The Seven Deadly Sins (19 page)

I will tell you what I do not envy. People with athlete's foot are nothing to be jealous of. Another example is the life of a garbage disposal. That is just gross. How about the snot end of a diseased penis? Where am I going with this? Sorry, I am surrounded by people talking about stuff I am actually interested in. I will be right back.

Okay, it is a day later and I have coffee, quiet, and countenance. Living with a million people in several different households makes it difficult to concentrate. Mornings like this make me envy a writer in his wood-ensconced study, complete with fireplace and loyal golden retriever. I have a kitchen table, a rotating space heater, and an ashtray covered in skulls wearing giant headphones. If you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. Thank you, Mr. Jagger.

There is a moment in everyone's life when you find yourself coveting something better, something meaningful, and something
of merit. Dan Marino was one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time and yet he never won a Super Bowl. I will bet you a ton of money that he envies Trent Dilfer, who won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is loaded with people who may or may not deserve to be there. How do you think that makes bands like Kiss and Rush feel, who are two of the most influential bands of all time who are still not in the Hall of Fame? People can go on and on about how they are content with what life has given them. But at night, when they are alone and the only voice asking them questions is in their head, the truth hangs in the silence like a heavy fog on the moors. I believe we are never truly content, but I think most of us can come close. It all depends on the details. I am a man with a deep hole inside me that I have tried to fill with all manner of subterfuge. I will not be a man satisfied until I am a man exhausted. We are given dreams so we can imagine a life that is a little more vested in the future. We are given life so we can exist. Our minds are what stoke the embers of desire. If God had wanted us to live without “sin,” he should have never given us the power to think for ourselves.

That is truly the crux of my argument: People have developed into beings that would give anything to be free. We have seen it in revolution after revolution: men and women banding together to shuffle off an immoral coil disguised as a government that does nothing but everything of, for, and by themselves. The crooked claw their way into the hearts of leadership to dismantle and control the very tools we were given to live our lives. The further we get from the prologue, the closer we get to the exciting conclusion. This is in the spirit of the great minds who have tried to pull us together for something we never even knew we deserved. I am doing my best to carry on that tradition, to convince
the people to rise up and tell the ones writing the rules that we will not be cabled into one universal rule of thumb. I am trying to set us free, but just with a few more fart jokes than you are probably used to.

In a world where the infirm are minutes away from walking on their own and the guilty are finally coming to justice even several years later, we are taking shaky steps toward letting go of myth and superstition and accepting ourselves for who we are: imperfect creatures of chance. Paint your Easter egg any color you want—we were accidents of evolution. We are a combination of aberrant cell growth, electrical synapse activity, and unbelievable luck. We are what happens when smart monkeys fuck. Making it more than it ever was just confuses the ignorant and slows our advancement. I am probably offending a lot of you, but I do not care. We should be looking inside for answers, not digging in the dirt to find ancient texts that supply a backstory. The future is meant for those who are willing to let go of the worst parts of the past. When you cannot take two steps without turning around to inspect your footsteps, you are getting nowhere fast. I know my ancestors blazed a trail somewhere around my family tree. So I will keep my eyes on the road, my hands on the wheel, and my ears open for distress calls.

Envy is not only limited to awards and flattery; it can also come in a form of jealousy that is as common as a fart after broccoli (see?). I call it the Married Man Melancholy. This comes when a married man is afflicted with a malady so viral it threatens the very fabric of his matrimony. It stings the heart, pierces the harmony, and leaves you going over your choices in life like unpaid bills at tax time. I am talking, of course, about single friends, but I do not mean the standard-issue, factorybuilt single friend who is looking for love but remains forlorn,
watching
You've Got Mail
all alone on a Friday night. I am in fact talking about the single friend who lives like Hugh Hefner in the '60s and then tells you all about it later on. To your wife, he is known as the Best Man at your wedding and that Fucking Friend of Yours every day after your wedding. And he will drive you to cry in your Frosted Flakes a lot.

This single friend cannot wait to share his sexual exploits with you, sometimes calling you in the middle of the night while he is still at the woman's house. This single friend has gestures and hand signals that would make a deaf person call the police. This single person probably has a collection of soiled underwear in a “trophy case” somewhere in his closet, taking them out on Wednesdays to “count his scalps” when nothing is good on TV. This single friend is a scumbag, a total asshole, and a mangy dog of another color. You secretly love him for it.

The married man will live vicariously through his single friends when married life is starting to taste like warm water. I know, marriage is about the long term and a deeper love that lasts well after the romance is gone. But a man is also a creature of instinct if not habit, and he never misses a chance to take a look at another woman. It does not mean he is going to run out and shove his fuck pump into the nearest and most welcome vagina—it just means that he is looking. Women cannot handle it, and it causes a lot of bullshit. But this is just how guys are. We are mammals with a nose for pheromones, the great truffle hunters searching for the quickening and trying desperately to hide our massive hard-ons. Because of this, we carry a garbage truck–sized amount of guilt with us from day one to judgment day. It is not our fault; we go where the wind takes us. But the sanctity of wedlock holds a tight tether, leaving us to fight these
feelings to keep our wives happy, our days less chaotic, and our homes quiet.

