"Shout at the Devil"

In those sloppy, godforsaken years of the Carter malaise-- when America slipped into its Bronze age of pot-smoking laxity-- Bobby used to reluctantly trail on the heels of a gang of juvenile delinquents whose thrill-seeking exploits and empty-headed depravity would make Hunter S. Thompson's head screw around like the child's in "The Exorcist" and seek the absolution of a priest. Secretly, that movie of national penitence used sub-sonic suggestions of angry bees and pigs getting slaughtered when an evil presence came on the screen, which would about sum up the tone of trouble these idiots were whipping their dicks out and laughing at like circus clowns from the '30s.

Everyone drank and did a lot of drugs. . . . . leading to distorted thoughts that screwed around in circles and pointed in the direction of malfeasance. Chief among them was "Uncle Perv", a lapsed altar boy who liked to joke about violating dead bodies and carried around handcuffs and a canister of chloroform in a satchel as his "calling card" much as "Jughead" wore the taped-together crown in the old Archie comics. There was no "Betty" or "Veronica" in this gang of teenagers. Any women with sense steered clear of "Uncle Perv" like sheep galloping away from a farmer with his pants around his ankles, shuffling around the field with his arms outstretched.

To show that he liked a girl and win her heart, "Uncle Perv" would wipe his ass with a pair of socks and leave it on her doorstep like a cat bringing home a killed possum for its mistress, along with its suckling offspring reeking of putrefication. Once, in the dead of howling winter during the holidays when they were sure no one was home, Bobby got up on a girl's roof and was about to do his impromptu "Santa Claus" act-- i.e. taking a shit down the chimney-- when Uncle Perv called for some sanity. The flue could get blocked up and suffocate the family when they warmed their hands by the fireplace. This, from the noble ethicist even as he removed his socks and loosened his belt buckle.

Hayes' friends once got bored and followed a girl back to her sorority house on the Washington University campus. They hid in the bushes, waiting to leave "a sock-ri-fice" on the doorstep but were chased off by the campus police. They leapt on a trio of unguarded bicycles on a bike rack and sped off like hooligans on tricycles. That gave one of them an idea-- to come back and steal bikes, cutting them with bolt-cutters and loading them into Bobby's van.

Ever the reluctant criminal, my buddy even back then knew that was a poor idea and the gang called him a pussy. But Bobby reasoned the role would be reversed when they found themselves on all fours in prison, a line of twenty hardened convicts de-virginalizing their assholes. One of them figured he'd just stuff his rectum full of quick-drying cement so they couldn't get at him and his ass would be as safe as the buried gold at Fort Knox. Bobby figured this boy was so far gone on drugs, that he was lost to all logic.

The lure of a fine girl from a wealthy family kept them coming back though, malingering around the campus like barbarians laying waste to the quad. Dumbfoundingly, these young women weren't impressed when one of Hayes' friends showed up with his arm around two pregnant 13 year-old's like "a big stud". He could just not understand why a girl studying to be a doctor, slated to make $100,000 a year and find a rich husband, didn't want to elope with his beer-swilling self making the sign of the devil in a "Kiss" t-shirt and sticking out his tongue like a "bat-demon".

They scratched their balls and moved on to more fertile fields, like molesting "The Gaylords" in Forest Park. Now "The Gaylords" were a biker and leather gang of homosexual men that liked to assemble for get-togethers whom the authorities mostly let police themselves, because it was easier "to let alone". Teenagers, let alone the hot-blooded and obnoxious, like to drive by in cars and let taunts fly from rolled-down windows like raising the ire of grazing bulls who looked and went back down to what they were doing.

But two of Hayes' friends wanted to take it further-- as in getting out for 20 seconds and firing a homemade potato launcher right into the middle of their leather picnic. Bobby didn't like the sound of this, and didn't want anything to do with it. However, they insisted-- taking his keys and leaving the stragglers on the other side of Highway 40 to drink beer and contemplate the grandness of life.

The gang waited. . . . . and waited.

And then through the streaming light of sunset the two pranksters came back on foot, crying and bruised and bleeding with their clothes all torn. They had fired the potato gun alright, but then as they sped off laughing like bandits the van had come to a chain in the road linked between two huge concrete dividers. Before they could back up, "The Gaylords" had swarmed the van like hornets, yanked the doors off, and pulled them out in one grasping, revengeful homo-hump of pent-up retribution and "had their way" with the boys. Almost like a riot on Riker's Island. None of the lads had brought quick-drying cement. Nor Vaseline for that matter. . . . .

Back across Highway 40 the victims were weeping with rage and vowing bloody slaughter. They pleaded with Bobby to lend them his shotgun so they could come back later, but he knew "The Gaylords" had flown off like sadomasochistic geese into the wind with the roar of motorcycles. If they killed those characters, then they would be locked up with such plug-uglies full time for the rest of their misbegotten, poor bastard lives.

At that point life seemed so bleak and hopeless that they all vowed a suicide pact and decided to jump off the Eads bridge into the Mississippi river that night. Though they got soaked and were certainly embarrassed, most of them moved on to become something mildly respectable.