The Seven Deadly Sins

by Corey Taylor

  Yeah, I have some issues. So what? At least I am busy, right? I am every bit as bad as the apples I am juicing. You will never get me to admit it in court, though. There is something to be said about still recognizing your own stink, if you get my drift. Just because I empathize does not mean I sympathize. These people never slept on the street. They never ate garbage, and they never lived through a cold night in their entire lives. Do not expect me to give a rosy red clit rubbing if one of their trophy pets dies or their fake tan goes from brown to khaki. I would not chum the Pacific with their leftovers to draw in sharks. If that makes me a bad person, then fuck yeah, give me all the black clothing you got and a damsel in distress to tie to some railroad tracks. Nah, that is too dated—I will just run over with a rented Segway any skinny stupid blonde debutantes who get in my way.

  I am the other end of the swimming pool. I am the reason I cannot sleep at night. Why do the freeloaders bother me so much? Maybe it is because I have never claimed more than I have earned. Maybe it is that I cannot and probably will never relate to a life spent in almost utter absentia. All I have known in my life is work and progress. All I have been shown is that you must make yourself a legend in order to scratch your name on the Great Oak. So when “entitled” morons get thrown book deals and movie roles and unmerited praise, I hang my head and fight back too many vicious tirades to count on my phalanges. When I see one of them embroiled in controversy, I feel the same way I do when a Kennedy dies. That may be a little dark, but I have nothing in common with a hierarchy that hides behind money to fund a lifestyle that is debased, tawdry, and counterfeit to the core. We can do better, or at least we can hope for better. They cannot: They are stuck being gold-plated, dim-witted, and asinine. You would have thought that with all that money, they could have hired someone to tell them that marrying cousins does wonders for the gene pool.

  I wish I knew a fart joke to lighten the mood right now, but so much for pathos. Tell you what—I will get a grip when they get a clue. What the fuck can they take from me that I cannot do without? I can play and sing on any street corner and scrounge enough to buy a pack of smokes. I can scream my diabolical diatribes at open-mike nights to a packed house of seven people and be okay. What can they take? They cannot take anything from me. So I will never take back anything I have ever said. This is me scared shitless—any questions?

  Maybe that is the key. Sloth plants seeds of doubt in the most fertile fields of man. I have no doubts in my abilities or talents. I am not saying I am cocksure or full of myself. I just know what I can do. So I do it a lot. I do it whether I get paid or not. I am an entertainer at day’s end, and as long as there are people lining up to see me do whatever it is I do, who the hell am I to rest on laurels that can wait until I am infirm and gray? I want the world, and that does not jibe with sloth at all. I am just not in tune with this “sin.” I am still not convinced it is a sin. It is a ludicrous place in the soul that just wants to stake a claim and sit on it. I do not want to start sounding older than I am, but what the hell is wrong with that? Is that what we are left with in this country? A horde of shiftless wonders who cannot tie their shoes without looking it up on Google? I do not buy it and I would like to put whoever is selling it out of business. Old fogies go on and on about “the good old days” when honesty and sweat built an empire called the USA. I wish I had just a single memory of any of that time; maybe if I did I would not be so angry. People always say that “times are changing.” But time does not change—people do. Time does what it has always done, rolling over us like waves of warm water and setting us to simmer in baths of inevitability. Time only points us in the right direction. It will never make you move on your own.

  If satisfaction is the murderer of our dreams, then sloth supplies the pillows we suffocate under when we try to lower our heads to rest. It seems like such a lukewarm and harmless thing, but sloth can erode bones from the inside. It can harvest dead wheat in a land of plenty. It can rip us to pieces with the simplest action, which is doing nothing whatsoever. So to rally the troops, we must control our appetites for lush extravagance. We need to remember that although Rome was not built in a day, it was also not built with prayers and wishes. It takes people to do what the people want. Leaders come and go, but the fire of our will has burned down the greatest obstacles of our lives. We cannot give in to commonplace worries. We have to be willing to face our instincts and sort them with rationality. The battles of our generation will be fought not on the streets but in our minds, because who can ever beat us one on one?

