MASHER, AKA FRANKIE

The summer after Masher’s father died, his family home was up for sale. Masher, Dano and I promptly moved in rent free. The house became our staging area for months of boozy, druggy partying in the clubs and the basement. Dano had his ’53 Plymouth, Masher had a ’50 Merc, and there was a rattle-can copper-colored Sportster around. Tins of pomade occupied nearly every flat surface. Johnny Burnette and The English Beat competed for the stereo around the clock. Near-death experiences were pretty commonplace, though not regarded as such.

Eventually the inevitable tragedy came to pass.

Masher had a great sense of humor. One thing he found highly entertaining was fighting, probably because he never lost, or at least I never saw him lose. He was about the size and shape of a refrigerator. I saw him deck five guys in ten seconds once, laughing the whole time.

Fights broke out frequently. One room-clearing brawl got us ousted from CBGB. Unfortunately, the guys we were fighting also got thrown out. They reappeared wielding pipes just as we were getting in the car. Our girlfriends were petrified. We escaped with just a broken windshield and our lives, barely. The close calls had zero dampening effect on our wild times.

If we failed to find trouble during the night, Masher would turn on Dano on the long, late ride home to Jersey. I always sat between them on the bench seat, hoping a little distance would forestall a physical display. The tactic mostly worked. Once he lit into Dano so hard he made him cry. Dano was sensitive. He looked exactly like James Dean and he hurt like him too. For the crime of weeping, Masher threw Dano out of his pickup on Route 80 in the middle of nowhere, screaming, “NO CRYBABIES IN MY TRUCK!”

We drove back to the house in silence. He threw the keys on the table and promptly passed out. It was five in the morning. I stole the truck and went back and found Dano stalking down the shoulder like a lost dog, still in tears.

We never spoke of it again.

Masher had worked as a bouncer at a roller rink as a teen and was preternaturally graceful on skates, like a bear doing ballet. He had a lot of contradictions. He was also a nationally ranked motorcycle trials rider as a kid, riding for a local Harley dealer.

His on-and-off girlfriend was terribly obnoxious but pretty. She had big hair and big eyes. Her dad ran an international chainsaw company. I think Masher kept her around just for the merch: outlandish calendars with bottle-blonde ’80s pinups straddling giant tools or brandishing chainsaws, bright orange jumpsuits with a chainsaw over the breast pocket. Fun apparel for punk shows. She was always mad at us. We nicknamed her Chainsaw to honor her personality.

One day a straight-up miracle occurred.

Masher walked into Tramontin Harley-Davidson and there it was, a bright purple full-dress Shovelhead with white seats and saddlebags that had once belonged to his beloved, idolized father. They had taken it in as a trade. Masher was family there. They let him walk with the bike on small payments, no credit check, no red tape. He rolled home and promptly took off the bags and mufflers. It was a sick machine, like none other, and he rode it expertly.

After he dumped Chainsaw for the umpteenth time, he found a new flame, a fantastic redhead, spirited and wild, the type of girl you’d meet at a small-town street carnival and fall in love with instantly.

I was playing a regular gig in a four-set-a-night bar band and they rolled out to Nyack on the purple bike. It was high spirits all the way that night, rowdy, loud, loaded. Masher was ripping up the street shooting blue flames from the short pipes to our great amusement. Sometime around closing I bought them both a beer. We drank and they took off.

I made it back to my apartment in the city after the gig. My band was booked to play the Tompkins Square bandshell the following day. My phone rang shortly after dawn.

It was old pal Pete Zest.

Masher had laid down the bike on the way home.

It was bad. He went into the guardrail and didn’t make it. They found the redhead sixty feet into the woods screaming, nearly every bone broken. No one could guess how she got there. She couldn’t have been thrown that far and didn’t seem capable of crawling. We theorized that she had fallen asleep on the back of the bike and that had caused the crash. No one knew.

I visited her in the hospital for at least four months. She cried and cried, barely spoke a word. They had found true love, and now this.

I still live with the disturbing realization that I bought him his last drink.

His family sold me the bike. The money went to Masher’s funeral. I delivered a crappy eulogy. Nothing could touch the depth of the situation, or at least I was incapable. I eventually restored the bike and rode it for a few years. My buddy Spike now owns it.

Somehow, Chainsaw ended up with his stuff. She still has the Keith Haring I gifted to Masher, stolen off the 86th St. station wall late one Valentine’s Day eve.

It depicts a lone man with a radiant heart.

Years later, in the depths of a heroin addiction, Masher came to me in a dream.

He was angry and coming for me the same way he used to harass Dano on those late nights. He was mad that I was wasting my life, that he was no longer on the planet having good times and watching me kill myself a day at a time really pissed him the fuck off. He yelled at me and swung on me.

We fought.

Blow for blow, shot for shot, it continued. Weirdly, we were evenly matched and neither could win. The fight was epic. We fought across cities, deserts, fields of grass, every possible landscape. Daylight came and went. Weather passed. There was no timeline except eternity.

Finally he landed one solidly on my eye and I awoke shouting out loud in pain. I touched my eye.

It was bruised.

Ten minutes later the bruise was gone, but the ache may never fade.