Romantic Violence

by Christian Picciolini

  We are skinheads, the vanguard today

  Our rifles are cocked, so get out of our way

  We will cut you down with no remorse

  We’ll die for our race. Our pride is our force

  Our flags raised high after this fight

  We shall overcome our foes by might

  We’re the new stormtroopers, the SS reborn

  From our lands we shall never be torn!

  The applause began midway through our first song and never died down.

  At last, I was the hero of the baseball team being carried off on the shoulders of my squad, by crazed fans drunk with appreciation.

  If I had lingering doubts about my message, about the skinhead scene, if I had reservations about the white race’s superiority—or if what I was doing was right—at that moment I didn’t care. This was what I had been born for.

  “Heil Hitler!” I shouted.

  The crowd was out of its mind going insane around me. Four thousand skinheads on their feet, boots stomping. Arms outstretched in glorious salute. Beams of sharp-edged white light washing over shaved heads. Sweat breaking over swastika tattoos black as sin, awash in pulsating strobes.

  Me on stage. Leading it all.

  “Heil Hitler!”

  Spotlights daring to glare through what was once a sacred house of prayer. Weimar. Former East Germany. 1992. Borders down. That communist wall tumbled, crumbled. Gone.

  Dense stage fog filtering around and up, skyward, like a cobra undulating to a snake charmer’s flute. A new dawn rising.

  “Heil Hitler!” I screamed again into the microphone.

  Swirling around, feet swinging free in midair, I raised my clenched fist to my band to begin the next song. Veins popping on my tattooed arms, muscles rippling, rivers of sweat flowing down my face, my neck, my back. My eyes manifest with supreme conviction.

  The band burst out with the force of a stampeding bull breaking free of immobilizing restraints. Music shattering any ancient echoes of holy hymns that had ever harmonized in this stone sanctuary.

  The white race was at war and God couldn’t help.

  Thank whoeverthefuck was in control of our celestial destinies that I was there to fill that gap.

  My voice filled the room.

  There’s white pride all across America

  White pride all across the world

  White pride flowing through the streets

  White pride will never face defeat.

  The night was mine. Ours. Arms outstretched in solidarity. Our music. Me leading the first American white power band to ever play in Europe. Me in charge. Dictating how history would remember me. Complete control.

  I was stronger than Clark Martell had ever been.

  One message delivered.

  White power.

  White power.

  “White power!”

  Me. Adolf Hitler resurrected, as far as the crowd was concerned.

  And if not Hitler himself, I was the embodiment of his spirit. His ideas flowing through my arteries, pumping my heart to one hundred times its natural human size. Beating louder than drums. Louder than the deafening crowd. Eardrums breaking with the force of it.

  The complexities of German National Socialist politics may have been largely beyond me, but I knew enough about Nazi doctrine to recognize that our proud European heritage was being threatened on all sides by muds. In front of me lay an undulating sea of white warriors, proof we would never let that happen without a fight.

  Hitler. Julius fucking Caesar. Me. The new holy trinity.

  Eighteen years old and on a mission to save the white race. Age was irrelevant when the issue was truth.

  Jesus Christ had nothing on me. If someone were to be stomped to death in the frenzied crowd, with the energy pulsing through me I could raise them from the dead like Lazarus.

  I had the power.

  The power.

  The power.

  Next song broke so quickly who could say where one began and one ended.

  Why don’t you open your eyes?

  Why don’t you open your eyes?

  Why don’t you open your eyes?

  The afternoon following the concert, I traded goodbyes with my band in Weimar and boarded a train to meet up with Lisa in Munich, the city where we’d started our European journey together.

  By the time I arrived, I was exhausted. I could see her from across the train platform, searching for me in the distance. The moon’s silvery glow cast an iridescent outline around her body. It was dark but I could see the soft silhouette of her face. I approached quickly and as I got closer, she turned and opened her arms to embrace me.

  Her eyes were gentle. Comforting. Her hand reached to caress my cheek and I pulled her in close, lifting her to her toes and giving her a passionate kiss.

  “I missed you so much, babe. Weimar was crazy. I have so much to tell you.” Her body melded with my arms and our eyes connected. “But first tell me that you missed me as much as I missed you.”

  Lisa whispered breathlessly, “Let’s go,” and she led me down the long and narrow platform out to the adjoining cobblestone square.

  I hoped I’d never have to let go of the moment. She smiled and I could see in her eyes a flash of yearning that was so inviting.

  After a short, brisk walk, we arrived at her private room at the hostel. We couldn’t tear each other’s clothes off fast enough. I hadn’t ever wanted or needed her as badly as I needed her in that moment. I pressed my lips against hers, and nothing else mattered—not even one second on that stage in Weimar even crossed my mind. Nothing but the love between us meant anything.

  We made love slowly that night as we held each other tight.

  “Lisa…you know I love you, don’t you?”

  She pulled me close. “Yes, I know you do. And I love you.”

