American Outlaw

by James, Jesse

  “Not really,” I said. “I don’t have much time for it.”

  “Reality TV’s hit,” Thom explained. “And it’s here to stay. Have you heard of The Real World? Survivor? These kinds of shows are leading the pack, nowadays. Viewers are starting to expect shows about real people.”

  “I know what Survivor is, Thom,” I said, looking down at the long to-do list I had in front of me for the day. “And we’re definitely not that. So, unless you got something else to tell me . . .”

  “Jesse,” Thom interrupted me, “we think that what you’re doing is absolutely unique. West Coast Choppers is very popular among a certain segment of the American population.”

  “Gearheads, bike freaks.”

  “Sure, gearheads. But with an hour-long show, the rest of America gets to see what you’re doing. It’d be great exposure. Come on, what do you say?”

  I thought it over for a while. I still didn’t see what was going to be compelling enough over at our shop on Anaheim Avenue to rivet the American public to their seats—our high drama was going to consist of watching an average white boy try to make payroll at his greasy garage. But, I reasoned, Discovery was probably good at what they did. It couldn’t hurt to try.

  The shoot was a disaster, though.

  “You could not have come at a worse time,” I told Thom. “I’m getting ready to take five brand-new custom choppers to a huge annual bike rally in Daytona Beach, Florida.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “We got a ton of work to do,” I snapped. “I don’t need any distractions!”

  “More drama equals better ratings,” Thom said. He held up his hands. “Just saying.”

  I almost eviscerated the camera crew. For two weeks, they lived in our shop, asking so many questions and being so invasive that I almost lost my temper several times. They seemed dead set on capturing every single step of what we did as a custom shop, from manufacturing the wheels to welding the frames to painting the flames on the metal.

  They filmed us riding around Long Beach; filmed us talking with customers; filmed me feeding the sharks that I kept in a tank in the shop. They even filmed me squabbling with Karla over payroll, and by the time they got done with their work, I felt like an animal in the zoo who’d been prodded with a stick.

  “Look,” I grumbled. “Can you explain to me why the hell you have all this footage of my dogs fighting each other?”

  “Shows a deeper portrait of who you are?” replied a cameraman.

  “No,” I disagreed. “And I don’t think footage of dogs trying to bite each other is important enough to be in the final cut of this show.”

  “I’ll make a note of that,” he said drily.

  Even though I hated the process and resented the strangers who had busted so rudely into my shop with their lights and cameras, I had to admit that secretly I dug the attention a little bit. Who wouldn’t have? I craved respect and acknowledgment just as much as anyone else, maybe a little more so.

  Some months after the crew had completed their work, Thom invited me to Los Angeles to view a rough cut of the piece. I watched with a mixture of alarm and pride as the film slowly unfolded in front of me.

  The version of myself on the screen rode his motorcycle to a beachside cliff in San Pedro and overlooked the Pacific Ocean wistfully.

  “I feel like I spent more than half my life trying to kick the world’s ass, fight everybody, and stuff like that . . . and I’m not even really into it anymore. I just want to trip out, make the stuff I make, hang out with my kids.”

  “This is cheesy,” I said to Thom. “Cut this part, okay?”

  “Hold on,” he said, shushing me. “I love this section.”

  “But don’t get me wrong,” the me up on the screen continued, “I’ll still punch someone. If they start shit with me, I’ll finish it.”

  Beside me, Thom laughed. “You come off so real, Jesse!”

  “I don’t even remember saying that,” I complained.

  “We think that’s precisely what people will enjoy about you.” He turned on the lights. “You’re spontaneous, unguarded.”

  “Thom,” I said, rising to leave, “I appreciate your enthusiasm. I really do. And I apologize in advance because, dude, this thing is gonna tank.”

  The next two weeks were about the most nervous weeks of my life. I felt totally exposed by the footage that was going to air, and my temper was at its absolute worst. I sheltered myself in my office, alone, as I waited for my national exposure and subsequent humiliation.

