Romantic Violence

by Christian Picciolini

  “In order for the white race to prosper for the next one hundred years, mate, we need to find ways to stick together and fight in a unified way to keep other races from pulling us apart or taking what is rightfully ours,” he’d say in his warbled Cockney accent. “Blacks and third-world immigrants come to England and America in droves to leech from the resources, leaving little to nothing for us native blokes.”

  Clay was right. It was hard enough for the average American white family to keep their head above water without other races punching holes in our buckets and drawing from the same limited water well. Sipping from his Carling lager, he went on to say, “Hard work and ethnic purity are the single most important tenets of National Socialism.” Clark had taught me that early on.

  “Without those two things, a society becomes weak and diseased and impossible to cure,” I agreed.

  Over the last few years, I’d learned to believe that American multiculturalism meant we had no solid foundation to build a healthy civilization on top of. We were a sick society. If we didn’t start taking care of our own kind in this country, instead of the foreigners who milked our infrastructure and resources, we were doomed. There simply wasn’t enough to go around for everyone who had their hand out.

  I enjoyed talking Nazi politics with Clay. He genuinely cared about National Socialism and music, and put them together well for over a decade.

  By the time we’d left, I’d made connections through Clay and Teddy that would seriously help put WAY on the national radar. My goal—my dream—was to play a concert outside of Chicago with Minnesota white power heavyweights Bound For Glory. Clay promised to make an introduction, as he had become friendly with the guys in the band. With this new contact, I was damn sure I’d find a way to get us together. And soon. Patience wasn’t my forte.

  It felt good to be interacting with people in higher places, people who were about more than getting wasted on beer and losing their minds once they got drunk. These Georgia guys were the real deal. They wanted to save America. Like I did. They had guns and were ready to fight for our lives.

  Teddy Dalrymple and I sat drinking cold beers on his front porch, the Georgia air dense with heat and humidity. “This here is an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle that I nigger-rigged to fire full auto when you flip this dang switch,” Dalrymple said, tossing me the weapon.

  “Whoa…what the hell, Teddy?” I barely caught the flying rifle, spilling beer all over my blue jeans. “Is it loaded?” I was unsure of exactly how to hold it, nervous with its surprising weight.

  “What good would it damn be if it ain’t?” he said winking at me. He stuffed tobacco into his carved corncob smoking pipe.

  I felt the slick blue steel in my hands and studied it, running my fingers along the thick, ridged barrel. Solid. Heavy. Spent gunpowder residue from the weapon’s cartridge chamber collected on my fingertips. The familiar burnt charcoal and earth smell sent me back to the Fourth of July fireworks displays I’d attended with the High Street Boys in my youth, on the hill next to the football field behind Eisenhower.

  Dalrymple reached over and snapped back the slide on the rifle and released it with a loud metallic clank. “There, it’s loaded. Now point it at something that ain’t white and squeeze the dang trigger,” he chuckled.

  “What?” I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him correctly. I let out a nervous laugh.

  “I said find something you want to kill and squeeze the fucking trigger! Is you motherfuckin’ deaf, Yankee?” He grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me down into a kneeling position and pressed the stock against my cheek.

  “Careful…it’s loaded,” I stammered.

  “You see that nasty white whore over yonder with that half-nigger baby?” He pointed to the middle of the block at a young white woman strapping her mulatto child into a stroller. “Shoot her in the face! Right between her nigger-lovin’ eyes. Then shoot the lil’ nigglet while you’re at it.”

  My sweat glands hit overdrive and I could feel my armpits instantly becoming cool and damp. My blood ran cold. Sweat streaked down my forehead and stung my eyes. “You’re joking, right? That’s pretty funny.” I laughed it off and attempted to hand him back the rifle.

  “Does it look like I’m joking, boy?” He pulled out a shiny pistol from his waistband and pressed it firmly against my temple. “Now aim.”

