Romantic Violence

by Christian Picciolini

  Christian and crew, 1990

  11

  ODIN’S COURT

  I started my junior year back at Eisenhower in Blue Island. Known throughout the school as a hardcore racist and bruiser not to be messed with, I was left alone by most people. Teachers knew I was intelligent. When I actually went to class, I’d ace their stupid honors tests despite my lack of interest. But they didn’t want me in their classrooms anymore. The football coaches who’d once clamored for me cut their losses and avoided me. I was a star athlete with fire in my eyes; I could have gone far, but my liability was a dragging anchor they could no longer tow. So, they stayed out of my way.

  I lasted at Eisenhower until November of my junior year. I’d missed twenty-four school days in the first three months of school, which was almost half of my total class time. Even when I was there, I cut out during lunch period to mess around with whatever girl I was seeing at the time, or check the post office box and answer some of the dozens of pieces of correspondence I received every week. The principal called my parents and told them he couldn’t let me continue there because of my truancy, and they pulled yet another bullshit move against my will and enrolled me in Brother Rice High School. Another private Catholic school in the city. I couldn’t believe it.

  I was there for all of a week before trouble began. On my way out after classes ended one day, not bothering anybody, the dean stopped me in the hallway. Out of the hundreds of other kids he could have singled out, he chose me.

  Where were my books, the self-righteous bastard wanted to know.

  “What books?” I smirked.

  Homework, it seems.

  “How do you expect to make it in life, young man, if you just close your eyes and travel the path of least resistance? The world won’t do you any favors if you aren’t willing to work hard.”

  There was truth in that. I certainly had bigger aspirations than being some glorified, middle-aged hall monitor like this dickhead. I politely smiled and explained I didn’t have any homework.

  “In our school, Mr. Picciolini, we have a rule stating you must bring at least one book home every night to study.”

  I’d never heard of such a ridiculous fucking rule and said so.

  “Ignorance of the law is no excuse to break it. We’ll see you in detention tomorrow after school. Bring your Bible.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll have to check my calendar and see if I can fit it in.” I laughed and walked away. No chance I’d get reprimanded for a rule I hadn’t even known about.

  “Don’t forget your VIP ticket,” he said, handing me the detention slip.

  “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what I do to protect your sorry ass?” I snapped. “Path of least resistance? Work hard? You don’t have a goddamn clue, do you?” I promptly crumpled the yellow slip and threw it in the nearest waste bin with no intention of accepting his judgment or his sentence.

  So when I didn’t show up I got another detention for not going to detention.

  Right. I didn’t go to that either. And so on.

  For missing three detentions, I was given a half-day Saturday detention, a JUG—Justice Under God. Fuck this school and fuck God.

  Miss two Saturdays and it’s a suspension.

  So I was suspended.

  At that point I stopped going to school at all, except when I was recruiting other students.

  Life outside of the classroom was far more interesting. Parties, fights, intimidation. Survival pack assembly. Preparing for the inevitable overthrow of the U.S. government and annihilation of the mud races. It was routine by now. Necessary. Incessant re-reads of The Turner Diaries had taught me that.

  Today it finally began! After all these years of talking—and nothing but talking—we have finally taken our first action. We are at war with the System, and it is no longer a war of words.

  Goddamn right.

  One night one of the Beverly guys and I were in a local record shop trying to convince the purchasing manager to carry Skrewdriver records, when we spotted a couple of skinhead-looking kids we’d never seen before, which made it a safe bet they were Antis. One was wearing an oxblood-colored bomber jacket. “That’s a cool bomber,” I said to my friend. “It’d look good on me. That Anti has no right to wear it.”

  We left the store and got into the beater car we’d come in, so rusted that both bumpers had fallen off long ago, and pulled up beside the entrance waiting for the two Antis to emerge. When they were close to our car and I was sure no one was watching, I swung the door open and confronted the kid with the jacket, thrusting my broken .25 semi-auto into his ribs.

  “Give me the jacket, motherfucker.” I directed his attention to the gun to emphasize my point.

  “Don’t give him shit!” his wiseass partner said, not noticing the weapon that was shoved in his friend’s gut. He walked around to the back of the car to look for the license plate, then dashed to the front of the car, his cocky expression turning pale when he saw there wasn’t one in either spot and I was holding a pistol.

  I raised the gun and pressed it under the kid’s chin. “Your jacket. Now!”

  He tore it off, held it out in his trembling hands.

  “Do you know who I am?” He nodded his head to indicate he did. “Good. Then you also know that if you say anything to the cops, I’ll find you and fucking kill you.”

  I backed into the car and we tore out of the parking lot.

  “Jesus Christ,” the Beverly kid said, cringing. “That’s armed fucking robbery. And that kid knows who you are!”

  “He won’t say shit.” I checked the side mirror for a sign of the cops. “Let’s get off the main streets.”

  We wove in and out of side roads all the way home. Halfway across town, I took my jacket off at a stoplight and tried the new one on. Too damn small. Son of a bitch!

