by Corey Taylor
By now you may have the presumption that I am a blowhard troublemaker with a chip on my shoulder and a giant hole in my soul. That actually does not sound all that bad, really. One of my philosophies has always been, “if you do not say it, it does not get said.” Basically saying, it means if you want something in life, speak up or shut up. I am saying we have enough to worry about in our lives without worrying how people who look nothing like anyone we should give a shit about feel when it comes to our decisions. There are days when the world should stay the fuck out of your business. Wanting something should not be a sin when everyone around is feeling the exact same fucking way. Being human is an instinct, not a source of religious scrutiny.
Nowhere does the concept have more impact than in the case of children. I can put it in this context: When I was a kid, all I wanted one Christmas was a set of Boba Fett Underoos. That was all I wanted. I ended up with an Atari 2600 and double-deck ghetto blaster. The disappointment I felt at the time was so crushing that I refused to speak to anyone for a week. A few months later I was being moved to Florida against my will and I had to leave behind all of my stuff. All of it. My ghetto blaster and my Atari 2600 were pawned for gas money. I ended up homeless for a few weeks in Fort Lauderdale. By then, Boba Fett Underoos were the least of my worries. Eating had become a high priority. So I learned young that envy is silly in comparison with survival. It does not mean I stopped wanting my heart’s desires. It means I have a curious yet headstrong way of putting things in perspective. I can see the forest through the fire. We make mountains out of gravel and ado out of apathy all the time. Envy will always be the Iago to our Othello.
Here is another bit of nonsense I came up with when I was younger. I was convinced I would never be a good singer or a great writer because I was not Steven Tyler. True story: Steven Tyler is one of the most gifted and original rock stars on the planet. Nobody sounds like him, nobody writes like him, and nobody exudes the kind of cool he has radiated consistently since I was a fucking toddler. He may have had his problems and he may go to battle with demons on a daily basis, but to me he was the upper crust of amazing. I have my idols: Sebastian Bach, Henry Rollins, Mike Patton, James Hetfield, and David Lee Roth. But Steven Tyler was the Holy Grail to me. He was the icon I tried to live up to for years.
As I got older I realized that I could never be Steven Tyler nor should I want to be, not because I think any less of him but because I know in my heart that emulation is a sincere form of flattery, but individuality is the only form of immortality. As envious as I was of his career, to want to have an exact replica would be a testimony to his legacy, not mine. It is easier to take your cues from someone else because they have made the mistakes in advance. No risk means no foul, but it also means no glory. You have to cut a new swath to find new land. If you follow the same path everyone else does, you will only end up with everyone else. If you want to stand out, stand up for yourself. So my loud envy became quiet respect for the Toxic Twin with the amazing lips. I still think he is an incredible man, but now I am looking for a way to be an equal not a double. Maybe that still means I am envious of a status high above what I have achieved. Maybe I am pragmatic and I know I have been extremely lucky to have the career I have had so far.
I am not the first to desire some sort of recognition from my elders. We have always envied the ones before us, whether it is a teenager wanting to be treated like an adult or a worker wanting a little respect from the boss. We all want the top spot, no matter where that spot happens to be. It can be as normal as walking through your neighbor’s house with an eye for what you can improve in your own. It can be as sordid as an oedipal complex and a cocked fist. We fight the good fight, but when no one is looking, we will always find ourselves looking around. Envy will make a man cheat on his wife. Envy will make a wife fuck the pool boy. Envy will make us all fuck each other over to get a better washer and dryer. But is it a sin or is it one of those things that come standard like a GPS in a Lexus?
The devout masses have told us time and again that free will was a gift from God. I dread to say it but that makes my point. Free will is the box set and your “sins” are the DVDs. We come loaded with the propensity to do great and terrible things. Free will guarantees we can do them. But then we are expected to believe that someone is watching everything we do and judging every second. Why the fuck do we have free will if we are judged regardless? And why should we give a rat’s ass pipe if we are being judged in the first place if we all have free wills? I guess it all comes down to what you believe. If you are an atheist, you just have to deal with how other people view your deeds. If you are a member of the holy flock, not only do you have to put up with the rest of the Gladys Kravitzes of the world, but you also have to worry about the big scary old guy in the sky. Your only hope is to subscribe to the New Testament god. He is a little more lenient than the Old Testament god. New Testament god will shake his head with a quiet knowing smile. Old Testament god will make you eat your children just to prove to him that you believe in his existence.
My own observations have shown me that envy just makes a sadistic little sewing circle that complains about anyone not knitting their ass off. For some reason we cannot keep our noses to ourselves. If we all just took life at face value, it might be a little easier. But most people just refuse to see that some things are unattainable. I get it: Every guy wants a four wheeler and every woman wants a guy who does not want a four wheeler. If people would just lower their expectations, they could settle, you know, like people do already whether they realize it or not. We get what we get and we like it, even if we do not truly like it. That is one thing about envy that I cannot stand: It makes us hate the things we get because they are not the things we want. Why do we not want the things we get? I am certain there are others who get the same shit. But we do not pay attention to those people. The things we get cannot be all that great because those people have them. So envy gives us another reason to look down on those around us, even when we are secretly looking up to them.
