County Fair Beatdown
This might be the most insane thing I have ever seen with my own two eyes. We used to have this carnival in Kennedy Park in my town when we were growing up. There was this big rivalry between our town and the next town, South River, which is probably the case with every two towns in America. So there we were, hanging out, and right across this grass lot from us were these guys from this other town with one of our girls, hanging out. We didn’t like that she was hanging out with them, and I’m sure it didn’t help matters any when this one guy, her boyfriend as it turned out, stood up and backhanded her across the face in front of all of us. So, a bunch of us walk over to them, and words are exchanged.
My buddy Tommy, who is a brick shithouse now but back then was a little dude, walks right up to the guy who smacked her. He was enormous, but Tommy was a scrapper. He’s like, “What the fuck are you doing?” and next thing you know the guy from South River pulls out a gun—it looked like a 9mm or something—and puts it right in Tommy’s face. Mind you, this is a “county fair”-type carnival deal. There are cops everywhere. So the gun comes out, and you would think that a gong had gone off because somehow it seemed like the rides stopped, the music turned off, you could hear streetlights changing from red to green—it was that quiet. Everybody was like “Fuck,” and in an instant—before the cops could react, before anybody could fucking fart—my buddy Tommy takes his left hand (the guy’s got the gun in his right hand), puts it just below the guy’s right shoulder, pulls the dude as close as he can without kissing him, and tucks the gun hand under his armpit. Then with his right hand, Tommy starts beating the piss out of him, just hauling off. By the third hit blood is coming out of the guy’s nose, by the fourth his eye is lumped up and his knees collapse. Tommy lets go of the arm, grabs the pistol, and starts pistol-whipping this guy. My eyes are fixed on what’s in front of me, so I didn’t notice that there are police now forming a perimeter around the fight. I look up and there are these cops with their hands on their hips just staring, watching it all go down. He’s beating him with the fucking gun, and when the guy looked like he was unconscious, one of the cops was like, “All right, Tommy, that’s enough. We’re gonna arrest him now.” So they pick up this guy’s passed-out body, put cuffs on him, and throw him in the back of the car.
| All presenter photos by Patrick O’Dell. Styling by Sara McCormack. |
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| Jorge: Yves Saint Laurent shirt, Hugo Boss suit. |
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To see a dude disarm somebody like that—I’ve tried to do it, to demonstrate to people, and I can’t even do it without them holding a weapon. And Tommy was so nonchalant afterwards, we went back in the woods and we all had some beers. He’s great. I moved to California, but once I came home and went to a Pantera show. I hadn’t seen Tommy in a long time, and suddenly I just see this big ass dude pummel some other big dude right in the middle of the pit. One punch, lays him out cold. Then the big guy starts coming toward me, and I’m like, “Oh my fucking god, I’m not even in the pit, I don’t even want to spill my beer,” and it’s Tommy. He’s like “Hey, Chris, long time no see. How you been?”
CHRIS NIERATKO
I Got Shot
I was a 13-year-old, kind of new-wave skater kid with a Tony Hawk hairdo living in Kansas City and trying to score pot. It was almost impossible back then and one of the few people that had it was Greg Grefauk. He was also 13 but the thing about 13 is, it’s a weird age. There’s 13-year-olds who look like janitors. They’ve got a mustache and a car. And then there’s 13-year-olds who look like they’re 8. I was the latter. He was the former.
So after trying to get pot all over Kansas City, I had to resort to Greg. He gave out pot for free, but it was still expensive in a way because you had to hang out with him—all night. Me and my friends went to his house and he made us listen to metal for hours and hours. I hated metal back then. I guess I still do. As the night wore on my friends started dropping like flies. I didn’t have a curfew so I could stay there all night if I wanted. He didn’t have a curfew either. In fact, his mother wasn’t even home. She was in Hawaii partying. She was rich because she divorced some rich guy, but she was as white trash as white trash gets. Greg and his mother lived in a huge, six-bedroom McMansion, but there was no furniture in it. Crap was piled everywhere. About the only decoration in the house was some wallpaper in Greg’s room made of old Marlboro cartons. He was proud of how many cigarettes he smoked.
At around 5 AM Greg put in this Iron Maiden VHS tape and turned up the volume as loud as it could go. It was like he was trying to torture me to see what my limits were. Like when a newly adopted kid is bad so he can see if his new parents are really in it for the long haul. I braved out the tape and after half an hour or so Greg suggested we go out and hunt rabbits. I said sure. Free pot had to be just around the corner. I had paid my dues.
