Post by CM Poor on Oct 26, 2011 10:18:47 GMT -5
Why We Fight
"Do you remember Lenny Griffin's club?"
David Brennan bumps his head on the hood of the truck, who's engine he was, until moments ago, elbow deep in, completely devoid of any attention paid to what was going on around him. Pride had gotten the best of him once again, and he had refused to let Jack pay for a rental, and now he was paying a dear price for it. Sure, he was making money again, but his financial resources were still much more limited than Jack's, and as such, so were his rental options, which has now lead to him cooking his upper arms on the side of a beat up '88 Ford Ranger. He'd insisted on paying, and he'd insisted on American. And so, stubborn as he was, he'd insisted that they not call the rental company when the truck, in the midst of traffic on some Louisiana highway, let out a huge CRACK, and didn't so much putter to a stop as it did just stop. The cars that nearly killed him as he pushed the truck, in neautral, off the road into the breakdown lane with Jack steering, speed by now at an alarming rate and David wipes the sweat from his brow, stepping away from the truck for a rest, a ratty, torn piece of what looks to be a shredded strip of rubber gripped in his left hand.
"Forgive me, Jack, but right now I don't give two sh*ts about Lenny Griffin. Alternator belt is blown. Only reason it was even still in there is because it wrapped around the tensioner when it snapped. We're gonna have to make some calls.
Jack and David return to the refuge of the truck's small cabin. The one fortune of all this misfortune was that Ford wasn't exactly leading the market on electronic everything in the late '80's, and so with a quick crank of a handle, the two men are able to let some air in to the vehicle. Even in mid-October, Louisiana was still operating on some rather unseasonable weather, and even in the mid 70's, that truck would have cooked up pretty quickly in the afternoon sun. David begins rifling through the rental paperwork, looking for something, anything regarding breakdowns or service repairs. Nothing. He checks the glovebox. Not even a users manual. He reaches into his coat, laying between the two men in the middle of the bench seat, and procures his cell phone from his pocket. His not-a-smart-phone, "battery low" blinking cell phone. Dropping it and staring ahead, he slouches a bit. It was going to be a long night.
"You were there when it burned down, weren't you?"
"When what burned down?"
"Gargoyles & Griffins, I think it was called."
"Are you still on about Lenny Griffin's stupid club? Yeah, yeah I was there. Not in the capacity I would have liked to have been, but I was there."
As David would have liked it, he would have been standing shoulder to should with whoever it was that mixed a set of molotov cocktails and hurled them through the club's stained glass windows, just before opening on a Saturday night. That would have made it 'Ceremony'. They gave all the dance nights different names, but it was all the same bullsh*t. Bass heavy trance music. Flashing lights. Interpretive dance. Junkies, hipsters, and Eurotrash. Designer drugs and hard liquor abound. It was easily the most conflicting night of David's career as a firefighter. He was on hoses, and then recovery. The first half of that night, he had to fight the biggest internal battle to put aside his differences and do his job properly. Eliminate the fire. Protect property. Regard for human life. When the fire was contained, he and Scott McShea were moved to recovery. Hours, upon hours, into the early morning, putting out burning embers, and scaling the building inside and out for anything that could be saved. Much to David's delight, there was nothing. Weeks later, the building was leveled, and over the course of the next few years, the property was resituated to play host to a number of new low-income housing units. Lenny Griffin lost everything. Insurance didn't cover the suspicious nature of the fire, and a year later, Lenny was found in pieces at the base of one of the city's tallest skyscrapers, no doubt having thrown himself off of it.
The fire marshall took over the investigation, and the case was closed after their leads went dry. No one was ever caught, no one was ever jailed, and that suited David just fine. He had a few suspicions of his own, but he certainly wasn't going to be the one to give the investigators any leads. He'd done his job, and in doing so, he had a front row seat to one of the greatest injustices of his lifetime going up in flames. But still, Lenny Griffin was dead, and the club he'd tarnished with his name now housed some of the very patrons that Lenny had once put out, and David hadn't given the subject any thought for years.
