America 51

by Corey Taylor

  Now an American president (not my president, but the president) is trying his damnedest to block refugees and immigrants from coming to this country, and he’s doing so under the guise of “keeping us safer” (read: “keeping us whiter”), thereby feeding the unfounded fears of his constituents (read: “peasants”). Never mind that the places he’s trying to put the ban on have never been a terrorist threat to us. Never mind the fact that more Americans are in danger of being killed by white extremists (read: terrorists) than Muslims from the countries Trump has singled out. No, let’s keep people paranoid and suspicious of those who aren’t the same color as them while domestic terrorists are released because according to the new laws, white people can’t be tried as terrorists. Yes, you read that right. Yes, that’s a true statement. The gentleman who was gearing up to bomb Target stores will not have terrorist charges brought against him because the laws have been rewritten to skew in favor of Caucasians and against Muslims. It seems like every fucking day something happens or is reported or comes out in a leak that drives me to want to set my fucking face on fire and run around head-butting people while I squirt them with gasoline.

  I have every confidence that this book is going to “lose me some fans.” I have no illusions about it. Hopefully most people struggle through to the other chapters that are a little more balanced. Right now you’re probably reading this and saying, “Judas fucking Priest, he’s a cryin’ snowflake cuck.” Fair enough. But if you take anything from this book, it should be this: I still believe in the American Dream, which is now about chasing the ideal of what we told the world we were supposed to be. Now it’s about putting our oil money where our gold-toothed mouths are. It’s about backing up freedom of speech and healthy debate. There are a lot of people in this country who don’t understand that the blanket works both ways. So I take this chance to remind you all of the wonders of the First Amendment and all the glories intimated on that glorious document. It’s taken a while for some of those freedoms to catch up with everyone here, and they are certainly taking a few hits here and there right now, under siege from the bourgeoisies who say they speak for the working class while gutting all the ways working-class folks can get ahead. Sure, we’ve got issues. But we also have the tools to deal with those… well, tools.

  America promises a lot. It shines in the night like one of those searchlights you see in World War II films or like the ones you always see near the malls or downtown areas, doing the circular programmed motions in the dark. It has been a beacon for anyone willing to risk for gain. We have totally shit on some people’s aspirations over the years, but I maintain that we’re still out there trying to do the good work. We’ll talk more about how I think we should stick a little closer to our own backyards for a while and how domesticity might actually help us even out our shitty little empires, but for now let’s just focus on that message: “The land of the free and the home of the brave.” This is not just a sweet lyric to our national anthem; it is a credo I think we all, as a whole, put a lot of stock and pride in. I know I do. I’ve always believed that more people fight harder when they’re defending a country worth fighting for than when they’re fighting for one that sucks. There’s a different energy that manifests itself in the breasts and bellies of our populace, our militia, and our military. We stand for something that may or may not be true anymore, but as long as the mindset is still there, the belief can make the vision become visceral. It can make the steel in the eyes harder than the steel in those bayonets and bullets. We have never tolerated tyrants and despots before, and I don’t think we’re going to start anytime soon, you feel me?

  This is why I’m not very concerned about the Cheeto. If he doesn’t get his shit together, the country will rise and take him down in one giant revolution. Thomas Jefferson said there should be a revolution every twenty years to keep the government honest. Maybe that’s what it’ll finally take to put us back on the map. Until then I’ll just keep putting the quotation marks around our tried and true phrase “the greatest country in the world” while I wait for the facts to catch up to our fiction.

  CHAPTER 7

  YOU DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH

  PEOPLE TALK TO ME—SPEAK AT ME, ACTUALLY—ALL THE time about adversity. Especially my fellow countrymen; god, they love to babble on about rising above the odds or to the challenge and not letting the weird shit bring you down. I believe this is why Americans love shows like Survivor or The Amazing Race: they like to think they’d excel if the roles were reversed and the spectators were there instead, rallying all of their rationale and resources to overcome even a sort of manufactured adversity because “Americans will always win. Americans are winners, and whatever obstacle we come up against, we’ll inevitably come out the victor. It’s what we do—we win.” From Reagan to the newest round of shit like that from Trump, we patriots from the fifty states are pretty stubborn in our global championship assessment. To them, there’s nothing that can’t be fixed, beaten, figured out, or made to work with the help of a whole bunch of people chanting “USA! USA! USA! USA!” So, fundamentally speaking, you’d think that we ’Muricans would be all gung ho to go out into the world in search of adventure and excitement in exotic locales, among different cultures, and slipping in and out of cool dialects and such.

