by Corey Taylor
I remember laughing like a hyena on meth when Kanye West married Kim Kardashian. It made so much sense: a bitchy, conceited, egotistical maniac… marrying a Kardashian. The sad thing is that if their fuck-knuckle fan base had started a petition to have their firstborn North West (jeeeeez…) declared a national treasure when he was born, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. That’s because to a lot of Americans they are our new royalty. Maybe this is the whole reason I wanted to write this book in the first place: because we stopped appreciating talent and exceptional gifts and started worshipping a bunch of fucking glorified squatters. We went from JFK and Jackie O to reality TV ass clowns. We went from giving credit where credit is due to putting liens on the credit of the “star” because in at least one episode they get drunk and shit themselves on camera… live. No wonder ticket sales for zoo attendance seem to have plummeted. It’s not the pro-animal protesters; it’s because we have become the monkeys slinging shit at each other on TV. We are Harambe.
USA! USA! USA! USA…
That seems par for the course, really. Nothing in our country makes sense past the surface, the safety sniff. The argument could be made that idiocy and hypocrisy is as American as apple pie and Tennessee whiskey. I mean, it has to be—our very Constitution reflects that. To quote my patron saint George Carlin, “This country was founded by slave owners… who wanted to be free.” So how can the American Hypocrite not be right up there next to bald eagles and Uncle Sam? More importantly, why are we so gung-ho obstinate in the face of that kind of mirrored reality? Why haven’t we embraced this two-faced image and stuck it on a flag of some kind? The answer is simple: because not only are we full of shit to each other, we’re full of shit to ourselves. The Great Lie is that all Americans are noble, decent, hard-working, god-fearing people who will fight tyranny to the end and always do what’s right for the greater good and democracy because the USA is truly the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Yeah… not so much.
Sometimes we can’t even get our own lies straight. The double standards are endless. Look at this last election. The Republican Party has always purported to stand for the working man. It has always tried to be the blue-collar party, the family values party, the Christian party. The party of the every-man has a great bullshit story because I can’t even remember the last time their party nominated an every-man. None of these motherfuckers come close, and neither do their policies. Donald Trump certainly doesn’t. By the way, did you see him on Inauguration Day? I’ve never seen a person who just won the presidency look so fucking morose and depressed about it. Hold that thought—we’ll get back to him in a minute.
Before I get off on the wrong foot here, let me tell you a story.
It was the summer of 1986. I was twelve on the verge of thirteen. The Bears won the Super Bowl, and the Challenger lost its crew live on TV. Coke Classic was the new thing, and I was making the journey from kid to dude with no one to give me a hand. The most exciting thing to happen to me that summer was a firecracker going off in my hand before I could throw it out the front door on the Fourth of July, and quite frankly that was the best thing to happen to me that summer. This was during the era when my mom, sister, and I were still living with her “best friend” Corky, a horrible, abusive, controlling, drug-addicted alcoholic with turquoise rings and something against little kids, especially ones who weren’t her own. There was no escape and no real safety to be had, and I took a giant share of it. So when Rick, Corky’s boyfriend at the time, asked me if I wanted to ride cross-country in a semi delivering goods for the company he worked for, I said yes—even though I didn’t really want to go. He wasn’t much of a prize either—our house was reality TV without the cameras, with shit-tons of violence, domestic and foreign. It was Cops on the worst night ever. But anything that would get me out of that house was welcome, at least for a little while. So we set off from our old house off of Lafayette Road in Elk Run Heights, Iowa, heading west for Billings, Montana. Rick was up front with his dad, whose name I didn’t care enough to remember. I was tucked back in the “driver’s nook,” the bed where the driver sleeps when he pulls over for a few minutes of shut-eye—you know, usually when the crank wears off.
Now let me explain to you what an exceptionally creepy place a driver’s nook can be.
I laid back there pretty much exclusively because there was no room up front and also because I didn’t really give a soggy shit about the conversation that was going on up there to begin with. It was almost always about drinking, fucking, trying to drink while fucking, trying to fuck while drinking, what a bitch my mom was, what a bitch Corky was (I could certainly agree with that), hunting, fishing, country music, and, most importantly, how many beers you could drink before it was someone else’s turn to drive. Every once in a while they’d toss a question over their shoulders at me in an attempt to include me in their shit-talk. “So Corey, ever been huntin’?” No. “No?!” No.
