by Corey Taylor
Level 1’s Boss would try to silence Bill, or rip his mouth and heart out. To defeat the Boss, you’d have to have faith in your ability to gather people around you to help stop the Boss. The louder the voices, the weaker Boss gets, until the people shouted him or her down. Level 2 is very simple: find a gun and protect yourself from the Boss, who wants to oppress you. Level 3 and 4 would be combined: you must sneak up on this Boss, so you go from house to house, asking for room and board for the night. All the while the Boss’s Preambles are searching each house illegally, trying to find you. Like a shell game, you’d move from house to house until you’re able to rally enough support to pull the Boss down from the government. Level 5 would be a bit cerebral: there are several people moving around who look like you, and you must make your way through the level without giving away your intentions to the Boss’s spies, who are trying to ascertain which one of you is the real you. So the game would go: on Level 13, you would free the Boss’s slaves. On Level 22 you have to keep the other Bosses from coming back and trying to be a Boss again. Once you get to Level 27 you have the right to start over or just move through the past levels as a spectator—the borders are all open to you now, so you can go wherever you want.
Do you think that’s too cheesy? Could be. I don’t know—I’ve seen some pretty crazy shit in my time to suggest that maybe something like that would get us all back on the same page or, at least, the same book. I truly believe that one of the problems we have when trying to communicate with each other in this country is that no one really knows what our rights are as citizens in the greatest country around. Sure, some do. Most would like to believe they have a general idea. But the gist doesn’t get it through the thick skulls of radicals and racists. In fact, they love it when we’re all scattered because they can then feed you misinformation—“fake news”—and tell you to question the things that are actually documented and true. Some people spend their whole lives trying to ensure that we all have the right idea and the rights to have those ideas. Unfortunately, history has shown the good that a man or woman does in his or her lifetime almost always dies when they do—very rarely does it live past their end. That’s because the zeal and energy that a single person feels for something can never truly be shared; it almost always diminishes as it passes from one person to another. In some cases that’s a good thing—it means that most racist or fascist leaders are replaced by people who never feel as strongly in their resolve as the original did. It also means that people who sweat and toil for years producing refuge for people who need help are nearly always replaced by opportunists after they die. Such is the cycle of energy; it can never be duplicated emotionally. In a world where the privileged feel oppressed and children die because of petty fear, it’s amazing that any of us manage to get out of bed in the mornings. Obviously, being American makes that much easier. We quite simply are the purveyors of the fruit, hanging out in Babylon’s gardens, trying to do something useful with all this freedom. Some days are better than others, but you can also say that about people. The sentinels have been lackadaisical for going on, well, forever, really. But the American spirit burns. You know why we’ll never get rid of war? Because we’re always spoiling for a fight. That’s why hippies and peaceniks are just as violent and temperamental as Nazis and thugs. To borrow a tiny bit of a phrase from the mighty Zodiac Mindwarp: “We love the fever pitch, bitch.”
The next few years are going to be a bit tense, this is true. But they are also going to make us better. We will all have a better understanding of each other’s lives and what it takes to be us when it all comes down to it. In the end we’ll know where we all stand on a lot of different things. I hope that no matter what, we’ll all be standing together. Now, that may seem a bit wishy-washy for some of you. That doesn’t matter—I’ll bet that most of you feel the same way I do deep down in your red-white-and-blue hearts. I’d be willing to bet the world on it. God knows I’ve lost more on less, but this one brings out the odds in me, and I’ve always loved being a betting man. The weight of the free world is going to be on all of our shoulders very soon. With enough backs, we’ll spread the tonnage evenly.
We can take it.
We’re American.
Pot it, motherfucker.
