George Tabb Needs Our Help!

Only mine costs well over three hundred bucks, while my bag boy buddy’s costs next to zilch. It’s one of those fake “pleather” jackets, which looked almost as cool as the real thing, but could only be found at places like Kmart or other discount stores.

It’s the winter of my senior year in high school and Louis and I, now total punk rock Ramones fans, are making our way out of New York City’s rock club, the Ritz.

We’d just seen some lame band called Huey Lewis and the News for two bucks at the Ritz’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Against Depression night and were in pretty good spirits considering no girls took us up on our offers to dance.

It’s really fucking cold as we begin to make our way back to my mom’s place on West Fourth Street, and under our motorcycle jackets, real and fake, we’re just wearing thin t-shirts. Me, a Sid Vicious one Nick had purchased for me at a local punk boutique called Trash And Vaudeville, and Louis, a Ramones Rocket to Russia shirt, complete with the little picture of the pinhead guy sitting on a missile.

It was the only shirt Louis ever wore. Ever.

As we hunch our shoulders to warm up from the subzero temperatures, I think about what my mom had said before we left the apartment for the evening.“George,” she had said in that motherly way, “I know you guys want to look cool and all, but why don’t you wear something warmer?” Of course, I just pouted at her like a two-year-old.

“No,” I said. “You can’t make me!”

“You’re right,” she continued. “I can’t make you do anything, but please try and not get sick. You boys want to have fun during your Christmas vacation, don’t you?”

I tell her we do, and while I appreciate the idea, now that I’m a Ramone and all, it’s just not cool.

She tells me she understands.

As does Nick.

“Mrs. Tabb,” Louis then said, even though her last name hadn’t been Tabb for many years. “I’ve tried with your sorry ass sucker of a son to make him wear his winter coat, but he just won’t. I’m sorry to have failed you.”

I just looked at Louis and seethed. The little fuck, not two minutes earlier, had told me we had to wear our leather jackets to the Ritz that night, because it would make us cool, and chicks dug cool guys. I reminded Louis that his jacket wasn’t real leather, and that’s when he fed that line of horseshit to my mom.

Bastard.

Anyway, as we’re trudging through at least six inches of snow, with more falling upon us on East Tenth Street near Fourth Avenue, two guys approach us.

We can’t really make out their faces through the snow, but one guy yells, “Yo,” so we yell “Yo!” back.
When they approach us we can see they’ve got the good sense to be wearing those snorkel type jackets, with the big hoods and all.

They’re warm.

We’re freezing.

“Hey man,” says one of the guys as he flips back his hood and lets wet snow gather on his almost shaved head, “You got a light?” The other guy takes off his hood and his hair is short as well.

“Well?” asks the one guy who’s talking, “how about it?”

I look at Louis and he looks at me.

“Tabb,” he says, “you sorry ass sucker, get out your lighter for the gentleman.”

I look at him pissed. I’m tired of that term, and my hands are so fucking cold in my blue-jean pockets, I’m afraid to take them out and use them. They’d probably get frostbite and fall off, then I’d never be able to play with myself again. I’d have to depend on girls for that, which, I knew, was never going to happen.

So I take out my frozen right hand, unzip the front right pocket on my shiny new leather jacket with the Ramones-style Air Force U.S. pins, and all Nick and I had found at an army navy store. I grasp the black lighter with the Playboy logo on it I’d found at a cool ass head shop a couple of day earlier, and start to remove it.

The next thing I know I’m laying on the hood of a snow-covered car with the sweet tasting flavor of blood in my mouth, and my nose hurts so bad I feel my eyes swelling.

“Give us your leather jackets!” says the guy who hadn’t spoken before.

“Fuck you,” I spit blood at them.

“Give us your leather jackets and we won’t hurt you anymore,” says the first guy, as he hits me in the gut with a lead pipe he’s pulled out of nowhere.

“No fucking way I’m giving you my Ramones jacket,” I say to the two punks, and look at Louis.

He’s already got his off and is dangling it on his index finger.

Because it weighs nothing and is a cheap piece of shit.

“Give it to us or else!” screams the guy with the lead pipe.

“Or else what?” I scream back, really pissed because this jacket means everything to me. It’s not just an identify thing, it’s my second skin. I’d worn it twenty-four hours a day since Nick and I spent my hard earned bag boy cash on the thing, and there was just simply no way I was parting with it.

They’d have to kill me first. So I told them so.