Silence…
Riveting.
So mainly I turned my attention to unearthing shit in the nook. I’ll be honest: the stuff I found back there was pretty fucked-up shit for a preteen to discover. Condoms, porno mags, whiskey bottles, cigarette packs, and so on. Remember: this was the eighties. Nobody was regulating decency yet. It was the Wild West in silver and neon pink. So I learned what a whiskey hangover felt like, I smoked behind their backs, and I basked in the knowledge that (a) Ginger Lynn was a porn star, and (b) Ginger Lynn had just released a “very realistic sex doll.” This was important information for a formative mind like mine. It was going to be a looooooooong ride. Mainly I just slept and tried to keep the cigarette ash out of my eyes and hair when it would blow back on me from their windows up front. Those fuckers could smoke—they made me look like an amateur.
This all culminated in the night we almost died.
We’d stopped on the side of the road to relieve our bladders—the nearest rest area wasn’t for miles, and between the two of them, Rick and his father had polished off at least a case of PBR. (That would be Pabst Blue Ribbon for anyone who’s not a redneck, a hipster… or any person who’s not dead, I guess—why the hell am I telling you what PBR means? I’m sure you know this!) So we parked next to a field not too far from the interstate, spread out, and commenced to go find some quiet patch to drain our respective lizards. I finished first, so I was heading back toward the semi when I heard a different semi’s horn blaring in the distance. That’s when I saw what was about to happen to us.
Picture this: I was about one hundred yards from the semi (I like privacy when I’m pissing in public), but I could see the highway clearly laid out in front of me. About half a mile down the road another semi was screaming toward our semi… and I mean HAULING TONS OF ASS TOWARD OUR SEMI. The angle I was looking at it, it was going to crush our truck. I started yelling for Rick because something bad was about to happen, and that’s when I saw his dad busting ass across the field to get to the truck so he could move it. For some reason the other truck wasn’t even trying to slow down—it was shooting toward us at an alarming rate. I caught up to Rick as we were trying to get to the truck in time. His dad was already up in the cabin—we heard the engine firing up. The truck was almost on top of us. That’s when it hit me: if the semi hit ours, it was going to be bad. Rick’s dad would surely die, and as Rick and I got closer, our radius to the damage would ensure we were dead too. I didn’t know what to do—I felt like I should stop running, but I also knew I should keep going. I wasn’t sure what the hell I thought I was going to do to help—I couldn’t drive a regular manual transmission, let alone a fucking semi—but I kept going anyway.
Thank Christ Rick’s dad knew what to do. With a sure hand and steadiness under pressure, he fired up the truck, moving it further off the road and farther down the highway just in time. The renegade semi merely clipped the driver side rearview mirror and scraped a bunch of paint from the trailer and cab. Rick and I had to run/walk a bit to find the truck, but that was bette
r than blowing up in the middle of nowhere. Come to find out that the other truck’s brakes had failed and the driver was trying to downshift to slow it down when he’d come upon our truck. Nobody was hurt, but it could’ve been so bad for everyone involved.
We fished our way through Middle America, through North Platte and other places I tried like hell to find something to do in, until we finally made it to Billings, Montana, where we ended up staying at a place called the Yellow Rose Ranch for a while. You guys may remember me talking about this place in my first book. I’ll give you a little more detail. It was a nice little spread just outside of Billings, with four out-buildings, a long winding dirt road for the cattle, and the main house, which sat assed up against a hillside covered in trees. Sure, it was just a doublewide trailer, but seeing as all the houses I’d ever lived in had never been my own nor very majestic, it was like something out of a Louis L’Amour book.
