The Seven Deadly Sins Read online

  This is fairly personal for me because I have always been angry. I think I gave up being cheery and gleeful when I was nine. As soon as my world turned upside down, it was over for me. So I suffered through poverty, humiliation, molestation, and abuse for most of my teens. And with every taunt, my anger grew. With every strike, my mind raced toward a judgment day that would have my aggression pouring through every street in every country all over the world. I wanted karma to drive stakes into the dark hearts that kept me bitter most of my adult life. I remember it all: I remember leaving school covered in food because all the bullies threw their trays at me. I remember memorizing all of the safe routes home because countless pricks with nothing better to do might jump me at any moment. I remember the prank calls and the toilet paper in my trees and the feeling that I would never ever be safe. I remember wanting to cry every morning before I left for school. I remember the shame and the bruises. I remember coming home to a house that wasn’t safe either.

  Now I remember all of their names.

  I know what they do and what their lives are like: horrible holes of ignorance and banality morning noon and night. And because I am still angry—and always will be—I think of how those knuckle-dragging mouth breathers ended up.

  And I smile.

  I may never let go of my wrath, my anger, but I will always have the last laugh.

  Is that bad? The Germans called that feeling schadenfreude, which means “pleasure derived from someone else’s failure.” Is it wrong to be ecstatic because the fucking bullies from my childhood turned into bigger pieces of shit than I ever could have imagined, and they are floundering in lives that I would not wipe my ass with?

  I guess to some people, it would be. Do I think so? Fuck no.

  Is it a sin? Of course not.

  It is damn near the definition of being human to be happy when your enemies eat a bigger helping of life’s shit than your own portion. How else can we get through days that are quite clearly the “worst we have ever experienced”? There will always be a yardstick for our achievements, and it will never be tall enough. And we will always be angry about it.

  But can we let go of the bitterness?

  That is the terrible and guilty taste that anger leaves in your mouth when you have finally vented, and even though you may have felt the reciprocity, the bitterness lingers. You see I have been able to move on. I have been able to release, to tap the valve of hatred and turn it into something positive. But the bitterness circles around me like cigarette smoke. Maybe it will never go away. It is okay though—it takes a journey to know where you are.

  Let’s talk about something awesome, like mindless wish killing.

  Now before you get all weird and beatnik on me, this is a harvested practice that has gone on for years. Everyone has angrily wished death on total strangers at least a hundred times in their lives. Think about it: the person driving in front of you who is either looking for an address or severely medicated. The people at the airport who have all the time in the world swerving languidly, interrupting the flow of pedestrian traffic. The morons who hold up the line at McDonald’s, spending twenty-five minutes “ummmm”-ing for something that is on a menu older than most people reading this book until they inevitably order the same #2 with a Coke they always fucking order. Mall walkers, dog walkers, speed walkers, slow walkers—these people are so frustrating they make us all want to chew and ingest stained glass until we pass out from internal bleeding. Impatience can breed fatal fury, in which case we wish the most dastardly and fucked up demises on those eating up too much of our precious fucking time.

  God knows I have.

  And if you say you are too “mature” for that, you are either a liar or in denial. We have all “Jack the Ripper”-ed our way through a crowd of people before, albeit in our profound little imaginations. It is that “self” shit again, the attitude in which “the only one who exists today is me.”

  That is all fine and fancy, but take it from me: There is nothing worse than passive-aggressive anger. I am just as big a cynic as the next guy, but when a close friend’s bitterness manifests itself in shitty smart-ass comments that knock the twinkle off of your twilight, then shit has got to stop. I am the first motherfucker in line to admit I have been extremely lucky in my life. I am fortunate to have a career, my family, even the opportunity to write this book. But when people I have known for decades come at me with this “remember where you came from” nonsense, it drives me straight up Homicidal Avenue. It is even worse when people openly refuse to recognize what you have achieved in life and instead treat you like you are still in second grade and it is your Friday to split the milk money.

