You're Making Me Hate You Page 8
When I was a kid, feathered hair and alligator-baited short sleeves were a rage. Women teased their hair as high as humanly possible, and the entire natural world seemed to be stone washed. I wasn’t entirely impressed, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t forced through peer pressure and social facilitation to engage in these atrocities. Yes, I wore that shit. But you need to understand that this was all that was available at the time. Thrift shops weren’t the centers of the groovy universe like they are today. You couldn’t get away with ironic fashion in the eighties—it was virtually extinct in those days. I am indeed aware of how fucking sad I sound right now. Shit happens in every industry. It was a tough time for people of my ilk: the sad few who were forced to commit the sins of terrible fashion faux pas. But it was either that or go to school in mechanic’s uniforms, and after it didn’t work the first time, I didn’t do it again until my tenure in Slipknot began. So Plan B was a shitty bust.
Not all of the stuff was bad, though. I can remember being skinny and cool enough to wear punk/goth/metal/rock fashion pretty well. I had a considerable collection of bondage pants, poet shirts (yes, poet shirts—I was a Lestat fan …), leather jackets, and enough Iron Maiden Ts to stock a Hot Topic on Black Friday. Now, I couldn’t pull most of this off today—I may not be fat, but I have a neck the size of an offensive lineman. However, I have a sense of pride that, among my pack of wild dogs, I could hang with the Dobermans. I couldn’t tell you whether I looked worth a shit, but enough people took notice that I wasn’t ostracized either. So maybe I did give a shit about fashion many aeons ago. But then I discovered flannels, jeans, and comfortable Vans. Effectively my life as a billboard was over.
As a (snicker) celebrity, I am encouraged by others to dress up from time to time, especially at awards shows. You can guess how those conversations go by the suits I have worn diligently to the Kerrang Awards for years. If you’re not familiar, just Google “Moods of Norway,” and that’s just the tip to that titanic iceberg. Every once in a while, though, I do throw on a nice suit so the wife and I can go out and look respectable. I admit she looks much better than I do when it comes to the upper echelons of suave accoutrement. I just do my best to keep up while hoping I also don’t make her look like she’s married to a guy who still works at Hardee’s. Unfortunately, for the most part, I just can’t be bothered to give a shit. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when I wear a suit, I feel like I raided my uncle’s closet. They just feel like someone else’s clothes. I wish I were more comfortable in this stuff, but I used to streak naked around my old neighborhood, and I can honestly say I felt more normal doing that than wearing a tuxedo.
Maybe it’s because of the way I have witnessed other people stress over how they look and the way they worry whether people are going to notice or, worse yet, make fun of them. Let’s face it: Joan Rivers, God rest her soul, was ripping people to shreds over their fashion sense a lot longer than I was. I should have let her edit this chapter before she passed just to make sure I didn’t step on any of her material. There was a malicious gaze of sheer glee that glazed over her as she picked over the clothes that people were wearing to places like the Oscars or the Grammys, like a kid watching his friends eat candy he knows fell in poop. You could almost see the targets in her eyes as the masses moved their asses through her crosshairs. When she found the weakest of the pack, she pounced. Rivers did not let up until her comments were in People, Us Weekly, and every website devoted to eating our heroes. Then a few months later it would happen again. I’m sorry, but I’d rather wear sweatpants into the White House with the world’s biggest boner than go through that kind of scrutiny any time in my fucking future.
It’s also my distaste for “peacocking” that causes me to turn my nose up at the deliverance of trendy getups. To me, alpha males are like the Betamax: not much use in the modern world and a pain in the ass to get rid of. Alpha anything is just ugly—women are just as bad. This brings me to the center of the universe where all this hellish crap collides: the modern-day club night. Good fucking God, I haven’t experienced discomfort like this since my first rectal exam … and at least my doctor felt bad about it later. Let me explain—not about the rectal exam but about the … never mind. It would take longer to back out of this apology correctly than it would to explain why it’s none of your business about that exam or why I’m depressed that my doctor hasn’t called me.
