A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven (23 page)

We sat in an old house just outside Denver, off of a road that leads you up to Red Rocks Amphitheater. I think my friend Jester was there, but I may be mistaken. All I know is that I was a million miles from reason and up to no good. I do remember there was a woman who called herself Rose there. Her real name was, like, Ingrid or something, so good call on the pseudonym. But with that name came all the haughty trimmings of a pretentious Thanksgiving. It was her Ouija board, and she had tried to dirty it up, or “antique it” as they say, by writing on it and scuffing it presumably with dirt. The only problem was that she kept it in the original box—the fucking thing still had the price tag from Wal-Mart on it. That was not going to rain on her dramatic parade though. “Ooooh, derelict spirits!” she exclaimed in the din, startling me and nearly making me wee a little. “We seek your guidance, wisdom, and cherished mercy . . . SPEAK THROUGH ME. Speak to us. Speak to . . . the world!”

You got to be fucking kidding.

And so the circling began. There we were: a bunch of gothic punk nightmares, fingers all together and touching on a piece of plastic with a hole in it, watching it swirl around like none of us had anything to do with its movement. I know for a fact that I was pushing it; I had no illusions coming into the damn thing. Then again, I had nefarious intentions. Slowly but surely, I started to lead this plastic triangle toward the letters that I wanted. I started with a Y, then an O, until I made it spell out a single sentence:

“YOU ARE ALL IDIOTS.”

I had planned on making it say, “YOU ARE ALL GONNA DIE,” but I changed it at the last minute because I did not want to run the risk of stepping in someone’s piss after scaring three shades of shit out of a group composed of armchair vampires—and I use the term “vampire” here as loosely as possible. Rose, being a little savvier than I gave her credit, picked up on it before I was done and scowled at me the rest of the night. She then called an end to the séance. I was not invited back. As you can tell, my feelings are still hurt to this day. I had basically pulled this same prank on some of my friends back in Evansdale, Iowa, when I carved a Ouija board face onto the top of a writing plank. Guiding the makeshift stylus, which was nothing more than the bottom of a Pepsi two-liter bottle, I made my board tell them all to bum me cigarettes. They all complied. I had smokes for the rest of the night. We did this for a few weeks every Saturday, about an hour before Headbangers Ball came on MTV. Good times. Good friends. Good smokes.

So yeah—those games are shite.

The wonderful thing about all this science and math I am hitting you with is that I am so very fallible when it comes to these questions. Everything I wrote may not even make fucking sense at the end of the day. A theorist could read this book and treat it like the National Enquirer. I could become a punch line for the entire scientific world, a Munson among men. But who gives a shit? So maybe I have just committed the worst bit of mental clutter since Garth Brooks tried to make a rock album, or at least since Chris Cornell tried to make a hip-hop album, or at least since Scott Weiland tried to make a Christmas album, or at least since Lil Wayne tried to make a metal album (I could do this all day—you get the picture . . .). Maybe this is the biggest put-on since the Millerites experienced their Great Disappointment in 1844. But ladies and gentlemen of the jury . . . what if I am not crazy? What if in some corner of a college basement somewhere someone could take this numeral voodoo and actually get somewhere with it? All I have done is stand on a step stool with a lit book of matches, doing my best to set the sprinklers off and send the alarms howling.

Discovery is a violent spasm of chance, reason, and determination. It takes a bit of ball size to jump in among the fires and dare for a marriage of the factual and the fascinating. In this day and age, when everything we are surrounded by seems to be less and less positive, when the world always finds itself on the dagger’s edge, just waiting for the final showdown, and even religion, with all its bells and whistles, cannot drag the throng away from wishing it was a quicker end than slower agony, maybe, just maybe, these few pages can be a counterweight to the heaviness life and all its trimmings can bring. What is so bad about not only believing in ghosts but also in trying to supply a few mathematical examples of why it is possible? What is the matter with wanting just a little bit of mystery left in the world, out there on the fringe by the Yetis and the underwater civilizations? This reality can and will kick every inch of fuck right out of you if you give it an ample opening. We have the anchor—how about a little wind in our sails?

I think looking backward is not the answer, as many theologians would want us to do. I also taste a little tactical chowder when I hear a pragmatist flailing at the mouth about how things like spirits cannot and never did exist. The bile in their repudiations causes the muscles in my forearms to draw clenched fists together and play a game I like to call Smash the Weasel. I only relax when I consider the hypocrisy of it all, when I have the same reaction to the God Squad. So the Gentleman Scholar inside me soothes my troubled mind and furrowed brow with the subtle yet firm reminder that “maybe time will tell . . .” Souls are wonderful things that no one can explain. We do know that this fleshy vessel we use for digs gives off a shit ton of energy. There has to be a connection. There has to be a little triple fantastic in this. Otherwise, humanity as a whole would not be so wonderfully and gloriously fucked up and beautiful.

In this chapter I picture myself running around a giant stone laboratory with crazy tall white hair and a toothy grin, pouring smoking noxious potions from one beaker to another, twisting knobs and switching switches, making lots of noise and cackling like a madman. My gnarled and hunched assistant wanders behind me (I call him Skip because I never bothered to stop and learn his real name), waiting to do my bidding while he wrings his hands over and over, as if there is too much lotion on them. In a convulsion of triumph, I savor my “eureka” moment with rigorous vigor and run across the stones to a blackboard covered in pagan-like symbols and chalk dust. With a bellow of “AH-HA!” I launch myself into my work again, muttering, “I will show them all! I will show the world! I will have my revenge!” Then again, I picture myself like that a lot, really. I see myself like that when I am making lunch sometimes. So I guess this new vision is nothing new. But I like it. I should look into buying a castle with a dungeon somewhere.