I will tell you what I do not envy. People with athlete’s foot are nothing to be jealous of. Another example is the life of a garbage disposal. That is just gross. How about the snot end of a diseased penis? Where am I going with this? Sorry, I am surrounded by people talking about stuff I am actually interested in. I will be right back.
Okay, it is a day later and I have coffee, quiet, and countenance. Living with a million people in several different households makes it difficult to concentrate. Mornings like this make me envy a writer in his wood-ensconced study, complete with fireplace and loyal golden retriever. I have a kitchen table, a rotating space heater, and an ashtray covered in skulls wearing giant headphones. If you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. Thank you, Mr. Jagger.
There is a moment in everyone’s life when you find yourself coveting something better, something meaningful, and something of merit. Dan Marino was one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time and yet he never won a Super Bowl. I will bet you a ton of money that he envies Trent Dilfer, who won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is loaded with people who may or may not deserve to be there. How do you think that makes bands like Kiss and Rush feel, who are two of the most influential bands of all time who are still not in the Hall of Fame? People can go on and on about how they are content with what life has given them. But at night, when they are alone and the only voice asking them questions is in their head, the truth hangs in the silence like a heavy fog on the moors. I believe we are never truly content, but I think most of us can come close. It all depends on the details. I am a man with a deep hole inside me that I have tried to fill with all manner of subterfuge. I will not be a man satisfied until I am a man exhausted. We are given dreams so we can imagine a life that is a little more vested in the future. We are given life so we can exist. Our minds are what stoke the embers of desire. If God had wanted us to live without “sin,” he should have never given us the power to
think for ourselves.
That is truly the crux of my argument: People have developed into beings that would give anything to be free. We have seen it in revolution after revolution: men and women banding together to shuffle off an immoral coil disguised as a government that does nothing but everything of, for, and by themselves. The crooked claw their way into the hearts of leadership to dismantle and control the very tools we were given to live our lives. The further we get from the prologue, the closer we get to the exciting conclusion. This is in the spirit of the great minds who have tried to pull us together for something we never even knew we deserved. I am doing my best to carry on that tradition, to convince the people to rise up and tell the ones writing the rules that we will not be cabled into one universal rule of thumb. I am trying to set us free, but just with a few more fart jokes than you are probably used to.
In a world where the infirm are minutes away from walking on their own and the guilty are finally coming to justice even several years later, we are taking shaky steps toward letting go of myth and superstition and accepting ourselves for who we are: imperfect creatures of chance. Paint your Easter egg any color you want—we were accidents of evolution. We are a combination of aberrant cell growth, electrical synapse activity, and unbelievable luck. We are what happens when smart monkeys fuck. Making it more than it ever was just confuses the ignorant and slows our advancement. I am probably offending a lot of you, but I do not care. We should be looking inside for answers, not digging in the dirt to find ancient texts that supply a backstory. The future is meant for those who are willing to let go of the worst parts of the past. When you cannot take two steps without turning around to inspect your footsteps, you are getting nowhere fast. I know my ancestors blazed a trail somewhere around my family tree. So I will keep my eyes on the road, my hands on the wheel, and my ears open for distress calls.
Envy is not only limited to awards and flattery; it can also come in a form of jealousy that is as common as a fart after broccoli (see?). I call it the Married Man Melancholy. This comes when a married man is afflicted with a malady so viral it threatens the very fabric of his matrimony. It stings the heart, pierces the harmony, and leaves you going over your choices in life like unpaid bills at tax time. I am talking, of course, about single friends, but I do not mean the standard-issue, factorybuilt single friend who is looking for love but remains forlorn, watching You’ve Got Mail all alone on a Friday night. I am in fact talking about the single friend who lives like Hugh Hefner in the ’60s and then tells you all about it later on. To your wife, he is known as the Best Man at your wedding and that Fucking Friend of Yours every day after your wedding. And he will drive you to cry in your Frosted Flakes a lot.
This single friend cannot wait to share his sexual exploits with you, sometimes calling you in the middle of the night while he is still at the woman’s house. This single friend has gestures and hand signals that would make a deaf person call the police. This single person probably has a collection of soiled underwear in a “trophy case” somewhere in his closet, taking them out on Wednesdays to “count his scalps” when nothing is good on TV. This single friend is a scumbag, a total asshole, and a mangy dog of another color. You secretly love him for it.
The married man will live vicariously through his single friends when married life is starting to taste like warm water. I know, marriage is about the long term and a deeper love that lasts well after the romance is gone. But a man is also a creature of instinct if not habit, and he never misses a chance to take a look at another woman. It does not mean he is going to run out and shove his fuck pump into the nearest and most welcome vagina—it just means that he is looking. Women cannot handle it, and it causes a lot of bullshit. But this is just how guys are. We are mammals with a nose for pheromones, the great truffle hunters searching for the quickening and trying desperately to hide our massive hard-ons. Because of this, we carry a garbage truck–sized amount of guilt with us from day one to judgment day. It is not our fault; we go where the wind takes us. But the sanctity of wedlock holds a tight tether, leaving us to fight these feelings to keep our wives happy, our days less chaotic, and our homes quiet.
