storeeze

I don’t even think they know where they’re goin’.  What are they tryin’ to prove, anyway? —The Wild Ones (1953) You know how every neighborhood has an eccentric? When I slipped my Harley up Richie’s drive on a wonderfully hot Saturday afternoon, he was sitting on his bed surrounded by clothes and boxes. It was one of those wacky Saturdays where the sight of Richie sleeping in would cause his father Ollie to turn purple and thrust a finger in Richie’s face: “Goddammit Richard, you'll be out of my house by six o’clock tonight, I GAR-UN-FUCK-N-TEE!” and dump the contents of Richie’s bedroom into the drive. “Where’s Ollie?” I asked. Richie sighed, “They’re at the Hub.” We got it back into his room—the heat didn’t help—and cracked open a couple of Ollie’s cold ones. We’d been in crises since Alan frosted us with the Angels: I like his sister. Yeah, fourteen. She doesn't look it. What do you see in these Angels girls? They're still in high school and you ain't even finger-fuc...

The sun drives the seasons and the days between Legion ball and football practice. These were the best of times—running with Richie and his older brother Larry, living on unemployment and sponging off the old man—more interested in getting laid than getting paid. Traffic tickets, pecker tracks in the back seat, a police escort home after midnight. Mom wringing her hands like Lady Macbeth, crying out loud, “Where did I go wrong?” On one of those dog day Friday afternoons, things got kinda screwed up when I turned my Harley onto Diagonal Boulevard, a mile from home. A bubble machine lit up on a side street. I grabbed a handful of throttle—my risk insurance had expired—no license! The Harley roar and a siren alerted mom as I swung past the house, wind in my face, the fuzz on my ass. I looped on 74th Street and flew past Marlys Pederson's, a fantasy I had until I saw Phoebe Crouch the first day of seventh grade. At Portland, a busy thoroughfare, I said a prayer, and blew across without...