  Sins have stained the cloths of royalty and ruined the air we breathe from time to time. Sins have pulled apart rope bridges left for escape and leveled the temples we dared to worship in back when we were a little bit different and a little more the same. But banality is hardly a sin. Being benign and faltering from lack of use is really just another reminder that we are three inches farther away from each other than the last time we stopped and talked. No effort means no more flyaway hairs standing on end in acrimonious displays of disagreement. No qualms or shows of distaste means not so much blood to clean from our hands and fingernails. How many species can say with as much brutal truth as possible that by not saying or doing anything, they are keeping us from killing each other?

  Our proximity keeps us honest. Our intentions keep us strangers.

  When I was young, we sat on stoops and sang the evenings back into their shoeboxes so as not to lose any stars. Apartment buildings were brick villages, and around 5 p.m., those who worked came home and those who played joined them for some air. I remember barbecues and discussions, sociable symmetry on Thursday nights. Sloth was used to enjoy sun tea and potato salad until the chicken was done. Sloth was grabbing a lawn chair and talking about the preseason with 1A across the hall and 2B upstairs. This was no sin: It was siesta, a way of coaxing a little more life out of languid hours and good company. If sloth is deadly, then just plain lazy will put you in a coma. Iowa is a wonderful place for this type of exemption. We are the middle, but in the middle of nowhere. We seem to be a punch line to the Coasts, but we were the first to legalize same sex marriage. The whole country glues itself to our doorstep every four years for the caucuses, where political bigwigs watch the outcomes like starving hawks on a day pass. So we must be doing something better than they are, like turning slothfulness into an exotic hobby. I am a blue-collar guy with a white-collar income. Iowa gave me appreciation for everything, including the rare spare time I have.

  So what do we do? I say we retire sloth to the Vatican like a superstar’s number in his home stadium. They can hang it in the Sistine Chapel next to God’s pointer finger, as if he is saying, “Wow, remember when something as boring as sloth was considered one of the seven deadly sins? I sure am glad Corey Taylor cleared up all that doubt for us. My, he is a handsome fellow. He truly is created in my image. Have you seen his neck? The thing is like a tree trunk, are you fucking kidding me? You would go through four axes before you made a dent!” Okay, maybe that is not the conversation your God is saying, but my God curses and thinks my neck should be declared a national treasure. No? Your loss, people.

  Anyway, we could do the unthinkable and make sloth an ice cream flavor. The trouble would come when no one had the energy to taste it. We could sponsor a car in its honor: the new Ford Sloth. It would never sell all that well though. . .because all it would do is idle!!!!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! That shit was real as fuck!! Did you read that? It was amazing!! You do not have to admit it. I know the truth. That shit worked on two different levels—total and utter brilliance! Ooh, we could discover a new species of plant life and incorporate sloth into its Latin translation. Now we just need to find a fuzzy little fern that grows no higher than a foot off the ground, depletes the food and water all around it, and very well could be harvested and made into stuffing for organic pillows. I predict a new hot item for next Christmas.

  This is proving to be the hardest chapter to write. I mean, how many different ways can you be
clever talking about a state of mind that is not far from a vegetative state? I suppose there are worse things that could happen, like the earth’s orbit could pull Halley’s Comet into our atmosphere and hammer it into the bedrock beneath the ocean floor, flash boiling deciliters of salt water, creating tsunamis and tidal waves not seen since the earth was forming. Between the catastrophic effects of the initial impact and the resulting shifts in polarity and plate activity, I would give the earth minutes, not days. In the event that that shit happens, this is exactly what I am going to do:

  I am going to corral my wife, my children, and any other family members standing close by and get them to “safety.” I will then give my children hugs and kisses, grab my wife’s sweet sexy ass, and head for Wal-Mart. I will pick out the nicest hammock available. I am not that big of a snob when it comes to designer colors, but it has to be super comfy and ultra-simple to set up. I will then help myself to four Texas fifths of my man, my friend, my saucy dancing partner, Mr. Jack Daniels. I will then return to my family’s whereabouts, string up my hammock, and drink until impact. Just for good measure, as that heavenly body of horse fucker is plummeting toward my planet, I am going to drink a shot off of my wife’s ample chest and flip that son of a bitch off as it hits the ground. Maybe I will also jump in the air as it is hitting.

