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

REPEATEDLY. . . ASSAULTED

AGED 14 AND 15. . .

STINKING, HAIRY THUGS

A deputy sheriff summoned by one of the erstwhile dates said he arrived at the beach and saw a huge bonfire surrounded by cyclists of both sexes. Then the two sobbing, near-hysterical girls staggered out of the darkness, begging for help. One was com­pletely nude and the other had on only a torn sweater.

Here, sweet Jesus, was an image flat guaranteed to boil the public blood and foam the brain of every man with female flesh for kin. Two innocent young girls, American citizens, carried off to the dunes and ravaged like Arab whores. One of the dates told police they tried to rescue the girls but couldn’t reach them in the mob scene that erupted once the victims were stripped of their clothing. Out there in the sand, in the blue moonlight, in a circle of leering hoodlums. . . they were penetrated, again and again.

The next morning Terry the Tramp was one of four Angels arrested for forcible rape, which carries a penalty of one to fifty years in the penitentiary. He denied all knowledge of the crime, as did Mother Miles, Mouldy Marvin and Crazy Cross — but sev­eral hours later, with bond set at a lowly $1,100 each, they were lodged in the Monterey County Jail in Salinas. . . out there in Steinbeck country, the hot lettuce valley, owned in the main by smart second-generation hillbillies who got out of Appalachia while the getting was good, and who now pay other, less-smart hillbillies to supervise the work of Mexican braceros, whose natural fitness for stoop labor has been explained by the ubiqui­tous Senator Murphy: They’re built low to the ground, he said, so it’s easier for them to stoop.

Indeed. And since Senator Murphy has also called the Hell’s Angels the lowest form of animals, it presumably follows that they are better constructed for the mindless rape of any prostrate woman they might come across as they scurry about, from one place to another, with their dorks carried low like water wands. Which is not far from the truth, but for different reasons than California’s ex-lightfoot senator might have us believe.

Nobody knew, of course, as they gathered that Saturday at Nick’s, that the Angels were about to make a publicity break­through, by means of rape, on the scale of the Beatles or Bob Dylan. At dusk, with an orange sun falling fast into the ocean just a mile or so away, the main event of the evening was so wholly unplanned that the principal characters — or victims — attracted little attention in the noisy crowd that jammed Nick’s barroom and spilled out to the darkening street. Terry says he noticed the girls and their dates only as part of the overall scene. The main reason I remember them is I won­dered what that white pregnant girl was doing with a bunch of suede dudes. But I figured it was her business, and I wasn’t hurtin for pussy anyway. I had my old lady with me — we’re separated now, but then we were doin okay and she wouldn’t have none of me hustlin anything else while she was around. Besides, hell, when you’re seein old friends you haven’t seen in a year or two, you don’t have time to pay much attention to strangers.

The only thing Terry and all the other Angels agree on — in relation to the victims’ first appearance — is that they sure as hell didn’t look no fourteen and fifteen, man; those girls looked every bit of twenty. (Police later confirmed the girls’ ages, but all other information about them — including their names — was withheld in accordance with California’s policy of denying press access to rape victims.)

I can’t even say if those girls were pretty or not, Terry went on. I just don’t remember. All I can say for sure is that we didn’t have no trouble at Nick’s. The cops were there, but only to keep people away. It was the same old story as every place else we go: traffic piling up on the street outside, local bad-asses prowling around, young girls looking for kicks, and a bunch of Nick’s regular customers just digging the party. The cops did right by staying around. Everywhere we go there’s some local hoods who want to find out how tough we are. If the cops weren’t there we’d end up having to hurt somebody. Hell, nobody wants trouble on a run. All we want to do is to have some fun and relax.