Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (108 page)

“He’ll
be the love in your eyes. He’ll be the blood between your thighs. And then have
you crying for more.”

At
twelve years of age I had no idea what Nikki Sixx meant with these lyrics, but
it sounded dangerous, filthy, and so righteous. The song lasts a paltry three
minutes and sixteen seconds, and I cannot remember anything that happened
during my first listen on Bobby’s Walkman. The roof could have collapsed, the
cheerleaders could have stripped naked, or Bobby could have kissed me on the
lips and I would not have noticed.

In
retrospect it sounds cheesy to admit that a Mötley Crüe song changed my outlook
on life, taste in music, and overall attitude. But I will, because it did. The
album
Shout at the Devil
exists as a thirty-four minute “fuck you” to
the status quo. It became my rallying cry against the popular-crowd mentality
of suburban Pittsburgh in 1983. I remember playing records my parents owned,
like Kenny Rogers’
Greatest Hits
and The Beach Boys’
Endless Summer
before my introduction to the Crüe.
Shout
is one of the few albums I can
listen to and enjoy like a twelve-year-old boy. It does not sound nearly as
dated and stupid as other albums from that time. When I began to find others
who took pleasure in the Satanic imagery and razor-sharp sound of early Crüe, I
realized I was, and would forever be, a Metalhead.

Another
benefit of this defining moment in my life, and there are many benefits, is
that it made me realize I did not have to live like everyone else. I had the
right, nay, the responsibility, to question everything. I recognized that I
thought differently from many others, including my parents and siblings, and
that this was not only OK but vital and necessary. Journey was selling millions
of records at the time, and I fucking hated Steve Perry. The popular kids
played “Faithfully” three times in a row at one dance, which made me throw up a
little a bit in my mouth. I saw the truth in the sleazy rock of the Sunset
Strip, and I would embark on a journey of spreading it that continues to this
day. Mötley Crüe did not turn me into a disciple of Mötley Crüe or of hair
metal. Heavy metal validated the idea of being an outsider, one who doesn’t
want to do what everyone else does.

And
it really made me hate school spirit.

***

Schools
foster blind loyalty in much the same way the Olympics do. Chuck Klosterman
says the “Olympics are designed for people who want to care about something
without considering why.” I would add that school spirit serves the same
function. The institution desires to have the student body care about it
without logic. In fact, as Klosterman says later in his essay, “I Do Not Hate
the Olympics,” it’s the same kind of “antilogic you need to employ whenever you
attend a political convention or a church service or movies directed by Steven
Spielberg.” He means that whether it’s patriotism, rooting for a team, or
cheering a school, it is ultimately a lesson in non-thinking. If you want to
non-think, you do not need a school to do that.

Ironically,
this is one of the cornerstones of modern education. Every district, school,
administrator, and teacher will say that they want to teach kids “how to
think.” Asking them to blindly cheer at a pep rally teaches them how to
conform. Schools are rife with conformity masked by such things as schedules,
rules, lockers, procedures, lines, and more. There is no room for the child who
questions authority or seeks an alternative path. Teachers and administrators
create programs within this rigid conformity that attempt to placate the
outsiders, but those efforts are not taken seriously by the kids they aim to
help. There are certainly more pressing issues in education today, and I do not
mean to scapegoat school spirit for the decline of the quality of education in
this country. However, it matters. It matters because kids learn more from what
we model than what we say.

Pride
only works if others know you have it. It is a feeling validated by external
factors and does not exist unless it is recognized. That is not to say students
should not have respect for their school. Respect is different. Respect allows
an individual to value without being dependent on validation.

The
underlying assumption of school spirit is that yours is better. But why is this
so? Is the rest of the world screwed because God blesses America? Do
Clevelanders suck because they live in Cleveland, a city with a football team
that constantly gets pounded by the Pittsburgh Steelers?

***

Bobby allowed me
to borrow his
Shout at the Devil
cassette. My grandfather, the one
buried with the Terrible Towel, had a dual tape deck in his spare bedroom. For
a twelve-year-old kid in 1983 the dual tape deck was only slightly less
shocking than if he had the command center of the Space Shuttle in there.

I asked him to
“dub” me a copy of
Shout at the Devil
. I made sure to hand him only the
white plastic cassette and hide the cover, the original complete with the boys
in the Crüe looking like Lucifer’s minions and surrounding a pentagram. My
grandfather looked at the tape, and as he slid it into the player, he turned to
me.

“We’re skipping
this track.”

I felt my face
catch fire.

Too bad, because
“Bastard” was one of the best songs on the album.

Thoughts on Social Engineering

Dan Slaney
sucks. Ours was a friendship of convenience and, as it turned out, not all that
convenient for me.

***

In early summer,
all of the schools in western Pennsylvania choose a Saturday for their
“Kennywood picnic.” Each public school district enjoys its designated day at
Kennywood amusement park outside of Pittsburgh. If you have never been there,
you owe it to yourself to visit. Unlike the manicured, sanitized, plastic parks
of Disneyreich, Kennywood is authentic. It opened in 1898 and is one of only
two amusement parks in the country listed on the National Register of Historic
Places (the other being Rye Playland Park, which is not in Pittsburgh and not
at all relevant to this story, although I am sure it is a wonderful park, too).

