Hell’s Angels. A Strange and Terrible. Saga by Hunter S. Thompson

There is an important difference between the words loser and outlaw. One is passive and the other is active, and the main rea­sons the Angels are such good copy is that they are acting out the day-dreams of millions of losers who don’t wear any defiant insignia and who don’t know how to be outlaws. The streets of every city are thronged with men who would pay all the money they could get their hands on to be transformed — even for a day — into hairy, hard-fisted brutes who walk over cops, extort free drinks from terrified bartenders and thunder out of town on big motorcycles after raping the banker’s daughter. Even people who think the Angels should all be put to sleep find it easy to identify with them. They command a fascination, however reluc­tant, that borders on psychic masturbation.

The Angels don’t like being called losers, but they have learned to live with it. Yeah, I guess I am, said one. But you’re looking at one loser who’s going to make a hell of a scene on the way out.

22

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

— Dr. Johnson

The neighborhood suddenly exploded with excited, morbid crowds. Hysterical women surged forward in a frenzy, screeching in almost sexual ecstasy, scratching and fighting the agents and police in their attempt to reach the body. One fat-breasted woman with stringy red hair broke through the cordon and dipped her handkerchief in the blood, clutched it to her sweaty dress and waddled off down the street. . .

— From an account of the death of John Dillinger

Toward Christmas the action slowed down and the Angels dropped out of the headlines. Tiny lost his job, Sonny got involved in a long jury trial on the attempted-murder charge,* and the El Adobe was demolished by the wrecker’s ball. The Angels drifted from one bar to another, but they found it harder to establish a hangout than to maintain one. In San Francisco it was just as slow. Frenchy spent three months in General Hospital when a can of gasoline blew up on him, and Puff went to jail after a fracas with two cops who raided an Angel birthday party.

* Which ended with a hung jury and eventual reduction of the charge to assault with a deadly weapon — to which Barger pleaded guilty and served six months in jail.

Winter is always slow for the outlaws. Many have to go to work to stay eligible for next summer’s unemployment insurance, it is too cold for big outdoor parties, and the constant rain makes riding an uncomfortable hazard.

It seemed like a good time to get some work done, so I dropped off the circuit. Terry came by now and then to keep me posted. One day he showed up with a broken arm, saying he’d wrecked his bike, his old lady had left him and the niggers had blown up his house. I’d heard about the house from Barger’s wife, Elsie, who was handling the communications post at their home in Oak­land. During one of the sporadic flare-ups between the Hell’s Angels and the Oakland Negroes somebody had thrown a home­made bomb through the window of the house that Terry was renting in East Oakland. The fire destroyed the house and all of Marilyn’s paintings. She was a pretty little girl about nineteen, with long blond hair and a respectable family in one of the valley towns. She’d been living with Terry for nearly six months, cov­ering the walls with her artwork, but she had no stomach for bombs. The divorce was effected soon after they moved to another dwelling. I came back one night and she was gone, said Terry. All she left was a note: ‘Dear Terry, Fuck it.’ And that was that.

Nothing else happened until January, when Mother Miles got snuffed. He was riding his bike through Berkeley when a truck came out of a side street and hit him head on, breaking both legs and fracturing his skull. He hung in a coma for six days, then died on a Sunday morning, less than twenty-four hours before his thirtieth birthday — leaving a wife, two children and his righteous girl friend, Ann.