The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

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    I’ve thought about being the Antichrist ever since the word was first taught to me at Christian school. In the Bible, the word antichrist is only used as a description of people who don’t believe in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. He is not described as one satanic entity—as the beast of Revelation which many people believe—but as a person, any person, who deviates from the Christian orthodoxy. But through years of myth-making and fear-sowing, Christianity metamorphosed antichrists into a single Antichrist, an apocalyptic villain and Christian bogeyman used to scare people much as Santa Claus is used to regulate children’s behavior. After years of studying the concept, I began to realize that the Antichrist is a character—a metaphor—who exists in nearly all religions under different names, and maybe there is some truth in it, a need for such a person. But from another perspective, this person could be seen not as a villain but a final hero to save people from their own ignorance. The apocalypse doesn’t have to be fire and brimstone. It could happen on a personal level. If you believe you’re the center of your own universe and you want to see the universe destroyed, it only takes one bullet.
    When my dreams about the Antichrist began occurring more frequently later in life, I knew I was that figure. When I dreamt as a child I’d be performing in front of thousands of people, it seemed just as improbable at the time. Now I doubt nothing. After all, the beasts and dragons of the apocalypse were all born in a dream, a dream of John the Apostle’s now known as Revelation and taught as fact. In one of my own revelations—we all have them—it was the last day of the world, Judgment Day, and there was a giant tickertape parade in New York. Except instead of paper, people were throwing vegetables and rotten meat. I was on a giant crucifix strapped to a huge float made from human and animal skin. We were nearing Times Square, the sky was a deep black streaked with jagged stripes of orange, yellow, red and purple, and everyone was celebrating. They were happy that they were finally going to die.

    Another took place in the future in Florida. Most of the human race had been turned into zombies for the entertainment of a small elite. There was a strip club where they had reanimated female corpses and made them dance naked in cages made of thick metal bars. Their flesh was covered in boils and gnarled veins, and their hair was falling out in clumps. Their jaws had been wired shut so that they wouldn’t bite off the dicks of the guys around them masturbating. The world had degenerated to such a Sodom and Gomorrah state of sin that it seemed clear that the appearance of the Antichrist and the Second Coming were imminent.
    I dreamt of little girls strip-dancing as little boys (or dwarves) hit them with rubber snakes, Tonka trucks and lollipops instead of throwing money. And I dreamt of taking my own hair and teeth, saved from when I was a small child, and very ritualistically creating an artificial companion out of them. And all these things became the album Antichrist Superstar . Now I can’t tell which is more real: my dreams or my music.
    I will leave you with one more dream, from last night. It was with the slashers, the fans who slice the band’s name into their chests. In my nightmare, I’m in bed with Jeanette, the cherubic looking one. She has Marilyn cut into her, and each letter is dripping like wet paint over her breasts, staining her white tank top. I’m fucking her and we’re both laughing because it seems like something that we shouldn’t be doing. Her friend, Alison, is sitting next to her, with the word Manson bleeding on her chest. One of her eyebrows is bleached white, her lip rings are clattering against each other, and she’s wearing a black dress, thigh-high hose, and black boots to the knees. She seems mad at me because I shouldn’t be doing this with her friend and she’s upset at her friend because she’s laughing about it.
    When we finish, they want to take me to eat. We walk downstairs to a damp, stone-walled, cavernous place, like a dungeon. It could be my parents’ old basement, but it’s also a restaurant. Water is dripping off the ceiling although there’s a hole over our heads with sunlight streaming in. The waiter is a tall, skinny, Aryan-looking gay guy. He brings us big black