The Seven Deadly Sins Read online

  Do you know why I am angry?

  You make me angry.

  That makes me a sinner.

  You make me a sinner.

  Go fuck yourself.

  chapter 3

  Lust Disease

  I was in a beat-up bathtub backstage in 1999, and four women were preparing to piss on me simultaneously.

  Welcome to the Lust chapter, kids.

  Yeah, it really happened, and not because I am into water sports on any level. It was because when you mix women and booze, sometimes you just want to see how far you can go. We had just played Pittsburgh outdoors in October under a train bridge for some sawed off, shady-ass promoter. The backstage area was literally a pair of bored out trailers with a couch in one and an office desk in the other. So one trailer was reserved for our dressing room, and the other was sequestered to be the “after-show area.”

  After our freezing-cold show, we all washed ourselves down the best we could and commenced to carouse with the people. I never knew we had so many “friends” in Pennsylvania. A few too many drinks later and I had the idea for perhaps the single greatest sociological experiment ever lit upon in a Penn State shack. So, very confident and very inebriated, I climbed up on a chair and posed the question: “Hey!! How many girls want to piss on me?!”

  Four hands raised in unison.

  A mass exodus wandered into the cracked out bathroom. I stripped down modestly, reminding the spectators that it was cold and “shrinkage was expected,” and laid my drunk ass in the tub. The four participants positioned themselves over me ass to back and, as if on cue, squatted. It was fucking hilarious. I laughed the entire time. That got everyone laughing. When they were done, I showered off and I was happy when they all joined me.

  Needless to say, after this silly little spectacle, it quickly turned into a lot of sex, with limbs and mouths and fluids galore. Nothing is boring when you are ready to except the impossible as a possibility.

  Lust, my Achilles Heel, the crazy monkey on my back, flailing and screaming and using my hair as a pair of handle bars, steering me toward the edge. It has taken me so far beyond the limit I could write a whole book about these exploits alone. It has also taken years to get it under control, to get it to the point where it does not make me do most of the stupid things that float through the Caligula-esque fantasy land that has been my life.

  For instance, do you know the problem with threesomes? They are easy to start, but there is never enough room.

  In 1995 I moved to Denver, Colorado, for a few months. It was a fairly big deal for my friends—I was moving there to get my music going because in my head, bigger city meant bigger musical gene pool and better opportunities. It was the only thing I was good at and the only thing I wanted to do with my life, so (ironically) I quit Stone Sour, packed my things into four big duffel bags, and prepared to blast off for the Mile High City. I already had a ride with my ex-girlfriend plotted and a line on four bands that needed a singer/songwriter ready for the big time.

  But my friends were not about to send me off without a big fucking party. So the night before I left, we converged on a house on the east side of Des Moines and proceeded to drink ourselves silly. We had gallons of cheap-ass hooch and a house full of madness. Noxious ichors like Southern Comfort and Mad Dog 20/20 flew around in the face of common sense and good manners, so it slopped all over annexing walls and floors. There were only so many rooms available to hang out in, so a lot of us wound up hanging on the street, singing songs to the moon and making peace with the mutual pasts we might have in common. To them, I was never coming back. I was just glad to be with my friends one more night, and trust me, for once sex was the last thing on my mind.

  Only two hours later, I was engaged in a threesome across the street in the parking lot of a church in the front seat of a Monte Carlo. I had one girl bent over on the floor of the passenger seat and another was leaned all the way back in the driver’s seat, letting her holiest of holies get devoured by the girl I just so happened to be inside. It slowly became a complex pretzel of thrusting and sucking, juices and orgasms. I felt like I was being overwhelmed by smells and tastes until I realized it was the gas fumes. I was being poisoned in a wonderful ménage a trois and I was living for it. It was cramped as hell but it was one of the all-time hottest adventures I have ever found myself embroiled in.

  If you could not tell, my life has quite frankly been one giant fuckfest.

  One thing is for certain—I have never had trouble with women. And if I have one fatal flaw, it is that lust has always been the loudest angel on my shoulder. I lost my grip and my virginity when I was eleven years old to a very giving and fucked up babysitter, and it has been the line of iron sulfide in my stone cold resolve ever since. I came, I saw, I came again. What can I say? It is the strangest life ever, but it is the only one I have got, the only one I want, and the only one I will ever need.

  It has made me have sex outdoors as many times as in. It has made me sleep with wives, girlfriends, and mothers of people I know. It has put me in situations in which being discovered by one’s parents is less than wonderful. It has bent me to its salacious will for the better part of my thirty-six years. It is the Ripper stalking my sexual Whitechapel, slicing and dicing through my qualms and morals. And with the exception of a threemonth bender five years ago, I have no regrets about it. Q.E.D.: no regrets, no sin.

  Sure there are some things I wish I had never done. There are certain people I wish I had never seen naked, let alone done the hunka chunka with. There was a woman I slept with on my twenty-eighth birthday in Poughkeepsie, New York, that was misshapen, missing teeth, and wearing blue spandex pants I am still trying desperately to forget. Nature has a habit of letting some erratic genes get through. Fuck, where was I? Oh yeah, we all have a troll under a few burnt bridges, but what one might call bad decisions, I like to call whittling down my array of taste. In other words, when you are shelling beans, you throw away the ones that might get you sick. You feel me?