  Frozen in place, my stomach churning, I was ready to expel the loads of smothered, chunked, and chili-topped Waffle House hash browns I’d scarfed down for lunch. The cold steel he placed against the side of my face assured me he was dead serious. “Okay, okay, Teddy. Just relax.” I slowly turned my head, lowered my cheek to meet the weapon’s stock, zeroing the sights in on the unsuspecting woman’s forehead as best as I could. I saw her smiling and teasing the young infant. Laughing.

  “Now pull the fucking trigger, cowboy.”

  I tried hard to keep my hands from trembling.

  “Squeeze the fucking trigger or I will! Is you a cop, motherfucker?”

  I took in a shallow breath, intentionally jerking my arm to the right to assure I’d miss her, and pulled the trigger.

  Click!

  Dalrymple let out a loud, guttural smoker’s laugh and hacked uncontrollably for a moment while slapping me on the back. “I got you, man!” He took the pistol that had been resting against my temple and brought it to his face. When he pulled back the trigger, it spit out a short blue flame that he used to light his pipe.

  “What the fuck, Teddy?”

  Unholy laughter and coughing. “Had to make sure you wasn’t some kinda narc or undercover fed. You think I’d give you a loaded gun? Shit, you ought to see your dang baby face, Al Capone.”

  I was both relieved and pissed at this giant hillbilly who’d almost made me a killer in the first degree. “You’re an asshole, Teddy.” I cracked a tense smile as I dropped the butt of the heavy weapon into his wide open lap, hitting him hard in the nuts in the process.

  He yelped and doubled over. “Owwweee! Why the hell’d you go do that for?”

  “Just had to make sure you weren’t some kind of queer,” I quipped. My arms felt like Jell–O as I wrenched open the screen door to head back inside the shack. “I needed to know I didn’t have some sort of a faggot fighting next to me when the time comes.” I wiped my brow.

  I came away from the trip feeling both anxious about my involvement in the movement outside of Chicago and certain that the time had come for me to start loading up on weapons myself. I was convinced there was a race war brewing, and soon. I needed to be prepared. If we didn’t protect ourselves, we’d be overrun. I was a white warrior willing to stand as a vanguard against that threat. I’d be ready. And heavily armed.

  Sometime during the subsequent months, a fellow Hammerskin from Montreal visited Chicago and wanted to set up a meeting to introduce me to Wolfgang Droege, a radical Canadian KKK leader who’d been heating things up across the border. He tried to draw me in by saying that Libya’s Muslim dictator Muammar Gaddafi had sent a government attaché to meet with Droege about giving North American neo-Nazis some financial backing. “Wolfie wants the Chicago Hammerskins in on it,” he said.

  I suppose I didn’t particularly care if Gaddafi wasn’t white. He despised the Jews as much as we did. And this could help bankroll a weapons arsenal. After all, an enemy of the enemy—the Jews and Israel—could be an ally. Gaddafi wanted to meet serious anti-Israel American radicals. Wanted to fly us over to Libya to discuss a strategy and support our cause by seeding us with cash.

  This was big time. As serious as it could get.

  I said I’d think about it, uncertainty hitting me like a cinder block. The Canadian Hammerskin hounded me, pressured me, insisting this was our big chance. I knew Droege had previously helped organize a failed military coup on the Caribbean island of Dominica and had gone to prison for it. That kind of adventure was intense and appealed to me. I was pumped at first; I could indeed be part of something huge. Internat
ional.

  But what if I got caught? What if it was a set-up? I didn’t know this Droege guy or the Canadian skinhead very well. If I agreed to the plan and the feds caught wind of it, I’d certainly be convicted as a traitor to the United States. A crime punishable by death, not prison time. I loved my country, I just didn’t agree with those currently in power—the System that held us down. I was willing to take on the government on my terms, but this wasn’t the way to do it. Plus I didn’t even like these Middle-Eastern ragheads; why should I trust them?

  “He wants to give us a million dollars,” pleaded the Montreal Hammerskin. “Think of all the weapons we can buy with that kind of money. The damage we can do.”

  He was coming on too strong. “So, why don’t you go?” I asked.

  “Wolfgang specifically asked for Clark Martell. When I told him he was in prison, he asked for the next in command.”

