The Seven Deadly Sins (2 page)

I am getting ahead of myself. Let me set the scene.

Every weekend the unclean would descend on a little building in West Des Moines called Billy Joe's Pitcher Show, a tawdry little place that housed a karaoke bar, a concession area, four bathrooms, and the world's single greatest movie theater ever. No stadium seating like you see today—just '70s tables with '70s
chairs and all the '70s ashtrays you could fill. During the week there was little fanfare—$1 movies reaching the end of their theatrical release and $2 Jell-O shots for caterwauling yuppies “singing” Huey Lewis covers. But on the weekends, this was ground zero. This was our turf because every weekend Billy Joe's Pitcher Show presented
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
.

From all over Iowa, tribes of misfits packed the place. The movie did not really matter, you see. There was nowhere else to go. You had to be twenty-one to get in a bar, and this was the era just prior to the great resurgence of all-age shows. There were no youth centers (well, no youth centers you'd want to go to, and some were dangerous), and no one was legally allowed to gather in parks after the curfew, which I never bothered to learn. To quote Henry Rollins, “your choice was fish.” We were the greatest motherfuckers of our generation and we had nothing to do. So we turned nothing into something, mostly out of nothing at all. Billy Joe's became the rallying point. Billy Joe's became the catalyst. And we defended it with our own blood.

Call one of us a fag, and we all threw down. Call one of us a loser, and you'd be dealt with severely. Just because you did not understand us, it did not mean we were wrong. We were amazing because we wanted to be, and fuck you if you could not keep up. We felt like the latest and maybe last great iconoclastic surge, and it did not matter if the world did not know our names. The world was not allowed to join our club.

The party began at the theater, as always. We would pass the hat, buy as much shitty booze as possible, and eventually invade some house with a bit of room, a radio of some sort, and a lot of insurance. This night we managed to procure shelter from the storm in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-story, cookiecutter
house in the suburban hell known as West Des Moines. That, as they say, is when the real fun began. In fact, to this day, people merely refer to the following series of events as The Night.

I have faint memories for the first few hours: shots of Jager, vomiting, jumping on moving cars, more shots of Jager, smoking on a couch when I was not even supposed to be smoking inside, even more shots of Jager. . .it is always the nights you cannot remember that eventually become the stories you don't forget. During a lull in the roar of the insanity, I made myself scarce to catch my breath.

I found myself in the garage, smoking a cigarette, freezing my ass off, and sitting on an unforgiving metal folding chair in the middle of a concrete void. I was coming around again, the proverbial second wind, which was usually when I ended up doing the most damage. The halo of liquor was giving way to the horns of ingenuity, and I was reveling in the moment, sober enough to appreciate it and drunk enough not to take notes. Later I learned that you have to live
in
those moments, not
for
them. If you look too hard, they blow right by you. If you do not live enough, you will regret every breath. So I was reflecting, but not too much. I was just getting started.

And as it turns out, at that exact moment, the starter pistol happened to walk through the garage door. For the sake of our story, we will call her “Beth.” She was a fiery-eyed, raven-haired miscreant from parts unknown, prone to wearing black and fluttering her heavily shadowed eyelashes. She had a pheromone about her that just screamed “lust.” And we had been flirting for weeks.

Beth slid slowly through the door and stopped at the top of the stairs leading into the garage. As I looked up, she said something low and seductive. Being smoother than chocolate pudding, I fired back, “Huh?”

“I said, ‘whatcha doin', silly?'” Her eyes were burning with a cross between mischief and innovation. Something was on her mind, and God help me I wanted to know what it was.

She came and sat in my lap and kissed me slowly. It was then that she revealed her plans: I was to be the lucky winner of a threesome with her and another girl who we will call “Kelly,” who was on the other side of the sexual spectrum but equally enchanting. As if on cue, Kelly came in the garage and sat on my lap as well. I have got to tell you, when two girls are straddling you like a pommel horse, you are subject to the will of your crotch. Lust is a lozenge I live to savor for days. But we will get back to that sooner than later.

So let's review: Our hero has just imbibed copious amounts of alcohol, thrown up, and has now been propositioned for a threesome with two comely vixens. Things could not look better, right? Well, as I have been shown time and time again, fate hates us all.

We sequestered ourselves to one of the bedrooms, most likely the host's parents' room based on the Spartan layout and garish décor. But it didn't matter what it looked like; the lights were soon off and pesky clothes shed in haste. Mouths found skin—those “sticky fumblings” that Hannibal Lecter described with such relish—and soon the three of us were a Chinese puzzle with no solution, a delicious triangle of heat and ferocity. The girls were giggling and moaning. I was happy for them to do what they wanted to each other, as I, too, was extremely busy.

As this was taking place, a coup was being plotted downstairs. A bum rush was about to happen, the definition of that phrase being “a large group of people invading a space they were not invited to, nor has enough room to handle their numbers.”
Forty people whispered and giggled, determined to inject themselves into our festivities, at just the right moment. It did not help matters that my best friend, Denny, was Cobra Commander behind this fiendish scheme, but it made sense because he was the guy I had appointed to watch the door so nobody would interrupt us.

Well, just as three bodies were learning new ways to occupy the same space (and just when it was getting very, very good), the door burst open, the lights flew on, and a multitude of cheers and jeers sounded the great chorus that officially put an end to our sweet little tryst. Needless to say, I was very angry, but seeing the good-natured mischief on everyone's faces, I slowly let that ebb from my mind and, climbing out of bed buck naked, proceeded to throw my soiled yet unfulfilled condom at the closest gawker.

