Outcasts and Easy Riders
In August 1981, I showed up on the campus of Southern Methodist University with long hair, a beard, and two earrings in my left ear, including a silver hoop that dangled prominently. I had spent the summer between my senior year of high school and my first year of college living aimlessly in Germany, where I wrote poems and short stories and made a brief side trip to Paris to visit Jim Morrison’s grave. But none of these experiences mattered to anyone on the well-heeled and preppy SMU campus. The earrings guaranteed my status as an outcast from Day One. So I hung out a lot alone.
Not a day went by when I escaped a withering stare or a leer and a wink from a preppy frat boy type. Occasionally I’d hear a comment — a “Well hellothere” in an effeminate voice from a stranger passing by, followed by a loud guffaw. I’d never say anything. I just kept my head down and minded my own business. My parents’ marriage was crumbling apart back home, and lack of money was a big problem. I didn’t have the energy to come up with a witty reply to the catcalls.
The students who lived on my floor in the dorm tolerated me but kept their distance. Most of them were privileged sons of wealthy captains of industry, and for them, college was like summer camp. They drank heavily, watched MTV videos in the common room, tried to sneak girls into the dorm, and walked around like they owned the place. A few of them dealt drugs on the side. Whether I was in the dorm or in class, I felt a constant sense of unease. In English rhetoric class, after our professor read aloud portions of an essay I wrote about the visceral impact of violent movies, a student turned to me and said loudly, “You need to see a shrink.”
One night a bunch of my dormmates, drunk, decided to drag me through campus and toss me into a fountain. I don’t believe they were trying to be cruel so much as they were interested in evoking a reaction. During their drunken parties, I’d seen them manhandle each other like members of a tribe performing a social ritual. In their own way, they had probably decided to force their world on to the weirdo to see how he’d react. I flailed around until my shirt ripped and they dropped me on the sidewalk short of the fountain, as it was clear I was not interested in playing their game. I lay there, humiliated, staring at the dark sky.
I eventually found a refuge. Somehow, only a block away from the well-manicured SMU campus, a genuine greasy spoon all-night coffee shop had found a home. It was the kind of place Charles Bukowski would have loved: crawling with drunks, nobodies, the occasional hooker, and a skinny drug dealer with sallow skin who dealt from a booth just like Handsome Kevin in the song “Welcome to the Boomtown.”
I don’t know how the coffee shop survived alongside the preppy campus in such a wealthy enclave. I spent hours there at my favorite counter seat, doing homework, writing in my journal, and talking with a Japanese-American server about everything from poetry to Japanese culture. There was also a weary old black woman named Minnie behind the counter who doted on me. On the surface, the coffee shop was radically different from campus culture, but it was similar in other ways. The drug dealer in his booth was no different from the kids on my dorm floor who dealt drugs (and would eventually be busted by the Dallas police). The kids in my dorm just happened to come from privileged backgrounds. One night, I was in the coffee shop with my nose buried in my journal, when a biker walked up to me. He had a swarthy face, bloodshot eyes, and a denim jacket with patches sporting his affiliation. For a moment, he just stood there, reeking of alcohol, his eyes fixed on me. Finally, he spoke. “You can’t always please your father,” he said in a thick Spanish accent. And then he half walked, half stumbled out the door. Sometimes I wonder about that guy. Who was he? What compelled him to make that unprompted remark (and only that remark) to a stranger? The fleeting moment would last a lifetime.
During many nights of solitude, I took long walks, which were the only way to get away from campus since I lacked a car. One night, I walked nearly two miles to the Highland Park Village, a small cluster of shops in stucco buildings with Spanish-style arches. A movie theater dominated one end of the Village, with a distinctive Moroccan-style tower jutting behind a fancy marquee advertising a midnight showing of Easy Rider. I noticed that the parking lot was teeming with big, heavy motorcycles parked in rows. I’d never seen the movie. Why not check it out?
In front of the theater and inside the lobby, bikers from all over Dallas dressed in denim and leather clustered in small groups. There was no other reason they could possibly be here except to see Easy Rider, a movie I only vaguely knew about as an ode to bikers. Although I was not one of them, I felt more comfortable here. They were not unlike the bikers who occasionally hung out in the diner. Who knows — maybe a few of the bikers who sometimes visited the diner really were at the theater that night. Together we sat for two hours, watching Captain America and Billy drive their choppers across America with those 1960s anthems like “Born to Be Wild” blasting into our brains.
I don’t know how the bikers felt about them, but I immediately identified with Captain America and Billy on their choppers, facing hostility during their journey from Mexico to New Orleans to attend Mardi Gras. I identified the most with the quiet, introspective Captain America, portrayed with a grace and subtlety by Peter Fonda. They were made-up characters, but their experiences were real to me, like the scene when they are hassled by rednecks in a diner. The jeering (“I think she’s cute”) was not unlike the words I’d heard directed at me:
The centerpiece of the movie is a campfire scene in which a fellow traveler, played by Jack Nicholson, delivers a powerful meditation on the nature of freedom. When he said, “Oh they’re not scared of you, they’re scared of what you represent to them,” I felt him speaking directly to me:
And yet, I knew this movie was more complicated than the story of two outcasts. Billy and Captain America were products of their time, trying to reconcile bourgeois values with the desire to live like rebels. I understood that side of them, too, for even though I’d lived like a bohemian for a summer, I knew many of my values were pretty middle class. I thought of success in terms of getting a good job. I was at a conventional college doing conventional things, like studying to get good grades. But because I wore my hair long and wore earrings, I was an outsider like they were.
After the movie, well after midnight, I returned to campus, which required walking past wealthy homes on Mockingbird Lane. I didn’t get very far before a police car pulled up to me, and a cop stepped out. I knew what was going on. He knew I didn’t belong, and he wanted to make sure I wasn’t a threat. He asked for my ID, and I produced a student card. He looked at me incredulously, as if to say, “What the hell are you doing here?” I was wondering the same thing. He drove off and left me alone in the dark.
I still watch Easy Rider about once a year, as I am this year, the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release. Although everything has changed for me since 1981, I still see myself in Captain America even though my earrings and beard are long gone. On the surface, I live what many would consider a conventional life, with a home in the suburbs and a Subaru parked in the drive way. I don’t know the first thing about motorbikes. I stay away from drugs. But I understand the outsider.
