In the Light of You Read online

  Late at night after everyone else had left or cashed out, Richard and I would stay up shooting the shit until sunrise. Not about anything specific, just whatever came to mind. He gave me books to read, mostly detective thrillers and true crime stories, occasionally historical non-fiction. He’d warn me ahead of time what was a fun read and what was “a little dry,” and said it was up to me if I wanted to read the shit or not. I devoured everything he gave me.

  It was all badass and brand new … but it all felt familiar as well. Lived in. It felt right to me.

  I remember my first warehouse rally like it’s the only memory worth having. I remember the fear and the anticipation as we drove for what seemed like hours through cracked out ghettoes, farms and fields, and miles upon miles of industrial wasteland. I remember the mob of bald heads and liberty spikes filing into the most bombed-out-looking structure I had ever seen.

  The stage was set with amps and a drum kit. Behind it hung a banner, which read “The Hangmen.” The walls were lined with kegs every which way. The smell of impending ruckus hung in the air in rippling sheets. There weren’t a lot of girls there that night, but the ones who were present were all gorgeous: blondes and goths and fine pixie punk babies. Some older roughneck was on stage screaming about “taking out the trash,” but people were cheering and “sieg heiling” so loudly I could barely make it out. I wasn’t really interested anyway because I had designs on a little punk rock girl named Suzi who had driven with us and was friends with Joe and Phil’s current squeezes Anne and Reeba. (I’ve heard other skins lament the overall lack of women in the movement, but I can honestly say that in Richard’s gang we never wanted for tail. Call it luck.) Suzi was sixteen like me, and had only been with the Fifth Reich for a couple of weeks. I grabbed us both a beer and we tried to find a place where we could talk, which was pretty much impossible. Over the cacophony I picked up that Suzi had a fairly rotten home life. Her mother beat her and tormented her. She had a bandage on her brow over her left eye that night because her mother had smacked her in the face with a broom handle. Her eye was bruised maroon, with just a shade of emerald. She loved her father, though, and hoped that he would divorce her mother and she could go off to live with him. I was as interested as I needed to be.

  I was just about to ask her if she’d like to step outside for a bit of air when we heard the roughneck holler, “. And it’s my pleasure to invite to this stage … y’all know you love him … RICHARD FUCKING LOVECRAFT!!!”

  The roar of the crowd was so intense just then that you would have thought Sid Vicious had risen from the grave and walked through the door. Suzi and I wedged up as close to the stage as we could. I knew he was cool, but I hadn’t realized until right then just how important Richard was to the movement. He was the star. The bright shining light.

  “So hot …,” Suzi whispered to herself as she watched Richard take to the mic. To look at the rest of the women in the crowd, the sentiment was universal.

  “I’m not going to waste your time with a lot of blah blah blah, cuz we all know who we’re really here for …,” Richard said, and everyone cheered, throwing up their hands in salute. From there he talked about taking the country back from the mud people and sending the liberals back to Woodstock and it was all very funny and sharp. But truth be told, he could have stood there and read from Goodnight Moon and he would have still had those people in the palm of his tattooed hand. Richard’s got a special something about him. Richard’s just got a way.

  “… So are you just about ready?!” Richard yelled. The crowd cheered. “What, are you fuckers asleep out there?!?! I said ARE YOU FUCKING READY TO GO FUCKING BATSHIT?!?!?!”

  ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAA AAAAARRRRR!!!!!

  “Then bash your fucking skulls together for THE HANGMEN!!!”

  The crowd erupted, and Richard dove in, riding the wave of hands all the way to the back wall of the warehouse. Four gruesome looking mutants who looked like they just crawled out of a sewer somewhere took to the stage, grabbed their instruments and let loose with a ferocious, “WHITE POWWWWWWEEEER!”

  Four chords, four beats per measure, and a cluster bomb of unbridled rage:

  One two three four

  We want our Racial Holy War!

  Five six seven eight

  Let the monkeys feel our hate!