One weird moan …
Anyway, I did a couple of solo shows in Las Vegas a few years back—one with a band full of my friends and another one purely acoustic—and the show’s promoters asked me to make an appearance at their club as a way to drum up excitement for the events. For whatever reason I agreed. Almost as a subliminal way of admitting that I’d made a huge error in judgment, I dragged my friends in the band and the rest of my family along with me. It became very apparent I’d made a horrible decision as I was suddenly and effectively blasted by nausea and regret once we entered the establishment.
Everywhere I looked men and women alike were gussied up in their “party clothes,” which, by the way, ALL FuckING LOOK THE GODDAMN SAME, just in different colors and cuts. It was like being in the Realm of the Replicates on Hawaiian-Shirt Wednesday. The women all had on dresses that barely fit over their surgically enhanced bodies, making them resemble a strange mix of Madame Trousseau’s and the Hall of Presidents at Disney. There was no room to dance, but they did their best to do so anyway, clumsily flailing and wailing in a room that was too small to be that loud. The men were, shall we say, afflicted with the same outfit: tight dress shirts with rolled sleeves, terrible jeans with bedazzled jewels and tribal stitching, heavily gelled spiky/slicked hair, and black nondescript shoes. Every one of them had already sweated right through their clothes. Every one of them looked greasy and moist. Every one of them smelled like they’d bathed in Cool Water or some other noxious tonic. It was by far the grossest display I’ve had to endure in my forty years of dragging knuckles on this planet, and that’s saying something—I’ve been to Tijuana.
The music might as well have been cued up by the entire cast of the Jersey Shore. This did nothing to improve my situation; in fact, it made it harder for me to leave because everywhere I looked these mooks were “dancing.” Dancing, as I like to say, like they were being shot with arrows. They were also blocking all the exits with their meandering moves and silly spillage. I had nowhere to go, so the family, my friends, and I huddled in a back booth, mocking the people while also studying their habits. The fucked up thing is that with the exception of a table of businessmen from Dallas, NOT ONE PERSON IN THE JOINT GAVE A SHIT THAT I WAS THERE.
Not one.
There was no real reason for me to be there—this wasn’t exactly my demographic. But the club owners insisted I stay for a while because it would be good for my turnout. As it in fact turned out, none of those people came to either show, and I looked for their types in the audience really fucking hard. I even sniffed the air a few times from the stage hoping to get a whiff of that sad aftershave scent I’d been bombarded with in that club. No dice. So I was subjected to repugnance on a molecular level, which assaulted every sense I came equipped with, for absolutely no good goddamn reason whatsoever. I remain convinced that a chunk of my dignity stayed behind and died a terrifying and unpleasant death deep in the leathery cushioned bowels that night. At the very least it fled the scene, concerned that this type of punishment might be thrust upon it again, and no amount of photos on milk cartons or any poignant vignettes on Unsolved Mysteries will ever bring it back to Daddy. And it’s all because of that club.
That fucking club …
I was there for two damn hours.
Fuck …
I guess I shouldn’t bitch too much. I mean, after all, if this is what people are comfortable and happy wearing, then who am I to judge? That all makes sense—it really does. But I’m really good at tearing shit asunder. People ask me why I don’t have my own reality show. It’s because I would be sued within se
conds of the first episode for defamation of character. I just don’t give a shit. When I see something that’s stupid, I say something. No one is safe—I look in the mirror and attack myself every morning. I have a system: wipe the eye boogers out from the corners, pick up and load the toothbrush with Crest, call myself a foul-mouthed cocksucker, brush, spit, and floss. I like routine. And you have to agree that some of the shit these people wear is pretty silly. I saw a singer in a band—I won’t name which one, but it’s the same one who cries after sex every time—wearing a trench coat that only had one arm. Make no mistake, I stared at that motherfucker. I asked him whether he’d done that himself—you know, to be different. Nope—he paid a designer WAY TOO MUCH MONEY to do it for him. The whole time I just kept saying the same thing in my head: Who do you think you are, fucking Neo? Go back to the Matrix … and fuck yourself while you’re at it. I’d tell you who it was, but that fucking guy would sue me in a redheaded heartbeat. But if you’re savvy, there’s a clue in this book to whom it was. If you guess it correctly, hit me up on Twitter: @Corey TaylorRock. You will win … fuck all.
