The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

had ordered two expensive prostitutes and was busy fucking them to the beat of ZZ Top’s Eliminator.)
    What I regretted most when I was fired from the record store for general job-shirking (they didn’t catch me stealing) was that I would never get to go out with Eden. Once again, however, time and fame were on my side, and a year and a half later I ran into her after a Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids concert. She didn’t even know I was in the band until she saw me on stage, and then all of a sudden she wanted to go out with me. So you can believe that I fucked her—and didn’t call her afterwards.
    After getting fired, I delved into rock criticism, working for a local freebie entertainment guide called Tonight Today . The newsprint magazine was run by a creepy, burned-out hippie named Richard Kent, who never paid me a cent. He was completely bald except for a patch of gray hair he kept in a ponytail and he wore thick black glasses. He constantly walked around the office with his neck bobbing back and forth, as if he were a fat parrot in search of something to say. Whenever I asked him a question about an article or a deadline, he’d stare blankly at me for minutes. I never knew what he was thinking, but I always hoped it wasn’t about molesting me.
    I soon conned my way into a glossy start-up magazine, 25th Parallel , by telling the owners, two lovers named Paul and Richard, that I had a degree in journalism and had written for numerous national publications. They bought my lies and hired me as a senior editor. I always tried to picture Paul and Richard having sex, but it was an impossible image to conjure. Paul, a small, chubby Italian from New York, looked like a fun-house mirror version of Richard, who was gaunt and tall with terrible acne and monstrous teeth that looked like they were part of a Halloween costume. One of the things that creeped me out most about them was a picture Paul kept over his desk of Slash passed out naked in a bathtub. I always wondered about the circumstances under which the photo had been taken.
    Paul and Richard were a hopeless pair. They would sit around the office depressed, destitute and in tears. The only reason the magazine came out month after month was because they made money selling the records they received for free in the mail. Like most people who don’t pay for their music, they didn’t appreciate it. I wrote nonstop for the entertainment section, but the piece that I was happiest with wasn’t about rock. It was about a subject that combined my aspirations in journalism and horror writing.
    25 TH P ARALLEL , A PRIL , 1990 W E A LWAYS H URT THE O NES W E L OVE
    (A T RIP I NTO THE W ORLD OF B AND D)
    by Brian Warner
    T he cloying scent of stale sex and leather instantly accosts my senses as I stumble into Mistress Barbara’s dungeon. After being blindfolded and escorted here by her personal slave, I spend a few moments adjusting my vision to the dim lighting in this living-room-gone-torture chamber; carelessly, I stuff the adhesive eye patches in my shirt pocket. Once I finally focus, the carnal coexistence of this Fort Lauderdale apartment becomes quite apparent.
    The short, corpulent woman who calls herself Mistress Barbara is, in fact, a B and D (that’s bondage and discipline for those of you who thought that the missionary position was still the standard) specialist and her house of ill repute is closer than you might think.
    â€œWhatever someone’s fantasy is, I fulfill it,” she asserts, gesturing to a roomful of painful, though prurient, blue movie props and other pornographic paraphernalia. “In commercial sessions I use instruments of torture on people. I do [genital] torture, body piercing and bondage—I tie them in positions that are extremely uncomfortable and I leave them there for long periods of time. If it’s a good session and they’ve been a responsive slave, I will allow them to masturbate afterwards.”
    On the wall opposite the door is a row of full-length mirrors and to either side of them are her work tools . I follow her to the rack on the right where she points out two jockey helmets, riding gear, electric shock equipment used for dog training, several flea collars, a pair of spurs and metal cuffs designed for shackling legs, wrists and thumbs.
    â€œI don’t always apply them to wrists, ankles and thumbs, however,” she laughs.
    Continuing down the wall are a