  Nine ten eleven twelve

  Send the faggots straight to Hell!

  Here it is the final hour

  Dirty Jew, time for your shower!

  RAHOWA!!!!!!!!!

  Bodies collided with bodies. People dove from the window ledges down into the swarming mass. Blistering hardcore bludgeoned us back from the stage and we charged back in screaming for more. And everyone knew the words:

  One two three four

  This is how we settle the score!

  Five six seven eight

  The White Man reigns, it is our fate!

  Nine ten eleven twelve

  Every mud fuck for himself!

  The time has come for true White Power

  C’mon, Jew, it’s just a shower!

  RAHOWA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  I didn’t know the lyrics yet, but I was damn sure I’d know them all word for word before next time. As Suzi pogo’d in place I hurled myself into the throng. Tearing off my shirt I let my skinny arms flail. I am a tornado. RAHOWA!!!!!!! What does it mean? RAHOWA!!!!!!! I’ll figure it out. RAHOWA!!!!!!!!!! It’s the only thing that matters to me now. RAHOWA!!!!!! I screamed it at the top of my lungs.

  We slammed and skanked and punched and drank and bled away the hours. Every song just like the one before it, yet somehow better. Pride. Strength. Unified. Power. An army.

  The drive back home seemed to take no time at all. The van was packed to its splitting point, as we appeared to have twice the crew we had on the ride there. Suzi and I rode in the far back—the perfect place to be.

  “Yup yup,” she said. “I’m so happy right now.”

  “How come?”

  “Because you have your arm around me.”

  And I did and I didn’t even realize. We stayed that way the whole ride.

  Everyone else was asleep except for Richard, who drove, and a girl Richard had picked up at the rally. I don’t remember her name. We all called her Special Olympics. Special Olympics was Barbie-doll hot, but nowhere near as smart. This girl had it all: tight, acid washed jeans, white high top tennis shoes, hot pink halter top, fried blonde Jersey girl coral reef hair. The whole package. I mention her only because she hung around for about a month and a half. Richard grew weary of her after a couple of days and passed her along to Brian. At one point she and Brian had a tiff and he threw her out of the house completely bare-ass naked. Somehow, without any money or a stitch of clothing on, she made it back to Kentucky. She was only mad at him for a day or so. Last I heard she’s a hair stylist at some high-end boutique and she strips on the weekends. And she’s pregnant by some Mexican with a tattoo of Jesus on his cheek. The most memorable thing about Special Olympics was that you could hear her having an orgasm from out in the driveway. Like guinea pigs in a blender.

  We made it home from the rally at about three AM. Richard’s apartment was actually half of a house, just southeast of downtown, right outside the Metroline. No one occupied the other half of the building so we pretty much infiltrated that as well. People grabbed space to crash wherever they could. Suzi and I staked out prime real estate on the screened-in back porch. I dragged a couple of sleeping bags out from the closet and pulled some cushions off of a beat up old sofa. Suzi stripped down to her panties. I peeled off my sweat-soaked jeans and lay next to her. She ran her fingers over my neck, my face, and through my short, bristly hair.

  “So what’s the style here exactly,” she asked, “crew cut or fade?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean,” she giggled, “are you tryin’ to look like a jarhead or a nigger?”

  “Well, I ain’t trying to look like no nigger.”

  “Okay, that’s
a start.”

  Not the most romantic repartee you’re likely to hear, but fuck it. After we ran out of dumb shit to talk about we got rest-of-the-way naked and down to business. Still pumped up from the rally, I thought I did pretty well and was mighty pleased with myself. But afterward Suzi patted me on the back and said, “That’s okay. It happens sometimes. No need to be embarrassed.” That’s just the way it is.

  Suzi fell asleep shortly thereafter, but I was wide awake. I yanked my jeans back on and went into the house to scrounge up some vittles. I found Richard in the kitchen rummaging through the fridge, and finding naught but a sack of geriatric French fries and what was hopefully a kiwi. Boots and boxer shorts was all he wore, his multitude of tattoos glistening with perspiration. Clearly he and Special Olympics had had a far more vigorous workout than Suzi and I.

