GUTTER BOSS

From the gutter to the stars

Or... “How to turn a dream of becoming a cool grunge badass, into living on the streets of a rainy city, alone and numb, in three easy steps.”

So there I was, a young man.

I had left home and moved to the big city of Auckland, from my rural New Zealand hometown to find fame and fortune.

I had just turned 17 and was full of hopes and dreams.

I had enrolled in a well-known drama school that was bonkers liberal in its attitude toward students.

I had heard stories of kids blazing weed on the field, an actual cigarette smoking area for kids who smoked, loose moraled girls, wild parties, and all sorts of other fun-sounding mischiefs.

Of course, most of the above was all going on at my rural high school, but I had grown up with all the kids at that school and they knew all my tricks.

At this new school, I would be able to reinvent myself as some kind of “Christian Slaterish” grunge badass.

My friend was going to help reinvent me and become part of the cool kids clique at this school. Something he had managed to already do.

I was going to be part of a clique called the “Munch Bunch”.

This was done on day one by completely changing my clothes from the ragged grunge uniform I usually wore, to a kind of preppy CK 1-covered munch bunch uniform of baggy jeans and a nice polo shirt with the top button done up and gel styled hair.

The orders from my friend were simple. “Don’t act weird, no crazy acrobatic shit, no stories, no jokes, don’t sing any songs… just be cool.”

So I rolled up to the school with him and was cool. Nodding to the cool kids. Standing back observing.

This lasted until about lunchtime.

My friend wasn’t around… so I somehow said something funny…This got laughter and looks…and from there evolved into stories, jokes, and songs...

By the time my friend got back and saw me walking down the steps on my hands, to the laughter of the Munch Bunch… it was over. The court jester was in charge now….

He came over and informed me that I should be hanging out under that tree over there with the freaks. Looking over I saw a bunch of kids looking over at me…

An Asian goth chick in all black and also wearing a cloak, a tall weird-looking dude with a ginger afro, two Rasta-dressed guys playing hacky sack, and some kid in a suit with a briefcase.
They waved to me. The ginger Afro guy literally chanting “One of us, One of us.”

I went over.

The next day I was back in my ragged orange cardigan with “I’m Grunge” painted on the back, plaid shirt, cut of army pants, and red beret and I was ranting with my people, the freaks.

My purpose in going to this school was to fulfill some kind of dream of being a famous actor and performer through the medium of hard work, showing up, and learning the craft.

Somehow… hanging with these freaks triggered something in me…

Even these freaks were conforming to what society felt they should be like as freaks. There were layers in this thing called cliques or groups… it was all a made-up act… I guess some people never realize this. For me, it was clear now…. my country school never had this… we were just a demented mass.

This was new…an ideological class system of sorts.

I had figured it out…

I’m not saying that I’m special or smart. It’s obvious how special and smart I am by the series of incredibly bad choices I made. It is what it is.

By hanging with the beatnik freaks, and listening to their opinions on what is good and bad, right and wrong, I rapidly came to the conclusion that these partitioned off cliques were just another masturbatory exercise in human social conformity.

Maybe it was just layers of conformity to cliques all the way up to heaven and all the way down to hell?

If I was to really grow and know myself I would have to force it.

This is harder than it seems when you are so programmed to make correct choices.
It was going to take a bit of headbutting life and a certain amount of focused self-destruction.

My guides were Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, The Doors, and every bit of beat literature stretching back to Lord Byron.

With this rubbish swimming around in my head I set to work on step 1.

I went directly to hang out with the baddest and most insane kid I could find, to blaze weed, drink stolen rum, and embrace a total lack of restraint in all things.

Terry the Munter became my guide.

Stank brutally. 17 going on 50. Bad teeth. Raised by a drug addict, alcoholic single mother. Personally a drug addict and alcoholic since 13. Wore a faded ripped Metallica shirt and leather pants covered in marks from stubbed-out cigarettes.
I was taking the crash course.

There’s being badass and then there is a point where you become so badass that you get killed by actual badass gangsters. This is that story.

Terry and I crashed a Redneck party. It was a Wedding After-party at a church.

It was a ruralish area outside of West Auckland, which is a pretty feral place. Henderson… if you want to be specific.

We got the bus out there… it took an hour…

Churches in New Zealand are cheap to rent and often used for off-the-hook parties.

How he knew it was happening I don’t know, but it had a band and, like everything out in feral Henderson, it was going to be nuts.

We rocked in—It was a small white church, cars parked haphazardly all over the lawn, people everywhere—totally wrecked… You don’t see this kind of stumbling, screaming, spewing, swearing mess these days, outside of a few rare areas… It was a special time and place...

We sidled in and chilled out by the wall looking for any unattended booze or anything we could steal. The band played, and people moshed. We were just ignored.

The band played “Rage Against the Machine,” FUCK YOU WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!!” And people went nuts. It was awesome…

Then the craziest shit happened...

