December 26, 1984. Edmonton, Canada: At the hall. Got here last night. Took us about twenty-four hours of straight driving to get here. Still freezing cold outside. Maybe tomorrow will be warmer. The show in Winnipeg was okay. Lots of “we have been waiting years to see you, you assholes better be good” and shit from the audience. It’s hard to find any quiet anywhere. I’m constantly around people who talk a lot but say nothing. A sad case, the singer in St. Vitus brought his woman on tour. I asked her what she does for a living. She said she “watches the house.” She said that it’s okay because Scotty makes enough for them both. She doesn’t want Scotty to go on tour because she doesn’t like it. What kind of shit is that? She wants him to quit. What a drag. It’s no real concern of mine. But still, what a drag to go out with a ball-and-chain woman. Tonight we’re playing in a roller rink. It’s cold in here. Load-in highlights: I carried in the soundboard, an all-metal case. My hands froze to it like a Popsicle. Oh man, that shit hurt.
Show was so-so last night. Lots of stupid punkers at the show. I told them that Jello was a narc. A government-paid agent—that bummed their lives real bad. Some people beat up the van, busted out the headlights, ripped off the windshield wipers, sideview mirrors. That’s why I don’t like you. That’s why I don’t answer your letters. That’s why I don’t want anything to do with you. I’m getting sick of Canada. I don’t like stupid drunks and subzero temperatures. After tonight there’s only one more show. Vancouver. Vancouver is drunkville. People make me sick. I am burning out. I’m getting the lumps in my throat again. I ran out of the medicine that the doctor gave me. I’m having trouble sleeping. I can only manage about four or five hours at a time. Something will give at some point.
July 23, 1985: At some guy’s house in Kentucky. Can’t move my neck. Can hardly move anything, headache. Just woke up. A lot of people at the Jockey Club last night, a lot of stupid, ugly, drunk people. Emphasis on stupid, drunk, and ugly. This fat skinhead boy nearly bought himself a ticket. He fucked with me, and then after the show I was sitting in the alley and he comes up and acts all tough, walks away muttering how he’s going to break every bone in my body. I told him he better start breaking because fat skinhead talk is shit when there are only two of us in the alley. He still didn’t deal. I wish he had been stupid enough to fuck with me. Fat boy, I would have kicked your ass so hard you wouldn’t even know how to piss afterward.
Last night they threw beer cans, cups, ice, spit, fists, all of it. How can I respect them? Why would I treat any of them as human beings? I am losing my patience with these “people.” A guy fucks with Greg all night, then comes backstage and wants to hang with us. I learned something last night. I now understand the “two-way street” concept. I hope the next asshole who wants to waste my time doesn’t. Enough of this, I shouldn’t let some belligerent drunk idiots get me in a sour mood. Not after sixty shows in sixty-four days.
August 7, 1985. Omaha NE: Now in Omaha on a day off. I cannot believe some of the places that we end up in. Right now we’re at the promoter’s lake house. The place is huge. He has a boat and takes everybody waterskiing and stuff. Ratman and I have our own room. Not bad.
I broke my right wrist on a guy’s head last night. I have broken this wrist about six or seven times before. This is fucked. I will not be able to do anything with my right hand for several weeks. What a fucking drag. My hand is hurting so much I can hardly think straight. I guess I won’t be doing any load-ins for the rest of the tour. What a trip. I’m sitting on this big porch facing this big old lake. The sun is setting, the waterskiers are ripping by. It’s like a scene out of a movie or something. I should have cracked that man upside the head with the microphone.
August 27, 1985. Reno, NV: A fast rundown of our show in Reno. No frills or extras. Ready? Go! We arrived at the place, a skating rink in the middle of nowhere. Tom Troccoli’s Dog goes on first. Near the end of the set Tom is pulled offstage, he falls and breaks his leg on the skating-rink floor. Later on, Black Flag plays. Our set is stopped by the police. A boy was in the crowd with a knife, he stabbed two other boys. They are taken away. The boy with the knife is apprehended and taken away. The set resumes. Two songs later, the set is shut down for good by the pigs. I go to the dressing room. Two plainclothes pigs are in there with one of our road crew. I am told to stand against the wall. I do it. The male pig stares at me, I hold his stare without moving. Finally he squeals: “You better smile more when you come into my town.” I just stare without changing my expression. The female pig asks me some questions. I ignore her. They both give our road-crew guy a lecture about the pot they found on him. They tell him that pot is a felony in the state of Nevada. Finally they are called away. They get up to leave, the male pig says to me, “You better smile more or stay in LA.” I just stare at him as he leaves. I hate pigs. I don’t smoke and I don’t need to get busted. Next time someone lights up some of that lame shit, I’m moving out of the room. This is the second near-bust on tour and I’m sick of it. That’s a night in Reno.
I overheard these boys talking in the men’s room. They were doing crystal meth and tequila. They were talking about how all the boys are pussies because they don’t do this or that or some bullshit. There is nothing. The world is a gross place.