"Why the sudden interest in Lenny Griffin after all this time?"
"Well....do you s'pose Drakz ever made his way to a night of Ceremony?"
Drakz. David had hardly given his upcoming opponent a moment's thought. It was the type of mentality David really had to go on. He was, after all, still the new guy in town, and was really in the midst of having opponents thrown at him, like cooked pasta on a wall, to see what sticks. Thus far, the water still needed to boil - David had cut through each one like a hot knife through butter - but Drakz was different. Tried. Tested. The stuff of legend. David wasn't around when he was in his prime. David didn't have to suffer under the reign of the Kyzer and Drakz. He could only read about it. Watch videos. Try and prepare. None of this had anything to do with whatever it was that had put Jack off on his tangent, but it made sense to consider. Maybe that's what Jack was getting at.
"I imagine he may have been part of the target demographic, sure. But what's that go to do with the here and now?"
"The target demographic? Davey, look at the guy - he probably had his own featured night to spin!"
Jack pulls from his brief case a plain, manila folder and hands in to David. It's full of clippings, articles, and a heavy assortment of color and black and white photographs. Rifling through the documents, David begins to see Jack's point. To look at the guy, you'd see exactly the type of trash that were always frequenting the club. Depending on what was being spun on what night, you'd get a more heavy emphasis on one group than the other, but there was always that same smattering - junkies, hipsters, and Eurotrash. Two out of three ain't bad. To travel out to the club on an odd night of the week and watch the lines outside snake into the door, David wouldn't be able to pick Drakz out from the rest of them, given the task.
"What was the name of that gal who used to run the place, before Griffin got his slimey paws on the deed?"
"Amy Lashley."
Amy Lashley. Doll of a woman. A smile that could make a nice man out of the meanest. Amy owned, operated and booked Sleazy The Rat's Place, which stood at the home of Gargoyles & Griffins before that trash ever even sought to exist. Polar opposites would be an understatement in describing the contrast between the two clubs. Junkies and dealers had no place at Sleazy's. The hard liquor was replaced with cheap, American beer. The trance music and flashing lights would have never stood a chance amid the live punk, ska, oi, and hardcore that filled the place three nights a week. If you were a band in town, and wanted to get recognized, you went to Amy and got booked at Sleazy's. If you were lucky, Amy would have already booked a touring, national act and would put you on the opening slot. And everyone got a chance, no matter how good or bad they were. No one was excluded - the only rule was respect. Amy never had to hire bouncers, because the punks and skins took care of their own, and took care of Amy.
Enter Lenny Griffin.
David was there the night Lenny first showed up at Sleazy's. It was an off-night, meaning that the place was operating strictly in a bar-type capacity. Those were the nights when you'd get the occasional straggler who'd wander in, not quite fitting in with the rest of the clientele, but Lenny stuck out like a sore thumb. The first thing David can remeber noticing about the guy was how skinny he was. Not unhealthily skinny, or athletically skinny, but abnormally skinny. His hair was long, and a very light shade of brown. It flowed in a weird sort of motion, having been cut into an undercut. His eyes stared out, almost menacingly, from behind a pair of black, horn rimmed glasses, matching his all black suit, right down to the shirt, tie, and shoes. And he LOVED the place, or so he said. the atmosphere, the clientele, Amy, all of it. And he had IDEAS. He was a booker, you see. He'd fill the place nightly. Unlimited cash flow. Filled to capacity. Sleazy's was never about the money, and neither was Amy Lashley, but keeping a club like this afloat was a tough business in of itself, and Lenny played a hard bargain. Contracts were signed, and Lenny would begin booking the place the very next week.