  “Tell Wolfgang I appreciate the offer, but I’ll have to pass this time. I don’t have a passport,” I lied.

  So I respectfully declined and kept my involvement domestic for the time being.

  Damn good thing I did. A year later Droege and his cohorts ended up in federal prison because the whole Gaddafi deal had been a sting operation set up by Canadian Intelligence.

  I’d dodged a major bullet.

  There were plenty of conflicts to focus on closer to home. Like the pack of niggers who had been accosting Pecker and Chili, two of the Beverly guys, every day on the city bus they rode home from school. This infuriated the hell out of all of us, so we planned our ambush. Pecker and Chili would stand up to them on the bus, talk trash, and get them all riled up. They’d lure them off at their stop to fight. And we’d be there waiting.

  Worked like a charm. Half a dozen of us hid around the corner behind the diner near the bus stop. When the three gangbangers got off the bus, we waylaid their black asses and beat the shit out of them in the middle of rush hour on busy Western Avenue. Cars screeching to a halt all around us, we hauled those useless niggers out to the middle of the street, beating them without mercy. Kicking. Dragging. Punching. Low blows. Bastards had it coming. You don’t mess with us. Not in our backyard.

  Car horns blared. People screamed. Didn’t give a shit.

  Kubiak grabbed a handful of afro on one of the guys and was swinging him around, off the ground, like an Olympic hammer thrower.

  Three Beverly Boys had another pinned down and pummeled him with a barrage of kicks to his stomach, face, and back. His wails were louder than the car horns that were begging them to stop.

  I chased the remaining gangbanger on foot and caught him in the alley behind the diner. I football-tackled him into a row of garbage cans and drove my elbow into his nose, breaking it with a resonating crack, as my feet suddenly shot out from under me. I’d slipped in a slick puddle of discarded restaurant grease, lost my grip and the guy got away. Lucky for him, as he’d ruined my bomber jacket and jeans in the process and I would have killed him if he’d stuck around. Disgusting. I was smeared in gelatinous yellow fryer fat and reeked like a fast food restaurant’s backed-up toilet.

  The rest of the guys didn’t back off until they heard the police sirens approaching. Then we all climbed over cars—denting their shiny hoods with our boots—to get the hell out of there. Last thing I needed with assault charges already looming over me was to be busted for a race-inspired fight. A felony hate crime.

  We made it back to my house without incident, laughing all the way, mimicking the niggers begging for us to stop. The Beverly guys and Kubiak ribbed me for weeks, calling me a “greasy Italian.” Suffice it to say, those kids never rode that bus again.

  Not long after the Western Avenue bus incident I appeared in court for sentencing on the trumped-up charges against me for allegedly assaulting that spineless spic Hector Diaz. Again, I dressed appropriately. Used my finest manners. “Yes-judged” that black-robed clown to death. I was sentenced to six months of court supervision, which pissed the hell out of me since I hadn’t done a damn thing. I’d take what was coming to me, but that was a travesty of justice and proved how the courts favored minorities.

  Because I was under court supervision, I had to refrain from getting arrested during that time. So, I shifted my focus and injected more venom into my music, got downright aggressive about rehearsals, and in May of 1991, we proudly gave our first live concert in a place called The Barn, a community center in Blue Island. At a birthday party of all things. I didn’t particularly care for the venue, but it was exciting having people responding to our music, getting revved up, cheering for us.

  The tiny place was jam-packed with a couple dozen kids, and the crowd was loving us. The scent of pine from the wood-clad walls was overshadowed by the pungent odors of floor wax and teen sweat. The unsuspecting parents were getting drunk in the parking lot while we entertained the sixteen-year-old birthday girl and a roomful of new recruits with our rendition of several Skrewdriver anthems and a few WAY originals.

  We’re the warriors of the street

  With shaven heads and boots on our feet

  We stand tall like a stone wall

  Against all evil we won’t fall

  Streets and homes are never safe

  Because there are niggers committing rape

  WAY’s our name, white power we follow

  We’re the White American Youth of tomorrow!