We drove all night to Palo Alto, California. I did an interview with the local paper there over the phone. SST called me and told me that The Village Voice wants me to write for them. I wonder what they want me to do. I am tired. I’m taking aspirin before I play now, it helps the after-show headaches a little. The equipment is being loaded out and I am waiting to leave. I’m not much good for load-out with my broken wrist. This trail has no end. There is no one anywhere. I don’t think I’m human anymore.
January 25, 1986. Miami, FL: At a Denny’s. Drove all night to get here. Last night I watched skinheads beat people up through the first two bands. The rented security made no attempt whatsoever to stop them. Later on, Black Flag’s set started. It was cold outside, we were all in sweatpants and shit. We were playing away and everything seemed to be going fine. That didn’t last long. People started grabbing me and trying to pull me in. One guy kept punching me in the knees. I let him keep it up for a while, and then I clipped him in the head with the mic. Not hard, just hard enough to make him notice that he’s wearing me out. He kept it up, so I wound up and belted him with my fist and the mic. His nose broke and his face was all bloody. Another guy started in on me, and I kicked him in the face. Steel cap in the face, felt like kicking a melon. People kept getting onstage, and Rat Man and Joe kept throwing them off. I started to notice that now people were getting onstage for the direct purpose of fucking with Joe and Rat. They were trying to pull them in. The guy whose nose I broke was now standing in the middle of the crowd with his arms outstretched so he looked like he was nailed to a cross. His headband looked like a crown of thorns; the blood trickling from right below his eye looked great. Old JC is alive and well in Tampa.
During the second-to-last song of the set, some skinheads pulled the cords from the stage-right monitors. Rat Man went to go see what was wrong, and they got him. From what he says, they got him down and started to kick him in the head. He told me that he was trying to crawl up the stairs to the stage and they kept dragging him back down and kicking him. I didn’t see anything except for Rat getting back onstage with his face all mangled.
We stopped playing. The insults started in seconds. I could feel balls of spit pelt me from all over. People started to chant “Bullshit” over and over. I just sat down behind the amps and listened to them: Black Flag sucks. Fuck you Henry, you pussy. We want our money’s worth. Play more you faggots. Henry you suck, I want my money back. Rock stars. Take the money and run.
After the show was over the pigs came, and all they did was stand around and tell us to hurry up with the load-out. The skinhead guys were just standing around right out of reach laughing. Rat swung at one of them, and a pig told him to cool it or he would take him in. Rat looked so bad. His eyes
were shutting and his lips were split. It didn’t even look real.
They are pieces of shit. They can’t hurt me, they just make me stronger. If they all die tomorrow, so what. I don’t know why they come. I don’t know why we come. They bitch and insult and try to hurt me. That’s cool. They make me what I am. Everything all those journalist pigs say about me is true. I didn’t make the shit up, I learned it from them. If they get all mad when they get it back, when they get themselves mirrored back at them, they won’t have anyone to blame but themselves, and that’s when I start smiling. From now on I don’t trust any of them. Not in any town, any country; they’re all the same. They are capable of fucking me up. I would like to see some bad things happen to them too.
January 27, 1986. Gainesville, FL: Today is a day off, kind of. It’s about 8:30 p.m. and my day off started about an hour and a half ago. I got myself a single hotel room. I wanted to check in about eight and a half hours ago, but I had to wait for everyone to go do their thing—that’s the way it is when you travel in a group. The show in Miami was okay, about nine hundred people came. After we finished the set I wanted to start from the top and do it all over again. We won’t be back there for a long time. The next night (last night) was Orlando, Florida. Our first time there. About an hour after the doors opened, Joe and some of the others said they recognized some of the fuckers who kicked Rat Man’s head in the other night in Tampa. We knew they were not there to see Black Flag. We all got ready. I was happy they were there. I was hoping they would start something so I could crack one of their skulls open. Joe was happy, he wanted a piece of one of them too.
Joe and I were at the soundboard keeping an eye on things. I turned around and they were all standing right there. I turned around and just stared at them. I couldn’t help but start laughing. I wanted to kill them so bad I could barely keep my seat. I just stared at them, and eventually they went away. By then the security was hip to what was going on. They wanted a piece of them too. A Cuban bouncer came up to me and said, “I hope one of those faggots starts some shit.” Then he pulls out this stiletto and flicks the blade in and out. “This is my last night, I don’t give a fuck.” All the bouncer guys got into it and started to stare at the skinheads. One went up to them and said, “If you start any shit, you’re all going to get hurt, then you’re going to get thrown out.”
We played our set. They did their normal thing—cheap-shot people smaller than they were. They tried to give us shit, but they were too easy to cut down. I did some good one-liners. “Well you know what they always say, if you can’t do it yourself, get about ten of your friends to help,” etc. Some skin yelled out suck my dick Henry. “Of course I won’t do that. I know how you skinhead guys are into boys and shit. I’m different. I like girls, I’m funny that way. But hey man, if you guys like to suck cock, that’s great. Good luck and bon appétit.”
I did a few more raps that went along the lines of some people here are almost ready for the army except in the army you can’t be overweight and you have to work out a lot. I know how that would be a bit of a strain on your Budweiser routine. Some skinhead girls were flipping me off; I just waved and said, “Hiya Fatty!” After people started laughing at them too hard, they just kind of stood there, except of course for the occasional cheap shot.