In came the drugs. The music. The lights. Junkies. Hipsters. Eurotrash. Within six months Lenny had bought Amy's share of equity and kept her on tending bar. Amy gave her notice when the crews came to remove the "Sleazy The Rat's Place" sign, replacing it with the stoic, forboding "Gargoyles & Griffins" one. The night she came in to collect her final paycheck, a couple of hipsters had gotten into a bit of a shoving match in line over an unpaid cocaine debt. Shots rang out, and Amy got caught in the crossfire.
"The cheap bastard pocketed that final paycheck and wrote it off as an unexpected gain, the way I hear it. Not another like her in the world. Terrible way to go."
"They've both got it, Davey.
"Who? Got what?"
"Drakz, and that latch-on Michael Kyzer. That blatant, unyielding disregard for human life. Full immersion is their game. Absolutes. Whether he was there or not, Drakz is just like Lenny Griffin in every way. An addict, feeding on the addictions and the short comings of others. Another piece of drug fueled, inhuman, attention seeking piece of trash. The same type that fed and fed until every last bit of good like Amy Lashley was reduced to nothing - they'll feed on you, too. And don't think that it's just Drakz that you've got to contend with. Know that wherever he is, Kyzer will not be far behind."
David has to reflect. It's normally his instinctive reaction to resist whenever Jack got like this. It was his way of trying to pull out David's dark side, a side he tried to dearly to keep in check. But all this - reminiscing, about growing up, and coming into his own as a skinhead, and the immeasurable part that Amy, Sleazy's, and Lenny, and the fire, how they all somehow shaped him into the man he'd become, it lit a fire of its own. Inside of him. The injustice of it all. In a world that is right, Lenny would still be gone, and Amy would still be here, and the club would never have burned, and maybe a young kid like David once was, not knowing where to turn in the world, would have found a bit of solace in the comradery and brotherhood that only a club like Sleazy's could have offered.
"And so that's why we fight."
"Exact...wait, aren't these usually my lines?"
"To hell with "your lines". You don't need to convince me now that you're right. This junkie slime is the exact type of trash that got Amy Lashley killed. You've seen the videos. You've read the reports. We've both seen how these walking wastes of carbon have used people to achieve their ends. The same type of manipulation that Lenny used to shut down everything my friends and I had. The sex, the drugs, the money, they're all just means to these peoples' ends."
David turns to Jack now, and Jack is momentarily startled by an intensity he hasn't seen in David's eyes in years.
"For weeks now, you've been worried about this company trying to kill me, trying to make an example out of me, or trying to eliminate me, like some unwanted pest, but I've shown them week, after week, that I'm not going anywhere. We're beyond that, Jack. It's time to start showing these people what this is all about. What Lenny did to all of us all those years back was an act of war - a war on good, honest, if not maybe a bit misunderstood people. This company is full of them! Grab any tape and listen to some of the garbage they spew. It's time we pushed back."
Jack has to smile. David is right. For weeks, he's been pushing to try and get this type of rise out of his son. He knew it was there. He'd seen it first hand, but somewhere along the way, David had learned how to contain it. He'd come to terms with the world's view of him, and people like him, but if there was one thing he'd never let sleep, one thing he'd never be at ease with, it would be people like him being trampled on by people like Drakz.
"It's good to finally see you, Davey."
"Finally see me? You've been following me for weeks."
"No, Davey. You. It's good to finally see you. Why don't we put some music on. It seems we may be stuck here for some time."
"Were you even listening? The alternator belt's shot! I'm sure the battery's just as cooked."
"Oh. Well why didn't you say so? Among other fine, colorful distinctions, I just happen to be a card carrying member of AAA.
David can only stare, jaw slightly agape, as Jack reaches into his pocket, procuring a cell phone, and dialing for assistance. Even now, after weeks spent traveling the country with the old bastard, he still manages to surprise David day in, and day out. But soon enough, this show would be back on the road, and Jack had now filled David's head with a whole lot more to consider. Sleep would not come easy. Not til Superbrawl was on the books, and Drakz had tasted defeat on the receiving end of David's freshly shined boots. A victory wouldn't change the past, undo what had been done, and bring Amy back, but David could learn to make do with these small victories.
