The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

the door his fat steward had jerked me away from when I first visited the house. The room was a private museum of arcana. The entrance was a giant Egyptian sarcophagus that had been propped up against the doorway. There was a rocking chair that had supposedly belonged to Rasputin, Aleister Crowley’s pipe, a satanic altar with a giant pentagram above it, and a couch lined with the fur of some endangered species. We sat at an old wooden dining table (probably something Aleister Crowley used to snort heroin off of) and ate steak.
    We spoke of religion, and how much of it is just a custom preserving practical codes of health, morality and justice that are no longer necessary for group survival (like not eating animals with cloven hooves). It makes a lot more sense to follow The Satanic Bible , written with twentieth-century humanity in mind, than a book that was written as a companion to a culture long since defunct. Who’s to say that a hundred years from now some idiot isn’t going to find a Marilyn Manson T-shirt—or a Collapsing Lungs baseball cap for that matter—nail it to a wall and decide to pray to it.
    As we discussed this, every ten minutes LaVey would leave the room. I had the feeling then that he was watching us through the eyes of one of his oil paintings, so I consciously kept quiet when he wasn’t around.
    We also discussed Traci Lords because LaVey asked me what had happened with her. I told him that she had blown me off and his optimistic prediction about our relationship was wrong. But after our show the next day, I found out she had been trying to hunt me down all along. Since by then I had a top-ten album and had been on the cover of Rolling Stone , our relationship had flipped on its axis, as LaVey said it would. When I first met Traci the fact that she was a star made her seem distant and unattainable. It crushed me, which made me stronger, filling me with the desire—the need—to become more of a fucking rock star. Now I had become one. This time around I was in charge, and I didn’t give a shit because I only wanted her when I couldn’t have her.
    A few days after Halloween the following year, I got a call at four A.M. telling me that LaVey had died. I was surprised by how sad I felt, because he had actually become a father figure to me and I never got the chance to say good-bye to him or even to thank him for his inspiration. But at the same time I knew that even though the world had lost a great philosopher, Hell had gained a new leader.

abuse, parts one and two
    I FIND TERRIBLE THE NOTION THAT OTHERS CAN DO TO ME WHAT I DO TO THEM.
    â€” Duran Duran, Barbarella
ABUSE: GIVEN
    One hundred and ninety-four pounds of abused flesh, atrophied muscle and hard bone, Tony Wiggins was a vacuum cleaner for sin. His blue eyes shone with the light of a perpetual party and his cyanotic lips curled and uncurled in threatening invitation. Only his red neck charm, emanating from a blond ponytail and Colonel Sanders goatee, hinted at any semblance of manners, decency or morality. No matter where he was at what hour—the smaller the town and the more unlikely the circumstance the better—Tony Wiggins managed to suck the filth, corruption and decadence off the streets and bring it back to us.
    We met Tony Wiggins at the right time, when we were weak and vulnerable. That first year on the road had taken its toll, not just on our health and sanity but on our friendships and relationships. In the meantime, all our singles had failed, our music wasn’t on the radio and nobody knew us except for a small cult of Nine Inch Nails fans and a few stray freaks. We had a new drummer, Ginger Fish, and were ready to go back into the studio, give it another shot and, if our next singles flopped, see if Collapsing Lungs needed any backup singers. We didn’t want to be an underground band all our lives. We knew we were better than that.
    But, just as we were preparing to record new songs in New Orleans, we were invited to join Danzig’s Spring 1995 tour as an opening act. It was an invitation we couldn’t refuse because the record label considered it a big break and an excellent opportunity to promote Portrait of an American Family , an album that, as far as we were concerned, was dead. So we began the Danzig tour reluctant, resentful and pissed off. The fact that during our warm-up show in Nevada some girl fed me crystal meth (telling me it was coke) didn’t