But it does not mean we cannot live another life through our friends. This is envy in its most pure and unrefined form. It gives us something to think about while we toil in cubicles or pound out manual labor. It gives us just a little hint of spice in our diets. Sure, we know it is just a flight of fancy, but inside we can transcend the bland and be a little less cramped if only for the briefest of periods. I do not say this to make people think that marriage is a burden; I am saying this is really just how guys are. Bad marriages are burdens and good marriages are godsends, but men will always just be men. Women, however, envy wholly different things. Not being a woman myself, mind you, this is just speculation, but I think I have a pretty decent grasp on this. Women do not envy silly things like dirty sex or drunken fiascos, although I am sure they enjoy both when readily available. No, women envy the things that truly matter in the world: status and stability.
A woman will live above her means to appear wealthier, more glamorous, and more confident than she really is her whole life. She will scramble and scrape for every little piece of the good life she can muster to get ahead and stay there. You may think this is a selfish little bit on her part, and on mine for writing it. But I disagree for one big reason: Men have done so much to ensure that women remain behind them that the ladies have had to adapt this reflex. Since the invention of talking, women were delegated to keeping the house and appearances for the caveman provider, thus beginning a millennium of competition between the sexes that crested with Susan B. Anthony and culminated with the Equal Rights Amendment. I know and you know that women are just as good and fucked up as men. In the end they will win their rights.
But in the back of their cerebrals, there was that instinctual tickle that craved status and hungered for not only a seat at the table but also the nicest most expensive table on the cul-de-sac. Much like the inner battle that men face every day keeping the sexual seed spreader at bay, women fight their own secret Gettysburg trying to balance a world where they have the right to be whatever they choose and yet still are worried about what the neighbor’s house is worth. I am guaranteed a verbal bitch slap for saying this shit, but the truth is a sledgehammer. I am just the guy in the hard hat swinging it. I see it every day because I work with several strong, committed women who are almost always better than the men they work for. I have had the privilege of picking the brains of quite a few females in a position of power far above mine. They are vital, sharp instruments of intelligence and savvy and they know exactly what they want. But every fucking time, what they want is usually what somebody else has. So women are not immune to the allure or the palpable thrust of envy. They just envy different things. Some would say better things. I would say more esoteric things.
But the price of longing is charged to a credit card that does have limits. There is a finite reservoir we carry around like a camel hump. If you get what you want all the time, you will end up with all the time you want and nothing to show for it. There is a certain candor that comes with denying satisfaction. It builds character, breeds appreciation, and allows for achievements of real worth. Yeah, you get pissed for a while, but who really needs a bidet in their garage? Come on, we have to start being practical with our envious whims. This is a country that does not like being practical, though. This is a country of game shows and instant winners, of self-starters and risk takers. This is a country where everything can be yours if the price is right. So common sense does not really blend when all-out instinct goes into the game plan. People will fill out Publisher’s Clearing House entries until their eyes go numb in the hopes that they can win $10 million in forty-eight hours. Then they will not have to watch MTV’s Cribs—they can be on it. Never mind the fact that Cribs features the homes of the famous. When they win their money, they will be famous. Never mind the fact that most of the bragging, grinning cocksuck
ers on Cribs do not even own the houses they are showing off. It does not matter. As soon as they get something for nothing, all their troubles will go away.
There you go, people. As soon as you get something for nothing, all your troubles will go away. Is that true? Is it just that simple? It seems to me that the people who play these games were not all that great with money to begin with, so what the fuck are they going to do with $10 million? They will wipe their ass with it. Then they are back at square one, with debt and interest. Good luck fishing that golden hook out of your sphincter: It has a barbed end and leaves a mark like a fucker. Use your pinky, it just might help. But common sense logged out of our chat rooms right around the time Thomas Paine died. It fled the scene like last call at a strip club, leaving us with soiled bills and creepy uncles lounging around sniffer’s row. The American Conversation has become a monosyllabic, incoherent mess of dudes, bros, fucks, and Lindsay Lohan. All we care to talk about are things we cannot have, people we cannot be, and places we cannot go. In other words, the American Conversation is a fucking love story devoted to envy. And why not, man? We preach a new religion, so why should we not have the best god money can buy? We show the best shows and move the best moves and just out and out outdo the rest of this giant blue pimple of a planet. Why not rub it into the global eyeballs a little further? If plights are the wounds this world tries to live with, America is a fucking ten-year-old with a Super Soaker full of lemon juice and dog piss. I think this is one of the reasons we go to war every ten years. We get really mad if we find that a country does not have the decency to envy our freedom like the rest of the world does. If we cannot be the most popular kid in school, we will burn the cafeteria to the ground. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. “Exterminate all the brutes!” Makes you want to salute a flag right now, huh? I am confident that is exactly what our founding fathers were trying to accomplish when they set down the blueprints for our timeless civil liberties. I love being American, but I hate other Americans.