CHAPTER 4
THE KILLING NAME
IN THIS COUNTRY WE HAVE ALL GROWN UP WITH CERTAIN apocryphal situations passed down through generations, bordering on archetypical at this point. If you’ve ever read a book, watched a TV show, told a joke, or even come out of a cave for, like, ten fucking seconds in this country, you’ll recognize the kind of stories I mean right away: the farmer and his daughters, the UFO sighting in the suburbs, the “foreign” new guy at the job and the various mishaps that come from the language barriers, the black guy in the white family’s home, the white guy in the black movie theater, and so on and so forth. At this point in our lives these stories are basically the new versions of Aesop’s fables or the brothers Grimm. Essentially starting out as a way to embrace our differences, these myths slowly became a way to marginalize them, making any understanding or comprehension comical and lazy. Now we don’t remember the realness, just the rumor. There is no more humanity, just humor. People have stopped getting to know the others and now rely only on whatever they can remember from a joke. So what does this mean?
Black people are a joke. White people are a joke. Farmers are a joke. Foreigners are a joke. You can continue to take that as far as you want; it won’t change anything. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to joke about people or cultures or idiosyncrasies—far from it; no one should be immune from satire and self-realization. What I am saying is we can’t forget that everyone is different from the origins of the stereotype. Not everyone is a stereotype, no matter how easy it is to treat people as such. It’s the same reason why there are no real universal rules of health—there are no real universal ways to treat other people, regardless of color or creed, race or religion, culture or stream for the mainline. Unfortunately, America has stopped putting in the work to try to get to know its people from state to state. Everyone is a fucking polling point now, a demographic, a mob to be seen for the scene. No one is allowed to be him or herself; everyone is encouraged to be one in a million, just one more piece of the crowd—because crowds can be controlled.
I’d love to see a day when we set fire to all that shit. Like, why can’t we have a story about a UFO landing in the ghetto? Why can’t we hear the one about the farmer who turns his neighbor on to Run DMC? Why aren’t we using our imagination for something other than keeping motherfuckers in their goddamn places like a bunch of mediocre placeholders? And more importantly, why is the greatest country in the world encouraging us all to do that kind of shit? I’ll tell you why: it makes us malleable, easier to manage, and quicker to herd into voting booths, strictly on a lie and a scare tactic. Fear the scary black men and Muslims—they want to kill all the crackers. Fear all the white men and Latinos—they want to kill all the blacks and burn the Bronx. Suddenly those jokes that we all laughed at become some truthful shit we all heard from a guy, and that’s why we need to put so-and-so in the White House—to protect ourselves! That’s how you get a nation of millions to decide against their better judgment and vote for a man the same shade as an Orange Julius.
We are four chapters in, and I guess I should have warned you: this is not my funny way of saying I hate you. There’s no “wink wink” in my screaming. This is some real shit. This could be the angriest book I’ve ever written and will ever write. In fact, if I get to write another book, I’ll be very surprised. But this is some shit that needs to be said. Why? Because you’re all saying it behind each other’s back and not to each other. The only things you reserve for each other are protests and yelling shit. I didn’t want this to be spiteful, and granted, there will be moments of levity here and there. But make no mistake my friends: this isn’t really a referendum; this is a fucking war horn, blasting you awake in the middle of the night from my version of Ect
o-1. To arms, motherfuckers. To quote one of my favorite David Bowie lyrics, “It’s in the whites of my eyes.”
Before you go rooting for your own team, don’t get ahead of yourselves. You forget: I hate everyone. I think you’re all fucked in the head. If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be there, and I wouldn’t be writing this book. You’re all fucking savages with pitchforks. Trumpers are screaming, “Get over it! You lost! He is your president, and you have to deal with it now! Oh and by the way, nothing he does is offensive—NOPE! NO NO NO NO NO! We refuse to believe it!” Meanwhile everyone else is saying, “We march! At a moment’s notice, we march! Even if we are getting our way, we march! And if you disagree with our reasons, which indeed could be misinformed, we will maliciously label you a NAZI COMMIE FASCIST BIGOT NEOFANATICAL HOMOPHOBIC COCKSUCKER—while we claim ‘One Love’ and ‘Peace’ and all that shit!” This is some shit you’d hear on the playground in elementary school, not even junior high! What, are you all fucking five? Take your toys, go home, and let other people talk for once.
