This delectable little gem, I assume to help announce the release of what looks like a must have for anybody’s DVD collection—Heavy Metal Parking Lot—was forwarded to me by stalwart reader, Danzig (more below).

The cats I rolled with took it to an even lower place; most times, we never even had a concert to attend. We just went to random parking lots for the fun of it. If you were not hanging out drunk in some parking lot back in 1986, then I suppose this is going to seem really, really cool to you. Well mister, let me tell you something: if we had been invited to anybody’s house, we would have gone there instead. That parking lot, in reality, was an intensely lonely place.

One of my fondest parking lot memories, circa 1986 (early summer), goes a little something like this:

Me and some guy I barely remember named Ross (shaggy ‘do and big teeth; if this sounds like you and your name is Ross AND you remember hanging with some pimple-faced dork with a blonde mullet, look me up!) lied to our sucker parents with some bullshit line about a sleepover and an amusement park with some friend, then piled into Mike T’s car with as much Mad Dog 20/20 as we could scam, and headed out into the fragrant Council Bluffs, IA night. I have NO CLUE what we might have been listening to that night; rest assured that both Motley Crue and Ozzy Osborne played a part as we cruised the heady streets, hoping beyond hope that each car we passed would be the one…filled with teased hair and garish rouge; loose t-shirts (I can see her bra through it! In the back! In the back!) knotted at the waist over a white denim skirt…don’t look away…please don’t look away…

But of course they look away.

And so what the fuck, ya can’t drive up and down the street all night (or can you?), so we pulled into the residential parking lot in front of what was at the time one of CB’s few apartment building complexes, and proceeded to blare the music while peeling donuts with reckless abandon. So, you know, it was fun for a little while, but after about ten minutes or so, we were back to trolling Broadway. What’s left except for the parking lot? That’s where all the action is anyway, so there’s little use in prolonging the inevitable. Off we flew, the cooling Iowa night at our backs, mocking our every move—was it any wonder we were as angry as we were?

The Hinky Dinky parking lot teemed with the same faceless losers from week to week, yet they all seemed new to me. Did I see myself reflected in their shaggy demeanors, and so was afraid to look too closely? Was my own empty future captured in their beery breath? The blurry stares and slurred speech of the leather vest-clad 20-somethings who had still yet to be invited to anybody’s house on a Friday night? Maybe. Or maybe it was the Mad Dog 20/20.

Mike T leaned against the hood of his old Mustang (more about that car some other time), and immediately struck up a conversation with one of the many slightly skanky young ladies of the time who never seemed to close their mouths all the way; a permanent look of disgust always right there in plain sight. He was the only one out of the three of us to whom girls ever showed any actual interest. I think they thought he was trouble. They were partly right, but not as much as they hoped. Neither Ross nor I were too worried about that, though; we were used to such shabby treatment from the ladies and had accepted it as the natural order of things some time before. We instead headed into the Hinky Dinky to grab a bag of those delicious Chili-Cheese Fritos, so seldom seen these days unless one is traversing the cracked Midwest (roll up your windows and make sure the tank is full, my friend). I don’t recall much of what happened inside the store (Ross was not the most engaging of people…sorry dude…maybe you shouldn’t call me), but I very much recall exiting the store and immediately spying the two police cruisers that had pulled up and boxed in Mike T’s Mustang, their red and blue lights casting an often told tale around the shadows of the grocery store’s ceremonial stomping grounds. Was there ever a better visual created to accompany the heavy metal of the times? Probably, but this was more common. One officer was holding the knife Mike T kept in the glove box (just under the five inch rule—so you see ladies, not bad enough), the other was glaring at Mike T, mid-hassle, brandishing the crow bar Mike T kept under the driver’s seat.

“What’s this for, buddy?” the cop was saying, “You looking to deal some trouble tonight?”

“It’s for a flat tire,” I could hear Mike say matter-of-factly. Of course, it wasn’t. It was for bashing skulls—just in case a skull needed bashing. I was too shy to bash in skulls. Mike most likely was too, but we’ll never know, because the chance—thank god—never arose.

“State law states that this bad boy is supposed to be stored in your trunk, son. You sure this ain’t for bashing skulls?” asked the officer again, looking bored and angry all at once.

“Yeah. I mean, no, it isn’t. It’s for changing tires.” Bashing skulls. Maybe. Someday.

I can’t tell you the look on Mike’s face through all of this, because Ross and I had already turned in another direction and kept walking, leaving Mike to his fate. Oh well. Fuck him. I never asked him to keep knives and crow bars in his goddamned car, and it’s a damned documented fact that this kind of shit always made me nervous. Ask anyone in town. Eventually we wandered near some other losers like ourselves and were eventually written our own tickets for minors in possession of alcohol. Only drunk teenagers stand near police cars with open bottles of liquor and think nothing will happen.

Since we had absolutely nowhere else to go, Ross and I eventually made our way to the county court house to visit Mike T while he spent the night in jail. I think we felt the need to give moral support and apologize for not getting arrested with him. As it happened, the reason the cops nailed him to begin with is because some understandably concerned nim-rod at the apartment complex had turned in the license plate number of some assholes spinning out in his parking lot. He seemed to take it all in stride, although it seemed as though something was on his mind. We asked him if he wanted us to call his parents. He did not.

Later that night, I eventually made my way home, told a lie, and somehow got out of paying my ticket.

Good times.