As I was putting my clothes back on and watching the crowd gathered at the foot of the bed getting larger, I had a magnificent idea. Maybe it was the booze coursing through my blood stream. Maybe it was my eyes still recovering from the shock of the lights being turned on. Maybe it was because I just wanted to give these fuckers a taste of their own medicine. But I had the idea in my head, and no one was going to stop me from doing what I wanted to do. It was simple: I was going to stage dive off the bed onto the big pocket of onlookers, and they would crowd surf me out the door and down the stairs to the bar in the kitchen, where I would make myself a drink.

It bordered on ingenious. How could it not work? I was
Corey Fucking Taylor
, even then. So, pulling on my pants (I was at least that courteous), I leapt onto the bed and jumped. . .and flew head on into a ceiling fan that I had either forgotten was just
above the bed or just did not see because of drunken tunnel vision. I swear to you, and this is not for comedic value or to belie any weakness on my part, this had to be the strongest ceiling fan known to humankind. I am talking industrial strength, folks. It hit me three times in the space of two seconds: once in the forehead, once right between my eyes, and the last bruised the tip of my nose. It gashed my head open and gave me two black eyes. I mean, one second I was the coolest dude at the concert, the next I was on my back trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. It was so fast that I did not even know it until I realized someone was helping me, in a daze, off the floor. And God love my friends, they never told me how fucked up my face was, so I mingled amongst them looking like Rocky Balboa until I caught my own reflection in a bathroom mirror an hour later. I should have just carried around a sign that said, “Take a Picture with the Party Zombie.”

I tell you this story not to brag nor to build up some kind of false image of myself. It is just very important to this collection of insights and incites that you understand right out of the gate that when I talk about “sin,”
I know what I am talking about
. This is no novice you are dealing with: Decades have not washed my hands clean yet. Think about this: In one night—hell, in one five-hour period—I experienced every single one of the so-called seven deadly sins. I was a mad-dog linebacker running the moral gamut of gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, wrath, envy, and vanity. And to this day, I recall this confounding chain of events with fondness and a knowing smile.

Which brings me to the reason behind this book, a reason I have embraced like a summer romance. I have cleared my schedule
and my throat to call all of your attentions to a fading little fact that no one wants to admit because they are so mired in habit and weird guilt. I know you can handle the truth. I know you can take a shot to the brain groin. I believe in you, so believe me when I tell you this.

The seven deadly sins are
bullshit
.

Everybody still here? Anybody convert to Scientology because I let fly that little nugget of reality? No? Then we may continue.

For centuries, these so-called “weapons against morality” have been the big scary banners waved in the faces of millions. They have been used as the righteous fist packs by the Right or the Holy Brigade to keep masses of normally free-thinking, free-spirited folks under a multitude of firebrand thumbs. When the world seems to be jumping up and down and celebrating a little too much, fun-hating fuckfaces trot out these Golden Rules of Control to knock us all off of the Giddy Wagon. Why most of us cannot mind our own business I will never know, but I do know this: Nine times out of ten, sin is a matter of opinion, and in my opinion sins are only sins if you are hurting other people.
So
if you are not hurting anyone else, where is the damn sin?

Sure, the seven deadly sins can induce pain and malevolence in the best of us. They can overwhelm the greatest minds and the most stoic souls. But they can also empower and influence you to do incredible things at pivotal moments in your life. To say these things are mortal weapons that bend us all into the worst scum in humanity is an outright travesty. We all experience these feelings. We all struggle to maintain civility in a savage world. But there are times when it is our right as people to let these “sins” wash over us like a warm Caribbean wave. There are times when I say we, as a species, should just out and out
revel in the sensations that these “sins” predicate. We are human fucking beings, for Christ's sake: We are not perfect. It is in our peculiarities where we find our character and individuality. Personally, I do not know if I could trust a person who does not have some grit left over from his or her past. We are defined by our dignity to rise above debasement; we are certainly better people for doing so.

They say “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” That is exactly my point. Not only are we all guilty of just being ourselves, we were never guilty in the first place. The only problem comes when we become caricatures of these deadly whims, like the politician who extols family values yet is forced to resign because of a dirty little fuckfest with a hooker in a truck stop bathroom, or the movie star who believes himself above the great unwashed just because his cheek bones are pronounced and angular. These people are
not
sinners: They are just shitty people.

I am not selling salvation here, but I am preaching moderation. Some of you motherfuckers are indeed crazy. I have no qualms on pointing out the obvious. So what if you like to fuck? Who cares if you enjoy actually having money, or love to eat, or are impassioned, or use your covetous nature to push yourself to new heights? Who gives a shit if all you want to do on your only day off is lay in bed and fucking sleep? Or if you think you are the sexiest prick on the planet?

Who cares? That is none of my business. It is
yours
. If you can live with it and you are not hurting anyone else, frankly I applaud you. At least you are not touting some doomed party line about the expressway to heaven. The whole reason for these supposed sins is really about control.

Think about this: A thousand years ago, the aristocracy wrapped themselves in so much excess that they should have burned here on Earth, but because they were royalty, they were considered ordained by God. There were no accusations of depravity leveled at them. In fact, the only time they were circumspect was when they killed one of their own. If they were given a theocratic pass just because of their birthright, what, in these modern times, makes it any more different for us? Sure, on one hand that sort of logic is a great reflection of medieval ignorance. And yet it would mark the very definition of America's founding principles: We are all equal. So one man's sin is another man's indulgence. Blue bloods glut themselves every day on the wants and needs of the upper crust. So when those of us in the middle or at the bottom do it, why should we burn in the house of the Christian boogeyman? Why should we be condemned for weekend indulgences that are just another Monday for the echelons of wealth?