  Grab some pen and paper, children, here is another free lesson. The best friends you will ever have are the ones who do not make you feel like you owe them a damn thing. Some of my “friends” have a tendency to insert themselves in places they did not earn the right to be. What the fuck do you do there? If you call foul on the play, somehow you are the asshole, and that is five years in a small city. If you do not, it is your own damn fault and you wallow in it alone. See the conundrum? It is even better when your family tag teams you—thank you, Christmas. You are officially the worst thing ever. I blame Coca-Cola: god damn jolly old St. Lick My Staff, sitting in judgment on harmless fucking toddlers with their acolyte trolls—you can call them elves if you want, I know the truth—and it is the same shit every year. Wish in one hand, shit in the other: Do not get me wrong—I love ties like the next guy. But I draw the line at singing ties. Horse shit, whoever invented the singing tie should be lined up and beaten with every fucking singing piece of shit they are responsible for bringing into a world that did not ask for them. And do not even get me fucking started on Pete Rose. God damn Cincinnati Reds—I get it, one guy can make the Hall of Fame because he had huge hands, but ol’ Petey makes a couple bets and he gets fucked. Do not even pretend that the other players are angelic—they are all fucking crooked.

  Where in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, did that come from?

  Quite frankly, that just made me pee. But only just a little. It will be dry by the time I get up from my counter space where I am allowed to write in the kitchen, giving me time to have a cigarette, change, and be piss-free by the time my wife realizes I am in bed. That, my friends, is time management. It is also the story of Jesus. Really. Most people would save their mangers for last when it came to cleaning them, so the last place on earth people would look for the Mini-Him would be the garage, which is all a manger is really. A stable is just a garage for your horses and shit, or, more to the point, their shit. Managers will only rent those rooms if they are stacked for the night.

  The thing about wrath is you have to know your buttons and who has got their grimy mitts on them. For instance, I hate driving in L.A. because I hit people. I do not mean hit them in their cars. I mean I hit their bodies with the car I happen to be driving. This is not my fault. The residents of Los Angeles plod across streets and around corners like they are (again) either looking for addresses or waiting to be touched by actual angels. You can blame the Pedestrian Right of Way Law in California. These fucking idiots just trot out into the middle of the goddamn street, so they are begging to be weeded out of the fucking gene pool. But because of this, I have officially hit forty-seven people in almost as many cars. Don’t worry, I will not be arrested because as a rule I wear a fake moustache when I drive anywhere, in any city.

  It seems California has cornered the market on buffoonery. Almost everyone there has a lifetime contract for retardation, so it is not my fault if they end up maimed or limping from a collision with a Chevy, know what I mean? Fuck them—any group of people that shiny, that handsome, and that stupid deserves a few wounds. It builds character; I only wish it made them a little fucking smarter.

  You may be saying to yourself, “Does this guy even like other people?” That, my creepy unseen friends, is a great question. I have no doubts that somewhere in me I am actually quite fond of my gala
ctic traveling pants brothers and sisters hitching a ride on this semicircular celestial body we call home. But for the most part, no, I do not like you. This is not my fault. It is yours. I do my best to get along. You keep fucking it up. And that, in turn, pisses me off. So do you know what that means? Very simple: If rage is a sin, then I am still not guilty because you guys make me inadvertently sin. You are all vicarious sin carriers, spreading godlessness like cooties. Rage gets the bolt of lightning because of you.

  Nah, just fucking with you; thanks for buying my book.

  Besides, I thought rage was a reaction. Rage is not really something you practice. It is a by-product of adverse stimuli. This changes the whole study. I mean, who should be blamed for something other people bring out of you? I think the people who elicit the response should bear the weight of the “sin,” if there ever was a sin in the first place. Numbnut humans bring out the worst in each other and walk away scot-free. That is a fucking truckload of monkey shit. If you make someone feel mad, you get the sin. If you make someone feel greedy, you draw the technical foul on the court. This is just common sense. If you ask someone to kill someone and they get caught, you can still be charged right along with the other person. So what is the fucking difference?