  “Some night, eh Mikey?”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “I just want to say, I’m really glad you’re with us, man. I can tell you’re a thinker. It’s good to have another thinking man around.”

  “Cool. Thanks.”

  “You do drugs?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not even weed?”

  “No way.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it. Fuck that hippie shit. I don’t allow it in my house. Makes your mind slow.” He cracked two cans of Fosters and handed one to me. We toasted. I hadn’t realized it, but I was humming that Hangmen song. “One, two, three, four …”

  “You like that tune?” Richard asked.

  “Shit yeah. It rocks like holy hell.”

  “You wanna learn how to play it?”

  “I can’t play guitar.”

  “Dude, it’s punk rock. Anybody can play it.”

  Richard went and fetched a beat up old Larrivée. He handed it to me and wrapped his hand around mine to show me the fingering.

  “Now see this? This is a G power chord. Three fingers: the root note, the fifth, and the octave. You use this same shape for all the chords up and down the neck. Give it a shot.”

  I gave it a shot. It sounded like hog balls. Richard laughed and ruffled my hair.

  “Keep practicing. You’ll get it.”

  So I did. And he was right. If any of you were wondering how to play “Count Them Off” by The Hangmen, it goes like this:

  “So, Mike. Tell me. You have an issue. One that really matters to you. What is it?”

  “I ain’t political, Rich. I don’t have no issues really.”

  “You’re not in high school now,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes. “It’s just you and me talking in the kitchen at four-thirty in the morning with no shirts on. I hear those wheels in your head turning from out here. Tell me what’s going on in there.”

  “Well …,” I said, and it dawned on me that what I was about to tell him I had never told anyone before, “I’m kind of concerned about, you know, things about the environment and whatnot.” I expected him to scoff and roll his eyes, but he just nodded. I had his full attention. So I continued, “You know, like global warming and pollution and all.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “My family is, well, I guess, kind of poor.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And we’ve lived in lots of different low income areas, like by the river, okay. In the fucking flood plain of course. And it seems to me that big corporations get away with dumping their waste near poor neighborhoods and in creeks that run by more … impoverished areas, you know, and I’m thinking that’s fucked up. I mean, no wonder so many people, kids and all, in like West Virginia and shit, are sick. Right? I don’t know. I guess I sound like some fucking, whooooo! Peace and love queer-ass right now.”

  “Hell no you don’t,” Richard said emphatically, then looking around to see if he had awakened anyone. “You are absolutely right, Mike. Absolutely. Our planet is being ravaged by poison and people don’t give a rat’s ass about it. You think that fat fuck Clinton or his bosses care? Yeah, sure. But … you know who was actively working for the environment way back before the tie-dyes hugged their first tree? Hitler.”

  “Zat right?”

  “Hitler. The great bogeyman of history. The Third Reich were promoting and enacting ecological initiatives since day one.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “How could you? You’re not gonna learn it in the public schools, that’s for damn sure. It doesn’t fit within the framework of their propaganda. If it doesn’t conform to the dogma of multiculturalism, then snip, snip, out it goes. The truth just doesn’t suit their agenda. And that’s why we have to fight.”

  I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t want to think right then. Not about ecology or school or the president or world history or any of it. I just wanted in. I wanted boots and white laces. I wanted red braces for my pants. I wanted my uniform. I wanted in the army. This army.

  Richard must have sensed it, and he crooked his finger and headed off down the hall. I followed him There I stood in the doorway of the bathroom looking at myself in the full mirror.

  “You mentioned your family,” he said, rummaging around in a small cabinet filled with odds and ends, “Are you close with them?” I shrugged. “You have any brothers or sisters?” I didn’t answer, for I was busy mapping out where all my tattoos would go. An eagle on my left shoulder. A swastika over my heart. “RAHOWA” across my stomach. And, of course, “white power” on my neck. White power. WHITE POWER. White man. I’m a WHITE man. White Power.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve got brothers now. A shit ton of them.”

