The Seven Deadly Sins (13 page)

I believe this all started with comfy pajamas.

Think about those nice and beat-up flannel PJ bottoms you reserve for Saturday morning coffee and Sunday game days. There is no one more malleable to little or no movement than a person just straight chilling in their jammy-jams. I have to say, that shit is appealing as all get out. All you need after that is a robe made of dead towels and slippers that were once stuffed animals. Luckily I have both. I am not trying to put down your personal sleepwear in the slightest, as there are many advantages to having underwear and pants made of the same fabric. But flannel, corduroy, terrycloth—these things are built by Buddha, truly. Please do not plot any recriminations against me—after all, you guys are the ones decked out head to toe in underpants, man.

Honestly, the origins of this “sin” are very simple. In ancient times, people were expected to work all week and rest on the Sabbath, or Sunday. We were meant to till and sow sun up to sun down, making more for the rest of us to pass about. These were the days when burning bushes spoke to hippies and it took a village to raise an idiot. God forbid you tried to take a Tuesday off to watch your kid's Bocce Ball game, or whatever they used to play in the 1960s (that was before my time). Never mind if it was because you were proud of the outfit your meager wife stitched together using nothing but bark and rock. They would more than likely cast you out as a witch or, worse yet, a liberal. So the roots of sloth lay in the virtues of menial labor, I guess. It seems like social judgment knows no time line.

But my argument is that this is just not a modern-day sin. Sloth has gone the way of Friendster and eight-track tapes.
These days no one can really be slothful; cell phones are leashes and technology leaves no stones unturned. There is nowhere to hide today. There are only places to catch your breath. Hell, even people just sitting on their ass are doing something. Look at me for instance: sitting on my big leather couch writing a book that most of you motherless shits will most likely download and dump on your Kindles. But I am busy nonetheless. And you will all be busy getting nerdy for something you could very easily have gone out and bought with a coffee at a book shop. You will be online or receiving scans that come directly to your home fax machine or texting or tweeting, whatever the fuck that shit means. You see, we are all a little bit busier than “God” expected we would be. This world has gone south of crazy and north of ordinary. This spinning blue marble is a fucking chaotic anthill, and I can almost bet on the fact that most everyone is doing his or her part to feed the collective. As the blank parts of the map were being colored in, we were connecting our network of dots to support a growing need to get shit done.

Sloth in this day and age requires more expended energy than being “slothful” qualifies for. It means canceling all kinds of shit: appointments, work, any kind of sports activity you might be involved in, a date, a wax, a happy ending—it all has to go if you want an annual Sloth Day. Okay, maybe not the handjob—that can only make you sleepy and improve your slothfulness—but everything else must go. It becomes a fire sale for the next twenty-four hours. And that, just by definition, makes it anything but sloth. When the hands at the end of your wrists no longer know control or restraint, you are neither slothful nor well. You are a tool for the grist of God. Or Sam—whatever your boss's name happens to be.

I work constantly. When I am not working, I am trying to raise my kids. When I am not raising future anarchists, I am
working on other people's tomfoolery. My cycle is powered by jet fuel. Hey man, you just never know when the quarters are going to run out while you are riding the electronic elephant outside the toy store. Sloth to me is not a sin, but it is quite offensive. The simple matter that some people cannot find at least a little bit of something to do with their time is a miraculous travesty to me. If I were not able to do as much as I could with the time I have, I would go stir crazy. You would find me shaving my nuts in the fountain by the airport—you know, the one the employees all smoke around. My compulsion may come from serious childhood issues, but I refuse to assume that this could last forever. When I die, I want to leave behind enough proof so people remember I was alive in the first place. Highfive your nearest coworker because that is true immortality. The price of sloth is the seat nearest the door to the linen closet.

So, because of my manic frantic state of panic, I have spent the better part of fourteen years traveling. I spend stupendous amounts of time on planes, buses, cars, trains, ferries, and other forms of transportation. I work on all of the above. I have become the ever-present cock smear on the plane, the guy who has his shit ready before he even gets to security. So sloth does not exactly find itself susceptible to growth in the Petri dish that is my life. I move too fast to let the moss gather momentum. My temptation is
more work
. And I am still trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. I do not foresee any test results in the near future.

