The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

lines and smudged black ink.
    I can’t even stand to watch people in restaurants laughing, having fun, enjoying life. Their pitiful happiness sickens me. And on TV, do people really live like this? Is this all a joke? Do we raise kids to believe in Baywatch, canned laughter, Jenny Jones? Stupid fish-white housewives straining their flabby legs together with Suzanne Somers’s Thighmaster? She helped create the dumb blonde stereotype and now she’s a fucking infomercial folk hero hawking a worthless contraption that sounds like a porno movie or an Aerosmith song. Fuck blind consumerism. Stupid people deserve what they get. They’d buy shirts that say “I’m fucking stupid” if Cindy Crawford told them it was cool. I’d love to kill all of them, but I’d be doing them a favor. The worst punishment I can give them is to let them wake up every morning and lead their stupid fucking lives, let them raise their stupid fucking children in their stupid fucking homes, and, of course, make a record called Antichrist Superstar, which will annoy and destroy each and every one of them. Fuck you America. Fuck me. The world spreads its legs for another fucking star…
    I had written those words the day I arrived in New Orleans, four months ago. I remembered it as if it were yesterday, because every day since had steadily grown worse, until, ravaged by drugs, exhaustion, paranoia and depression, my body had finally given out on me, landed me here in this fetid, white-walled hospital. I was optimistic after fulfilling my obligation to promote Smells Like Children . I thought I had shed my skin of self-doubt, watched it peel away inch by inch over the course of two years of touring. What seemed to be emerging from this cocoon was hard and soulless, smooth and terrifying, scarred and numb, a malefic gargoyle about to spread its scabrous wings. My plan then was to write an album about the transformation I had endured during my twenty-seven years, but I had no idea that I was about to undergo my most painful one as I sat writing in my journal in Missi’s car as she turned onto Decatur Street on a wet February afternoon.
    In the back seat was our only “child,” a black and white dalmatian-boxer hybrid named Lydia. She barked with excitement or fear as I stepped out of the car and kissed Missi goodbye.
    â€œDon’t wait up,” I assured her. “This is going to be a long day.”
    I opened the wrought-iron gate, pressed the buzzer, and waited for the studio manager to let me in. The first thing that greeted me—that greeted anybody who came to the studio—was a menagerie of dogs, which belonged to the studio’s owner, Trent Reznor. They barked, jumping and fighting with each other, and then decided what to tear up next or where to shit.
    â€œEveryone seems to have a dog this summer,” I thought. “Maybe that’s because they know our secrets and, despite that, don’t judge us.”
    I sat down on a black leather sofa in the lobby. A big-screen TV filled the room with light and noise from the Alien Trilogy video game that Dave Ogilvie, the engineer hired to coproduce the album with Trent Reznor, knelt in front of, as if praying to the screen. He was a short Canadian with glasses, the kind of guy who looked like he got beat up a lot at school, not unlike Corey Haim in the movie Lucas , but he was also childish in a way that I enjoyed. As we killed time waiting for Trent—he was always the last to arrive—I faded out the xenomorphs and barking dogs, and thought about why I was here and what I was about to embark on. My nightmares still hadn’t gone away. In fact, the move to New Orleans had only increased their intensity, a backlash from the dark, secret history that squirmed through the belly of the city like a tapeworm. Life was sucked in and decomposed. Nothing seemed to grow from here.
    I had come to accept the fact that the acquisition of too much knowledge had led me to drug use, but it was through that very same drug use that I had acquired my knowledge. As a band, we had agreed that party time was over. There would be no more chasing after drugs, women, and adventure. We were in New Orleans to work. I wanted to focus my hatred and sharpen my contempt, even if I harbored both of those feelings for myself the most.
    A black BMW skidded into the garage and a door slammed shut, announcing the arrival of Trent, who breezed into the