  On that note I’m about to tell you a really sad and pathetic story.

  I know, that’s sort of out of character for a CMFT book, but sometimes I feel the need to add hints of melancholy here and there. Plus, this book has tended to skew very dark and angry—not that fun kind of angry like my other literary tirades, but the “god damnit, I really hate having to point out this dipshit nonsense” type of angry. Honestly, I can’t believe you guys have soldiered this far through this bastard. But that’s why you come to me: for the dollar bills, reality checks, and incredible cheek bones—TRUTHFULNESS! I meant to say truthfulness. Anyway, before I get too far up my own ass, let me first explain why I’m going to tell you this story: because if you haven’t noticed from my book or from the rest of the crap around us all, we the people of the United States of America are so full of fucking shit about ourselves that brown should be the fourth color on our flag. I’ll fill you in more on what I mean, but you’ll first need an example, and oh boy fuckin’ howdy, do I have one for you. It involves an FOB, a quick trip to Japan, copious amounts of booze, a strip club run by the Jamaican mob, and a lost/stolen passport. Yep, strap on your big-kid helmets because it’s about to get fucking ignorant.

  First off, let’s answer the question sitting in your mouths like the cinnamon challenge: What the fuck is an “FOB”? Well, any traveling musician will tell you that FOB stands for “friend of band.” An FOB isn’t usually an issue. Most times a FOB can mean exactly that or it can be longtime fans that became close to the band over the years and are now considered FOBs. Those examples are fine; they’re actually pretty awesome because I’ve grown extremely close to some of my FOBs. However, there’s another section of FOB: the ones who claim to be techs, or roadies, for lack of a better term, but have no real idea of what goes into being on the road or how a person is supposed to function/conduct him or herself. Fortunately, for the benefit of your entertainment, this story concerns the latter example. Unfortunately, I had to live through it to be able to share it with you all. For his benefit, I’ll change his name to Dick. I’ll also downplay his involvement with the band for anonymity’s sake because I don’t want it to blow back on my people. But trust me: Dick doesn’t deserve your sympathy. Dick is a fucking tool-bag of the lowest caliber and should have never been hired in the first place, let alone allowed to get on the plane with us.

  But I digress…

  Let me set the scene a little better. The band was picking up a couple of shows in Japan before embarking on a North American tour, and because of that we didn’t have our core crew, the crew we would be using for the duration of the tour itself. Figuring we could get by with a few fill-ins because these were just a couple of shows, we brought on a few
newbies as well as Dick, who had never left the country before yet talked a great game about “knowing everything there is to know about guitars, and I’ll be fine on the road, don’t you worry—you’ll have to keep up with me!” We as a band collectively shrugged and made our way to Japan. If you’ve never been there, it is truly a gorgeous country, full of robust urban landscapes blended with natural majesty and tranquility. The people are quiet but friendly, and the pace depends on where you are: in the cities like Tokyo and Osaka it is frenetic and crisp, while outside, in places like Fukuoku, it is definitely more laid back. But it has a little bit of something for everyone. For me, I’ve been blessed to have a major following there, so I was really excited for the shows because I knew we were going to have an amazing time. We landed, were met by fans and management at the airport, and were taken to the hotel. We checked in, dropped off our passports at the front desk, as is custom there, and we all tried to dodge the jet lag as best we could by going to sleep. Unbeknownst to me, however, when we all split up, a certain FOB decided he was going to go exploring.

