I was driving in my old ’67 Mustang on Sunset Boulevard, just a few blocks west of where U.C.L.A. starts. 1967 was the summer of love, and my old beater car had a certain charm about it. But it was mostly just a beater, no matter how you look at it.

Anyway, I was just cruising along, minding my own business, and out of nowhere some preppy guy in a souped up SAAB Turbo starts tailgating me.

I hate tailgaters.

There are different kinds of tailgaters. Some are your typical lame-ass tailgaters who accidentally tailgate you or are just stupid people not paying attention. Others, like this guy, were either on cocaine or crystal meth, or some kind of serious drug, and he was tailgating me within two or three feet, not even remotely close to the three-second rule. This guy was a dangerous menace.

I rolled down my window and used my hand to signal him to chill out and back off. He didn’t comply. He just stayed on my tail like a drug-crazed lunatic.

Very calmly, with no malice or negative energy, I tried again. It was a very busy time of day, with wall-to-wall, stop and go traffic, so tailgating someone was not a good idea. Besides, it wasn’t going to get anyone anywhere faster. It was just lame. This guy was lame. He was just a crazy, freaked out, yuppie asshole. No more, no less.

I pretty much gave up the idea of being nice to this guy after my second attempt at using the friendly hand signal to slow down and back off. He didn’t register. People like that don’t register anything, except what they’re doing. I guess you could use words like “totally self-absorbed” or “self- centered.”

I like to use the words “suffering from a thousand forms of fear,” because that’s what those people are really doing, although they don’t know it. They just think that being an asshole is a good idea and makes sense. They probably think that you have to be an asshole to succeed in today’s competitive world. I suppose it works pretty well for most people, but I’m not really very interested in that type of behavior.

So, I made a decision. If he wouldn’t back off my tail, I’d just slow down to see how mad I could get him, just for fun. He was fucking with me, so I was gonna fuck with him back.

I slowed down and he started tailing me within inches and freaking out. I was laughing and waving at him. Then, I sped up really fast and he punched it and started chasing me like a mad dog.

Naturally, I slowed down some more so that he was forced to slow down or crash into me. California has some pretty basic laws and if you crash into someone from behind, it’s pretty much a no-brainer. It would be his dumb-ass fault and I could sue him and his insurance company for damages and health stuff, etc. He figured out pretty quickly that I was fucking with him and his anger escalated higher and higher.

I was getting real happy. It was fun. For a while, that is.

All that time, I was just sort of experimenting with human behavior, like I always used to do. Sometimes, you just never know how someone will react. I figured, hey, he’s the asshole, he’s in the wrong; let’s see how he handles some pressure. Let’s see how he feels when someone really RESPONDS to his tailgating problem.

So, the fun continues.

Let’s do this.

So, now I’m stuck in stop and go traffic, just like he is. I can’t go any faster, and I can’t pull over. I’m stuck with a lunatic behind me. This cat-and-mouse game goes on for about five minutes. I slow down, and then I speed up, and then I hit the brakes. Each time I do this, he gets crazier and crazier – and I mean CRAZY.

When I hit the brakes, he almost slams into me, and he hits his brakes and then I can see all kinds of white smoke, and I see his car going sideways and fishtailing.

Then, I speed up some more and he steps on the gas and peels out, chasing me, and then I hit the brakes, and he’s skidding all over the road like a total freak show. I’m dealing with a bona fide psycho. Something has to give pretty soon or there might be a little problem; someone might get killed, for real.

The traffic opens up on the other side of the street, so our little freak-show-nut- job-on-steroids puts his hot rod SAAB turbo in first gear and punches it into the opposite side of the street around a corner where no one could tell if a big truck is coming or not. He chooses to take that risk so he can get ahead of me. He literally and figuratively risks his life and the life of countless others just to get ahead of me.

Not only does he get ahead of me – now get this – he does a police maneuver where he pulls in front of me at a diagonal and stops. This totally red-in-the-face, yuppie jarhead dude jumps out of his car in his little lawyer suit and he has that look in his eyes that he’s going to try and kill me.

I calmly, and quickly, put my car in reverse, punch it, then slam it in first and PUNCH it again, going around this fuckin’ asshole from the Black Lagoon, while giving him the finger and smiling.

For some crazy, lucky reason I’m in a section of the road where there’s a right lane open and a quick getaway. I look back, and he’s stopped the traffic and is just standing there, waving his arms like a freakin’ lunatic punk-ass shithead. I get the hell out of there and take my first right turn into a U.C.L.A. parking lot and hide behind a bush.

This has been fight or flight at its finest.

My life is a LOT more valuable than this guy’s. A LOT more valuable. I wasn’t going to stick around and see if he had a gun or any golf clubs to attack me with. This was a road- rage freak show violating MY space, not the other way around.

I gave him several friendly warnings to cool it and he ignored them. People like that don’t respect friendly warnings. They’re Type A predators. Rumsfeld and Cheney types. Anyway, I fucked with him and I fucked with his head. Hard.

Since then, I’ve learned a valuable lesson: it’s NEVER worth the risk to deal with people like that, in any situation, for any reason. There’s really no money in it, unless you’re a shrink or whatever. I’ve learned that if something like that ever happens again, to just pull over and let it pass. We’re dealing here with an “it,” not a human being. People that are “its” don’t have any problem murdering strangers, torturing people for fun, raping, molesting, whatever — they’re sub-

humans and they’re well armed. They tend to be well schooled, too, and quite often have money. They tend to be lawyers or businessmen of some kind. Who knows what they do? I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do. All I know is, next time I come into contact with one, I’m just gonna let them pass.

“Have a nice day, have a safe trip, bon voyage! Run along now, little boy, I don’t want to play with you anymore…ever again!”