Some guy yelled, “Disappointment, big time, Henry! I want a refund!” That made me think. If the crowd disappoints me, I should charge admission for them to get out.
Well, that’s Orlando. The skinheads were lucky to have the sense to go home. I don’t think they knew what they were in for. All of us had hammers, pipes, etc. If you fuck with one of us, the wheel comes around. No, I would have no problem crushing one or five of their skulls. Their lives are meaningless. I would enjoy watching them twitch.
More and more I start to question why I am doing what I am doing. Greg does not like me at all and thinks that I have ill feelings toward him. There’s no convincing him otherwise. I respect Greg more than anyone I know. He’s incredible, all of us in the crew are constantly amazed by his playing and his presence. He’s totally nonstop. He makes me and Dukowski look like bums, no shit. I think that Black Flag is his second-string project, Gone being his first. I think the other members of Gone know that. You can see it when they deal with the rest of Black Flag. It doesn’t bother me, they’re incredible musicians. I think they give Greg a run for his money. Gone is the tightest, most together band on this tour. They are always working on their music. I watched Greg play bass for almost five hours straight the other day. C’el doesn’t even look at a bass until it’s time to play; it shows too. It embarrasses me sometimes. I don’t know what I can do. What am I going to say? “Hey C’el, what the fuck, don’t you like playing?” I don’t know, it’s hard to find people who really want to go out and do it. C’el is a cool guy, but I don’t know if he’s cutting it. I hope he comes around. I don’t think he will. That’s just what I think. I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong. I think his woman in LA is giving him lots of shit about being on tour. I had that happen once. One time I was in England and I called this girl I was going out with at the time. She hung up on me from six thousand miles away. I fooled around with different girls all the way back to LA.
It is becoming very important that I keep to myself around the others. I’m a jerk when I enter into their conversations. I’m not human anymore. When they spit on me, when they grab at me they aren’t hurting me. They’re just gouging and defiling my flesh. When I push out and mangle the flesh of another, it’s falling so short of what I really want to do to them.
July 12, 1986. Hermosa Beach, CA: Been here about two weeks. I’ve been doing okay. Feels strange being in one place for so long.
When the tour ended, I felt like I had stepped off a fast-moving train. You look behind you and it’s over. It’s so over with that it’s as if it didn’t even happen. So much for glory.
I feel somehow cheated in a way, it’s hard to explain. It’s just over. “You did your time, now get the fuck out of here.” I don’t think I can explain. I feel empty, restless, and out of place. I have had a hard time sleeping. I can manage only a few hours at a time. You figure there’s going to be some movie type of ending to the whole thing, some big climax, but there’s not. It’s just over and everyone goes home, promises to keep in touch and never do.
I have been doing some writing and reading. I did two shows of my own, one at Be-Bop Records, another at UCLA. I thought they went real well.
The door to the shed had a seven-foot pot plant growing next to it when I got back here.
Thanks Pettibon, that’s all I need. Funny guy.
Fuck it, I don’t feel like writing anything. Life has slowed down to a crawl. Without the tour I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel like getting in a fight or slicing myself up some.
Later that summer, Black Flag broke up.
I got it from you. Your headlines and head lies. Your hate mail and red tag fire sales. Your justice and your jails. Your corruption that never fails to spit in the face of the one who knows but cannot say, who has no voice, no options, no choice. The one who has to pay the price for your greed and pride and all the fear you hold inside. Your stereotyping paranoid claustrophobia. Your no-minded logic defying homophobia. It’s been going on so long. So here’s your authentic American blues song. I got it all from you. I pushed back. Back back back my back against the wall. Paranoid I’m not. Understanding I am too much to the point to where it went too far and it went to where it hurt and scarred and bruised and charred and took life away and put horror in its place. Here’s your ugly face. Face it. Here’s your darkness slice. Here here here it is. Here’s your human race. Your rape scene siren lit gynecological boy meets mutilates meats meats meats girl—girl destroys herself in the wreckage of her mother’s cowardice—boy destroys himself acting out imagined male imperative that father or lack of instilled.* You can get raped and killed here. Addicted and imprisoned. Saturated and intimidated. Isolated and condem
ned. You might not get what you deserve but you’ll get something that’ll hurt. That’s a brain-splattered guarantee. So don’t come crying. Don’t come dying. I don’t have a doorstep left for you to bleed your case upon. You broke it into pieces and threw it at my head. You win. Don’t come to me looking for answers. Your street is my street. I hear the same gunshots and share the same held breath. I’ll just tell you to duck and vote NO YOU BASTARDS. I’m warning you this last time; that which stands still gets victimized or worse.** It’s the way of the residents and the dead presidents. The future’s on hold. If you have a problem with something you read in this book, write an angry letter but address it to yourself because I got it all from you. Hit the streets begging, for tolerance not money. Instead of rest and relaxation, here’s some mutation and mutilation. Here I come. Running at you with the Anti-Life.
The Portable Henry Rollins Page 17