Rick and his dad were too busy working or doing god knows fuck to entertain a gnarly kid with a dozen years under his belt, and seeing as there were no other kids there, I was alone a lot. So I figured some shit out on my own. I chopped down some trees in the forests behind the main house. I dug a swamp with a shovel and filled it with well water, convinced I could “lure frogs to my waters.” (I was a fucking weird kid.) And the one thing I did that I will never forget is I taught myself how to drive in an eighties Toyota truck with no siding, only two working gears and a roll cage designed not to save your life but really just to keep the cattle out. This thing was a glorious piece of shit—even the pipes that made up the cage and frame were different colors. I wasn’t exactly supposed to drive the thing, but seeing as I was the only fucker around to do anything, I decided it was worth the ass whooping. I got really good at it, which is fortunate because even though I couldn’t afford to get my license for years, I could drive anything you put in front of me.
This is usually the part in my books where you, the reader, are naturally thinking, Well, this reads like typical Taylor: he cuts a swath through the prior pages just to get to some tale from when he was growing up that is clearly a metaphor for whatever tone or moral he wants to foist on us, whether we like it or not. Yep. Pretty much. Even as I scoff at your pretentious snarcasm, I will give you this: you read me like a book. But allow me to retort: this is a book, dipshit. I know I tend to go off on tangents and whatnot, but I hope you know I always have a point. I do. I do have a point. I’d better have a point; I’m wearing my Pantaloons of Eternal Wisdom, and they were on sale. Shit, where was I…
So… what have we learned? Hmm?
Jesus, I can feel your lawsuits heating up.
I’m not a subtle person—I am blunt-force trauma in ill-fitting jeans. So if this book has offended you, it’s your fault. I’ve never made any bones about who I am or what I believe, and if this book caught you off guard, I don’t care. I wear my empathy on my sleeve, but don’t think for a second I won’t roll these sleeves up to get my hands dirty. Besides, I think you’re all fucked in the head. Between your weekly protests and your nightly news, my migraines have now registered to vote just to find the quiet candidates.
All you motherfuckers who think this country would be better if it went back to the “good old days,” you should probably understand something. Back then fear dictated that certain people of color wouldn’t fight back because they were afraid of “The Swarm.” The Swarm was basically so many racists coming all at once that there was nowhere to run and no way to fight back. I’ve seen the footage, which, it pains me to say, includes police officers from back in the day. In the “good old days” you could get away with literal murder. You could use your station in life to lord over others just to make yourself feel better about nothing at all. The “good old days” were only good for a handful. Those days, thankfully, are dead. Done. Fucking. Over. This generation has grown up in an era when not only have they been encouraged to fight back, but also now truly anyone—including them—could be elected president of the United States of America. So all you motherfuckers pining and crying for the “good old days,” you’d better listen up right now. Your shitty scare tactics may have worked in the past, but they’re not going to work anymore. This generation and all its beautiful colors are ready to fight for the ground they’ve gained, they’ve earned, and they’ve fought for. What’s more, there are literally millions of people like me who will be right there ready to help as well. So if you think you’re going to “do your worst,” be prepared to deal with this country’s best. There are way more of us than there are of you. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that back in the “good old days,” math was not a strong suit for you dicks. Let’s put it on paper: the Hillary voters, plus Stein voters, plus Johnson voters, plus the undecideds who didn’t vote but are now pissed off, plus the ones who did vote for the Cheeto but are now starting to see that he wasn’t going to keep any of the real promises he made—that’s a massive fuck-off number. You know what that means? There are way more of us than there are of you. And not one of us is afraid of you.
Watch what happens when your hate meets our resistance.
I don’t want this book to end on a shit note. Too many of our stories tend to be destined for the flush these days. Yes, I’m fucking repelled and angry about the state of the Greatest Country in the World (patent pending), but I also still love and hold dear some of the things that matter, even if only from a cerebral standpoint. I love that you can still go from coast to coast unchallenged in search of adventure, yourself, or just looking for a new home. I love that even in bigger cities, family is still something that is cherished and regarded with a sense of pride and protection. I love that you can still get into good, old-fashioned trouble in places like New Orleans, New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, or a thousand other places here. Yes, there are dangers, but if you live your life stuck in the loop of irrational fear, you’ll never have a reason to be afraid in the first place: look at the sad example your life has become when you’re so busy worrying about the loss of it that you forget to loosen up and fucking live it. That’s what fear mongers do: they goose that gland in your head that keeps you in a state of constant neuroses and puts you on the edge of absolute anxiety all to get you running back for the voting booth so they can keep controlling you with that fear. Fuck that. FUCK THAT, GOD DAMNIT! This is America. We’re not meant to live under control to deal with fear. We’re meant to control our fear to show motherfuckers what the deal is. And the deal is this: YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO BEAT US. YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO HURT US. YOU KNOCK US DOWN? WE WILL JUST CLIMB BACK TO OUR FEET, COME OFF THE WALL, AND GO DOWN FIGHTING IF NEED BE. To quote Captain America (you’re fucking right I’m going to quote Captain America): “I can do this all day.”