  The room whirled with teen angst and perspiration. Choppy guitar rhythms and the rousing choruses drove the moist juvenile bodies violently into one another from every direction.

  We’re White! Strong and free!

  White supremacy!

  White! We preach the truth!

  White American Youth!

  The work, the frustration of getting practices together and figuring out how to operate as a single well-oiled machine, had all been worth it. There was no doubt we’d make something happen musically. Again, I’d proven I could do whatever I set out to do.

  With only a month left until graduation, I drove to Ombudsman in the clunky 1984 Chevy truck my parents helped me buy so I could travel the extra distance to alternative school. As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw my old skinhead pal Craig Sargent—who by now had also been kicked out of Marist and Eisenhower for his racist activities—locked in a shoving match with two niggers. I jammed on my brakes, skidded to a stop, and jumped into the fray.

  Craig and I beat up this fat dude named Pooky and his wiry sidekick Juice before they even had a chance to so much as utter our names. I pulled the bigger of the two off Craig, while he continued to pound the other. As a crowd—including the teachers—gathered in the parking lot, we continued to volley blows after they attempted to retreat into the building. We threw them against parked cars and knocked them to the ground repeatedly.

  Having no doubt our efforts would mean we were both kicked out of yet another school and the cops would be looking for us, we hopped into my truck and took off, spending the rest of the day parked in a forest preserve drinking the warm beer I had stashed under my seat.

  Four weeks to graduation.

  And once again, I’d been expelled. Fifth time. Five schools. In four years.

  My parents begged the school board president for a favor one final time and were granted a special reprieve to enroll me in the local community college to finish my remaining two high school credits.

  “You’re ruining your life,” my dad said. “I know you think you know it all and believe you have everything under control, but…”

  “Stop pretending like you fucking care. You don’t! You never have.” I managed to get the words out while holding back tears of anger at his very suggestion that he knew a damn thing about what I was feeling. “I do what I want, when I want. And you haven’t earned the right to tell me what to do.”

  Just then seven-year-old Buddy walked into the room, holding a mangled wrestling action figure. He’d pulled the head off it and the plastic body was riddled with c
ut marks, rendering it almost unrecognizable as the former figure of black WWF professional wrestler Junkyard Dog.

  “Look, Buddy,” he beamed, “It’s a dead nigger.”

  My mother grabbed it from his pudgy fingers as both she and my brother wailed.

  My dad’s angry eyes penetrated mine. “See what you’ve done?”

  Knowing my time in school was coming to an end, I considered joining the military. I’d receive excellent combat training there. My fighting skills would only improve and I’d get to handle the best weapons known to mankind. I knew I could rise to a leadership position quickly and influence trained warriors to join our movement. Moreover, the Gulf War was going on and I could kill mud races legally. And get paid for it. Sweet deal.

  I headed over to the army office to enlist. “I want to be an M.P.,” I told the recruiter.

  He took one look at my skinhead clothes and tattoos and shook his head. “You can’t be Military Police. People like you have one choice. Infantry.”

  “People like me?”

  “I know your kind. Tough, brazen, and you have a taste for blood. Front line for you all the way.”

  This grunt wasn’t going to send me packing. “Fine. Infantry it is. I’ll work my way up the ranks.”

  “Of course you will, Private,” he said, and signed me up for the ASVAB test, the aptitude and enlistment exam for the U.S. military.

  When my scores came back, the recruiter changed his tune. I’d scored higher than any of his previous enlistees ever had. “Son,” he said, “you still want to be an M.P.? Let’s get you that job.”

  Only problem was, I wasn’t old enough. At seventeen I still needed a parent’s signature. And for once, I couldn’t forge it like I had for my less than stellar report cards at St. Damian.

  When I told her I wanted to join the army, my mother was beside herself. She didn’t want me killed. “You have a long life ahead of you. Why go fight in a war that has nothing to do with us?” My father agreed. Buddy liked the idea of having a brother who was a soldier and brought out his G.I. Joe toys and asked me to show him how I’d kill the bad guys. My mother snatched them away and told him to go watch something nice on television.