  On the evening the show was to air, I was sitting in my office all by myself, my stomach clenched in a knot.

  “Go home, Melissa,” I said.

  “Really, Jesse? There’s some more . . .”

  “I said go home, please,” I snapped.

  She saw from my face that I meant business. “Uh, okay,” she said, grabbing up her bag and beating a hasty exit.

  I wondered how I could have been stupid enough to allow a TV crew into my private life. How could I have been so prideful and naïve, to think that anyone would actually care what happened in the day-in, day-out life of a motorcycle shop?

  Just then, the phone rang.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Is this Jesse James?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “My name is Jim Newsome. I live in Detroit. I just saw your show on TV!”

  “What are you talking about?” I growled. “It hasn’t aired yet.”

  “It has over on the East Coast! Man, I just had to call you—I loved it!”

  “What?” I said, stunned.

  “Sweet work, man! So much love going into those bikes!”

  “I’m . . . glad you liked it,” I mumbled, still shocked.

  “Like it? Goddamn, man! I loved it!” he exclaimed. “You know when you were on that bluff, looking out over the ocean, saying you didn’t want to fight anymore? Dude, that’s me! That’s how I feel every day.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Keep on doing what you’re doing, man. You’re the best.”

  As I hung up the phone, my jaw dropped slightly. There were people out there who related to me.

  “Jesse,” Thom told me the next day. “The ratings are insane. They’re through the roof.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, I’m not. Look, this show went crazy. So many people checked into our website, it melted our servers.”

  I laughed. “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Enjoy the success,” Thom said. “And rest up, because Discovery is going to want to work with you again. I can guarantee that.”

  The aftershocks were immediate and massive. Requests for custom bikes absolutely went through the roof. In the space of one week, I had a yearlong back order, with clients from around the world begging to be included at the end of the list.

  “I think I’m going to have to hire an assistant,” Melissa told me. “I can’t deal with talking on the phone this much!”

  “Hey, everyone,” I announced, “my secretary needs a secretary.”

  Suddenly, the activity around our shop was like a beehive. We had visitors every day, folks from the Southern California area who had seen us on TV and wanted to be part of the gang.

  “So this is the scary-ass dog I saw on TV!”

  “That’s Cisco,” I said proudly. “Nobody mess with that pit!”

  The prices for a West Coast Chopper bike rose. Now I could get away with selling one of the specials for well over $100,000.

  “And see, our bikes work to showcase our products, too,” I explained to Hud. He’d come by on his way home from work to grab a few beers with me and the new hangers-on, who’d posted themselves up in the corner to ride the wave of our local celebrity.

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, man,” I explained, “think about it. You see some fool driving around in a crazy-looking bike, with a sweet-looking custom fender, a custom gas tank, and custom air filter. Maybe you
can’t afford the bike, but you could throw down for a part or two, make your own chopper look smooth.”

  “Genius!” somebody said.

  I nodded, proud. Slowly, I was getting caught up in the success. It felt impossible not to. I was a homemade superstar, after all; a minor-league celebrity who’d somehow managed to hit a huge home run. I could drink in local bars for free on this for the rest of my life, probably!

  But the best party was at West Coast Choppers. We had crowds at all times of the day, and especially after hours. The local Harley association annually put on something they called The Love Ride. I thought it was just dumb—a bunch of yuppies with their factory Harleys with tassels on the handlebars and all that crap.

  “I wanna have the No-Love Ride,” I announced. “Let’s invite all the bikers around here and have a huge kegger at the shop!”

  The No-Love Ride attracted fifteen thousand people. It was just madness. I bought a hundred cases of beer and we went through them in twenty minutes. The city of Long Beach had snipers on the roof before I was able to tell the police department what was going on.

  I was married to the shop, and I loved it. I sat back just like Boyd Coddington, wheeling and dealing, taking outrageous offers for custom bikes well into the evening.

  “Jesse?” Melissa said. “Karla’s on the line.”

  “Oh,” I said frowning. “Well, yeah, put her through.”

