American Outlaw - Jesse James [54]
That wasn’t going to be my fate, though. I might have been hired muscle for a punk band, but I’d be damned if I was going to let a whole continent’s worth of sights go unexplored. With the enthusiasm of a total nerd, I began seeking out all the Italian frescoes and Renaissance museums I could find. No matter where I went, I couldn’t get enough of the architecture and the incredible attention paid to detail.
I wasn’t all about the high art, though; sooner or later, I’d inevitably find myself at a bookstand, leafing through European motorcycle magazines. I wanted my next cycle to be bitchin’, blow everybody else out of the water. And to do that, I needed it loud, fast, and most of all, unique. Because I was overseas, I felt like I had an advantage over the rest of the cats stuck stateside—cycles were more popular over here, and they had much more stylistic variance. I pored over hundreds and hundreds of motorcycle magazines in Sweden, France, Italy, and Spain, often purchasing them to examine more closely backstage or on the bus. I received a per diem for food, but I never used it. I filled up on apples and oranges at the hotel, and usually copped a free dinner backstage. I put all my money toward bike magazine research.
Backstage, when I had a free moment, I enjoyed talking shop with other bodyguards.
“I have patented the absolute foolproof way to remove a groupie from a hotel. No fuss, no hassle.”
“Do tell.”
“Well, you know how it is, man,” I said. “Your bass player was all stoked to get this chick inside his suite at midnight. But now it’s three in the morning, and he’s had his kicks. He wants her out.”
Sympathetic nods all around; clearly, this is familiar grist within the security guard community.
“So you’re stuck. Obviously, she doesn’t want to leave—no groupie worth her stripes is gonna leave without being told flat-out. I mean, she’s done her job, right?” I said. “Any decent human being would let her rest in his bed till morning. But remember, we’re not dealing with human beings, we’re talking about musicians.”
“Preach it.”
“So all of a sudden, she becomes your job, right? ‘Jesse! Get rid of her for me!’ You can try reasoning, but that almost never works, and you can’t touch the girl. No way. Then you’ve got a drama on your hands.”
“Can’t have that.”
“Of course not. So what I do,” I said, lowering my voice to a confidential whisper, “I breeze into the room, and before anyone can say a word, I grab the groupie’s handbag, and I fling it into the hallway. She’ll run after it like a poodle. At that point, I slam the door shut behind her.”
“No!”
“Yep. She’ll immediately start banging on the door like some psycho, but you have to ignore that. Then you just call down to the front desk, say there’s some crazy woman trying to break into your room—and if you wouldn’t mind, could you please have her ejected, immediately?”
“Genius,” my compatriots said.
“Give me a little credit here,” I said modestly. “I’m very good at what I do.”
When I was back in the States, I spent almost all of my free time in my garage, trying to get better at building motorcycles. Progress came slowly. I could slap a whole bunch of cool parts on my bikes, sure, and make everything kind of function as a whole, but from a design perspective, it didn’t feel like I was doing anything earth-shattering.
Still, I kept riding Harleys as fast as I could around Riverside and Long Beach, rattling my teeth, blowing off steam, having fun. Random security gigs continued to come my way. If they appealed to me, I’d accept them. When a dive bar in Anaheim called the Doll Hut requested my services, being the generous soul I was, I decided to appease them.
God bless the bar. Working security at one of those places was like a paid vacation. I was too tightly wound to take a night off—already, in my early twenties, I was well on my way to becoming a workaholic—but folding my arms in the fun, stupid, party atmosphere served fairly well as a social event.
After a few weeks of working at the Doll Hut, I got to