Ultimately, though, at some point, if we want this country to get on better footing, we need to find some common fucking ground. These days that seems like a tall order, seeing as both sides of the political aisle find it easier to attack each other than talk to each other, like smashing two fists together in an attempt to lace your fingers. Anyone watching these days is probably scared shitless; we’re all surrounded by fascists in sheep’s clothing, except one group is in fifty-fifty polycotton, and the other is in all-natural biodegradable diesel textiles. All they want is for you to support their cause, no matter where it takes you in the end, but if you deign to disagree—even if it’s just a matter of opinion and it’s not a big detail to get hung up on—they’ll vilify you in the town square, screaming “NAZI” or “FAKE NEWS” or “SNOWFLAKE” or “DEPLORABLE” or a zillion other fucking catchphrases the media has pushed on the public for no reason other than to appear relevant in an age when print feels dead, news feels forced, and if information doesn’t come fast enough, it gets fucking made up. Sound familiar? Feel like shit? I couldn’t agree more.
On your way out the door, let me tell you about the Murder Hotel.
Before you start thinking crazy thoughts or if you’re wondering whether I’m going to pitch you on one of
my shitty scripts (I’m telling you, Cul-De-Slash is going to be a hit!), I promise you it’s a true story, no one gets murdered, and it has a happy ending. It’s meant to be a metaphor, just like the story about Rick and his dad a few pages back. I know I didn’t exactly tell you what the metaphor was when I told you that story, so maybe by kicking this tale down the drain as well I’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I do have a point to make, I just can’t remember which bubble I wanted to burst with said point, so I need to find my way back to it by going over this story with you all. Come on, have I ever let you down before? What? What was the second time? I only remember the one with the goose and the Mason jar, and that was hardly my fucking fault, seeing as I wasn’t the one who made the dare in the first place! I knew that damn bird wouldn’t make the distance, so don’t blame me! Shit got everywhere, ruined my good venetian blinds, and I lost twenty fucking bucks. NO ONE WON THAT DAY, YOU CALLOUS DICKS.
It’s happening again, I know…
Anyway, my son Griff and I went on a road trip of our own.
My family has houses in Iowa and Nevada. A few years ago we decided to switch cars, from Iowa to Nevada. So my son Griff and I loaded ourselves in for a cross-country trek. Well, I guess it would be a half-cross-country trek—what’s half of a country? Maybe half of the word country… rhymes with “front”… I’m drawing a blank right now…. Anyway, we logged the coordinates in the good ol’ GPS system and proceeded to the highlighted route just in time to catch some killer shit on the eighties on eight. Griff, brutal typical teenager that he is, simply rolled his eyes at my choice of songs (he’s finally come around to appreciating “good musical nostalgia”) and sank into the backseat for the first of many naps on our trip. I settled down on my sit bones, getting both cheeks on the same page, and allowed my journey to roll out in front of me. Unlike most people, I absolutely adore road trips. Maybe it’s because I basically grew up on the road. Maybe it’s because of the stories like the Semi Near-Death one with Rick and his dad. Maybe it’s because the more I drive through this country, the more connected I feel to it, like following the veins and arteries that keep our nation running. Maybe it’s the hypnotic swing that comes with staring at the white and yellow lines for too long. Hell, it could be as simple as road trips are the best times to listen to good music. Whatever the reason, I’ve always loved to be on the pavement, racing toward a faraway destination. Something about it just feels like freedom. That may sound corny, but to me it’s the purest form I can think of right now.