But it does not mean we cannot live another life through our friends. This is envy in its most pure and unrefined form. It gives us something to think about while we toil in cubicles or pound out manual labor. It gives us just a little hint of spice in our diets. Sure, we know it is just a flight of fancy, but inside we can transcend the bland and be a little less cramped if only for the briefest of periods. I do not say this to make people think that marriage is a burden; I am saying this is really just how guys are. Bad marriages are burdens and good marriages are godsends, but men will always just be men. Women, however, envy wholly different things. Not being a woman myself, mind you, this is just speculation, but I think I have a pretty decent grasp on this. Women do not envy silly things like dirty sex or drunken fiascos, although I am sure they enjoy both when readily available. No, women envy the things that truly matter in the world: status and stability.

A woman will live above her means to appear wealthier, more glamorous, and more confident than she really is her whole life. She will scramble and scrape for every little piece of the good life she can muster to get ahead and stay there. You may think this is a selfish little bit on her part, and on mine for writing it. But I disagree for one big reason: Men have done so much to ensure that women remain behind them that the ladies have had to adapt this reflex. Since the invention of talking, women were delegated to keeping the house and appearances for the caveman provider, thus beginning a millennium of competition between the sexes that crested with Susan B. Anthony and culminated with the Equal Rights Amendment. I know and you
know that women are just as good and fucked up as men. In the end they will win their rights.

But in the back of their cerebrals, there was that instinctual tickle that craved status and hungered for not only a seat at the table but also the nicest most expensive table on the cul-de-sac. Much like the inner battle that men face every day keeping the sexual seed spreader at bay, women fight their own secret Gettysburg trying to balance a world where they have the right to be whatever they choose and yet still are worried about what the neighbor's house is worth. I am guaranteed a verbal bitch slap for saying this shit, but the truth is a sledgehammer. I am just the guy in the hard hat swinging it. I see it every day because I work with several strong, committed women who are almost always better than the men they work for. I have had the privilege of picking the brains of quite a few females in a position of power far above mine. They are vital, sharp instruments of intelligence and savvy and they know exactly what they want. But every fucking time, what they want is usually what somebody else has. So women are not immune to the allure or the palpable thrust of envy. They just envy different things. Some would say better things. I would say more esoteric things.

But the price of longing is charged to a credit card that does have limits. There is a finite reservoir we carry around like a camel hump. If you get what you want all the time, you will end up with all the time you want and nothing to show for it. There is a certain candor that comes with denying satisfaction. It builds character, breeds appreciation, and allows for achievements of real worth. Yeah, you get pissed for a while, but who really needs a bidet in their garage? Come on, we have to start being practical with our envious whims. This is a country that does not like being practical, though. This is a country of game
shows and instant winners, of self-starters and risk takers. This is a country where everything can be yours if the price is right. So common sense does not really blend when all-out instinct goes into the game plan. People will fill out Publisher's Clearing House entries until their eyes go numb in the hopes that they can win $10 million in forty-eight hours. Then they will not have to watch MTV's
Cribs
—they can be on it. Never mind the fact that
Cribs
features the homes of the famous. When they win their money, they
will
be famous. Never mind the fact that most of the bragging, grinning cocksuckers on
Cribs
do not even own the houses they are showing off. It does not matter. As soon as they get something for nothing, all their troubles will go away.

There you go, people. As soon as you get something for nothing, all your troubles will go away. Is that true? Is it just that simple? It seems to me that the people who play these games were not all that great with money to begin with, so what the fuck are they going to do with $10 million? They will wipe their ass with it. Then they are back at square one, with debt and interest. Good luck fishing that golden hook out of your sphincter: It has a barbed end and leaves a mark like a fucker. Use your pinky, it just might help. But common sense logged out of our chat rooms right around the time Thomas Paine died. It fled the scene like last call at a strip club, leaving us with soiled bills and creepy uncles lounging around sniffer's row. The American Conversation has become a monosyllabic, incoherent mess of dudes, bros, fucks, and Lindsay Lohan. All we care to talk about are things we cannot have, people we cannot be, and places we cannot go. In other words, the American Conversation is a fucking love story devoted to envy. And why not, man? We preach a new religion, so why should we not have the best god money can buy? We show the best shows and move the best moves and
just out and out outdo the rest of this giant blue pimple of a planet. Why not rub it into the global eyeballs a little further? If plights are the wounds this world tries to live with, America is a fucking ten-year-old with a Super Soaker full of lemon juice and dog piss. I think this is one of the reasons we go to war every ten years. We get really mad if we find that a country does not have the decency to envy our freedom like the rest of the world does. If we cannot be the most popular kid in school, we will burn the cafeteria to the ground. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. “Exterminate all the brutes!” Makes you want to salute a flag right now, huh? I am confident that is exactly what our founding fathers were trying to accomplish when they set down the blueprints for our timeless civil liberties. I love being American, but I hate other Americans.

So you see, this feeling of envy permeates us all. I am sure most of you would be very upset if I accused you of being dirty, stinky sinners, almost as sure as I am that you are all dirty, stinky sinners, but not because of envy. We all fight off bouts of boring inner botulism that threaten the sweetbreads of our soul, but wanting more and wanting it better than before is no reason to throw out last night's chicken yet. It makes no difference to me how you feel, really. I know where my moral limits lie. Envy comes with the territory, and if you want to lose sleep over shit you cannot control, go right ahead. Sorry, I have an allergy to stupidity. So I spend a lot of time sneezing, especially in airports. I go through tons of Kleenex. That is why I am angry with you people. You make me sneeze.
Stop being stupid!