Before there was Joe Lansdale . . .

. . . there was "No Class Chick" by J. J. Solari. When I first met Joe, back around 1979, one of the stories he told me about was in an anthology called Best Biker Fiction from EASYRIDERS. So of course I bought the book and read the story. Last night I read it again. It's still as profane, and as horribly funny, as it was 25 years ago.

I once accused Joe of having written "No Class Chick" because I'm sure he wrote for Easyriders when he was starting out. He's never admitted it, but it's certainly like a story Joe would have written. It's about a guy whose initiation into a bikers' club is to take a woman on a cross-country run, and she has to remain in his company the entire time. Before he even starts, she dies. But that doesn't change the rules. The story starts off gross and gets progressively grosser. The old phrase "not for the squeamish" was never more appropriate. (I'll spare you most of the details, but there's even a rape scene.) If that's not a Lansdale plot, what is? It even has Lansdale like similes: "The panic-frozen bunch of wanderers couldn't have helped a cockroach out of a plate of mashed potatoes. . . ."

I'm posting this in case some future doctoral candidate about to write a dissertation on the collected works of Lansdale is looking for influences. Sure, there are the obvious ones, like Harper Lee and Flannery O'Connor, but "No Class Chick" must not be overlooked.