  After spending a glorious few days with Lisa picnicking on hillsides and visiting museums and parks around Munich that she’d discovered before I’d arrived, I left her once again and took a standing-room-only overnight train alone to Cologne. I showed up without an appointment to Rock-O-Rama headquarters in Brühl where I dropped in unannounced on owner Herbert Egoldt, a round, jolly old man who I quickly realized wasn’t even a racist.

  Seemed he didn’t give a damn about much of anything but making money. He was a capitalist pure and simple.

  As he led me into his office, I met his shallow eyes with a steely stare, letting him know I was onto him. He’d pay my band album sales royalties, never mind that Rock-O-Rama was widely known as a non-paying label. I would be the exception to his rule. I’d lead the way for him to start paying the bands he’d fleeced for years. Slime ball. He may have given us a platform to promote our message, but he’d be giving us our hard-earned money, too, if I had anything to say about it.

  Not for a lack of trying, I never got a dime from Herbert or the label. His bulky warehouse goons made sure of that. But I did manage to leave with a small box of about thirty various white power CDs before I left, which I happily sold when I got back to the States.

  After spending only an hour at the office, I took a taxi back to the train station and headed back to Munich to spend my final days with Lisa.

  The high from the trip lingered once we got back home. But daily life immediately interfered with my renewed commitment to fight for the white race. To rule the world, actually. Somebody asked me once what I’d wanted to be when I grew up. I told them at ten I wanted to be a doctor; at twelve, a detective, an explorer, a spy; but by fourteen, I wanted to rule the world.

  I might have been half-joking about it then, but I was serious now. I’d had a taste of power and loved everything about it. Acceptance. Freedom. Fear. Respect. Control.

  So what the hell was I doing still working in a pizza place? I was better than that.

  Something had to give. I needed a better job. A persistent voice inside me began to wish I’d taken formal education more
seriously. But I shut that voice down and used my lack of decent-paying employment opportunities to my advantage. I spoke to my recruits with great fervor about the work ethic, the importance of providing for our loved ones, and ranted against the Jews who were controlling all the money and making it impossible for good, clear-thinking, hardworking white people to put food on their tables and feed their families.

  “There is honor working in factories, making goods for our fellow Americans. We don’t need to import a bunch of foreign junk from slant-eyed, yellow-skinned chinks. Buy goods made right here by white Americans who get out of bed every day, who go to work to support their loved ones, to put clothes on their backs, and food in their stomachs.

  “There is no shame in driving trucks and getting these American-made goods from local factories to stores owned and operated by white moms and pops who know what we want, who understand our needs. And at the end of the week, after paying the bills through our sweat and labor, it’s good to relax and enjoy ourselves like we’re doing here together now.

  “Be proud to serve your brothers and sisters by working in restaurants and the service industry. I am proud to say I make pizzas. I see exhausted white folks come in after a long day’s work and I’m honored to provide them with food for their family that is made with my own hands. It’s a labor of love, and we don’t need any capitalist Jews with their vile fast food chains destroying our health with their poison. Let the uneducated animals eat that garbage. We need to stay fit, eat right, and prepare ourselves to be the righteous freedom fighters that our destiny demands us to be in this battle to reclaim our rights!”

  I made it a point to attend every rally I could, no matter how small. I performed music, keeping the energy flowing as younger skinhead candidates joined us. But I took less of an active role in any confrontations. I’d already done my fair share of knuckle dusting. Made a name for myself. I had nothing left to prove. It was time for somebody else to deal with the cops and bruises. That’s what soldiers were for. And by this time, I had an abundance of warriors ready to obey my every order.

  I was a good commander. I taught my recruits how to respect themselves. Many of them had been marginalized or disenfranchised kids with low self-esteem, searching for identity. The traits that made them loathe themselves made them easy targets and gave me a reason to save them. They’d do anything they were told in order to have something to belong to. And if they got arrested for carrying out a mission or if they got hurt, there were others ready to take their place and pledge their support. Those risks were assumed when they signed up.

  Meanwhile, my love for Lisa kept growing, and when she told me three months later that she was expecting our child, I was overjoyed.

  “I’m pregnant,” she cried.

  “We’re going to have a baby? Lisa, that’s amazing!”

  She sobbed. What about her plans? What about college? What about becoming a teacher? Needing to comfort and reassure her, I took her gently into my arms.

  I am ashamed to say that part of my happiness over the pregnancy was that it meant she would stay with me. She wouldn’t be going off to college, making new friends, having a new life I wasn’t a part of. All her reassurances that college wouldn’t change her love for me hadn’t ever stopped the fear that she’d fall for somebody else and leave me. At the very least, if she attended college she would live in a world I was not part of. Abandoning me. Like my parents had.

  I held her tight and tenderly kissed her tears away. “This is wonderful. What we’ve wanted all along. Maybe it’s earlier than we planned, but that doesn’t matter. We are going to bring a child into the world. And we won’t be like our parents. We’ll do this right. It’s fate that we have this child now.”

  I nestled Lisa close, stuffing her fears away. “I love you. And I love this baby,” I said, assuring her that everything would be okay.

  My mother was not pleased.