A weird-looking skinny dude fully dressed in white—white jeans, a white jacket, a white shirt, and white cowboy boots, and a big white cowboy hat—came out of nowhere and started dancing a weird sexy cowboy dance. Grooving up against any females he could. People were laughing, the girls were laughing and pushing him back… it was just funny to watch…

Then also out of nowhere two hardcore NZ gang members appeared.

This was bad news… they were fully patched members of the Mongrel Mob.

You should do a Google image search of the NZ Mongrel Mob now. So you can get an idea of what this brutalness actually was like.

The back of their leather jackets feature a British bulldog wearing a German Stahlhelm.

One was a massive Maori Guy and the other was a shaved-headed, short stocky white guy. Both with crude tattoos all over their faces.

The white shaved head guy went right up to the Cowboy guy and kicked him so hard in the arse with a big steel-capped boot he seemed to fly through the air. Then before he could get up he kept kicking, and kicking his butt as the poor screaming guy tried to scramble out of the way.

Kicking him all the way up the middle of the church… never letting him up… hat flying… begging… screaming …. utter brutality.

The Maori guy charged into the crowd, smashing people flying, and grabbed one of the church pews. Wielding it in both hands like a huge baton he just spun it about smashing it into people like a total maniac.

They were both obviously out of their minds on booze, weed and speed and this was entertainment to them… people were going down left and right and screaming…something wet hit my face… it was someone’s blood… the band had stopped playing and I grabbed Terry and we fled.

This was too fucked for words.

We started walking down the dark road and decided to hitchhike back to his place in the city—the shitty concrete apartment he shared with his messed up mum… but his room was a cozy stinky sanctuary with Iron Maiden…and he did have a jug of cheap brandy.

A car was coming and we put out the thumb… it was coming pretty fast… but whatever… It slammed on the brakes and pulled to a stop almost hitting us…

It was a small Toyota Corolla two-door hatchback… The door flew open and the big Maori Mongrel Mob guy got out and clicked the seat forward. “Get in, you’re coming to a party.”

Instead of running, idiot Terry says “Sweet” and gets in.

Instead of running, idiot Me just gets in.

And they take off… as fast as it can go…

The radio is up full blast playing some rock radio station through the tiny speakers… It would have been funny if it wasn’t so terrifying … They both held big beer bottles and there was a crate of beer in the back between us with six left. This is how we drank back then. A crate of 12, 750ml bottles of beer. Lion Red… cheap generic.

Lion Red is a New Zealand beer brewed by Lion Breweries in Auckland. The beer is 4.0% alcohol. Because of its relatively low alcohol content it is widely regarded as an excellent ‘session’ beer, that is, a beer that can be consumed freely over a long session of time without all the adverse effects of a higher alcohol volume beer.

Kiwi Piss.

“Have a beer guys!” said the skinhead one.. so we each had a big warm beer…

We are roaring along now… all drinking and silent.

The driver seemed to be kind of blacking out … and the car started dangerously swerving onto the edge of the road…

I decide to say “Bro… look out man… you don’t want to cash your car.”

He says “HAHAHAH, not my car bro I stole it!”

I’m sure we are going to die. So I just pound my warm beer hoping that when we all go through the windscreen I will be relaxed.

Terry is having a great time… he starts singing to the songs on the radio…

Spoiler alert… I didn’t die… we drive for about 20 minutes at this insane speed through the dark and then they turn off the road onto a long gravel driveway and up to…

A big gang-headquarters shed house-party… with dogs everywhere and feral gang women and motorbikes and blasting music...

It seems like they were heading to this party and just stopped in at the church on the way to smash shit up…

They got out and rolled in… forgetting us.

We sat in the car.

Terry gets up and looks like he’s entertaining the idea of going to the party….he said “Let’s…and I cut him off with “FUCK NO.”

“OK then but I’m stealing these beers.”

And so we grabbed the last four beers and snuck out of the car. The only thing that watched us go was a mangy dog… The party was in full swing but no one saw us…

We snuck down the road and started jogging and then running. We got to the main road and the relief was like nothing I have ever experienced. We laughed and walked and drank our massive warm bottles of Lion Red.

Anytime a car came we rolled off into the ditch and lay down flat in case they were coming back to grab us. We walked for about an hour along that rural road. Finally, we were so tired and drunk that we just lay in the grass by a bus stop at the first point of civilization, and waited for the 5:30 am bus to the city.

That was my last foray with maniac Terry, bless his heart. No idea what happened to the guy. I have a fondness for total fucking maniacs. As you have read. There is a reason for this. No matter how bad shit got. No matter how insane I went. No matter how demented the scene… I still knew I wasn’t as bad as them.

I could always hang onto that last rung and, while I might be in the gutter… they were in the drain under that metal grill thing where IT lives, looking up at me and telling me to come down into the drain and play.

And play I did:) As I have said… my mentor taught a rule to live by:

“Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

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