Sit On It!

The Hood had a ducktail. He slathered an entire tube of Brylcreem on his head every morning. He carried a comb. 

The Hood preferred to stand at the back of gatherings. He always wore a plain white t-shirt and jeans. He wore a leather jacket to intimidate the villagers. He rode a motorcycle for the same reason.

The Hood was spreading syphilis throughout three local high schools. 

The Hood could snap his fingers and girls in his proximity would rush into his arms. 

The girls had no shame. They weren’t aware of how desperate they looked. They didn’t realize The Hood was humiliating them.

The Hood was always in control.

The Hood had casual sex with the girls he picked up and then moved on. He called the pretty young females “chicks” and they acted flattered, blind to their abasement. The Hood used them and discarded them like disposable wet-wipes.

He wasn’t interested in love or a relationship. The Hood was a proud predator, interested only in stockpiling sexual conquests and satisfying his raging, voracious sex addiction. 

The Hood was cool. He could coax music from a jukebox with just a thump of his fist. 

The Hood was admired by many young men in Milwaukee. They either kept a careful distance or tried to become a cohort. 

The Hood had a red-haired friend who acted obsequious and fake-amiable in an attempt to achieve social status. He’d worked hard to become a comrade of The Hood, but The Hood saw through his petty masquerade.

Others called the red-haired kid a “nerd” and disdained his facile subservience toward The Hood. 

The red-haired kid came from money. His father owned a hardware store. 

The Hood worked as an auto mechanic and barely scraped by. He didn’t care. He got whatever he wanted anyway.  

He kept an upturned collar on his leather jacket. He wore black engineer boots. 

The Hood was tough. He liked to brawl. He had a dangerous reputation that kept others in line. He kindled real fear among his peers and this fact brought him satisfaction. He felt empowered. His curt commands brooked no dissent. You had to agree with The Hood and follow his orders or he’d have to slap some sense into you.

The Hood hung out at a drive-in diner. He never ate there but he commanded the joint like a Roman Emperor. 

The diner was originally owned by an Asian immigrant and then managed by a sad middle-aged man with a tumescent nose who looked forlorn-yet-resigned to his lonely, isolated life. When confronted with tragedy or loss he would merely shrug, sigh, and murmur, “Yuh…Yuh… Yuh…Yuh…”

The red-haired kid introduced others into The Hood’s exclusive fold: a second red-haired kid who delivered moldy old jokes that amused no one but himself.

And a slow-witted kid who never learned to utilize his looks or singing talent to improve his futile, monotonous life. 

The Hood, on the other hand, understood and acknowledged his strength and power over others. He wielded his uncanny charisma and confidence like the weapons of control they were. 

So it came as a shock to the entire town of Milwaukee when The Hood was killed in a switchblade fight in 1959. The Hood’s carotid artery was severed and he bled out in the alley behind the diner. 

His opponent was never identified and The Hood was buried in a pauper’s grave while a throng of distraught daughters bawled uncontrollably at the loss, tossing flowers atop his humble burial plot. 

It was not a happy day for anybody.