The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

never going anywhere.” I think he was under the impression that we worshipped the devil and advocated rape—probably from those phony fucking affidavits—and he ended up chewing us out and ordering room service all night. A total schizo, and another idol forever shattered.

    Â Â Â Â Â  FEBRUARY 4, 1997, LUBBOCK, TEXAS
    God has somehow managed to find his way into the Hippocratic oath because the paramedics here refused to treat me with oxygen for exhaustion after our performance, explaining that they didn’t agree with my morality, therefore I didn’t deserve their emergency life-preserving skills. Apparently Jesus saves, but the paramedics here don’t.
    Â Â Â Â Â  FEBRUARY 7, 1997, KANSAS
    I’m not sure what I hate more: the bomb threats or the bomb dogs that are trying to save us. Because those happen to be the same dogs that sniff out drugs, and I don’t know whether I’m more paranoid of getting blown up or arrested.
    Â Â Â Â Â  FEBRUARY 14, 1997
    I lost the last connection with my past today, Missi. The fact that I wasn’t with her today must have symbolized my priorities to her, and she doesn’t want to speak to me. We’ll always be close, because she has a part of me inside her. But it’s a part of me I no longer have—and it was the darkest part of me, too. I hope it doesn’t cripple her the rest of her life.
    Â Â Â Â Â  FEBRUARY 19, 1997, MASSACHUSETTS
    I can’t decide if I hate America more than it hates me.
    Â Â Â Â Â  FEBRUARY 21, 1997, MASSACHUSETTS
    Another shitty show. Now I can’t decide if America hates me more than I hate myself.
    Â Â Â Â Â  UNDATED
    The ironic part about all this Christian outrage is that on certain levels this tour pales compared to some of the things that we’ve done in the past. The Christians are complaining about the way I compare them to Nazis. They’re not complaining about me tearing up the bible; they’re not complaining about me wiping my ass with the American flag. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous: the stories they’ve created or the fact that people believe them. If I didn’t commit those acts, then where did they come from? Nowhere other than the imagination of my accusers. So who’s the sinner now?
    Â Â Â Â Â  MARCH, 1997, NEW YORK
    I met Fiona Apple at the Grammy Awards after-party the other night. She’s this little singer who no one’s heard of. I’m a huge fan of her music. And she’s so sexy and fragile, definitely too fragile for me. If I was ever to be put in a circumstance where I could have sex with her, I would decline because her vagina is probably too precious to be dirtied by my filthy cock. When she walked in the room they were blasting the song we did for Lost Highway , “Apple of Sodom,” and the lyric playing was “I got something you can never eat.” Total delusional self, because that song’s about obsession and things you can never have and, in a distant way, is kind of inspired by her.
    She was slouched over and looked very timid, almost like a wounded deer, as if she was about to cry. I asked her what’s wrong, and she said she was overwhelmed and show business was too much stress for a girl of her age with her constitution. I asked her to sit down and said I’d bring her some food or a drink, but she was a vegan and—unlike me—was really picky about what she’d put into her body, which definitely means we’ll never get along even though I’m attracted to her on many different levels. When I was speaking with her, I was distracted for two seconds by some celebrity’s drunk teenage daughter who was bouncing around singing songs and talking about the various rock stars who had made her pregnant. Another starfucker and sycophant sucking the life out of me and distracting me from the conversation that I want to have. When I turned back around, this weird fellow had kind of slithered his way up to Fiona and was performing card tricks for her. Really lame. In the book of shitty ways to pick up women this was chapter one. But I think it worked.

    AFFIDAVIT OF
    [ NAME WITHHELD ]
    STATE OF OKLAHOMA
    COUNTY OF OKLAHOMA
    I [NAME WITHHELD] HEREBY SWEAR, AFFIRM, DECLARE AND AFFITT:
    1. I AM A SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD MALE AND RESIDE AT [ ADDRESS WITHHELD ] O KLAHOMA C ITY , O KLAHOMA [ ZIP WITHHELD ].
    2. T HREE YEARS AGO I