  The reason people are afraid of rage is the violence associated with it. Violence makes people nervous and nervous people cut up the land and stay on their own side. Like I said, everyone gets mad, but not everyone reacts the same way. Violence makes people hesitant to display their true feelings. Violence makes people flinch at loud noises on subways. Violence makes people think twice when dealing with—who else?—other people. It is the main reason we hold in our frustrations. It is why we waste time and money telling our worries to impartial therapists. Sometimes the stagnation of fury builds a conflagration of seething retaliation, bent on burning the churches and soiling the fields of our collective satisfaction. I know I sound like some kind of malevolent Nipsey Russell, but I watch the world without presumption, so I can safely say the rot of our reaction will always spoil the fruits of our creation. If you treat a situation a certain way, you will get a specific result.

  A long time ago I still had faith in people doing the right thing. Unfortunately, reality always intruded on this naïve notion. When I was nineteen, I landed my dream job of working in a music store. It was a chain outlet, but that didn’t matter. It was the musical equivalent of working at Wendy’s, but I was undeterred. I could listen to music all day and I got a sweet discount on all the CDs I wanted. It was a great gig even if I had to dress nicely, which I hated doing, but I did it with relish because for the first time, with the exception of actually playing music, I was good at something. It may seem stupid, but that made me feel normal, and even for me, normal is sorely needed once in a while.

  There was one problem. I had long hair. That may sound extremely minimal considering today’s standards and practices, but even as little as fifteen years ago, that was still a very big deal, particularly in the Midwest. I was not dying it, I did not have dreadlocks, it was not a crazy hairdo; I just had long hair. What was wrong with that, right? The answer to that question was “a lot,” apparently. You see, in this chain outlet’s regulations, it stated that a male employee’s hair could not be past the collar. I could give three-fifths of a red shit about that, but I was not told that or made aware of that when I was hired. So a few months in, the owner showed up to do a walk-through to see how the store was doing. Without a clue, I introduced myself. He took one look at me, then without another glance he turned to his assistant and said, “He needs to cut his hair or he has to go.” My manager did his best to defend me, but the damage was done. They fucking fired me.

  Are you ready for the really fucked up part?

  Across town, at another store of the same outlet, there was a guy with longer hair than me, and he had been working there for seven years. Seven fucking years. The manager at that store kept him hidden during inspections. I used him as an example for why I should be allowed to keep my job, but nobody wanted to rock the boat and say anything. I was fired; he kept his job until that chain outlet went out of business. I can only pray he is using his hair to mop out portalets in Toledo, Ohio.

  So when the chips were down, people sold me out to save their jobs, as most people will. Even the other long-haired guy could have said something, but he did nothing. You might be asking me why after all this time I am still a little raw about it. In all honesty, I had not even thought about it until I started writing about it just now. So I guess I am still a little pissed about it. The reason I am pissed about it is because it was not fair and I am a firm believer in what is fair. If you lose fairly, then you roll with it and you learn what to do better the next time around. But being bent over and fucked like a freak so everyone else can fucking feel better about themselves for another few days is the very essence of why I am still angry about it. Yeah, it should not be that big of a deal seeing as I have achieved quite a bit over the years. Yeah, it was a temporary job at best and I learned a lot from swallowing my pride and accepting that people are still uncomfortable about men with long hair. But was it right?

  I kicked ass at my job and I was responsible for boosting profits. I was good with the customers, and if I had been anybody else, I would have been in line for a promotion. I know, even back then I was not a big fan of compromise, and in the grand scheme of things it is a trivial matter. But what really should not have mattered was the length of my fucking hair. I was screwed twice, once by the owners and once by my friends. Do you still wonder why I remain mad about it? You give too many people access to your feelings and you will lose your grip on how to control them. For me it was a bitter lesson in loyalty and fairness. Thankfully people have come into my life to give me faith in those two precious qualities. But I still harbor lingering doubts about most people. I guess I always will.

