by Nikki Sixx
At the restaurant, sitting with her and Dj, I pulled out my business card and handed it over.
I had grown so sick of people asking me, based on how I look, if I were “in a band” that I just would say, “No, I am a tattoo artist.” At first, people would go “Oh,” then shrug and wander off, uninterested all of a sudden. That worked until L A Ink and other tattoo shows started popping up on TV. People began equating tattoo artists with celebrity and would ask me where my shop was or if I was on a show. Some even had begun to ask if I had a card.
So, long before I met Katherine, I had some business cards made up that said:
God’s Tattoo Shop
“Get some god under your skin”
GOD, Proprietor and CEO
KAT HOTEL fig.kh4.2
There were two phone numbers, one East Coast, one West. Both connected to a voice-mail message that said, “The person who gave you this number never wants to see or hear from you again” or something like that. My thought was that if you’re too stupid to get the joke, you have it coming. I thought it was clever.
She laughed and said, “One problem. The picture on your business card isn’t God, it’s Jesus.”
I said, “Aren’t they the same guy?”
Dj just scratched his head. Sparks, maybe.
I asked if she was up for inking my tattoo idea. She said yeah.
But I still didn’t know where on my body I wanted it. The tattoo was to be a handwritten prayer:
God, please forgive me for my sins…
And the ones I am about to do, too.
She said if I wasn’t sure where I wanted it, then we should hold off until I figured it out. I thought she was right but was somewhat taken aback by this young filly telling me what to do. We ate our steaks, laughed a bunch, broke the ice.
After dinner, I dropped her off at her studio, and Dj and I drove away. We were in the middle of recording the Heroin Diaries sound track and needed some beauty sleep before our morning session the next day.
I remember driving home thinking that Katherine von Drachenberg seemed like a very cool person.
Months and months pass, we’re busy as bees, building empires and masquerading as vampires. Having a go-to text buddy who got my dark, demented, self-loathing humor was cool. Someone who mentioned artists I had never heard of and was too busy to hang out most of the time. Funny as it seems, she was exactly like me. I never really had a female as a friend before so this was uncharted territory. I didn’t know it was possible. I remember the day she said she broke up with her boyfriend and my first thought wasn’t “Fuck, yeah!” It was more like concern. I didn’t plan on trying to date her. I think we both just planned on hanging out. That lasted until the night we decided to go to a movie at the Arch Light in Hollywood.
I picked her up at her studio and we drove off, excited to see There Will Be Blood. I told her I hadn’t seen it because, to be honest, I had only seen half. I figured half a lie was not really a lie. Ahh, to manipulate the situation in your head is something we men are all so grand at doing.
So, guilt free, we went ahead and parked and then it happened, by accident. We were walking toward the theater, and my hand somehow landed in hers. That uncomfortable feeling of “What is (he or she) doing?” blushed over us. It felt like fire running up the inside of my arm, and I took the pain, excitement, or confusion in one full gulp. Down the hatch, smoke shooting out of my ears, and eyes rolling around in the back of my head like black marbles.
Oh, shit, said my heart, now what?
After the movie we headed back to her shop. I came in to hang and for some reason only known to my heart, I tried to kiss her. In response, she tried to karate chop me. I laughed. What the fuck? That was a new one.
So I lurched forward and that was it. I could go on and on. That day, we laugh, I lost a leg and she lost an arm. In our broken little way of seeing life, that is romantic to us. She bought me a prosthetic leg once to remind me, and I still get goose bumps when I remember that first kiss. I think of us as Siamese twins. So close we are one and the same. Sometimes when you’re that close you fight and get on each other’s nerves. Sometimes you are willing to die for the other to live. This is how I want it to be. All or nothing. Giving, breathing, and exhaling magic.
Life is full of twists and turns and surprises. I am sober today, and if I hadn’t been, if I hadn’t changed my life years ago, if I hadn’t been willing to face the demons, then I wouldn’t be so lucky to love an angel now.
Katherine von Drachenberg has changed my life. She has inspired me to be more than I believed was ever possible. She has listened to me as if I am her muse, and I have swallowed her words and experiences much the same. She supports me as a father, knowing it is the most important thing in my life. She told me she would never lie to me and I could trust her with my heart, and I knew it was 100 percent true. At that moment I let down my guard, which had been tightly in place for years.
All these wonderful experiences are happening right now because I allowed sobriety and spiritual growth into my life. Thank you for letting me gush about her. If I am gushing over something so magnificent, it is my hope that you are gushing over someone or something, too.
Love is grand…
Love is the reason…
Nothing else really matters.
My first tattoo was a black rose on my right arm. The year was 1981. It seems like a lifetime ago. In fact, it was.