  Cut to the next morning at lobby call…

  We all made our way down to the bus that would be taking us over to the gig. Some of us had indeed been able to sleep, while others had suffered at the hands of jet lag’s evil insomnia and were now trying to fight their way through the pain by just staying awake the whole time. The band and crew mingled and talked shit, and when the bus arrived we all boarded and sat waiting for our tour manager, who hadn’t made it yet. There was no sign of Dick. None of us were worried; we had a few hours until we played, so we consigned ourselves to sitting and waiting. Eventually our tour manager did join us on the bus. He was late, which was odd for him—usually he was the first one down to the lobby and the last one to get on the train, plane, or whatever. He seemed to be in a fairly terrible mood too, another sign that something was a bit off that day. Still missing, fairly conspicuously, was Dick. Questions were asked between us, only to be met with similar inquisitive looks. Our tour manager was alerted to his absence, and I swear to god this happened: our tour manager stiffened, his face went completely red, and he stormed off the bus back into the hotel.

  Thirty minutes later in stomps our tour manager (TM), followed closely by a fucked-up Dick, severely hungover, reeking of flop sweat and stale beer. He collapsed into one of the seats on the bus and did not come back up. We were stunned at first, but with one look at the back of our TM’s neck, which was getting redder and redder from anger, we knew we shouldn’t ask too many questions. We rode in silence for an hour and a half, arriving at the venue with just enough time to set up our shit, play our show, and get back on the bus to return to the hotel. All the while we were all wondering just what in the ever-livin’ fuck had happened to piss off our TM and leave Dick smelling like a Baptist preacher’s dirty little secret. Over the course of the next couple of days we pieced together the events that led to Dick’s shitty state and, subsequently, his early dismissal. You’re going to love this shit…

  After we’d all checked in and split, Dick decided he wanted to go out. He wanted to have some adventure. Fair enough—it’s only natural, really. I can remember feeling the same way when I first came to Japan myself. This, however, is where the similarities end, because Dick broke every fucking unwritten rule in the tour handbook. Yes, there’s an unwritten tour handbook. How the fuck should I know what it looks like—I’m sure it’s probably leather bound and awesome looking, but it’s hard to tell because it’s unwritten. Of course I believe it’s real—my friend told me about it. Which friend? You don’t know him—he’s from Canada. I met him at Niagara Falls. Yes, of course he’s really real too! What the fuck is going on with this interrogation!? I’m uncomfortable with this line of questioning! You’re just going to have to trust me! I have a friend from Canada, he promised he was real, and there’s an unwritten handbook for the rules on touring! Now leave me alone before I tell my grandma you’re being mean! God, you guys are assholes…

  Here’s what Dick did to set the stage for his spectacular disaster.

  One, he left the hotel alone. Now let’s pretend that you the reader are someone who’s never been abroad your whole life. You arrive at night at your destination. Would you go out into a city like Tokyo by yourself, knowing absolutely no Japanese? Yeah, it’s not a great fucking plan. Sailors descending into cannibalism make better decisions than that. But even this would have been sort of okay if not for number two on the list: he didn’t tell anyone he was leaving. That’s right: this fucking dipshit split the scene and didn’t give anyone a head’s up, in a sprawling metropolis of many millions, not knowing anything about anything. He just decided to go, and he went. I wouldn’t be as irate with him to this day if he was, like, a kid or something. This man is older than I am. How the fuck do you get to be middle-aged and have no fucking clue about what you’re doing? It’s baffling, to say the least. Then again, once you hear the rest of the story, maybe it’ll make more sense. So on his own and without telling anyone, Dick waded into the darkness of the Tokyo nightlife.

  His next mistake was falling for one of the tourist honey traps. After hitting a few bars (and paying with his debit card instead of exchanging dollars for yen… insert rolling-eyes emoji face) Dick found himself wandering—now drunk—until a business barker hailed him, calling him over to invite him inside his establishment. Yeah, it was a strip club, but it was more than a strip club; it was an escort service ostensibly for higher-class clientele, run by Jamaican gangsters who’d emigrated there to work with local hoods. In other words, it was a place Dick was woefully not prepared to be caught dead or alive in. But supposedly, with a grin and a sweaty, thinning hairline, Dick bounced in, slapped his debit card down, and began drinking fast, bothering all the girls and pissing off the wrong motherfuckers in the process. You can almost sense where this is going, but I’ll get you there anyway. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d think, except way funnier and scarier.