"Do you remember Lenny Griffin's club?"
David Brennan bumps his head on the hood of the truck, who's engine he was, until moments ago, elbow deep in, completely devoid of any attention paid to what was going on around him. Pride had gotten the best of him once again, and he had refused to let Jack pay for a rental, and now he was paying a dear price for it. Sure, he was making money again, but his financial resources were still much more limited than Jack's, and as such, so were his rental options, which has now lead to him cooking his upper arms on the side of a beat up '88 Ford Ranger. He'd insisted on paying, and he'd insisted on American. And so, stubborn as he was, he'd insisted that they not call the rental company when the truck, in the midst of traffic on some Louisiana highway, let out a huge CRACK, and didn't so much putter to a stop as it did just stop. The cars that nearly killed him as he pushed the truck, in neautral, off the road into the breakdown lane with Jack steering, speed by now at an alarming rate and David wipes the sweat from his brow, stepping away from the truck for a rest, a ratty, torn piece of what looks to be a shredded strip of rubber gripped in his left hand.
"Forgive me, Jack, but right now I don't give two sh*ts about Lenny Griffin. Alternator belt is blown. Only reason it was even still in there is because it wrapped around the tensioner when it snapped. We're gonna have to make some calls.
Jack and David return to the refuge of the truck's small cabin. The one fortune of all this misfortune was that Ford wasn't exactly leading the market on electronic everything in the late '80's, and so with a quick crank of a handle, the two men are able to let some air in to the vehicle. Even in mid-October, Louisiana was still operating on some rather unseasonable weather, and even in the mid 70's, that truck would have cooked up pretty quickly in the afternoon sun. David begins rifling through the rental paperwork, looking for something, anything regarding breakdowns or service repairs. Nothing. He checks the glovebox. Not even a users manual. He reaches into his coat, laying between the two men in the middle of the bench seat, and procures his cell phone from his pocket. His not-a-smart-phone, "battery low" blinking cell phone. Dropping it and staring ahead, he slouches a bit. It was going to be a long night.
"You were there when it burned down, weren't you?"
"When what burned down?"
"Gargoyles & Griffins, I think it was called."
"Are you still on about Lenny Griffin's stupid club? Yeah, yeah I was there. Not in the capacity I would have liked to have been, but I was there."
As David would have liked it, he would have been standing shoulder to should with whoever it was that mixed a set of molotov cocktails and hurled them through the club's stained glass windows, just before opening on a Saturday night. That would have made it 'Ceremony'. They gave all the dance nights different names, but it was all the same bullsh*t. Bass heavy trance music. Flashing lights. Interpretive dance. Junkies, hipsters, and Eurotrash. Designer drugs and hard liquor abound. It was easily the most conflicting night of David's career as a firefighter. He was on hoses, and then recovery. The first half of that night, he had to fight the biggest internal battle to put aside his differences and do his job properly. Eliminate the fire. Protect property. Regard for human life. When the fire was contained, he and Scott McShea were moved to recovery. Hours, upon hours, into the early morning, putting out burning embers, and scaling the building inside and out for anything that could be saved. Much to David's delight, there was nothing. Weeks later, the building was leveled, and over the course of the next few years, the property was resituated to play host to a number of new low-income housing units. Lenny Griffin lost everything. Insurance didn't cover the suspicious nature of the fire, and a year later, Lenny was found in pieces at the base of one of the city's tallest skyscrapers, no doubt having thrown himself off of it.
The fire marshall took over the investigation, and the case was closed after their leads went dry. No one was ever caught, no one was ever jailed, and that suited David just fine. He had a few suspicions of his own, but he certainly wasn't going to be the one to give the investigators any leads. He'd done his job, and in doing so, he had a front row seat to one of the greatest injustices of his lifetime going up in flames. But still, Lenny Griffin was dead, and the club he'd tarnished with his name now housed some of the very patrons that Lenny had once put out, and David hadn't given the subject any thought for years.