  Jesus stuffed-crab Christ, even in a no-win scenario, with no chance of survival, I cannot relax enough to find a way to even approach being slothful. I am a failure at fallacies. I guess I am just doomed to be on point, all the time, till that son-of-a-bitch fucking comet gets here. Yeah, I know it will never happen, but it is not the only thing hurtling through space. We are not the focal point of the universe—hell, we are not even an exit sign for the universal highway. We are more like one of the pebbles they use to cover the sides of the road. That is the size proportion we are dealing with: galactic soap scum in the big bathtub in the sky.

  I am sitting here with my coffee, looking at the valley that my house in L.A. sits above, watching workmen build three different homes for people who, more than likely, are not even around. These men have been doing these jobs for months: waking us up in the morning, keeping us awake around noon, interrupting conversations in the afternoon, startling us when they come back from their lunch break, and immediately using a jackhammer. If anything, these men are very committed. And that is an apt metaphor for this whole chapter. These people show up day in, day out and set themselves to a backbreaking task, surrounded by houses full of people who probably make copious amounts of money for doing a lot of nothing. These men are on display in an open-air menagerie, adding a little more to the landscape and paying close attention to their architecture. They do not give a shit if they wake us lazy shits up or make us have to talk a little louder to hear each other. They take pride in their work even though they do it all the time, rain or shine.

  There are men and women just like them all over this country, in every county, every city, and every township just outside the capital. They do the things they do because they are carrying on a fundamental tradition and a way of thought that many are convinced has been gone from America for a very long time. Trust me—I have been to every state in the Union and I see my fellow Americans hanging on. No recession can bring us down. No depression can break our resolve. There may be a percentage that throws off the bell curve, but the pros far outnumber the cons: The pros are doing more for a better world and the cons are doing time for a life spent wasted. Sloth can lead a man to crime, but it does not mean he will steal. Sloth can slow a man’s progress, but it will not make him fall. If life and history have proven anything, it is that men do what they want. Some men choose to fail. Thankfully, most men choose to win.

  In a place that needs constant care and takes so much energy to strengthen, sloth is left to its own devices because it cannot get a hold in this new world. We move forward on our own, treating each step not with the mentality of a triage but as a chess game. We live better by thinking ten steps ahead, anticipating every counter-move and celebrating each gain. So I say we send sloth out on the water and give it the Viking funeral it so richly deserves. It is a human trait that holds no sway over this mess of memories any longer. Our white cells have been fighting this so-called pestilence since before we were born. Just because the fight is getting easier, that does not mean we have won the title. None of us are immune to the allure of aloofness. We do not know where we are going, but we are pointed in the right direction. The challenges are where we find ourselves. The obstacles are now scenery for the long walk home. We can overcome anything we want because our greatest advantage is that we are all alive, and as long as we are alive, we have everything. So pick up a stick, smack at the grass, and whistle a while. There is no sin in that.

  chapter 6

  My Waterloo

  It is funny how things work out sometimes.

  There are proponents who maintain that we are all products of two different variables: genetics and environment. This is saying we are one part who we are born to be and one part what we are turned into through relationships, family, childhood, and the rest. I happen to agree; the things we go through make us who we are. Our yins and yangs are usually nothing to boast about, but in this life, being extraordinary has to take a collision of talent, drive, and passion mixed with a certain amount of dysfunction and insanity, an almost-perfect storm that makes one person a star and another just a plain old fuck up. In other words, it takes a lot to be a lot.