  In our DNA, there is the built-in compulsion to breed, to procreate, spreading our “selves” as far as we can. The fact that it feels good is just an extra as far as I am concerned. Between the golden ratio and pheromones, it is a wonder more people are not fucking in the streets. So between instinct and free will, we get screwed, if you can excuse the pun. Man or woman, gay or straight, the intricacies of sex are major driving forces in our lives. Besides, a lot of our advancement is due to our wanting to get laid.

  Think about it. How many monumental moments in history can be chalked up to just wanting to be noticed by some sexy peeps? Huh? Napoleon’s victories, the Trojan Horse, rock ’n’ roll, peanut butter M&Ms. . .well, that last one I cannot back up, but I am totally right on with the others. Men and women have spent generations preening like neophyte peacocks in order to press flesh, and yet along the way have managed to achieve so much. Who would have thought lust would carry us into the future? Makes you look at Star Trek a whole new way, huh? You think Bill Gates got any play without genius and a stake in Microsoft?

  Here is a thought: Do you think Bill Gates can get an erection without crashing? Can he find a woman’s V.J.J. only to have that sexual window close on him? If he gets pop-ups, how many viruses come with them?

  Man, what the fuck am I talking about?

  Who cares why we want to rub up on yummies? The fact is that we do, and calling it a sin is asinine at best. Why are people so ashamed of being human? Why do people attach terrible stigmas to instinctual behavior? You would think lust would be the one human drive that would almost be a guaranteed “Get Out Of Jail Free” card, seeing as any person with junk in their trunk and nothing good on cable likes to shoot sticky DNA on their carpet. Yes ladies, I know that is not how you work: Get in the bath, light some candles, and think about Gerard Butler then. God knows I do.

  Lust gets the Scarlet Letter because lust begets dark compulsion when it is twisted by environmental agitation. Brutal upbringings, disgusting mother figures, m
onstrous father figures, molestation—there is a heinous gamut of psychoses out there that can wrench something that is supposed to give joy and turn it into a deadly weapon. Murderers speak of bloodlust; no wonder people get uncomfortable when they hear about real lust.

  But here is the thing. People do not want to hear it, but this is what I think. Everything I just described is not lust. These are products or histories that lead to mental health issues. It is not even close to the real thing, and here is why. Lust can only be felt and released by strong minds. It is meant to be empowering so people can embrace and enjoy it. Everything else is camouflage for puritanical denial. Nothing makes people feel guilty more than tying implied darkness to sex and the inevitable lust. However, if you do the math, rape is not about lust: It is about hate, control, and sickening rage. Molestation is not about lust: It is about generational abuse and a broken sense of self. Murder is not about lust: It is one of the real sins I will address later.

  Real lust is a celebration of the sexual self, a whole other side of yourself that comes to life in the right circumstances. It is letting yourself go, trusting that the other person is there with you. Real lust gets your blood going; it gets everything going, really.

  In short, lust should always be accompanied by good fucking.

  I know that is kind of crude of me to say, but man I have got to tell you some of the best times in my life have been spent naked and sweaty, not counting those times I was in a sauna in Greece. For a very long time it was one giant Blake Edwards movie, with excess and access abound. I can thank lust for introducing me to the beauties of oral sex, both giving and receiving. Because of lust I am now in the know about a position called the Hawaiian Monkey Fuck, which is a Tekken-like position that requires total concentration and the ability to be as limber as a cat. It is daunting but extremely gratifying if you can keep from cramping—it is hard to keep your legs and back like that. So my advice is to stretch out prior to this endeavor.

  Much like wrath, the shit that comes out of people’s mouths when they are in the throes of lust is equally stupendous but in a hilarious sort of way. There is nothing like hearing, “I hate you! Fuck me!” I have heard things that have made me laugh so hard it has started fights midcoitus, resulting in departure and a case of blue balls. Women who fart when they are gripped by multiple orgasms, women who squirt when they cum. . .man, I cannot help it—when something is funny, I guffaw with the best of them.

  That is not to say I have come out unscathed. I have scars that have their own little hellish tales. I have drunken visions of going to bed with one girl and waking up with another. They started out as the same girl, they just looked incredibly different, and better, in the dark. We have all had that experience of coming out of a whiskey-drenched slumber and all of a sudden your house is fucking haunted. And why do they always want to make you breakfast? I cast you out, unclean spirit! Where the hell is Max Von Sydow when you need him?

  Instead of diving hip deep (no pun intended) into the usual suspects, I want to talk about something I find hysterical: the times when we feel anything but lustful and sexy. For instance, there is nothing less sensual than trying to look suave when you know you have to take a shit. I do not care who you are—you could be Brad Pitt or Rocco Siffredi—no one can find the stones to make a move when torpedo tube #1 is flooded and ready to launch, if you smell what I am shoveling. The turd pressure alone is enough to wilt the strongest boner right to the hilt. And if you are feeling unfresh, good luck with your game. This is more of a woman problem, really. Guys could smell like hot garbage and still be ready to go Casanova on the opposite sex. Women are a little more discriminating. Then again, women have much better taste.