MEDITATION fig.sme5fd
KATHERINE, WET PLATE fig.sa93
FUN HOUSE fig.fh19
SKIN fig.ca711
AMY fig.am61
INNER CHILD fig.ic81
COMMITTED fig.c24
FEAR GOD fig.dog19.0 UPRISING fig.up341
STRENGTH fig.st61
WEAKNESS fig.319w
FORGIVE fig.f91
FORGET fig.8f?
BEAST fig.be61
BEAUTY fig.be41.7
JACKIE fig.jc81
SEDUCTION fig.71sed
UNHOLY fig.28u
TOM fig.tm21
30 YEARS fig.30fy
VI
ROCK N ROLL WILL BE THE DEATH OF ME
I do not wanna go” is all that could be heard for miles around as I spoke into the phone.
“This is a band, and bands are more than one,” I heard back into my earpiece. “You have one vote, and sometimes it just plain sucks to be outvoted, Sixx.”
“Choose one,” I said. “Either we go to Europe or we do our American Crüe Fest 2, but I’ll be damned if I wanna do both.”
Especially not with just nine days between them, I didn’t. I am not in my twenties, high on fame and drunk on money. I don’t need either one and so I was putting my foot down firmly, some might even say stomping it.
Fast forward: October 2009.
It’s chilly outside and everybody is still asleep. I just put a fire on, to match the radio that’s been on low all night. Coffee in hand, I write. It’s a Sunday and life is perfect right now.
As I sit here I know I have all my kids’ unconditional love and they have mine. I know nothing will happen to them in this life or once I am gone that they cannot handle. I work harder and harder every day to make sure of that. Little lessons and messages I hand out to them like Halloween candy. The biggest gift I can give is listening to how bad it hurts when they fall down. Not always saving them, maybe just holding them, emotionally and physically, too. Being a father is the biggest challenge and greatest reward I ever have received.
Nothing compares to this.
I promise you this: if you’re not a parent yet, with the birth of a child comes a haunting of your mortality.
It didn’t happen upon my first child’s birth but soon after. That’s why there are wills and trust funds. After the diapers are gone, “We the Parents” have to still cover their asses.
We the Parents of the United States of America realize what we never knew before: not everything is about us, and there is a reason to be alive other than our own needs.
/> Note to self: get back to writing book.
Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. Not because they’re too hard to handle or because someone is holding a gun under your chin. Because that’s life.
Life is not always about you, as hard as that is to guzzle down.
“Ego is just fear in action,” I’ve heard slurred so many times at AA meetings. As I like to say, “Your ego is not your amigo.”
My ego was in high gear the day of that phone call. “I am not going on tour,” I said, but such grandiose statements almost always fall short. You end up feeling defeated because you couldn’t cut the head off that poisonous snake, your ego, no matter how hard you swung the machete.
Ego overtakes the idea of God.
I say the idea of God, because I have a hard time with “God.” I like to say “my understanding of a god,” or my higher power, something bigger than myself to believe in. Karma even falls under these Sixxism-type guidelines.
A sliding scale of your spirituality is better than a complete, grandiose statement that nothing exists other than yourself. Earn it as you learn it. Fake it till you make it. Shake it but don’t break it. (OK, not that one, but you get the point.)
Note to self: stop rambling.
I did go on that tour of Europe. I did then return home for only nine days with my family and Katherine before leaving them again for the American Crüe Fest. I didn’t like it, but I am part of something bigger than myself. I did it with a good attitude and to be honest, as hard as it was, I had a good fucking time.
Last note to self: think before you pull the trigger. The head you blow off may be your own.
Here are some of the ramblings I committed to my journals during those two tours.
Europe Goes to Hell
FLIGHT TO MOSCOW FROM LOS ANGELES
MAY 30, 2009
There is something to be said about having a simple deck of cards, a quiet moment (maybe at sunrise or sunset), and a vigorous game of solitaire.
Now, I am being partially facetious but, at the same time, honest and introspective. Just take a moment to look at this through the eyes of a trailer-park-trash high school dropout world-traveling Zen-type O-negative (and positive), grade AAA personality.
You have to go out and get yourself a deck of cards. Hopefully, they will already be well worn, but new is good too. In the end, all that really matters (whether they’re those cheesy strip poker cards or a standard deck from your local 99-cent store) is that you have fifty-two cards.
I used to play with my grandmother’s cards every day after school, and one day I asked how many cards were in a deck. She said, “There would be fifty-two if you hadn’t lost ten of them building that house of cards.” So there we have it. She gave me unconditional love even when I lost ten cards from her favorite John Deere deck. That meant I had been playing the game all along with no chance of winning. She knew that the whole time. That woman was wise. She was so wise that she probably knew she would be teaching me this lesson thirty years later, once she had graduated to the next level.
OK, so now that I am older, I get it. (Thank you, Nona.) I see that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose in solitaire. It’s the game of repetitiveness that untangles all that is in you and is balled up into a sphere of stress. Unnecessary anger, scattered thoughts like a random, out-of-control, emotional roller coaster that rides through your mind, or the need to be more than you need to be.
