal and glass and stared at us. The wave of anger broke… Lucidity. Panic. He looked at the shredded fixture. What the hell was he doing? He ran.
Martin was halfway to us when I spotted the round little man bolting from across the street, chugging, rolling forward with momentum. He wasn’t the stereotypical middle-aged donut addicted cop, asymmetric flab rolls cascading over his belt, back fat bunching up around his shoulder holster. He was solid, perfectly round in the center – a Weeble-Wobble toy… an egg with feet. His girth bounced, up and down, compact. Still, his footwork was clumsy and robotic, the markings of a high school nose guard gone to seed. I’d have yelled, told Martin to spin, weave or juke left. All he needed to do was miss the initial hit and the round little man would have careened past him and fallen under the force of his weight overcoming his joints as he struggled to turn. He’d lie on the ground like a beetle on its back, scurrying to get right. By the time he did, we’d be a block away. That didn’t happen… The booze stalled my reflexes. By the time I got “Look left!” out of my mouth the fat man was clothes-lining Martin. A moment later they were rolling on the ground, the cop struggling to straddle Martin between his knees and cuff him.
“Are we in Russia? Is this a Communist State?” Martin was roaring as the cop spread his hands across the car and frisked him. “Is this fucking Russia?”
The cop shot us a look. “Can you take care of this?”
“Martin, let him do his job.”
“I am. I’m not in fucking Russia. I’m a U.S. citizen.”
“Russia’s not Communist.” I’ve always believed even a rant needs a sensible underpinning. He just kept bleating. “This is Russia.” The adrenaline had melted his synapses. “I pay my taxes.” I prayed he wasn’t going for the “I pay your salary” argument with the cop. That’s doom.
“That doesn’t allow you to destroy property, sir.” Cop 2; Martin 0. Martin stared at the roof of the car. “This is bullsh–” The cop cut him off. “Look, you either shut up and cooperate or I’m taking you in.”
The cop sifted through Martin’s identification cards. “Are any of you sober?”
“My uncle’s a lawyer and–” Tim interjected.
“That’s nice. I asked who’s sober.”
“I am.” I piped up. “No you’re not.” The cop didn’t even look me in the eye.
“What’s your name?” He turned and addressed Karen. Thank God for the stereotype that women don’t drink as much as men. Karen stiffened and took on a formal tone. “I’ve had a few, but I live up the street. I’ll take him to my place.”
“I’ll go her place. I’m sober… Comrade.” Martin was still bitching. I walked over to the car where he was standing. “Russia is. A. Democracy. The USSR doesn’t exist anymore.”
“So what? This Gestapo–” I cut him off. “That. Will. Get. You. Arrested.”
“So what?”
“So what? It makes no sense. The Gestapo were German.” Martin hung his head and mumbled to the sidewalk. I walked back to the cop, who was lecturing Karen and Tim. “I’m remanding him to your custody. He’s not going anywhere. I see him out and he’s going to jail. Understood?” The cop walked back to Martin, handed him a citation and uncuffed him.
“Thank you. I’m sorry Officer… I jusss…”
“Save it. Go home and sleep.” He turned and walked back toward the bar.
“What’s with the fucking Russian shit?” I asked Martin as we trudged up the hill to Karen’s.
He shrugged. “It just seems, I don’t know. It’s all wrong.”
Martin was right. Everything was wrong. It was all upside down. Though an obnoxious, possibly alienating commentary, in many ways, it’s worse to have been born into a comfortable upbringing than a lousy one. If you never know any better – if your life is terrible from the start and you claw your way out of it – then becoming a professional, joining a golf course, buying a snazzy fast car and getting a second home seems amazing. Considering where you started, you’ve every reason to be proud. You’re the American Dream in Dockers, a man with his broker on speed dial. But if you’re born a middle or upper middle class jackass, you probably grew up with a lot of that stuff in your face already. Getting a professional degree wasn’t an aim, it was maintenance. And the “stuff” – the German rides, Italian suits and clunky automatic wristwatches – was the material equivalent of cocaine… The more you bought, the more you needed, and the less it got you off. Even a Ferrari’s just a car after you’ve sat in it for 5000 miles. The thing you wanted to do, in Martin’s case coach high school sports; in mine, fly around the world writing jaundiced articles on world events, seemed impossible. We’d been brainwashed into the Merchant Class Mentality – the frightened assumption a risky job – a job unlike the safe ones of ours and our friends’ fathers – was failure. If I didn’t write this book, I’d whittle my days away in an office, dreaming of screenplays I might write. It’d be a pipe dream… The people around me would remind me how poor writers are. I’d agree it was foolish. We’d drink somewhere and I’d forget about it.
Facing what you think is the only future – an auto-pilot skid, pumping out kids and phoning in 40 years of dreck as a lawyer, doctor or consultant – with an immediate lack of pussy on top of it, none of senseless events of 1996 seemed odd. If anything, they felt like the only available course of action. How many years of getting our ya yas out had we left? If not now, never. If it killed us, so be it.
But that’s the rub… When you really don’t give a shit, you’re invincible. Barreling down 95 with my hands on the wheel, Harris in the driver’s seat, mumbling to himself, empty nitrous balloon in his hand, I knew we were safer than 90% of the people on that road… More in control then we’d have been stone sober. When you’re trying for early cirrhosis or a dumb stunt suicide, you’re never going to get it. Rebelling against the common while remaining in it isn’t rebelling at all. You’re just splitting in two. Harris and I could have driven an Indy track on a headfull of nitrous in those days.
“I got it. I got it.” Harris was coming back, shaking off the last trails of the gas. “Wheeew. That’s pretty intense.” He grabbed the wheel from my hand and pressed on the accelerator. I pulled a cartridge from the bag on the floor and slid it into the cracker. The balloon filled; I inhaled deeply and slid back into the seat, numb, mouth breathing, staring out the window, a short bus mongoloid. The City was coming up fast on my right and I was warm with joy. This was a teaser; in four hours, I’d be a million miles out of mind. Maybe I’d even get some…
If you Tivo Montel Williams for a month, you’ll see a dozen people cry though torrid descriptions of their lowest point, about how close they came to the edge, and what saved them from it. They’ll say they’re only sitting in the studio because of Jesus, Dr. Phil, or the luck of their favorite Joe Walsh song coming over the radio as they were about to run away from fat camp. “Life has been good to me so far, Montel, and I… excuse me (sobs)… I, I knew then… excuse me (sobs)… I could lose the weight, and make it even better.” Nobody asks a grinning jerk in a fancy suit about his nadir. This is a good thing. How would I say “A big ass, Montel… When I think about what could have been a terrible personal abyss, I thank God for thick, round asses.”

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