Sometimes fashion does make things easier. There’s no painful guesswork in school about which crowd you’re going to hang out with—you look for the appropriate look. You can tell the grits from the preps from the geeks from the artists. You can find the Jocks among the goths, the heshers, the cheerleaders, and the glee folk. When you’re young and just trying to find your place in the crowd, sometimes having that extra visual as a heads-up is worth its weight in fool’s gold. In the long run it might cause more pain than pleasure, but most of us just want to get through it so real life can start. It’s a lot like a minimum-security jailhouse: you just want to do your time, get out, and get on with it. Besides, we all know that most of the cool clothing in high school is just a costume, a pseudo-camouflage designed to help you blend in to the rest of your surroundings. But some people need the rockets’ red glare—those outfits that burn white hot in the moment only to be severely dated upon inspection of yearbooks at the reunion.
“Jesus Christ, Kelly! Is that you in study hall wearing Uggs and a sweater vest? What were you thinking?”
“Shut up, Jesse! Where is it? … Yeah! Here’s one of you in a cashmere jumper with meat cleaver earrings! Don’t think for a second that this was ever cool!”
I’d keep going with that exchange, but bile has filled the back of my throat and I don’t like that, so I’m stopping.
Superiority and confidence: these two forces of human nature combine like an after-school special with Captain Planet to reinforce how miserable we all feel when we’re young. This is another reason why humans are dipshits sometimes. Because we don’t have a handle on our own feelings at that age, we couldn’t care less about other people’s feelings. So we belittle and berate until those people are broken and banished to the corners of the gym, just biding their time until graduation. Hopefully they make it that far. But bullying has reached an all-time hateful high these days. There are swarms of disturbed children just waiting to pounce on any and every weakness. They are giving into the baser side of malice, set for destruction and a craving for flesh. They wouldn’t know what to do with compassion if it were sticking in their craws. These physical reverberations ricochet across the years, doing damage no one can believe, all because someone dared to dress like a dick or because their family was poor and had to shop at Walmart.
There are savages among us who feel no empathy, and you got the obscene knack and bags to try to suggest to me we should give a fuck about what fucking clothes J-Lo is wearing? How about you take a deep breath, hold it, then plunge your face into your own crotch at a violent speed and angle in the hopes you eventually fuck your own face off? Can you do that for me? You forgot to do that today.
By “you” I don’t mean anyone reading this book. Remember, we’re talking about the Faceless They—the shit heels just off camera who are busy doing the most injustice. No, not you—you are my peeps! We’re all good. Those other fuckholes can go eat their young for all I care. See?! Fashion makes me P-I-S-T PISSED! I want to smash shit against bricks or walls or coconuts—COCONUTS ARE HARD AND THEY HURT A LOT! Fuck, I’m on a tangent again. That’s what happens when you hate everything. But I don’t hate you—remember that. I’ll bring it up again later just in case.
Jerry Seinfeld did a bit that discussed when we would all end up in the one-design space suits of the future. I’m paraphrasing, but he said, “In every movie that is set in the future or in space, it appears we’re all wearing the same silver one-piece jumpsuits.” He never really gave an answer when he thought that would happen, but I’ve been thinking. Most of the Earth looks like a bunch of hard-ons in different clothing today. If we’re all going to look like tool bags anyway, maybe we should all start dressing the same. Is that too bold a Communist statement to make? It’s in the movies—and movies never lie—so why not just get to it? It would certainly alleviate some of my headaches. Your wardrobe budget would plummet. You’d be forced to remember people’s names because we’re all dressed alike. Maybe the differences that force us apart would become a nonissue, seeing as we’d all be in uniforms and there would be no assumptions about religion, class, or tax bracket.
But, of course, we’re only human.
All it would take is one friendship pin on the lapel of your space suit.