The Kennywood
picnic was a time of careful maneuvering. Those at the top of the social ladder
had no real concerns. They brought strips of tickets and gaggles of friends and
moved through the park like locusts, devouring junk food and game-booth
souvenirs at an exponential rate. Because they entered Kennywood in prearranged
groups, it became interesting to see which boys “rode” with which girls.
“Riding” is not a euphemism for sex. We were twelve, you pervert. A boy asked a
girl to ride with him on La Cachot, or a ride equally as dark, smelly, and prone
to a slip of the tongue, such as the Haunted Hideaway. (I had the unfortunate
experience of returning to Kennywood last summer with my young children. For
the most part, there are a lot of rides that remain from my childhood.
Unfortunately, the Haunted Hideaway did not make it. The building and the
slimy, green water remain, but it’s been converted to a kind of “scary cartoon
character” theme, much too much like Disneyshit, in my opinion.)

My greatest
conquest at the Kennywood picnic came a year later, when I managed to (1) get
Susan Mayfair to ride with me on La Cachot and (2) snuck an arm around her as
we came out of the ride, which gave my social standing quite a boost.

But I digress.
The sixth-grade year (and the previous five) I had spent at a Catholic school.
We shall leave that experience for another essay. Dan Slaney lived across the
street from me and was in seventh grade at the local junior high, a building
that held 187,000 kids in grades seven and eight. Dan was big and played
football. Although he was not part of the in-crowd, he managed to hang on the
edge, which meant his friendship would be strategic for me. Because we were
neighbors, we often played together. Dan would calm my nerves, telling me
wonderful stories of life at our junior high school. He claimed that new
students were often beaten by roving gangs and left for dead and that uncaring
teachers would often spit on the corpses.

A week prior to
Kennywood picnic in 1983, Dan and I agreed to go together. This unwritten pact
meant that our parents would drop us off at the gate and we would spend the
entire day, usually from eleven in the morning until midnight, riding, eating,
gorging, and occasionally standing under rides that might give us a chance at
seeing panties (not those of mothers or sisters unless they were Dan’s. I’d
have to sneak peeks at his younger sister, Stacey, while pretending I didn’t
know it was her). We spoke all week about the greasy fries we would get at the
Potato Patch or how we would try our best to get each other wet on the Log
Jammer (no sexual connotation, pervert). You had to go to Kennywood with an
even number of people as most rides held pairs.

Friday, the
night before the big day, I had already set out my clothes: undoubtedly nice
athletic shorts, tube socks with multiple colored bands at the top, and an
iron-on decal shirt from The Empire Strikes Back. I apologize for arousing the
ladies with that description.

Dan called after
dinner, choosing not to come across the street to talk: a bad sign. My dad
handed me the phone, and I am sure he saw my jaw drop. Dan had decided to go
with another group, and he made the number even, so I was to “find someone else
to go with.”

We must pause
here to understand the calamity. As a twelve-year-old, nothing could have been
more devastating. Today I look back at this and chuckle, given that Dan started
going bald at seventeen (served him right). The social shitstorm brought me to
the edge of a mental breakdown.

I cannot
remember what happened. Seriously. I know that I ended up going to the picnic
with another group and that this was the unofficial end of my friendship with
Dan, but that is about all I remember. I guess years of alcohol abuse and my
memories of Susan’s blond tresses lying on my shoulder have erased that May
Saturday in 1983 from my memory.

***

Let me tell you
what my parents did not do. They did not march across the street and demand to
talk to Dan’s mom, or her lesbian partner, bless her heart (NOT lipstick
lesbian). They did not call the school and demand that Miss Stover step in and
find me another Kennywood partner. They did not call whatever faceless
administrator ran our junior high school at the time and demand that their
son’s feelings be repaired. My parents did not demand that anyone else step in
and socially engineer my Kennywood experience. I am not suggesting that my
parents were masters at raising kids. In fact, I am the oldest and often
provided the learning curve for my two younger siblings. I’ve got the scars to
prove it. However, they talked to me about what I could do and about future
decisions involving the loyalty of Dan Slaney.

***

The standard
operating procedure, especially in independent schools, is generally called
“social engineering.” The term itself has such a negative connotation that most
educators will immediately deny they do any such thing. In reality, they do it
constantly. Schools put other labels on the experience, such as “ethics,”
“advisory programs,” or “character education,” but they are nothing but
slightly ambiguous, fuzzy-feeling wrappers for social engineering (like adult
contemporary music without the music).

The idea is noble even though the practice is flawed. The reason for the programs is the perceived rise of bullying and violence in schools. I would argue that the media has heightened awareness through intense saturation of rare instances, but bullying is not much worse than it has been for previous generations. (I say this with absolutely no scientific data to back it up. You are reading the wrong book if you want studies done by professional researchers.) In a New York Times article on character education, a middle school principal by the name of Michael McDermott says, “ . . . But you can’t have kids saving Darfur and isolating a peer in the lunchroom. It all has to go together.” While this is true, I am not sure you can ever ensure that no student is ever isolated. Some people like to be alone. Empathy is not taught. Empathy is modeled.

In the same
New
York Times
article, Deborah Kasak, executive director of the National Forum
to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, said that teaching empathy can seem
“artificial or hokey” to some students. Most students recognize what the adults
want to hear and then proceed to spoon feed it to them.

If you cannot
teach empathy, kindness, and respect for each other, are we losing our children
to a world of violence and self-interest? Possibly, but not for the reasons you
might think.

***

Before reading
the next section, please place your mobile phone on the table or on the seat
next to you.

I can surmise
that you either (1) did as I asked or (2) realized your phone is still on the
hood of the car underneath a bag of groceries. The point is that you have one
and you expect everyone else to have one as well. These days, it is absolutely
expected that every citizen in the United States, including children over the
age of six months, has a mobile phone. For years friends of mine have enjoyed
ditching the landline in their homes and hanging the latest iPhonerazortouch
from their belts like the shrunken head of a conquered foe.