(Male, 50’s) In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that I bought a motorcycle a couple years back in the midst of mid-life crisis and that within the last week as it came time to winterize the thing, I’d been angry with myself that another season had passed and I hadn’t really gotten out on it.
I was with my wife and a female friend and we were crossing a parking lot, heading into a bar when this group of about a dozen motorcycle riders over took us. I started defending the women who were able to get away. This didn’t particularly make the hooligans mad. They just started messing with me instead.
This was a relatively outlandish group of motorcyclists really. Their bikes were all American made and chopped like very classic examples of the style. And by classic I mean original 40’s and 50’s era chopped bikes, simple, basic, with a few bits of chromed flair. And the guys themselves were straight out of a time capsule too, or at least they looked like they were trying to be. They had greased hair with big curls on the top. I bet there’s a word for that. They didn’t wear the bomber style jackets but rather something that looked more like a suit coat jacket that was made out of riding quality leather. They were a riding club – The Rockets – which actually, as I remember it now used to be a local band I really enjoyed back in the 70’s.
The Rockets pushed me around with a detached, ironic sort of torture, like a cat playing with a mouse, that bats it around between its paws. One of them had a package of metal “rockets” that sort of looked like those toys from back in the day that you could put a “cap” in and then toss up in the air and when it landed the cap would go off with a loud pop. Anyway, one of the gang members had a package of these, still on the cardboard like he’d bought it at a retro boutique or something. He took them off the card one by one and shoved them in my mouth til I was choking. I think this was some kind of a test of something to see if I’d choke or vomit. All the while they were laughing and joking while I was trying to keep from suffocating.