Noveau Americain

Through all that rain-streaked glass, what we see is how lemmings fill the stands. Fingers poke through chainlink, some with faces pressed to the safety fence. Harley engines rev above steady downpour. Bike helmets, slick with rain. Small pools reflect from floodlights above the track. Two-wheelers falling in after the speed-demon on pole position. Surrounding speakers strung above the heads of the mosh. Brazilian Girls, looped as “Noveau Americain” blares. How the wind blows, the corrugated iron that acts as overhang does little to shield the plate glass. How Farley explained it, her mom’s father is the national Comissioner, and the skybox is theirs year-round. Dignan’s red mane tossed over her shoulder, absently combing fingers through sodden strands. I step close to the glass beside Farley and her parents. My eyes move over glistening safety helmets. There, contact with a visor pulled low. Ken flashes me a thumbs up. I give him a mock thumbs-down, then move my fist right-side up. The bulky form beside him turns to face us and Schaffer raises a leather-gloved hand. I return with a jazz-hand and a finger-waggle. Dignan’s crept beside me. She does the same.  

For the most part, the raceway is looped same as a NASCAR track, though with a few kinks in the road. Lombard Street, if you pulled Lombard Street apart the way you pull apart a slinky. Two games: the sort with a lone rider who does the steering and the swinging; and the tag-team event. A pair on each chopper. Here, Schaffer’s on throttle, and Kenny, with those noodle-arms of his, bringing down the pipe.

Gaijin decked in Bosozoku gear is how I see what I see. These fucken Wide-O’s, how they sport leather must be how Berserkers would sport pelts. Berserk, Nordic for “Bear Shirt.” That is, those pelts that draped Viking shoulders. Vikings who would dip into a frothing trance amidst the carnage. And some claim, become bears themselves…  

The buzz, the wave, the light is green. We’re off the way Immortan Joe is off, hot on the heals of a tanker with Mad Max at the wheel. From here, choppers roar above other choppers. The way those choppers roar, how might you call that? Best in show or beasts in heat? Huh. Come to think of it, this whole show, What’s that movie, what had James Caan? Rollerball…? That’s it, that’s the movie. Sure, Norman Jewison took a big, fat dump all over theater screens back in the seventies when he clenched those pearly whites and squeezed out fucken Rollerball, but come to think of it, that’s almost the picture we see here.  Around that first bend, the bikes start to thin out. Schaffer keeps to the middle of the pack. The burly driver dashes past choppers paced wheel-to-wheel, pipes, crowbars that land with dull thuds, thunk, thunk, thunk, with the bikers up front at each other’s throats as both try to fuck up the other’s field of vision. From here, I can see it. Ken, a bundle of nerves, presses those leather digits tight around the lead. A flank brings up the rear. Two teams drop their hostilities to take either side of that chopper Schaffer’s whipping around the bends.  Jesus, Kenny. FLCL, Kenny. Do what Naota did. Ready or not, sometimes you just hafta swing. Dignan at my shoulder Shines the way Danny Torrence Shines. Her mumble is barely audible. “Furi-Kuri…” Kenny Riefenstahl, pipe at the ready, comes with the blind swing. From here, I can picture the lame thunk that musta bounced off the helmet. Other choppers, the riders start to swing these chain-link lassoes -  Woah. Had this been a movie, the camera woulda swung, paced with the wide arcs Kenny’s right arm makes as he bounces lead pipe from helmet to helmet. The road warrior on Kenny’s left, his visor snaps off. Pelting rains sting the man’s eyes. A gloved fist with these plastic studs toothed across the knuckle cannonballs and rattles Kenny’s head-cheese. Ken drives the butt of that bludgeon into the man’s naked socket. The bogeys to the left peel away, and the pair of them bear down on the furies hugging their right.

With us in the skybox, Farley’s dad tilts forward. The shit-eating grin plastered across his mug is the great white set loose from the aquarium and finding its way to sea. The muffled clang of small metal rings as the boys down on the expressway chain-whip whoever’s orbit happens to pass closest.  

The rusted speakers dummy up for a spell. When those speakers do come back, Marilyn Manson’s five-toned growl comes at us, sawing out    from the intake. A defeaning blast. “The Fight Song” jolts the bleachers and thunders above the racetrack.

Battle Royale, meet Amerika’s obsession with whips doing donuts. Fat streaks of gore leave skidmarks how Duane Allman must’ve left hisself smeared across Hillcrest, pinned as he was under that Sportster. Broken, mangled bodies pick themselves from the dirt. Sinews groan. The rain scrubs off entrails Jackson Pollock’d into the gravel. Three, four pairs are what’s left as they zip around the track – hold on. Wait. A fifth is back on his wheels. His partner lies twisted and squirming in a ditch. So it goes. Our fifth man, he’s fast. He runs up as the other whips dance through those curves – oh…

Our fifth man over there, he Kamikazes and blindsides one of the pairs that’s left. Two bikes and a trio of men, flopped by the fence. A helmet hits the road, the driver who got boned too out of sorts to go on. What happens next is not another flank – there’s Kenny, there’s Schaffer – a ways back and some time ago, they screeched onto a shoulder to switch places on the chopper – Schaffer packs more of a whallop and Ken, to everyone’s shock, can handle himself on throttle. The other doubles seems decided to double-team our fuckleheads down there. Two bikes rocket past Riefenstahl, a chain springs up between them. The choppers drift apart. The chain grows taught. Ah, the soundtrack. As glistening trip-wire circles the roadway, the speakers belt another hit from those spooky kids. This time we dive into glam-rock-era Marilyn Manson and dig up a cut from 1998. “Speed of Pain,” a very tongue-in-cheek choice. Two Harleys slow to match the speed of the whip trailing them. Heads cocked to look back – wh-where’s Kenny? Where’s Schaffer? Too late – the pair of drivers, their heads snap back. A well-timed conk from both sides of the roadway startles the amateurs at throttle. They drift, shaking off the lead pipe – and careen against one another. Ken double-times across the tarmac. Ken takes his place on chopper and drifts past – wait – of that pair that collided not a minute before – one, one driver! There, he’s, he’s back on track, bearing down on – that’s gold. Schaffer just kicked him. Schaffer swung his leg high and kicked that last driver into a barrier. That sports movie moment. A wave swells from the mosh. Ken, Schaffer, another lap. All that feel-good sorta crap.