  After a couple of hours the nice gentlemen of the Jamaican mob came to the unanimous conclusion that they’d had about as much of Dick’s company as they’d like to admit. So they told him he needed to pay his tab and leave. Dick, blind drunk and belligerent, surveyed the wall of beef stacked against him and calmed down a bit. He handed over his debit card as payment. Now, Dick is from the Midwest, with an account plan that isn’t exactly suited to “exotic purchases,” especially charges originating from an escort service in Tokyo, Japan. So, to NO ONE’S SURPRISE BUT ASSHOLE DICK HIMSELF, the card was rejected. This was largely because (a) he hadn’t let the bank know he was going overseas, making sure they’d be alert for international charges, and (b) he hadn’t researched the exchange rate enough to realize he was way over his fucking limit. Indeed, this moron was running around the Shibuya district like a fucking maniac, putting a major run on his card that wasn’t going to balance at the end of the night. The greatest part of this story is that THIS ISN’T EVEN CLOSE TO HOW BAD IT’S ABOUT TO GET!

  So the Jamaican mob goes to his table and demands he handle the rest of the money. Dick, still wasted but slowly becoming more and more paranoid, makes up his mind that they are not only trying to steal his debit card but that they’ve also stolen his passport (the passport, you may recall, that he’d left at the hotel). So in a moment of sheer manic panic, Dick accused them all of stealing his shit. You’ll understand why his “hosts” didn’t exactly like that. So they try to grab Dick, but dipshit managed to get away from them. He ran from the club, with a bunch of crazy Jamaicans right on his ass. Dick, covered in sweat, booze, and piss, found a local police station, burst in like Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and started screaming that the owners of the club were trying to kill and rob him. The police escort him back to the club, where the club members lay everything out for the officers, from his drunkenness to his inability to pay his bill. When Dick accuses them of stealing his things, they tell the officers he never had his passport and that they were holding his debi
t card until someone paid his very outstanding bill. The police looked around, asked some questions, and took Dick back to the station for his own safety and because until he could pay his bill, he was effectively under arrest.

  The dude hadn’t been in Japan more than five hours.

  Right here is when our TM got the call—at 4 a.m. The police told him the predicament, to which our TM screamed a bit, had them put Dick on the phone so he could scream at him a bit, relented, and finally got dressed to come bail Dick’s shitty stupid ass out. Our TM also had to pay the outstanding bill because, come to find out, it was even more than originally suspected, to the point where Dick was essentially working these shows for free because he was in so much debt to us. When Dick kept accusing the club of also stealing his passport, our TM angrily reminded him that he’d left his passport with the front desk, just like everyone else in the tour party. Dick was made to apologize, he got his debit card back, and our TM got him back to the hotel around 6 a.m.—about four hours before lobby call. Dick was summarily dismissed soon afterward—much to the relief and cheering of the whole band and crew. The guy was a shit-show from the very start, and as it turned out, he was just as big a fucking nightmare domestically as internationally. I could tell you a whole story about how this same Dick nearly ruined a meet-and-greet with a prominent guitar player all because he burst into his dressing room and began drinking all his beer, getting so drunk that his fucking ride left him in an alley passed out. But that’s not what this chapter is about.

  We spoke about that touring handbook earlier, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you there’s another unwritten rule regarding being that far away from home, especially when you’re a reasonable Yank traveling abroad: when people hear your accent, tell them you’re Canadian, because Americans are some of the shittiest tourists/travelers on the face of whatever country they happen to be in at the time. That little Japanese trip is really just the tip of the iceberg; in fact, this more like the nose of the Titanic, because what did that iceberg do to anyone before that night? It was just minding its own business when out of nowhere, a giant cruise ship not paying attention to either Jack, Fuckin’, or Shit came about and rammed the shit out of it. That’s about as good a parable I can come up with for the way most asshole Americans act when they go on “holiday” anywhere other than their own backyard. I say most out of fairness, and I will stipulate that every country on the planet has its share of cock-knocking travel sets, but the brash American tourist has a special sort of entitled pettiness that is unrivaled even by the French, who are about as spiky as they get sometimes. I have nothing against the French, but I have experienced some severe treatment by French people and can truly say that it has to be because of other Americans’ behavior while running amok on the Continent or anywhere else. Most Yanks tend to treat a vacation as a toilet, and whatever country they happen to be visiting sadly becomes the fanny ribbon they wipe their shitty assholes with.