I’m not saying there aren’t reasons to protest. I’m saying that when the bigger shit happens, it might be that no one is listening anymore. When a guitar is feeding back like mad, you don’t stick your head in the fucking speaker; you find a way to make it stop or you leave the room. But all these fuckers defending Trump need to stop being so fucking indignant and realize that he is up to sheisty shit. The last time I checked, an American president shouldn’t be using executive orders to ban travel on countries who’ve posed ZERO FUCKING THREAT to the United States while also rolling back important regulations that not only put pressure on small businesses and simultaneously ease taxes on big corporations (contrary to what he said while he was campaigning) but also make it legal for tax-exempt bodies like organized religious groups to become more politically involved. I’m not sure how up on American constitutional law you are, but that’s in direct violation of the separation of church and state. It’s also the reason we had the Johnson Amendment in the first place: churches shouldn’t be able to regulate taste. You want to talk faith? Fine. However, your doctrine is based on some shit that came out thousands of years ago—I don’t need you reinstating “cobbling” in the twenty-first century just because you’re uncomfortable with modern ideas like abortion and same-sex marriage.
We’re getting into that territory again, sadly. I just made sweeping statements about different groups based on conjecture and hearsay. I’m just as guilty as you are for this shit. I don’t want to be, which, I guess, is why I’m writing this book—to solve some issues, to right some wrongs, to figure things out, to make peace with my own inherent bigotry and prejudice, and so on. In complicated times, why do we turn away from real complex ideas and alternatives? Why do we always go with the safest and yet most dangerously hurtful solutions? Listen, I had just as good a chance as any to grow up way different from how I am now, which is to say I could have grown up exactly how most people would have expected me to grow up, considering my background, surroundings, and family. I might’ve been a statistic rather than a metaphor. I could’ve been a liability rather than a possibility. So I understand and embrace the concept of shuffling the restraints of human hyperbole and psychosocial behavior. We can’t move forward if we refuse to see each other as individual stories, instead of whole volumes of the same ol’ books. If we’re truly evolving genetically, then spiritually and empathetically we need to do so as well.
I think I’ll tell you about Sauce Man now.
Many eons ago, before my success with Slipknot and Stone Sour, before my crazy weird adventures at the Adult Emporium, I was Corey Taylor: duly anointed taco/burrito creator at a really awesome fast-food joint called Taco Time. It was in the parking lot of Southridge Mall (back in the days when there were stores there and people actually went there), nestled in between a place called Golf Galaxy and O’Reilly’s Auto Parts. Yeah, needless to say, it was a bitchin’ place to be on a Saturday night, when everyone else was out doing really cool shit. But honestly, it was a really good gig—my bosses were a great couple who’d bought into the franchise, the people I worked with were super-cool and of various ages, and the food was FUCKING RIGHTEOUS. To this day I can’t think about their crispy chicken burritos without getting a serious food boner through unforgiving denim. So even though it was “lowly fast food” and I reeked of cilantro and hamburger every night, I enjoyed it for the company and the calories I was piling on. The place was so good that it not only had the usual people ready for the quick fast-food in-and-out (no pun intended), but it also had regulars who came in every day, right around the same time. There are several who come to mind, but the one who sticks out the most is “Sauce Man.”