One person at work will notice it and ask about it. The next day that person will come back with two friendship pins on. Then four people will come in covered in them. Within a week the pins would become bracelets. Within a month Macy’s would be nut-deep in a Fall Friendship Sale. Paris would come up with a spring line for friendship chains that would tie people to each other. By year’s end the friendship pins and bracelets would be obsolete. In their stead would be love knots, grievance flowers for collars, and malice tape that you would only wear at family reunions. Then the real revolution would begin. First we’d roll up the sleeves on our silver unitards. Then we’d tight-roll our already tight cuffs. Then we’d cut off the legs. Then we’d only cut off one arm (so stupid …). By the time two years had passed, people would be talking about why we were all in the same outfits in the first place. There would be rallies and protests where we’d all show up wearing them inside out or upside down—anything to make our point. That’s when the militia would come in. That’s when the real fashion wars would drive us all toward the brink of oblivion.
It’s our genetic code that fucks us in the end: we all need to be individuals, to stand out in the crowd, and to be heard in the convex confines of the herd. It’s the price we pay for free will that keeps us apart and unwilling to read or, for that matter, be on the same page. Maybe this is why we’re all destined to fight with one another for the rest of our existence. We’ll never be able to get out of our own ways long enough to see the other’s point of view because we’re all so fucking busy paying more attention to the sounds of our own voices than to what the other person is saying. We’re always more impressed with our retorts than the rest of the conversation. The whole time the opponent is talking we’re just thinking about what we’re going to say in reply; we don’t even hear the other side of it. So if you think a thing like fashion couldn’t start a war—if you believe that it’s too big a jump from flares to full-blown chaos—think about this: unless you saw them Sieg Heil, do you think you could tell a Nazi from anyone else unless they were in uniform?
Fashion plays a bigger part in how we view the world than even I can imagine sometimes. I wouldn’t know whether someone was a priest unless they had on the collar. I wouldn’t know whether someone was a soldier unless they were in their fatigues. I wouldn’t know whether someone was Jewish unless they were dressed in Hasidic garb. That may be good or bad; it all depends on how you look at it. What I take from this is that I don’t assume someone is something they are not unless I ask them or unless I see them in the clothing that would suggest such. I prefer to ask them. But I also assume the worst if someone is dressed like
a dickhead. That might keep me from getting to know someone who might otherwise be quite intelligent and kind. Fashion divides us on so many levels that it takes a while to really break things down. Yes, fashion is good for the individual to express his or her self. But it can be devastating in so many other ways as well.
Attractiveness: that’s what it boils down to in the long run.
Whether it’s plain old posturing or out and out snogging, we want to look our best when we’re doing it. The signs of the times have taken us down some seriously depressing and dark byways in regard to what is considered cool and hip. Yet it is imperative for sexual ripeness that we feel good about our decisions pertaining to the need for pressing against the proverbial flesh. This is also true for homosexuality or whatever your taste is: nobody wants to wake up with the troll from the party who looked like shit. As long as that person had “it” going on, you can wash away your worries in the morning shower or until someone skips a period. No one’s going to brag about a hookup that makes you want to hide under your bed for days. Fashion smoothes out the rough edges of our awkward attempts to get down. The sad part is that once you’re in it, the clothes come off, so there’s no getting around how weird your partner looks at the time, no matter how rad his or her clothing looks.
That could be a positive alternative: nudity. With nudity the only things you’re judged on are … okay scratch that. Depending on the weather or the circumstances, nudity can paint you into a corner socially that could take years to claw yourself out of, and that’s only after therapy and an address change. So what’s a better idea? Fuck, this is frustrating. Maybe if I paid more attention to what passes and what fails, I could wax a little more ecstatic, but honestly I just can’t be bothered to care about it. Who gives a shit whether those shoes don’t go with that dress? Who cares whether that shirt doesn’t match that waistcoat? Who really shares a plump fuck whether nobody wears waistcoats anymore or calls them waistcoats or whatever? There’s that diabolical bit in our mammalian brain pockets that enjoys a bit of schadenfreude as they’re tucked into the backgrounds of senior proms and dance halls, praying that the cool kids have a series of serious wardrobe malfunctions just as the slow numbers begin. We need it to balance the scale because, let’s face it: some people do look incredible with or without clothes. Others need all the help they can get. But when things go wrong, ahhhh … that’s when we’re all equal citizens on England’s mountain green.