  Without another word Richard clicked on his electric razor and ran it across my scalp. My hair sprinkled down to my shoulders and across the bathroom tiles. I watched in the mirror and saw the person I used to be, whomever he was, disappearing. Then gone. Goodbye and good riddance to me.

  3.

  I’M often asked how True Aryan Warriors spend their time day in and day out. Let me tell you, there is a lot of Tetris involved. And the importance of Sonic the Hedgehog to the struggle for total ethnic supremacy simply cannot be overstated. Speaking just for my chapter, we also spent an inordinate number of afternoons at vinyl record swap meets, Richard being the most dedicated vinyl fetishist I’d ever met before or since. If I had a halfpence for every time I heard him say, “Ahhh vinyl … why listen to anything else?” I could self-publish this book, believe me. My assertion that digital recording was far and away superior to analog fell on deaf ears, to say the very least. (“It fell upon hostile ears” would be an odd thing to say, but not altogether inaccurate.)

  That’s not to say that we weren’t active. There were parties most nights of the week, and a rally at least once a month. And, of course, the fights. Up until the time I joined I had been in my share of scraps and street scuffles. But in the Reich we would have battles like other people had neighborhood get-togethers. Most were planned, few were fair. Even if the rest of us were clueless about the where, when, who, and why of any rumble, Richard knew and he knew just how to win. And if it got hotter than he had thought it would he always knew the way out (well … almost always). After SHARPs (Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice), Richard’s favorite targets were military folk. Marines especially. Richard held that marines were nothing but the Government’s sheep, and “his army” could take out “theirs” any time. He batted a thousand as far as that went, but I’d be lying if I said that there was anything fair about it. This would usually take place in a bar, most often our favorite haunt Eldon’s Tavern, which was run by an old guard racialist whom Richard had known since he was preteen. El was with our cause, so he never gave us static about me or the girls being underage, and he always covered for us when the police were called. It would start when one of us would insult some soldier boy’s wench. This was particularly effective if said wench was non-white. Richard would then walk over extending an olive branch, pretending to be the voice of reason, then he would smash the biggest guy over the head with a bottle or a beer mug. W
e would then swarm the rest of them, their ladies included, with pool sticks, chairs, what have you. That’s just the way it was.

  Rumbling with SHARPs was even more ludicrous. These showdowns were actually scheduled ahead of time. “We’ll meet you on the floor at the Agnostic Front show …” Idiocy. SHARPs were so easy to beat because invariably at least a couple of their guys would be racialist undercover. Call it the COINTELPRO of the white underground. The only time that backfired was at the Kreator concert when the lead singer stopped in the middle of the song “Betrayer,” pointed us out, and admonished the rest of the crowd to, “Kill zoze fucking racist pigs!” We made a break for it out the back of the venue and escaped unscathed. Everyone else thought it was hilarious, but I was pissed off because I really liked Kreator, and I still do.

  Within the group I was seen as something of an “intellectual.” There’s just no telling. I suppose because I actually read the books Richard recommended. Although I was the youngest, there was a sense that at least some of the guys deferred to me. Some even jokingly referred to me as the Minister of Information. (That’s indeed a joke because we did not have ranks. Technically Richard was not even “the leader” in any official way. But he was. And everybody knew it. That’s just the way it was.) The fact that Richard appeared to value my input and respect my intelligence carried all the weight. Who was I to protest?

  I imagine that there is a moment in everyone’s life that is THE moment. That was the crossroads, you’ll say to yourself, and if I’d taken a different path everything would have worked out differently. You only spot it after the fact, of course, and it has to seem innocuous at the time. The biggest of the Big Stuff doesn’t hinge on Sophie’s Choice, it hides behind, “Hey, what do y’all wanna do tonight?” Maybe other people have more than one THE moment in their lives. Maybe I will too someday. But as for right now I have just the one night. It was my seventeenth birthday.