I believe his name was Joe, but even if it wasn’t, I’d probably change it anyway, so we’ll just use that for now. Sauce Man was Joe, a middle-aged guy who worked somewhere in the mall during the day. Like clockwork, every day for lunch Joe would stop by, order the same pile of awesome tacos, sit down, and then slowly but surely walk from table to table, checking each bottle of Taco Time hot sauce to find the one that had the most sauce in it. Never mind the fact that I could at any moment just fill one up and give it to him—it was all part of the ritual for Joe. Then again, I could relate: Taco Time had a unique sauce with a proprietary recipe unknown even to the people who worked there. So Joe’s crazy fixation was understandable. He was always kind of withdrawn and nerdy, so it took a while to get him to open up to us, but when he did, we let him know that we’d dubbed him Sauce Man. He loved it—really took to it too. He’d come in, we’d all yell, “SAUCE MAN!” and he’d smile real big and say the same thing every time: “I know, I know, I have an obsession. It’s unhealthy!” For someone who looked like he could get very lonely, this seemed like it made his day.
Cut to the day I absolutely bummed him out.
I was working largely by myself, and it had turned into a really bad day. When I say “really bad day,” I mean a seriously cunty, fucked-up, evil-cocksucker of a day. I was having the kind of day that makes men go rogue and overthrow governments, you understand me? I was hell in a uniform, the devil on duty. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to work, I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t want to smile, and I didn’t even want to try to do any one of those things. But because I was, I decided I was going to make it difficult for the entire world. I was pissing off customers and coworkers alike with my vocal venom. Enter Sauce Man, who came bouncing in with his usual grin and good feelings, like he’d finally gotten to the best part of his day. He strolled to the counter giving over his “I know, I know, it’s a condition…” shtick, and like the pure prick bastard I was being, I shit all over his enthusiasm, ringing him up with little banter, making his food half-assed, and giving it to him with a nod. The pièce de résistance came when he asked me for more sauce, and I very bluntly answered with, “There’s plenty on the fucking tables—help yourself” and walked into the back room, leaving poor Joe standing there with a sad and confused look on his face. When I came back out to the counter he wasn’t even in the restaurant. Sauce Man grabbed some sauce, his tacos, and split. It didn’t occur to me till later that maybe—just maybe—it was my fault he was bummed out and bailed. When I did put it together, I felt so fucking horrible that I swore that I’d make it right.
It took a while, though. Joe didn’t come in for a while, and when he did, he was sullen and introverted again. It took a long time to get him to loosen up again, but even when he did, he was never the same around me. Maybe I’d reminded him of all the shit he’d had to go through outside the walls of Taco Time, where real life and pressures and bullshit made him feel like he was being beaten with a hose behind a bike shed. It didn’t matter if I was sorry, and it didn’t matter if he knew I was sorry—that fun, cool place he enjoyed had been violated by the real world. In that instant his food lost its flavor, his laugh lost its luster, and his life hit another wall. In that instant he stopped being Sauce Man forever. Yeah, I
wish that story had a happier ending. I wish I hadn’t been a crabby dick stain to him. Wherever he is, I wish Joe well, and I hope the Sauce Man is raging for it at another Taco Time. I know this is a very strange parable for what I was trying to say, and at the end of the day my attitude shouldn’t have any bearing on someone else’s day or life. However, I’m an incredibly empathetic person—I always have been. When I don’t have my head up my ass, I can usually vibe on what people are feeling.
The same goes for the rest of the world, but mainly America. We should be super-tight with each other not because of our similarities but because of our differences. We should be bulletproof just for the fact that this many different people are proud to be American and are willing to not only stand up for it but to stand together for it as well, despite the vast miles and cultural divides. How is that not something to aspire to? How is it not the very ideal we should be living up to? How can that be worse than everyone being in their own regions all sectioned off and miserable? This is the United States of America, and no matter what our government does or fucks with for our foreign policy, we should be steely and resilient in the face of that, banding together to guarantee a better day for all of us. I know that’s anathema compared to how the various political parties would rather handle shit, but it’s true. If we could stop communicating using only those buzzwords and filibuster, if we could get on the same page together, those pricks in Washington and the fucking White House would have to read our book and stick to our stories. But as long as we let them keep us cut up and broken down, we’ll always be at their beck and call, under thumbs and overwritten.
