Kingdom of Fear (23 page)

That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th Century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now. The party’s over, folks. The time has come for loyal Americans to Sacrifice . . . Sacrifice . . . Sacrifice. That is the new buzzword in Washington. But what it means is not entirely clear.

Winston Churchill said, “The first casualty of War is always Truth.” Churchill also said, “In wartime, Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of Lies.”

That wisdom will not be much comfort to babies born last week. The first news they get in this world will be News subjected to Military Censorship. That is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately planted “Dis-information.” That is routine
behavior in Wartime—for all countries and all combatants—and it makes life difficult for people who value real news. Count on it. That is what Churchill meant when he talked about Truth being the first casualty of War.

In this case, however, the next casualty was Football. All games were canceled last week. And that has Never happened to the NFL. Never. That gives us a hint about the Magnitude of this War. Terrorists don’t wear uniforms, and they play by inscrutable rules—The Rules of World War III, which has already begun.

So get ready for it, folks. Buckle up and watch your backs at all times. That is why they call it “Terrorism.”

September 19, 2001

Big Sur, editorial conference, 1971 (Annie Leibovitz)

“Hi, Mr. Thompson. My name is Wendy ______________ from Suzuki, and I want more than anything else in the world to give you a brand-new Suzuki ______________, which has a top speed of 200 mph [chuckle]. Yeah, I thought that would interest you [giggle]. Call me anytime at ______________.”

How long, O Lord, how long? Some people wait all their lives for a telephone call like that. But not me. I get them constantly, and on some nights I ask myself, Why?

Speedism is the most recently identified Disease that curses modern Man. Yesterday’s murdering speed freak is today’s helpless victim of “Speedism.” This is a Big Leap that has taken a long time to achieve. It is a milestone in medical history & many unsung heroes have sacrificed themselves for it, including Sid Vicious and the actor Richard Pryor, who set himself on fire while researching the Speedism virus.

This is wonderful news. A whole generation of coke fiends can rest easy now: They were not common addicts & criminals. No. They were helpless Victims of a highly contagious Virus,
Speedata Viruuseum.
The Disease is Debilitating, Demoralizing & Incurable, leaving the victim wracked with pain & utterly helpless for 6-9 months at a time.

Speedism can be Fatal when mixed with high-speed automobiles & whiskey. It is wrong & I condemn it, but some dingbats will do it anyway. . . . And not All will survive, but so what?

For the others, the Living, here are some basic rules.

No. 1
—Make sure yr. car is Functioning on all Mechanical & Electrical levels. Do not go out on
any
road to drive Fast unless all yr. exterior lights are working perfectly.

There is only failure & jail very soon for anybody who tries to drive fast with one headlight or a broken red taillight. This is automatic, unarguable
Probable Cause
for a cop to pull you over & check everything in yr. car. You do not want to give them Probable Cause. Check yr. lights, gas gauge, & tire pressure before you drive Anywhere.

No. 2
—Get familiar with the Brake pressures on yr. machine before you drive any faster than 10 mph. A brake drum that locks up the instant you touch the pedal will throw you sideways off the road & put you into a fatal eggbeater, which means you will Go To Trial if it happens. Be
very
aware of yr. brakes.

No. 3
—Have no
small
wrecks. If you are going to loop out & hit something,
hit it hard.
Never mind that old-school Physics bullshit about the Irresistible Force & the Immoveable Object. The main rule of the Highway is that Some Objects are More Moveable than Others. This occurs, for instance, when a speeding car goes straight through a plywood billboard, but not when one goes through a concrete wall. In most cases, the car going fastest sustains less damage than the slower-moving vehicle.

A Small Wreck is almost always both Costly and Embarrassing. I talked to a man tonight who said he had been demoted from Headwaiter to Salad Boy when he had a small wreck in the restaurant’s parking lot and lost all respect from his fellow workers. “They laughed at me & called me an Ass,” he said. “I should have hit the fucker at seventy-five, instead of just five,” he whined. “It cost me $6,800 anyway. I would have been maître d’ by now if I’d screwed it on & just Mashed the bastard. These turds have made me an outcast.”

No. 4
—(This is one of the more Advanced rules, but let’s pop it in here while we still have space.) Avoid, at all costs, the use of Any drug or drink or Hubris or even Boredom that might cause you to Steal a car & crash it into a concrete wall just to get the Rush of the airbags exploding on you. This new fad among rich teenagers in L.A. is an extremely Advanced Technique that only pure Amateurs should try, and it should
never
be done Twice. Take my word for it.

No. 5
—The eating schedule should be as follows: Hot fresh spinach, Wellfleet Oysters, and thick slabs of Sourdough garlic toast with salt & black pepper. Eat this two hours before departure, in quantities as needed. The drink should be Grolsch green beer, a dry oaken-flavored white wine & a tall glass full of ice cubes & Royal Salute scotch whiskey, for the supercharge factor.

Strong black coffee should also be sipped while eating, with dark chocolate cake soaked in Grand Marnier for dessert. The smoking of oily hashish is optional, and in truth Not Recommended for use
before
driving at speeds up to 150 mph in residential districts. The smoking of powerful hashish should be saved until after yr.
return
from the drive, when nerve-ends are crazy & raw.

Road testing the Ducati 900, 1995 (Paul Chesley)

There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc café-racer is one of them—but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.

Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack—and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you. . . . There is, after all, not a pig’s eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.

When
Cycle World
called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I’d rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. “Hot damn,” they said. “We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away.”

“Balls,” I said. “Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Café Racers.”

The Café Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5,000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill essturn is quite another.

But we like it. A thoroughbred Café Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest diminishing-radius loop turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.

Café Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening commitment to the
Café Life
and all its dangerous pleasures. . . . I am a Café Racer myself, on some days—and many nights for that matter—and it is one of my finest addictions. . . .

I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a picture
of a Vincent Black Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple. . . . I have visions of compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called “Bess” sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.

Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim singing when they go under, and others hear the song of the Sausage Creature.

When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd, or maybe Ron Ziegler.

The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.

Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 160-mph café-racer. And include some license plates, so he’ll think it’s a street-bike. He’s queer for anything fast.

Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as “the fastest motorcycle ever tested by
Hot Rod
magazine.” I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid. . . . I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, and my infamous old friend Ken Kesey, a legendary Café Racer.

Some people will tell you that slow is good—and it may be, on some days—but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba. . . .

So when I got back from the U.S. Open Polo Championship in New York and found a fiery red rocket-style bike in my garage, I realized I was back in the road-testing business.

The brand-new Ducati 900
Campione del Mundo Desmodue
Super-sport
double-barreled magnum Café Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked at it. Others felt the same way. My garage quickly became a magnet for drooling superbike groupies. They quarreled and bitched at each other about who would be first to help me evaluate my new toy. . . . And I did, of course, need a certain spectrum of opinions, besides my own, to properly judge this motorcycle. The Woody Creek Perverse Environmental Testing Facility is a long way from Daytona or even top-fuel challenge sprints on the Pacific Coast Highway, where teams of big-bore Kawasakis and Yamahas are said to race head-on against each other in death-defying games of “chicken” at 100 miles an hour. . . .

No. Not everybody who buys a high-dollar torque-brute yearns to go out in a ball of fire on a public street in L.A. Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room but still blast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it. . . . For that we need fine Machinery.

Which we had—no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for reasons of their own, to send me the 900SP for testing—rather than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track-racer. It was far too fast, they said—and prohibitively expensive—to farm out for testing to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they’re world-class Café Racers.