"Why the sudden interest in Lenny Griffin after all this time?"
"Well....do you s'pose Drakz ever made his way to a night of Ceremony?"
Drakz. David had hardly given his upcoming opponent a moment's thought. It was the type of mentality David really had to go on. He was, after all, still the new guy in town, and was really in the midst of having opponents thrown at him, like cooked pasta on a wall, to see what sticks. Thus far, the water still needed to boil - David had cut through each one like a hot knife through butter - but Drakz was different. Tried. Tested. The stuff of legend. David wasn't around when he was in his prime. David didn't have to suffer under the reign of the Kyzer and Drakz. He could only read about it. Watch videos. Try and prepare. None of this had anything to do with whatever it was that had put Jack off on his tangent, but it made sense to consider. Maybe that's what Jack was getting at.
"I imagine he may have been part of the target demographic, sure. But what's that go to do with the here and now?"
"The target demographic? Davey, look at the guy - he probably had his own featured night to spin!"
Jack pulls from his brief case a plain, manila folder and hands in to David. It's full of clippings, articles, and a heavy assortment of color and black and white photographs. Rifling through the documents, David begins to see Jack's point. To look at the guy, you'd see exactly the type of trash that were always frequenting the club. Depending on what was being spun on what night, you'd get a more heavy emphasis on one group than the other, but there was always that same smattering - junkies, hipsters, and Eurotrash. Two out of three ain't bad. To travel out to the club on an odd night of the week and watch the lines outside snake into the door, David wouldn't be able to pick Drakz out from the rest of them, given the task.
"What was the name of that gal who used to run the place, before Griffin got his slimey paws on the deed?"
"Amy Lashley."
Amy Lashley. Doll of a woman. A smile that could make a nice man out of the meanest. Amy owned, operated and booked Sleazy The Rat's Place, which stood at the home of Gargoyles & Griffins before that trash ever even sought to exist. Polar opposites would be an understatement in describing the contrast between the two clubs. Junkies and dealers had no place at Sleazy's. The hard liquor was replaced with cheap, American beer. The trance music and flashing lights would have never stood a chance amid the live punk, ska, oi, and hardcore that filled the place three nights a week. If you were a band in town, and wanted to get recognized, you went to Amy and got booked at Sleazy's. If you were lucky, Amy would have already booked a touring, national act and would put you on the opening slot. And everyone got a chance, no matter how good or bad they were. No one was excluded - the only rule was respect. Amy never had to hire bouncers, because the punks and skins took care of their own, and took care of Amy.
Enter Lenny Griffin.
David was there the night Lenny first showed up at Sleazy's. It was an off-night, meaning that the place was operating strictly in a bar-type capacity. Those were the nights when you'd get the occasional straggler who'd wander in, not quite fitting in with the rest of the clientele, but Lenny stuck out like a sore thumb. The first thing David can remeber noticing about the guy was how skinny he was. Not unhealthily skinny, or athletically skinny, but abnormally skinny. His hair was long, and a very light shade of brown. It flowed in a weird sort of motion, having been cut into an undercut. His eyes stared out, almost menacingly, from behind a pair of black, horn rimmed glasses, matching his all black suit, right down to the shirt, tie, and shoes. And he LOVED the place, or so he said. the atmosphere, the clientele, Amy, all of it. And he had IDEAS. He was a booker, you see. He'd fill the place nightly. Unlimited cash flow. Filled to capacity. Sleazy's was never about the money, and neither was Amy Lashley, but keeping a club like this afloat was a tough business in of itself, and Lenny played a hard bargain. Contracts were signed, and Lenny would begin booking the place the very next week.
In came the drugs. The music. The lights. Junkies. Hipsters. Eurotrash. Within six months Lenny had bought Amy's share of equity and kept her on tending bar. Amy gave her notice when the crews came to remove the "Sleazy The Rat's Place" sign, replacing it with the stoic, forboding "Gargoyles & Griffins" one. The night she came in to collect her final paycheck, a couple of hipsters had gotten into a bit of a shoving match in line over an unpaid cocaine debt. Shots rang out, and Amy got caught in the crossfire.
