The Hub Cap Inn was at 5953 Belair Road and is now the "The Hub" a black bar run by Pakistani men, guarded by gun-armed white security contractors. The neighborhood bar a block up the street is now called Mixers, a small gay bar, at a location which has always struggled to support a profitable bar, sandwiched as it is in between the Hubcap and what was JT's Saloon up the street. Both bars sit across the street from the base of a steep, overgrown quarry wall, with a granite cliff face behind the grocery store lot threaded with one hillside street.
I was pretty much done with all the people I grew up with as a teenager. They were all hardcore drug addicts. I was socializing with men I worked with: hunting trips, going to the fights, strip clubs, Atlantic City, fishing trips, having a good time. Second half of the 90s I was a bachelor.
It was in a store. I approached her and asked her for her phone number. Got married in 2001. Got married kind of early. It’s been on and off. Most of the problems we had was because of me fucking anything that moved. But when I was hurt she was there for me, so I’ll return the favor. I would have to say, that now we’re better than we ever were.
This was the winter of 2001. The wife is a knockout, tall girl, pretty, nice big tits. We were coming down off the top of the quarry headed to The Hubcap—a bar owned by an ex-cop where all kind of stolen shit was sold. He’ll he’d be coking steaks in the morning and selling them to the guys that worked in the store across the street where they had been stolen from! My wife and I lived up on Raspe and Walther. We walked down over the quarry, down that small street that runs along the hillside. It was snowing like hell. We went down there, drinking really heavy and we get into a big argument about be checking out the barmaid. We are outside arguing. This redneck comes out behind us. He said, “Are you alright, hon,” said it three times.
She said, “Get the fuck away, asshole!”
I said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get your ass back in the bar.”
He did what’s good for him, at that point. We are back in their drinking, then went up to the little neighborhood bar, Brenda was tending bar, knew my wife. It was me, my wife, Brenda and two old men. The redneck comes in with this bigger redneck. By this time we’re fucking drunk and some junky comes in there selling meat and I buy some steaks from him. I’m watching these two guys. Then its closing time and these two guys come over outside and the big brain, original redneck, says to my wife, “You need a ride, hon?”
I set my bag of steak down and I said, “What the fuck I tell you!” and he kicks my bag of steaks in the snow and I’m drunk and my wife is drunk, practically holding her up.
She is back to my left.
I’ve got him slightly angled to me—he is ready to pop off—I knew and I wasn’t that concerned about. This was the type of shit I did for fun.
The big guy is behind him, an intimidator.
I say, “You motherfucker,” and I hit him with a right in the chin and throw a left hook, but his knees buckled from the right and he went straight down and the left went over his head. I recovered guard, [demonstrates peek-a-boo wing block] and started advancing on him [the big guy] to the left with my guard up. I don’t know if I tripped on this guy, stepped over, went around. I was really drunk.
There they are the mastermind and the fool in this caper. Big Brain went down and the dimwit thought better of everything. He was my height and a lot heavier. As big as he was he took off running in the snow and I screamed, “Bitch, punk-motherfucker!”
Then I had to pick my steaks up out of the snow and walk the wife home in that fucking blizzard.
Never go bar hopping in a snow storm on Belair Road.
The situation Big Ron and his wife got into, by being drunk and arguing, is fairly common and forms a specific subset of predatory aggression in white working class America. Make no mistake, Ron was not the target, his wife was. The most common way women get raped by strangers in these situations is that a man or men pretend to be sympathetic to her and offer a lift, usually as she is walking away from her man. As indicated by his wife’s earlier response, she was keen to this dynamic and knew this guy was a skulking predator who was hoping to separate her from Ron without having to deal directly with Ron.
Thriving in Bad Places
link › jameslafond.blogspot.com
When You're Food: Raw:
A Fighter’s View of Predatory Aggression: The Forever Autumn Press Edition