Solitaire says, “Stop, enjoy the kiss, the sweet succulent flowers, and your child’s smile or the roar of a plane overhead, even sirens in the distance. Life is just life.”
I like getting to that place in life, that perfect moment in an imperfect world. Being in a moment is not easy, because we make it that way. This is not hard work, even if at times it hurts to just be in the moment.
I could go on for hours, if you’re still awake. So, just in case you’re zoning out, let me take you back to the rough-and-tumble world of solitaire! Do you have your cards yet?
DEATH & LIFE fig.dl31
First, you lay them out before you, and immediately it seems like you’re facing an impassable enemy. An army of suited-up warriors ready to defend their ground and take yours if need be.
And then it starts, the war, the battle. Somebody is going down and you pretty much know the cards are stacked against you. After all, if you’re lucky, there are fifty-two of them and only one of you. (Unless you’re a bipolar borderline zooid-type personality.)
But like life, you have to go into this battle. Now, how do you go? Do you slowly flip over the cards and pray for the right one to appear? (As some do in life. I used to.)
Do you flip over the cards and get frustrated (maybe even let out a little grunt or curse the deck) when the card you really need is just under the card you don’t? (I’ve done that, too, and I wasn’t the smartest guy in the world to be cursing at little pieces of paper.)
Or do you flip them over, look at your cards, look at your opportunities (or maybe the lack thereof) and either make your move or flip over the next batch, and so on and so on?
I will tell you this, you’re either going to win or you’re going to lose, and it’s not the end of the world either way, my friend. But it is a lesson in how we should live. I taught my kids that losing is actually cooler than winning. I remember one of their voices answering back, “Dad, that makes no sense,” and I said to them, smirk on my lips and deck in hand, “It will in thirty years.”
You see, to win, to conquer, to activate the loss of others, to crush and destroy can seem wonderful, but isn’t the hunt as invigorating as the kill? Once you get what you want (the new car, the new girl, the new computer, the new house), we feel the game has to start over. I don’t know about you, but I love looking into the mouth of the lion. I smell my own fear when I get that close. That fear is high octane on steroids and it’s 100-proof poison…It will shorten your life, if you care. So, as I age, life has given me some other, introspective ways to live, too…
Just let it happen and, I promise you, all that is magic will appear.
Or leave your mouth open long enough and, I promise you, a bug is going to fly down your throat and you’re gonna choke to death. So shut your mouth, open your eyes, and play along with life. And stop waiting in line to win, mouth gaping, panting, outta breath…you forgot to breathe because you want it so bad. You can’t will life. It will kill you. There is more of it than there is of you. Just wait in line patiently to see what’s going to happen. I promise you, as an individual—a solitary person—you will get just what you need, win or lose. I promise a fairy-tale ending and you will be the champion of the world.
I say this as I play solitaire forty thousand feet above Europe, heading toward Russia for the first time in twenty years. I wonder if it has changed as much as I have. Funny how life has simplified itself down to just a deck of cards and a fleeting thought of my grandmother. Seems as though I am right back where I started…
P.S. When I said there are fifty-two cards in the deck, don’t forget the two extra cards, the jokers. There are always jokers in life.
solitaire
noun
1. any of various card games played by one person, the object of which is to use up all one’s cards by forming particular arrangements and sequences.
ORIGIN early 18th cent.: from French, from Latin solitarius (see solitary).
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
JUNE 1, 2009
The first thing I noticed flying in over Moscow was how green it was. It seemed to go on forever into a new kind of green that I didn’t remember from when I was here in 1989. I thought maybe I was just coming down off the drugs then, and my eyes were still fogged over or something, but when I was in the van going to the Mötley Crüe press conference, Tommy noticed the same exact thing, saying, “Can you believe how green it was flying in?”
Last night I went for a walk to Red Square, where the first thing I noticed was the cobalt blue sky jumping up from behind these huge red buildin
gs. The courtyard, twice as wide and deep as a football field, was slowly draining of tourists. It was 10:00 P.M. and the sun was still somewhat out. I noticed police drinking from bottles of something that appeared to be vodka. Not far off in the distance, leaning against the Kremlin walls, were Russian girls, smoking, laughing, and showing off their long legs and short skirts. The tourists were all but gone by then, except, of course, for me…I am always finding myself in the weirdest places at the wrong time. I guess I didn’t feel like I was in enough danger so I ventured up the side of the buildings and made my way around back. I climbed through trash, shattered glass, and the remnants of someone’s makeshift home but there was nothing back there worth pulling out my Nikon for. No characters to shoot. It had been abandoned for one reason or another. (Maybe the vodka-drinking police were rousting the ratlike humans out of boredom.)