"The cheap bastard pocketed that final paycheck and wrote it off as an unexpected gain, the way I hear it. Not another like her in the world. Terrible way to go."
"They've both got it, Davey.
"Who? Got what?"
"Drakz, and that latch-on Michael Kyzer. That blatant, unyielding disregard for human life. Full immersion is their game. Absolutes. Whether he was there or not, Drakz is just like Lenny Griffin in every way. An addict, feeding on the addictions and the short comings of others. Another piece of drug fueled, inhuman, attention seeking piece of trash. The same type that fed and fed until every last bit of good like Amy Lashley was reduced to nothing - they'll feed on you, too. And don't think that it's just Drakz that you've got to contend with. Know that wherever he is, Kyzer will not be far behind."
David has to reflect. It's normally his instinctive reaction to resist whenever Jack got like this. It was his way of trying to pull out David's dark side, a side he tried to dearly to keep in check. But all this - reminiscing, about growing up, and coming into his own as a skinhead, and the immeasurable part that Amy, Sleazy's, and Lenny, and the fire, how they all somehow shaped him into the man he'd become, it lit a fire of its own. Inside of him. The injustice of it all. In a world that is right, Lenny would still be gone, and Amy would still be here, and the club would never have burned, and maybe a young kid like David once was, not knowing where to turn in the world, would have found a bit of solace in the comradery and brotherhood that only a club like Sleazy's could have offered.
"And so that's why we fight."
"Exact...wait, aren't these usually my lines?"
"To hell with "your lines". You don't need to convince me now that you're right. This junkie slime is the exact type of trash that got Amy Lashley killed. You've seen the videos. You've read the reports. We've both seen how these walking wastes of carbon have used people to achieve their ends. The same type of manipulation that Lenny used to shut down everything my friends and I had. The sex, the drugs, the money, they're all just means to these peoples' ends."
David turns to Jack now, and Jack is momentarily startled by an intensity he hasn't seen in David's eyes in years.
"For weeks now, you've been worried about this company trying to kill me, trying to make an example out of me, or trying to eliminate me, like some unwanted pest, but I've shown them week, after week, that I'm not going anywhere. We're beyond that, Jack. It's time to start showing these people what this is all about. What Lenny did to all of us all those years back was an act of war - a war on good, honest, if not maybe a bit misunderstood people. This company is full of them! Grab any tape and listen to some of the garbage they spew. It's time we pushed back."
Jack has to smile. David is right. For weeks, he's been pushing to try and get this type of rise out of his son. He knew it was there. He'd seen it first hand, but somewhere along the way, David had learned how to contain it. He'd come to terms with the world's view of him, and people like him, but if there was one thing he'd never let sleep, one thing he'd never be at ease with, it would be people like him being trampled on by people like Drakz.
"It's good to finally see you, Davey."
"Finally see me? You've been following me for weeks."
"No, Davey. You. It's good to finally see you. Why don't we put some music on. It seems we may be stuck here for some time."
"Were you even listening? The alternator belt's shot! I'm sure the battery's just as cooked."
"Oh. Well why didn't you say so? Among other fine, colorful distinctions, I just happen to be a card carrying member of AAA.
David can only stare, jaw slightly agape, as Jack reaches into his pocket, procuring a cell phone, and dialing for assistance. Even now, after weeks spent traveling the country with the old bastard, he still manages to surprise David day in, and day out. But soon enough, this show would be back on the road, and Jack had now filled David's head with a whole lot more to consider. Sleep would not come easy. Not til Superbrawl was on the books, and Drakz had tasted defeat on the receiving end of David's freshly shined boots. A victory wouldn't change the past, undo what had been done, and bring Amy back, but David could learn to make do with these small victories.
I dont know good luck 