  My much larger point is there are going to be instances in life that make you mad. If anyone tells you otherwise, you should slap their hand because they just lied to you. So if that is just a fact of life, how can that possibly be called a sin? It is a given that you will be angry. The sanctimonious and religious will tell you it is another example of Original Sin and that God will be merciful if you ask his forgiveness. Are you fucking kidding? Who are you to tell me about “God,” and if there is a “God” who the fuck are you to speak for him? Do you know God? Have you met God? Hey, here is an easier question: Are you a fucking liar? Have you ever had a notion that was not filtered through your God Ouija Board? Did God send you a text message from heaven? Did he use an emoticon with a halo? These holy rolling snake oil salesmen hold about as much water as a shot glass, but they know every way possible to quench the thirst of the bereft who are only looking for answers.

  The darkest moments appear in the crevices we try to avoid. We traipse through events and encounters clinging desperately to the rope swing, afraid to let go. Meanwhile, the irony that is our essence seeps into those same cracks. The result is that some of our shit gets on each other. So are we soiled by our surroundings or surrounded by soil? What comes first: the friction or the fate? We can all drown in our dissatisfied mire for all I care. I hope the world gets Mono. I hope the world wakes up with its liver missing after a hooker dopes it—fucking serves it right for pissing me off.

  But I empathize, you know? I get it. We have all got problems. We all have days when what we are eating might as well be dog food. We all have days when we feel like there is a sign above our mouths that says “piss here.” Because of these peculiar days, we all have a tendency to shoot hot daggers through our eyes at each other. The souls of the world are crying out in anguish, and they are all saying the same thing: “fuck off and die.”

  The thing to remember is that you are not alone in any of this mess. We all go through the same things and we are all waiting for the steam to subside. If that means we are all sinners, then sinners listen up, pull up some floor, and cop a squat. Everybody get a little closer together.
Do not be shy. Is everybody cozy? Cool. Check it: We all sin because they say we sin. So I say we stop listening. We tune them out like a local radio station. We should all feign a certain amount of deafness when it comes to the insanities of the clergy and the devout. But that could just be me. I happen to be a cynical son of a bitch. That scary bedtime story called the Bible is fine and all, but it is nothing more than a dusty tome for a dusty time. Never mind the fact that the Old Testament is just the Torah. Christians are so lacking in imagination that they borrow and steal for their own religion. They think they get away with it, but they are only lying to themselves. The devout Jewish look at Christians the same way Christians look at Mormons.

  You want to know what pisses me off?

  You all fucking piss me off.

  You make me sick to my fucking stomach with the way you all try to fuck each other over. You bring out physical pain in me because we have been on this rock for approximately 200,000 years and you still cannot get your shit together. You are all sad, starving, exhausting, sorry lumps of aberrant cell reproduction, and I still cannot get over how much you all look like me. That in itself is enough to make me want to rip my own eyes out of their sockets and pass them around the glory holes of a porn shop, but the fact that you are all so satisfied, so fucking okay with all of this makes it unbearable. If you had more than two legs, you would climb walls. If you had more than two eyes, you would still have garbage on your breath.

  So do you know what I do? I absorb all of this misused energy you cast around like semen at a frat party and I put it to use. I take all of your shit and all of your sweat and all of your fucking hate and I save it, so one day when you are all too busy doing to each other what you always do to each other, I will make you all fucking choke on it. I do not know how. I do not know when. If I could get the whole world to watch Showgirls for the rest of its life, I would not be as acidic toward it. But because that is not possible, I will wait. As far as I am concerned, we are not speaking right now, world. I know, I know—I will get over it, but not for a while. Not for a very long fucking time.