  But I want to take it a step farther. In addition to genes and surroundings, I believe everyone in the world has two places in their hearts: the city you are born in and the city that defines you. For most people, it could be the city their parents raised them in and the city where they went to college. For me, both were in the same state. I was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on December 8, 1973. However, starting in 1984, my soul was formed in a darker place.

  Come off Highway 29 before you hit the tiny little mix-master over by the Crossroads Mall and you will see Greenwood Park at the horn of River Forest Road. The dike by the river almost runs parallel, mirroring the curve like a geographical pair of quotation marks. River Forest takes you to Lafayette Road, a gray blacktop vein that stretches through almost four towns, combining them into a straight line of morose loneliness, despair, and intolerance. You follow Lafayette till you hit downtown—gutted, rusty, and closed in on all sides by broken cement and tragedy. Along the way you are assaulted by the remnants of a city that used to have a purpose until the businesses moved away, leaving economic devastation in its wake. High schools, railroad tracks, and dead eyes—welcome to Waterloo.

  Waterloo, Iowa, and its sister towns of Evansdale, Elk Run Heights, and Cedar Falls were the backdrop of the worst moments of my life. From Jewett Elementary all the way until my final days at East High School, it was a cornucopia of racism, malicious intent, and ignorant torrents of pain. I can still feel the evil in the marrow of my spine, my bones, and my soul. I was beaten in this town. I was raped in this town. I was destroyed in this town. I almost died in this town. I was hated in this town.

  So I learned to hate it right back.

  Before I go any further, let me make myself very clear: This is not a reflection of the people who live there now. I have not been back in years and I am fairly out of touch with the current population. I am quite certain the folks who make up the old “319” these days are very lovely. No, my seething hate comes from the time I spent there, and my deep-seated need to escape. There is a little bitterness connected to my five years there in every line I have ever written. It stripped me of my innocence. It was where I first learned that no one is safe, not even a starving, eleven-year-old kid who only wanted to fit in, laugh, and be loved. But when you are left to the whim of the selfishness of adults, your safety and your heart go up in flames like a funeral pyre.

  When no one cares, you learn to follow suit to survive.

  It was in this town that all of these “sins” really hit home for me. Every one
of them was an escape or an assault. It seemed I was a wanton lust monger, a glutton for punishment, a jealous, envious dick pining for recognition on any level, and a raging knot of fury all buried under blond hair and blue eyes. But I do not want to get ahead of myself. Let me set the scene for you.

  My mother, my sister, and I moved to Waterloo when I was eleven years old. We had been moving around from state to state for about six months. I did not even get to finish fourth grade. After a brief and shitty stint in Florida, I was told we were going back to Iowa. I was led to believe we were going back to Des Moines, a city I was very fond of and where I still had many friends. Instead, we landed in Waterloo with my mother’s thenboyfriend. We moved into a trailer court on River Forest Road, surrounded by mud and dog shit, promptly taking up residence in Lot #20. In this morose little ecosystem, #20 was the trailer in the middle of everything, five lots down from the city street and caddy corner to the big white building that apparently housed all the washing machines, a construct that was conspicuously always locked up. That building scared the hell out of my sister. For some reason, though, one time she ran away and we found her in that building. We never knew why—hell, I did not even ask. I understood the urge to run.

  After a few months, my mother broke up with her boyfriend and we moved in with her brand-spanking new best friend. I will not say her name out loud because every time I do, I curse and spit, but her nickname was Corky. She was a disgusting forty-year-old power alcoholic who was balancing three men, slightly raising a daughter, and hell-bent on sucking the very light from the sun if it meant people would look to her for warmth. I know the golden rule is if you have nothing good to say about someone, say nothing at all. Well, if I had no choice but to talk about Corky for the rest of my life, I would have to take a vow of silence. Corky died of cancer about fifteen years ago, and it is the best example I have in the world to believe in karma. I have never told anyone this, but I used to make a trip every year just so I could piss on her grave. The only good thing that came out of her was her daughter Missy, who I affectionately call my other sister to this day.