  “Hi there, moneyman,” Karla said. “Are we going to see you, tonight?”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “Sure. I’ll be home later.”

  “I mean for dinner.”

  “Well, no,” I said slowly. “I have to work a few more hours, Karla. Look, I’ve got about a million things to take care of . . .”

  Click.

  “It was nice talking with you, too,” I said to the dial tone.

  Our brand had gone crazy. Motorcycle magazines began calling with offers for photo spreads.

  “Jesse, we want to have you on the cover of American Iron.”

  “Yeah, I’d love to have a West Coast Chopper up there,” I said. “It’d be a great honor.”

  “We want to have you up there with it, Jesse. How’s that sound?”

  My first thought was to refuse, but then I just shrugged. Hey, why fight it? “Yeah, sure,” I said casually. “Whatever you need.”

  Within a few months, my bikes and I had graced the covers of five different motorcycle magazines. A handful of writers hailed me as the wunderkind of the chopper world. I half believed them. It was heady stuff. Heady as hell.

  “Think we might sell a few more T-shirts this year down in Daytona?” Rick asked.

  “Dude,” I said, “I would not be surprised.”

  I wasn’t ready for the craziness, though. People were literally knocking over other vendors’ booths to get to us. It was a sea of utter biker madness, and when the smoke cleared, we’d sold $680,000 worth of T-shirts in just under three days.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Rick asked.

  “Nothing would surprise me now,” I said. “Come on. Let’s celebrate.”

  We headed to a bar and started slamming the brew. Straight away, I got a nice little buzz on. Everything I’ve worked for all my life is coming to fruition, I thought. I’m on the top of the heap.

  “Dammit, Rick, let’s walk the strip!” I cried. “Take in all the beautiful people, those who have made us rich!”

  My eyes danced. The street felt hot and humid and bright. Sweating, I walked tall through the pack of revelers, my head turning to take in the jean shorts and elastic tops, women with boa constrictors wrapped around their thin shoulders, men with ferrets perched atop their heads elbowing aside brothers with gold teeth peeking out of broken mouths. A fat Jesus with a shower cap carried his cross through the mob.

  “These are my people,” I explained to Rick.

  “I may need a few more beers to deal with them,” he said.

  We ducked into a strip bar, where I switched to vodka and cranberry. “Make it strong,” I warned the bartender, “or I’m leaving.” I frowned, watching an elderly-looking biker slut doing a full split on the filthy, beer-stained floor. Hey, nice leather thong, I thought, feeling the flush of the alcohol in my face.

  We sat back in the corner, our backs pressed up against vinyl cushions, progressively getting drunker and drunker. Strippers with flabby stomachs circulated through the bar, proposing lap dances. We waved them away impatiently.

  “I’m feeling sick,” I told Rick. “I need some dollar bills to throw at people.”

  Rick handed me a handful of dollars. Slowly and carefully, I folded them over, twice, then three times.

  “I used to play football.” I hefted them up toward the stage, one hand on my drink. “Watch me go.”

  Drink after drink, I drained sweet liquid through thin red bar straws, laughing, as my dollar bills hit blond strippers on top of their hair. The grimy dollars fell to the floor, looking diseased in the purplish neon of the Daytona nightclub.

  The phone in my pocket rang. I looked at the number. It was Karla.

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “We’re at the club, baby,” I said. “Me and Rick.”

  “What a surprise,” Karla said, annoyed.

  “Baby, do you know how many T-shirts we sold?” I began, triumphantly.

  “I don’t care, Jesse, I really don’t,” Karla said. She sounded exhausted. “Look, I’m just calling you because I need to know, are you coming back to Long Beach tomorrow, or Tuesday?”

  “Call the shop.” Rick goosed me in the side, pointing out a very fat dancing girl. I stifled a giggle. “Because right now, I just don’t have any idea.”

  “Yes, I’ll call the shop,” Karla hissed. “They’ll tell me when my husband is coming home. That’s just great.”

  “You’re killing my buzz, Karla,” I said, pronouncing every word carefully. “Murdering it.”

