MR. STEINER’S WILD RIDE
Posted 07/14/05

Jim Steiner was our 8th grade bully. He didn’t talk much, always wore a dungaree jacket, Levi’s and boots, held back a grade, an always walked in a pissed-off slouch, so he was pretty imposing. Our initial meeting was when his friends decided they wanted to see us fight for no good reason, so they told both of us that the other was saying crap about the other one (we weren’t at all, actually.) A 3:30 after school fight was set at Grovedale School, and Jim and I came in with our entourages from opposite sides of the school like we were prizefighters. I thought there was a good chance I was gonna get creamed. After some finger pointing and a few choice words, I hit him with a straight right, and he dropped like a sack of bricks. I’ll note here that I hit him hard, but not hard enough to drop him. He got up, we started circling, and I hit him again. Same thing. He took a dive, and it now dawned on me he was all show and not the tough guy everyone thought he was. Now I just felt bad for him. The anxiety about fighting deflated and turned into sympathy. Now I figured I’d jump on him, we’d wrestle (no one could beat me wrestling, not even the schools wrestlers) and he’d save face that way. It worked. We wrestled around a bit, broke off, had more choice words, and then I went home. My neighbor Terry picked up where I left off (still don’t know how that started), Terry got his ass whooped, so Jim now at least had a winning end to his day.

I hadn’t thought of Jim in five years, when he showed up on my porch on a Friday night with a brand new 240Z parked sideways in my driveway. He said he’d ran off and joined the Army, was stationed in Texas, was on leave for just a few more days, and would I like to check out his new wheels? Sure, why not? I grabbed my wallet and hopped in. Once moving, he started in about how horrible life is, how he hated all the discipline of the Army, and, oh, I have just one stop to make, do you mind? We got out to Beach Blvd. (long before it was filled in with homes & was a just long stretch of brush) and he steps on it. We’re now doing 90MPH and he’s riffing on about how when faced with a situation that pisses him off, he now just says, ”F*** it!!!” like a religious mantra and it makes everything all right. Except it wasn’t all right. Traffic’s in sight & this asshole’s doing 90.

We hit light to medium traffic, and now he’s now doing over 100, wildly weaving lane to lane and calmly telling me to ’loosen up’ when I start protesting like a bitch. We are going to die, I am certain of it. I start a conversation with Jesus inside my mind, promising to lead a better life if he gets me out of this mess (we’d have this conversation many times later when I was a raving drunk.) I’m praying for a stoplight to hop out at, but it’s nothing but green lights. After making it through Buena Park without killing anyone, we hit the ramp for the 5 Freeway South, and he finally slows it up. Now he says he just needs to make his stop, and then we can go party. Fine, I can wash my face and change my underwear, let’s do it.

We drove to an apartment in Tustin and to the door of a brunette in her early 30’s. Apparently he’d met her that week in a bar, and not knowing what kind of psycho she was dealing with, she gave him her address. She was pretty, but the kind of wallflower pretty that fades into the background when out with girlfriends. A sitting duck for the aggro’s of the planet. In no time he stood right on top of her, tucking his head behind her neck, clumsily whispering platitudes of love, with all the while her looking fidgety, and like she didn’t have the fortitude to say no. She finally deferred, and they went off to the bedroom. With nothing to do, I sat and thumbed through her photo albums. There were lots of nice pictures of her and her girlfriends, and images from a life that didn’t seem to include any psychotic males in it. Very fucking sad. I was still thumbing when, just ten minutes in, Jim appears in the doorway and says, ”Let’s go,” in the same tone Dennis Hopper used in Blue Velvet.

He drove me back to Whittier and we didn’t say a word the whole trip. When he dropped me off, I let out a sigh, said nothing, went inside and didn’t look back. I hope he’s since gotten his act together, but even more so I hope a gas truck took his ass out on the way home that night.

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