  That is really the issue, right? Men and women have very different triggers when it comes to lust. Most men are basically dowel rods in search of the next piece of wood for insertion. Women are multidimensional sexual beings; they are susceptible to attraction on so many dynamics that you never know what is going to float their boat—hopefully allowing you to put the motor to said boat. Where men only need a few seconds and a cocktail (again, no pun intended) to be ready for hot jungle sex, women usually need time, talk, and a good whiff of the intellectual pheromones. I know some women are just as chauvinistic as us dudes are, but I am merely making a point. Men and women handle lust in very different ways.

  So here is my question: What the hell does “God” have against fucking?

  We have just established that people do the sexy time in so many ways. If the clergy have the Holy Handbook, complete with merit badges, I would like to personally peruse the chapters and get a grip on the codex therein. Is it like a pie chart? Is there a graph with graduated states of arousal? Do the sins themselves graduate to misdemeanors or felonies? Are there subsections on certain sins in which the penance is more lenient, say for penalties regarding sex in public as opposed to sex with Myrtle the Cow? My final question is easy: If there is a secret manual, when do we ever get to see it? They leave us to our own devices to distinguish between sexual right and wrong with nothing more than recrimination. How does it feel to be left hanging with guesswork and assumption when it comes down to your immortal soul?

  This is why I am calling Holy Horseshit. There is no book. There is no script. There is no Godly Guideline. There is nothing more than the personal opinion of those who are quite convinced that they are closer to God and, therefore, more important and smarter than we are. What an impossibly fucked up attitude. They stand on high and think they are infinitely better than we are. Well, the last time I checked none of my friends or family were guilty of child molestation. In fact, in my opinion, children are more in danger of being abused in a church than anywhere else. The Church cannot handle their own lustful ways, so how dare they question ours?

  Again, do not get me wrong. I am talking about regular old-fashioned lust here. I am not making an argument for people who try to disguise or defend sex and abuse against children, rape, or anything else that is not between consenting adults. As far as I am concerned, there is no difference whatsoever between a repeat rapist and a NAMBLA member. That is not lust. It is a sickness. These people are nothing more than monsters among us, looking for another victim to terrorize in an effort to alleviate their own pain. They can talk all they want and hopefully choke on every word. My fight is with those who would take away pleasure that the majority of us love to experience.

  And now, back to the faithful.

  In terms of lust, of all the sins on the soul radar, it is the most physical of all of them. Sure one can say that wrath makes people want to take bricks to heads, but it is way more emotional in theory. Lust can be felt, but it is the episode one chooses to get involved in that really seals the deal. Religious folk will claim that even unfulfilled lust is a sin, but that is a copout designed to control how you think and feel. To me lust becomes “sin” in copulation. I may not be an expert, but I have definitely had sex. In healthy circumstances, sex is not a crime. So why is lust a sin?

  I was living in Denver, enjoying the fruits of bachelorhood, when I found myself in what Papa would have called “a delicate situation.” You see there were two women I was involved with. For anonymity’s sake, and to make sure I do not get sued and lose the ten bucks I make on this book, we will call them Kate and Penny. They were both very different, very strong-willed women who I enjoyed many sweaty nights with. But I do not want to spoil the ending. Let me give you some background.

  I was one of several people living in a two-bedroom flat in Lakewood, Colorado, just outside of Denver off of Sixth Avenue. I was doing time at a video distribution company, loading reels or “pancakes” of blank film onto machines. The machines would then be programmed to fill empty videocassettes with the appropriate amount of blank tape so they could be mass-duplicated for distribution. That tells you how long ago this was—the heathens were still using VHS tapes. As you can imagine, with a job this innocuous, is it any wonder I tried to find any excuse or opportunity to let loose l
ike a coyote on meth?

  I spent a lot of nights out on the town, drinking my dirty little cares away and doing things that would make the Marquis de Sade look like Barney the Dinosaur. Word to the wise: Sex in a snowdrift is not at all worth it.

  Anyway, I ran with a fun-loving bunch of lunatics, and these two girls were part of that group, fringe players in our little cabaret of chaos. Kate was from the South, a blond-haired, blueeyed curvy vixen with a day job and night school who could turn any little phrase into something salacious with the slightest flick of her accent-tinged tongue. She was dirty, too; we had sex on more floors than we did in beds. I do not know how women deal with carpet burn sometimes. I am a wuss when it comes to chafing.

  Penny, however, was a redhead through and through and the hottest nut job I have ever had the pleasure of bedding. Her eyes would light up before her anger got the best of her, so you knew instantly if you had pissed her off. Her body was delicious and her voice was a razorblade—it could cut across a crowded room at a party full of auctioneers. Sex at her place was a bit weird seeing as she slept on an air mattress next to an open window. Honestly, now that I think about it, I am fairly certain I only had sex in a bed like four times during my tenure in Denver. It was almost exclusively on the ground, floor, or the aforementioned snowdrift. Oh, and a handful of trysts in cars. . .goddamn those bucket seats.