  It struck us as a riot and we laughed so hard we had trouble driving straight the rest of the way home.

  Later I gave the jacket to a new girl who’d been hanging around our parties. She was impressed that it had been ripped off at gunpoint. Good enough for a blowjob.

  In January of 1990, the end of the first semester of my junior year, I got called into the dean’s office for my ongoing refusal to serve my mounting detentions, and with all the authority vested in him by his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and all the money my hardworking parents paid his godforsaken school, I was expelled from Brother Rice.

  I was simultaneously pissed and overjoyed.

  “Thank you very much,” I said in my most condescending voice. “I’ll be going home now.”

  “Oh no you won’t, young man,” this dusty old asshole told me. “You have to complete the full day to finish out the semester or you’ll lose the credits you’ve accrued.”

  “Fine, if that’s the way you want it,” I said with a crooked smile.

  I skipped all my classes the rest of the afternoon. Spent every remaining period hanging out in the library reading World War II history books, or in the lunchroom passing the time with my friends.

  During the last lunch period of the day, I chain-smoked cigarettes at a long table among schoolmates. The typical cafeteria clinking and clanking sounds turned to whispers, all eyes focused on me. I rose from my seat only to strut around triumphantly, blowing mouthfuls of smoke at teachers as they walked by me in the dining hall. The ultimate game of chicken and I’d be damned if I’d be the first to flinch.

  For thirty tense minutes, everyone gawked at me but nobody did a thing as I marched around victoriously with a lit cigarette dangling from my lips. Not a word. What could they do, expel me twice in one afternoon?

  The next day, my parents crawled back to Eisenhower and begged them to let me in so I could stay on track to graduate. Reluctantly and with stipulations, the school agreed, my mother and father no doubt full of promises that this time would be different. Which of course it wouldn’t be.

  Indifferent to the whole situation, I someho
w managed to complete the rest of my junior year at Eisenhower without significant incident, mainly because I was under constant surveillance by an off-duty police sergeant the principal hired specifically to monitor me during school hours. I couldn’t make a move without that cop on my tail.

  My parents were totally lost. Not even remotely socially involved with my life at this point. I depended on them for basic needs like food and shelter, but it never escalated past that. They’d been so busy trying to manage their business and taking on second and third jobs to support their impersonation of a middle-class life, they’d forgotten that anything outside of that pursuit existed.

  When she was home, my mother continued hassling me about my friends and activities, meddling, giving me grief. My dad couldn’t get it through his head I was long beyond his control. Buddy had forgiven me for yelling at him, but was becoming increasingly distant and quiet. My parents never stopped me from doing anything because they knew they damn well couldn’t, but it was annoying to have them around at all. Like flies dive-bombing you, buzzing in your ear. You know the little pests can’t do you any harm and you can kill them with a single swat, but they make life a bitch by hanging around, not standing still long enough for you to squash them.

  Deep down I knew they cared about me. I cared about them, too. I wouldn’t be risking my life every day trying to protect them and what they’d worked so hard for if I didn’t. But on the surface, my resentment was bitter. While I’d finally come to terms with the reasons why they were absent during my early youth, the thick skin I developed while trying to heal from it had inadvertently hardened my feelings towards them.

  They knew I was into something bad and tried to steer me down a different road any chance they could. It didn’t work.

  I was on fire the summer between my junior and senior year. With Kubiak as my right hand partner-in-crime and most of the Blue Island and Beverly kids on my side, there was nothing I felt I couldn’t do. All the popularity and acceptance I’d ever longed for when I was invisible as a child was now mine.

  Everybody knew my name, wanted to hang out with me, or was scared shitless of me. I needed to do no more than suggest something and it happened.

  Antis bugged me, so we locked horns with them every time we got a chance. Never needing provocation. That they were on the planet was reason enough to crush their bleeding hearts.

  Things heated up to the point that a huge brawl with the Antis was all anyone talked about anymore. We all knew it was coming. A date finally emerged without any specific planning. Just one of those things. One person told someone to “go fuck yourself.” Another said something else in return. Tempers flared. Somebody challenged somebody and a date was set.

  The Beverly Boys heard what was going on. Pledged their support. To my surprise, so did every other white clique, including most of the jocks, metal heads, and stoners from Blue Island—people who knew me and what I was about, but whose names I could never remember. Word about the rumble spread fast and the Prairie was chosen as the battlefield.

  Night of the fight, our group showed up first, with an endless row of cars already lined up when another twenty or so cars full of supporters pulled up. Kids came from everywhere, including neighboring towns, to back us up.

  Then came the Antis. Dozens of them.

  Altogether there were more than a hundred kids in the Prairie that night ready to brawl.

  The Antis initiated the action and jumped out from behind buildings, pumped, thinking they were going to ambush us. But they didn’t take more than a few steps before they realized just how many people had come out to support us. Our cause. Our beliefs.

  The Antis backpedaled slowly, and then as they saw us moving in, broke into a retreating sprint.

