The grass crunches when walked on. The wind is shoving through the curve of our sphere and throwing up sarcastic dust. The bluest sky. So dry it's hardly there. A moon shows itself in the afternoon. Wait till night children. A roaring interstate monster just miles away. Anyone going anywhere in the mainline metal box blood stream. If only Jack and Neil really were the inspiration for all this. Instead we have fond memories of Walt Disney, Harley Davidson, Dale Earnhardt, and President Eisenhower's beatific vision, in bastard fruition, sprawling blacktop with lanes in to 4 then 6, then 8! We got lost causes and probable mundane inevitabilities. We wait for the light. We're the free and the brave.
So I worked up a sweat and then jumped in the ocean. Surfed for an hour, good waves but the zipper on my full suits broke so I was out in my spring - which wasn't cutting it in my extremities so I cut it short. Threw on my Donnie, not so Darko, Billabong hoodie and went upstairs to Finnegan's. Finnegan's Beachside Pub. It's on the ocean and A1A has a deck with a nice view. It's bike week. I topped the stairs and scanned the crowd of 50 or so sitting in the sun near the bartender's island and listening to some guy belt out a Stones cover. He was about my age but somehow looking too young to be authentic.
I picked a spot at the bar and mused wit'in me rasta hed how out of place I was - and how out of place it was for me to be out of place. I'm not Jamacian. I'm a local. I grew up in fucking Flagler Beach. Amidst all the phony Bologna biker leather I had on shorts and a hoodie. Warm but for the wind and the ocean. Here were a ton of celebratory free democratic republican Americans enjoying the fruits of their bounty.Bikers aren't really rebels anymore, they're wealthy people playing baby boom cards. They are out to impress. The first bikers, the real ones, the ones in clubs, don't really want to impress anybody. They wanna wear the leather, but the FTW philosophy is gone. That's ok. Just people wanting to have a little fun. Still, I was looked at funny. The Devil Inside video. I'm old enough to know the difference between my childish paranoia and genuine out-of-placeness. A black tank-top waitress was walking by just then, "Do you have shoes up here?"
"No," I said, thinking - you must be crazy - knowing what would come next.
"Well, don't let anyone see you're feet."
I felt contempt throw itself through my veins thinking: I live here. I'm at the beach in Florida, in the sun, during a celebration of so-called-freedom, and I'm patronizing your bloody establishment, and you want me to go find some fucking shoes?! I didn't say anything back, of course, but put my feet up on the stool beside me. People like me keep it in, in public, face to face, and feel brave on places like blogs. Hide my bare feet at the beach?! Never! Viva la France!
I sat at the bar and the singer took a break. He sat a few down from me and seemed to be in the same boat as me somehow. He looked around lit a smoke and seemed to be in pure neutral. Jack Black with a white bandana. Nobody said hi to him, patted him on the back, or even requested a song. I wondered if anyone clapped when he finished his last song, but I didn't even notice when he stopped playing. He probably keeps a blog too.
I scanned, ordered from a guy. I listened to two couples talking. They were rich gold studded and in fresh leather like everyone else up there, in heaven, looking down, but in just bits and pieces of sound I heard...
"...get a job”
"they must reek...”
Who were they looking at? Real bikers? Hells Angels? I stretched to see. There were two hippie squatter kids with a cardboard sign down below. They had dirty hair bags and a dog.
Rebel bikers sitting judgment.
What’s the world comin' to?
Apocalypse?
Do I hear four horsemen riding?
On silent silver bikes?
Slowly rolling in to town at sunset, the big one?
Earth breathes itself.
Jesus was a Hell’s Angel.
b
PS - (Comment suggestion - A surfer sitting in judgement of bikers? What's the world coming to?)
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