Were we aware that by emulating our neighborhood’s motorcycle gangs, we risked getting drawn into a vortex of drugs and violence that seemed to grow faster and more powerful every day? Maybe on some level.
But what did we really understand?
Somehow, thank God, I managed to stay right on the edge of the whirlpool and never got completely sucked in—partly due to motocross training and racing. I practiced relentlessly at a track in Salem, New Hampshire. Every day, like a teenager possessed.
Friday after school my buddies and I would tear our bikes apart, clean them, and get them ready for the race on Sunday. Saturday afternoon we’d drive to some track in the New England–New York area in a ’63 Chevy van, which we’d sleep in overnight.
I was raw and fearless, and drawn to the energy, excitement, and danger. (Some things never change.)
My goal was to become a professional. By tenth grade I was racing 125 cc and 250 cc, and in the open class and I already had a sponsor: Dave McCullen, the owner of New Haven Suzuki.
That changed one Sunday at a race in Pepperhill, New Hampshire. I was in fourth place, trying to catch Dave himself, who was in third. Even though he was my sponsor I was determined to beat him. Because that’s the way I rode—WFO.
Motors screaming, mud spitting from our tires, Dave and I started climbing up a rocky slope. He was eight feet ahead of me, bouncing all over his bike. I bore down.
As I started to pass, his leg flew out of the peg. I whipped by, fighting to control my bike, with no chance to stop. My front tire smashed right into his leg. The leather motocross pants and boots Dave wore didn’t save his leg from snapping.
Sorry, Dave. Good-bye, sponsor.
Despite the danger and my many accidents, I raced as often as I could, and I hung out with my rowdy friends at night.
School meant nothing to me. Some years I never once opened a book. When textbooks were handed out on the first day of class, I’d stash them in my locker and not look at them again until the last day of school, when we had to turn them in.
Once, at the end of the year, when a teacher asked for her textbooks back, I remember answering, “I’m sure they’re in good condition, but they’re in my locker, and I don’t remember where my locker is.”
I attended Amity High School in Woodbridge, Connecticut, where my Flat Rats friends and I were known as torks.
The jocks were from rich families. They played football, drove Chevy Camaros, and dated pretty girls. We torks wore dirty jeans, black boots, and black leather jackets, rode motorcycles, had muscular arms, and got into fights. Our girls were tough, drank and did drugs, and rode on the backs of our bikes.
There was a third group called the ziegs—the hippies who listened to the Grateful Dead and smoked pot.
Whenever torks and jocks were in the same room, you could feel the tension crawl up your neck. Insults were exchanged, and usually threats.
I shared a class after lunch with tall, blond Bobby Savage, the captain of the football team and leader of the jocks. At the time I’d reached about five eleven and weighed 165. Bobby was about six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than me. He made snide remarks and tried to intimidate me all year long.
One day during class, I dropped a pencil that rolled under Bobby Savage’s chair. When I went over to get it, he kicked the pencil to the back of the room.
All the kids in class stopped what they were doing and waited to see how I was going to react.
I walked to the back of the room and calmly picked up the pencil. But inside I was seething, thinking, I can’t let him disrespect me like that. I’ve got to do something. What am I gonna do?
I blew off the next class and met up with a group of torks sitting at a table in the cafeteria. They were all Italian Americans and had fathers who were associated with the Mafia. Tough guys.
I leaned on the Formica tabletop with my foot resting on a chair behind me; the other torks huddled around me. As I started telling them what had just happened, one of my friends said, “Here he comes.”
“Who?”
“Bobby Savage.”
“Where?”
I turned to look over my shoulder and saw the big football player stride into the cafeteria with a tall, blond friend of his from the basketball team by his side. They even had the gall to walk by our table.
“Son of a…”
Without thinking, I kicked the chair my right leg was resting on, hard. Bobby’s friend coolly stopped the chair and pushed it away.
I turned to face Savage, cocked my right arm back, and smashed him in the face.
Shock registered in his eyes. Blood shot from his shattered nose.
As his friend and my friends looked on, Savage crumpled to the floor. Immediately, I jumped on him and pounded him in the face about seven more times.