  I hadn’t been sure how to tell her. I still technically lived under my parents’ roof and I might need their help financially until I found a better job. While she didn’t spend too much time in church, my mom still considered herself a devout Catholic, and a child born out of wedlock was a mortal sin. It was a disgrace amongst old-world Italians who were obsessed with the notion of protecting their public image—la bella figura, as they called it. What mother would raise a boy to have a child before he was married? Nonno and Nonna would be disappointed. Of course, Buddy would be thrilled to be an uncle, even if he was only in third grade.

  I tried easing my mother into the idea. Lisa and I clearly needed to live together now. It was my duty to protect her and our unborn child.

  There wasn’t a graceful way to break the news. “Lisa and I are going to be living together.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re going to have a baby.”

  I don’t know which came faster, her tears or the rapid-fire throwing of her shoes at me from across the room. “What have you done? You’re only a child yourself! You aren’t a man yet! She’s still a schoolgirl! How could you do this?” My father left the room without saying a word.

  I waited patiently, letting her get it all out.

  But then she said something I hadn’t expected. “This can be fixed,” she declared, eyes wild as a loon, wiping away her tears. “She can have an abortion.”

  Rage filled my veins. I rose like a dust storm, swept over to her, my face casting a shadow over her now fearful eyes. “How dare you suggest something like that to me? This is my child. Your own flesh and blood. You think I should destroy my own child? If you ever say anything like that again, even so much as think it, you will never meet my baby. And you’ll never see me again. Ever. Understand?”

  I left the room, seething, fists tightened, to get my temper under control.

  My mother came around. She always did, and by the time Lisa graduated from school and our wedding in June of 1992 approached, she had accepted that not only would she have a daughter-in-law, she would also soon be a grandmother. Even became proud of the fact.

  Our wedding was intimate, held in a quiet, non-denominational ceremony in a quaint little chapel in the woods.

  Thirty people attended. Lisa’s family. My parents and grandparents were there. The groomsmen—my band mates from Final Solution—all had their heads freshly shaved and their muttonchop sideburns aptly trimmed for the occasion. They shined their boots to wear with their black tuxes. The contrast between them and Lisa’s bridesmaids—all friends of hers from her Catholic high school—was hysterical.

  Little Buddy, looking cute as the stout little ring bearer in his mini tuxedo, led Lisa through the chapel doors and down the aisle. As he passed me, I bent down to kiss the top of his head. He may have been only eight years old, but I wanted him to know he’d always be my best man.

  Lisa was radiant. Stunning. Her emerald eyes glimmered as she passed across the rays of sunlight beaming through the narrow, rose-hued chapel windows. When her gaze caught mine, time paused in a moment of suspended reality. Blink. I pledge my life to you and to our child growing inside of you.

  Kubiak—my best man—snuck a flask of whiskey from his jacket pocket and passed it along to the other groomsmen. They all had virginal bridesmaids on their minds and some indulging of spirits was in order to celebrate the occasion.

  As Lisa and I looked into each other’s eyes and proclaimed “I do,” the time that had been standing still recalibrated and the three of us were one.

  But if the wedding was small, the reception more than made up for it. My parents wouldn’t allow us to have the small gathering we wanted for fear the other Italians would badmouth them as cheapskates, so they sprung for a large Italian affair with more than two hundred guests. Relatives from both sides. Skinheads and Catholic school girls. All eating and drinking together and having a grand time. Traditional Italian tarantellas rang out, interspersed with punk rock ballads my drunken friends strong-armed the wedding deejay to play
. The High Street Boys weren’t there. We hardly saw each other anymore; even passing each other on the streets of Blue Island’s East Side was a rarity. A few of the Beverly guys were there, but they, too, were mostly part of the past. The Bound For Glory guys, on the other hand, had their own table.

  The cops patrolled the parking lot of our wedding reception. Certainly not because they were invited or even because anything got out of control, but because they’d been told I was getting married and they wanted to document who’d shown up. More notes for their files. I didn’t let it get to me. I was too happy. I even brought some cake out to their unmarked cars.

  While our honeymoon was short—I couldn’t get time off work—and the location less than romantic—we stayed at Lisa’s grandparents’ mobile home on a small lake in rural Michigan—we couldn’t have been happier.

  I carried my beautiful bride across the trailer’s threshold and set her down on the sofa bed. In typical Italian fashion, we’d been given stacks of cash by our wedding guests. We sat on the bed and counted it. Fourteen grand! We were rich.

  We threw it in the air, watching it drift back onto us. Rolled in it.

  We were going to start our lives out right, as the happiest couple alive.

  Christian and Lisa, 1992

  20

  AMERIKKKA FOR ME

  I settled into married life effortlessly. I was bringing in a steady salary, working full-time at the pizza place. And Lisa had begun working part-time at a furniture store in town. With some semblance of financial stability, and because we figured having my mother close to help with the baby might be nice, Lisa and I rented the smaller of the second-floor apartments in my parents’ two-story building. With the money from the wedding, we’d also begun talking about buying our own place somewhere. We now had enough for a down payment.

  I loved Lisa. She loved me. Both of us loved the baby growing inside of her. Like all couples in love for the first time, we believed our bond was stronger and more special than anything anyone had ever known.