The point is that stranger things are always possible. We keep finding mysteries and unlocking their answers, more so in the last twenty years than at any other time in our existence, in my opinion. Yes, things like alchemy and perpetual-motion machines are a little outside our grasp of physics, but there are vast universes of explorative discovery to be had if only we have the mettle to make it so. Just because something is fantastic does not mean it is a fantasy that will never find its place in reality. One of the better bits of being human is that we can dream and reach for things that might never have been reached if we had not had the power to do the dreaming in the first place. The only limits we have ever had are the ones we build ourselves, fences of pessimistic stone that keep out the sun while blinding us to the sensation of that light on our faces. Some claim that only God has the answers; others say that the parameters of science section off the places we are not meant to go. All of that could be true. Then again, all of that could be a crutch to ensure that the majority of humanity remains ignorant and shortsighted. How will we ever find ourselves if we are not allowed to look? How will we outlast the mistakes of the past unless we test the waters outside our peripheral vision?

Maybe ghosts do not exist. Maybe there is no way in science and life that they can exist. Maybe I have more mental instability than I thought. Maybe I am wrong. If I am, then I will be the first to admit it. I would not like the taste of saying it and I would grumble into my coffee cup for a few years, but I would accept it and move on to the next mystery. Maybe I just have a great propensity for turning bullshit into brilliance than do most people I know. But I like my idea better—that there is more to this world and others than even we, with our big brains and brawny opinions, can fathom as of yet. I like thinking that somewhere between the religion and the science there is the truth. We may never know. But that does not mean that we will never dream of its identity.

The Kids on the Circle

I
N
2006 I
FOUND
MYSELF
IN
a very strange dichotomy.

On the professional side, everything was going swimmingly. Stone Sour had just released Come What(ever) May, we had just come off a great run on the Family Values tour, and “Through Glass” was number one on the radio, on its way to staying there for eleven weeks. I had been working and touring for seven years by that point, and even though I knew there was more work ahead, I felt like I had a good foothold in the zeitgeist, cementing myself in the industry and setting the foundation for a thrillingly long career. I had also sold millions of albums, played several sold-out shows, and won a Grammy award with Slipknot. I was really hitting my stride, both musically and intellectually, and I was ready for anything.

Unfortunately my flipside was desperate to know how the other half lived. I was separated, on my way to an eventual divorce, and sleeping in my friends’ basement on a pullout couch that had seen a few too many doggy naps. I would not quite call it the glamorous life, but suffice it to say I was happy and that was what mattered. It was the beginning of that long road I have described in other literary routes as “getting it together, for fuck’s sake.” Although my friends had made it very clear that I could stay as long as I wanted, I knew I would need to get off my ass and find myself a home—that is what you do: you get your shit together, mend, and move on. Life only does you favors when you show the world you have the legs for a journey like that. So in late 2006, with my friends’ help, I went house hunting again. Unlike last time, I was not exactly looking for anything monumental or manor-like. I just wanted something that I could move into very quickly—comfortable, durable, cozy, and suitable for soirees and a few parties here and there. But every available house I looked at just did not have that thing I was looking for. I know what you are thinking: does something like that matter? Well, to me, yes, something like that does matter. Emotionally speaking, I had just moved out of Alaska. I wanted a home in the spiritual tropics.

At a friend’s urging I went back to one of the many houses I had originally turned down that I was convinced needed too much work. Like I said before, I wanted something ready-made and did not want to waste any time on shit like picking out curtains to match the carpets or any shit like that. I wanted this transition to be efficient and speedy. So I had no real expectations when I found myself walking through a certain two-story split-level in my hometown that day. But once I realized a little TLC would make it perfect (and some assurances that this could be done while I was on the road because I am a lazy cunt when it all comes down to it), I went for the little house on the cul-de-sac on the west side of my beloved Des Moines. Despite the work that needed to be done to my future home, I had high hopes and was dealing with an excitement I had not felt in my life. This was the big time—a house of my own. No roommates, no people to trash the place, no bullshit—just my son and I when it was my time to have him. Over the course of a month spent off the road, I slowly moved my stuff in while augmenting with things I was in dire need of, like couches, tables . . . and a fifty-five-inch big-screen TV with 7.1 surround sound.

You know—necessities . . .

After the renovations were completed, the house was wonderfully affable. We had removed a wall on the first floor and opened the living room and kitchen into one great big entertaining area. Up had come some dreary tile and carpet; down had gone some kick-ass hardwood flooring in its place. The formal dining room was a particular favorite. The wood floors were stolen from a house I had looked at twice, had made offers on, and had been about to close on when the owner had freaked out, taking the house off the market completely. The last I heard, the agent involved was suing the guy. But there had been a great floor plan in which several kinds of wood had been used in a remarkable way that really made the floor pop. So seeing as I had not been able to get the actual house, I just stole the idea for its most striking feature. Anyway, the rest of my house was painted and prepped (including some granite counters in the kitchen, called “Uba Tuba”), and after a few months it was finally finished.

I was ready to get on with my life in a house that I could call my own and around which I could build on my family. It had a great backyard, nice neighbors, and enough privacy that I did not need to hire armed security to man the parapets, so to speak. Sure, I was gone on the road a lot, but everyone and their mom loved the place, and my son made fast friends with the children living next door, running the area like I had when I was growing up. Contrary to the plans I had made when I first purchased the house, I soon had a few roommates too. They filled a vacancy for looking after the place when I was gone and provided company when I was resting from the burdens of touring and travel. But the first night I stayed there I was by myself, and it became very apparent that once again, in a very different house on a very different side of town, I was not living alone, not by a fucking long shot.