  We tore off after them, shouting obscenities, swinging sawn mop handles, padlocks, chains wrapped around waving knuckles, baseball bats cutting through the air.

  But there weren’t as many of them as there were of us, so they had an advantage in terms of mobility. The sheer number of us slowed us down as we got in each other’s way, shoving to be the first to draw Anti blood.

  They outran us.

  A few broke away from their group and some of ours pursued them. To no avail.

  Disheartened that our moment to destroy the enemy had come and gone without a single punch being thrown, we retreated back to the Prairie to celebrate and get drunk. While we proclaimed victory and laughed about their gutless ways, a few Antis snuck back to the Prairie and attacked our cars, throwing bricks, kicking in fenders, trying to smash headlights and windshields with their boots, ripping off car antennae, slashing tires, any meaningless thing that would give them bragging rights.

  But we were on our feet when we heard the shattering glass and gave chase quickly.

  Again, they outran us.

  We settled in with our beer, proclaiming ourselves the true victors. Knowing full well none of us could claim any such thing in this bullshit non-event. “They’re nothing more than nigger-loving pansies,” a cute blonde cheerleader said.

  “Damn right,” we agreed, popping open more cans of beer and toasting our victory.

  “Heil Hitler,” another stranger shouted.

  “Fucking A,” I agreed. “Heil Hitler.” Things would have gone better if blood had been shed, of that I had no doubt. But this sign of unity from people that I didn’t even know was huge. And the sheer adrenaline from the evening was an enormous power boost to my ego.

  All types of white youth—jocks, stoners, metal heads, book worms, cheerleaders, preps, you name it—began to look up to me, emulate me. Girls wanted to fuck me and more often than not I let them.

  The recruitment pool was overflowing and we spent the rest of the summer drinking and listening to blaring white power music with fresh faces, going to rallies and battling a brand new wave of anti-racist traitors called SHARPs—Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Yeah, right. More like Scum Hanged After Racists Prevail.

  For a moment, I felt like the almighty Norse god Odin alongside my loyal legions of bloodthirsty Viking warriors and Valkyries in the festive halls of Valhalla. Feasting and fighting.

  One big party.

  Suffice it to say it was another great summer. Violence and passion to save my race driving my every move. Amp up the fights and rallies and recruiting by about three hundred percent and that’s what this particular summer was like.

  We had momentum working in our favor. However, the outside perception was that our group was much bigger than we actually were. While there were always new people hanging around, the reality was that the turnover was high and most of them never stuck around very long. Kids would come around for a few weeks, shave their heads, buy some Docs, party with us, then get freaked out by our intensity or get accosted by a rival gang and fade away. The Antis and cops thought we had all these sleeper skinheads in training around Chicago. In truth, we never had more than a few dozen or so at any given time. Perception became the reality. And that made us stronger. Unstoppable.

  I ruled. You fucking bet I did.

  Christian, Blue Island Police Department mugshot, 1990

  12

  WHITE AMERICAN YOUTH

  In late 1990, when September and my senior year rolled around, I was impatient to start high school so I could get it over with once and for all. The last year I’d be subjected to know-nothing teachers and under the thumb of a family who refused to support my vital mission.

  By this time, though, my family was rarely a thought in my head. I avoided my parents at all costs. At seven, Buddy was becoming more independent and old enough to have his own friends to play with and I hardly saw him anymore. Days and weeks would pass without speaking to any of them or even seeing them. Nonno and Nonna were getting up in age and I only found time to see them on holidays, despite them living across the street.

  Freedom. I was just about to turn seventeen and I was loving it.

  The new Eisenhower principal warned me
shortly before classes started that even a small disruption would get me kicked out permanently, so I did try toning down my rhetoric during school at first for the sake of graduating. While I had my priorities locked in with the movement, I was also ambitious. I wanted to succeed overall and if it would help, I could keep my temper under control during my last year of school. So I dropped any remaining honors classes I’d managed to hang on to and did the least amount of work required to pass. I pushed the limits of truancy, avoiding the place altogether as much as I could.

  But despite my effort to skate through my last year of high school, there was no realistic chance I would fit in. It was way too late for that. I had serious goals that I wanted to achieve and I’d outgrown school and everyone in it. Not only did I not belong there, but nobody wanted me around. Administrators feared I’d cause a race riot in an already volatile multiracial environment. Teachers distrusted me. They worried I’d disrupt their classes and make it hard for other students to learn. Not to mention making the teachers themselves look stupid when I didn’t hesitate to challenge them on their bullshit. They were trying to cram their skewed, ZOG version of history down our throats and I wasn’t going to sit back and let it happen.

  And to make it all worse, it was obvious to me they favored blacks over whites, giving them better grades for less work, letting them get away with shit the white kids never got away with like swearing in class and showing up late after the bell. They never confronted black students for fear they’d snap back, which they often did, or bothered the Mexican students because the language barrier was too great. And to top it off, the new Eisenhower principal—a black woman I’d as soon spit on as talk to—thought she could keep me and my crew in check.