He picked up his stepfather’s .22 and started waving it around the room. I wasn’t too worried about it and went to the bathroom to take a piss. When I came out of the bathroom he shot me. BANG! I remember seeing his face go really pale and realizing I had been thrown up against the bathroom door and was now sitting on the floor. The bullet had entered my side, punctured my liver and kidneys, ricocheted around my ribs, and got stuck halfway out my back. Like, if you looked at my back you would have seen the tip of a bullet sticking out. When I looked down at my shirt I saw this enormous red stain that was growing way too fast. It is impossible to convey the kind of fear I was feeling at the time. Pure terror.
You see, most people have a library of references if something happens to them. If they burn their finger they go, “Oh yeah, a burn,” and go put it in water or whatever. I didn’t have references for this experience. All I knew about being shot was what I saw in Rambo movies and that was: You die. I was going to die. These were my last moments on earth. One thing people in movies don’t do when they’re shot is stand up and start screaming, “YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE!?” But I did. He kept repeating, “Dude, I’m sorry. Don’t sue me.” That’s what he kept repeating, “Dude, don’t sue me.” I didn’t mind the suing thing so much as the word “dude.” This was back before everybody in the world said “dude” and it just fucking annoyed the shit out of me.
I ran around the house ranting and raving for about two minutes until the pain hit me. It’s difficult to describe the pain. Just imagine the worst cramp anyone ever had times 1,000. It was literally crippling, so I lay in the fetal position and told Greg to call 911. That’s a tape I’d like to hear. He said, “Hey, man. I think… I think my friend got shot.” And I yelled, “No you fucking asshole. Tell them YOU shot me.” And he said, “Yeah. I guess I shot my friend.” Neither of us cried once during this whole thing. I remember I was wearing a “Boys Don’t Cry” shirt at the time.
Greg picked me up (remember, he was one of those grown-man 13-year-olds) and carried me out to the lawn. This was summer in Kansas City and the sky was just breathtaking. I lay on my back looking at the stars, bleeding to death, and I started to pray to Jesus. I was an atheist at the time and gave my mother no end of grief about Christianity, but that night I prayed and prayed to Jesus and begged him to let me live. Then I had a life-changing experience. You know how they say your whole life flashes before your eyes? It does. When I closed my eyes I saw my whole life being projected inside a cylinder. There was audio coming out either side playing sound bites that related to the images. It started at my most recent memory, being at the skate park on my 12th birthday, and it went chronologically backward toward my birth. As the video unraveled it was moving toward a bright white light that I was also heading toward. All those clichés are true.
The next thing I remember was being startled out of this dream state by a paramedic. I opened my eyes and said, “Am I going to die?” and they said, “I don’t know.” Aren’t they supposed to tell you everything’s going to be all right? I started panicking again as they put me in the ambulance and asked me if I could move my toes and all that. When we got to the hospital, I asked them if the Kansas City Royals had won and then blacked out. They did exploratory surgery and stopped the bleeding and that was it. Apparently organs heal themselves, so if you can stop the bleeding everything else will take care of itself. When I woke up this real slick tough-guy black dude came over and said, “Wassup Jeff. I’m the surgeon that stitched you up.” I said, “Thanks for saving my life,” and he said, “Cool.” Then he said, “I need to talk to you about something,” and went into this huge lecture about “the pot.” He told me how he was a child of the 60s and he’d been there and seen what it can do to people and if I don’t stop going down the pot route I’m never going to do anything with my life. Fine, I won’t smoke pot anymore.
Greg came to visit me a few days later (I was in the hospital for weeks). I had a catheter in my penis that they put in the second I arrived. That was potentially more traumatizing than being shot. They also had a huge green tube that they stuck up my nose and into my stomach. It was pumping bile from my stomach nonstop. So Greg comes up to my bed and he’s freaking out, saying, “Dude, I don’t know what to say, dude. Please don’t hate me, dude,” and he gives me a letter and walks out of the room. I wish I still had that letter. It had the grammar and spelling of a kindergarten project. And the worst part was he fucking spelled “dude” wrong. It said, “Dued.” This was about the only word he knew how to say and he couldn’t even spell it. The letter said something like, “Dued. I am so sarry. Dued. Don’t hate me dued. Dued. I don’t know wut to say. Dued.” Hilarious.
Just before I was finally ready to leave the hospital, my mom came into the room and said we had to go over some insurance policy offers. I was like, “What? I get money because some idiot shot me?” Apparently if something like this happens in a person’s home, you can get their home insurance policy to pay you money. They had offers like a lump sum of $200,000 or how about $800 a month for the rest of your life? I chose money for life and $5,000 cash. My parents didn’t let me spend the five grand until I was 21, but I’m 33 now and I still get that check every month. In a way it’s a curse because it totally robbed me of any ambition, but fuck it. I know people with really shitty jobs and it sure beats having a shitty job. I’m glad I got shot.
JEFF JENSEN
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