  “Well, I won’t do that anymore,” she said, furious, and hung up the phone.

  I held the phone up to my face for several seconds longer, though I knew it was dead.

  “Who was that?” Rick asked, not taking his eyes off the stage.

  “My wife,” I said. “She was curious to know if you and I are going to have another vodka and cranberry here, or move on to the next bar.”

  “Next bar,” Rick said.

  The street was a blur. We stumbled down it. For shits and giggles, I pushed a big meathead-looking jock in the back.

  “Watch it, douche bag!” he yelled.

  “You want to throw down?” I mumbled. A sour taste came up in my mouth and I vomited in front of me, coming about an inch away from ruining my jeans.

  “Let him go,” the guy’s girlfriend told him. “He’s totally wasted.”

  Rick steered me into another club. We sat behind the bar and listened to heavy metal on the shitty speakers. I looked at myself in the mirror behind the bar. A douche with leopard-spotted hair sat next to me. I waved at him in the mirror.

  “Hi!” I said. “You have a lot of earrings, don’t you?”

  He frowned at me. “Whatever, dude.”

  “No, really,” I cried, “your earrings go all the way up to the top of your ear! Did you even see that? Hey Rick, get a load of this feller’s sexy little hoop earrings!” I laughed uproariously.

  “Calm down, Jesse,” Rick said.

  “I am calm,” I told him, calmly. “Waitress,” I said. “Oops. I mean, bartender. Barkeep! We’d like a bottle of vodka, over here.”

  “A bottle?” she said.

  “An entire bottle, miss,” I answered. “Your best stuff. I want to show you a secret talent of mine.”

  The bartender sighed. “Sure.” She placed a half-filled bottle of Smirnoff’s in front of me. “What’s your talent?”

  “This,” I said. “Duck.”

  I picked up the bottle by its neck, and, as hard as I could, hurled it into the mirror. The mirror and the
vodka bottle exploded into a spray of glass shards. Rick and I winced.

  “What the fuck was that!” the bartender cried.

  I sat there and swayed sickly in my seat in the silence that ensued. “I’ll . . . uh . . . pay for that mirror.”

  “Jesse,” Rick said, hooking an elbow around my midsection, hoisting me to my feet. “I think it’s time to go.”

  11

  “Sir? Sir? Is everything all right in there?”

  Each brisk rap against the airplane’s restroom door felt like an ice pick jabbing into my brain.

  “Sir? Excuse me?”

  In response, I vomited loudly and explosively, spattering the small stainless-steel toilet with a frightening-looking gush of phlegm and blood. Turbulence rocked the plane and, sweating, I let my forehead play back and forth against the cheap industrial mirror, trying to find some coolness there.

  “He’s been at it for half an hour,” I heard the stewardess complain to a coworker. “It sounds like he’s dying in there.”

  I groaned. “I’m fine,” I mumbled miserably. My voice was so low, I knew no one had heard me. “Honestly.”

  But the saliva was building up in my mouth again, acidic and nauseating. An icy shiver surged through my arms and chest, and I knew what was coming next. I positioned my mouth over the toilet and once more retched convulsively, my eyes tearing up, my diaphragm clutching, tight and miserable.

  I squinted down at the toilet. It was filled with vomit.

  This isn’t me, I thought. This isn’t how I want to live.

  “Excuse me.” The stewardess knocked relentlessly, annoyed. “Sir, is everything all right in there?”

  “Yup,” I gasped, leaning up against the wall. I pushed the flush button with my knee, and tried to steady myself. “I’m coming right out.”

  ——

  “I made a decision,” I told Karla on the ride home from the airport. “I’m quitting drinking.”

  She said nothing, just gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  “Seriously,” I said. “I know I can do it. Will you support me?”

  She remained silent, staring instead into the thick traffic as we weaved our way down the 405 South, toward Long Beach.

  “Well, hell,” I said, slightly offended. “I knew you wouldn’t be happy to see me, but I guess I was . . .”