I used to complain about too much work. Now my voracity knows no bounds. I will drive myself into the ground before I allow myself to get too comfortable on the couch. Besides, too many of my friends have broken my furniture—why do you
think I am writing this fucking book in my kitchen? Anyway, vacations are nice and there is always time to watch
Dexter
, but if I am not working toward fifteen goals at once, I am not a happy camper. In fact, it drives me bat shit when I could be doing something and I am not able to for whatever reason. Funeral homes should really have Wi-Fi; I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that or who has complained to the owner about it. How am I supposed to spend my time while people are praying? I could be replying to e-mails!

Yet there are still people with defeatist attitudes and lack of will who think life owes them a favor. Life owes you nothing; you owe yourself everything. I learned that shit on my own walking home from school one day. There is no guarantee you will be around tomorrow. The wheels of a rickshaw could fly off and take out your entire face, leaving you looking like you lost a fight with a rabid badger. You could wake up in the morning and, while you are still groggy, accidentally brush your teeth with toilet bowl cleaner—you are just getting around to scraping the eye boogers out of your oculars and now you are dead in a really stupid way. Anything is possible in a world that takes Sarah Palin this seriously. So get off of your ass, take a shower, and fix that fucking cabinet door in the bathroom!

Being a man and studying history the way I have, it seems that carrying a concealed penis meant you were just expected to work from day one. No time for sloth when you are doing the jobs of ten Amish barnburners, right? Women have had their share of chores but not until the last eighty years have they taken it upon themselves to lean into a pitch or two so we can have at least one person on base. I know, for the longest time
men frowned on this and even legislated terms that kept women in check. Men are terrified of change and they cannot handle it when Ethyl can do anything they can do. But that did nothing to change the fact that men are expected to work for a living and women are given the option. You fought hard, ladies: Light up a Virginia Slim and celebrate. For you, it was a battle for equality, respect, and a chance to build something for a lifetime. For guys nothing changed. There was no empathy for men; we did not hold rallies or support parades that resounded with the idea that if women want to work then men should get a day off. To this day we are still genetically and socially pressured to do whatever is necessary, to put in the time and the effort.

I am a firm believer in equal rights and I have seen firsthand that women are often more capable than men when it comes to being prepared for anything. While women were fighting for the right to stand and be counted, men were just fighting. Men are the mules of our species and women are the drivers, the herders, the overlords of a world in dire need of direction. I am very proud of the leaps we are taking to bring the sexes head-to-head on the playing field. It is just a shame that the hard work that most men have put in for years has gone unnoticed.

I have noticed sins have no potency without vessels of action. The strange thing is that when these sins are used in combinations, they are so much more aggressive. Our forebearers might have known this, but they sure as hell did not put it in their book. So you are left trying to do the math, and that leaves you with 50–50 Oxy/Cotton. Good times on weak wings—fly while you can because the ride is not cheap. There are layers to cakes and labors too cheap to mention. If you do not have the savvy
to know which is which, you are certainly going to earn the scar on your mouth. Tell them you cut yourself shaving.

Back to my point: Envy and greed can breed either champions or martyrs. Lust and rage can make you a monster or Don Juan. As such, sloth with an infusion of gluttony simply gives birth to drug addicts and wastes of flesh. I truly believe that sloth is harmless left to its own devices. But in tandem with other forces it can cause damages not ever imagined or experienced. Sloth and rage makes an expert. Sloth and greed makes a brother-inlaw. Sloth and lust will leave you surfing porn in a basement with a neck beard and a poop sock, bothering your mother to buy more Pop-Tarts the next time she hits the grocery store. In a lot of ways, it is a “gateway sin”: It leads you away from the groundwork of the original problem and sets you in chains against a backdrop designed for penance and shame. You can have the best intentions in the world, but if you do nothing, you are nothing. It is a harsh glare to shed that kind of light, but in my heart that is pure reality for me. How does the quote go? “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.” This is the downside to the longevity of sloth. It is an exit on a highway that leads to the worst parts of town.

Like vanity, sloth can be an enabling type of viral distress, a way of life that is way off course. It is a simple case of strong people forgetting their nut sacks on the corner of the dresser before they leave the house in the mornings. It can take away fantastic thoughts and replace them with consumer taglines. A mind is left bereft when it is nothing more than a tool of regurgitation. You have to think for yourself, but we all have to be taught to do so, and if you are not paying attention, you will pay for it later. Sloth's blind eye is your deafening silence; touch the
stones before you go so you have luck pulling yourself out of hell. We are only what we allow ourselves to be. If there is no permission, there is no pursuit. The only hell I recognize is the one we build with our own two hands, and that is a job even a slothful person can handle.

But sins do not sin for themselves. They are just the subjects to our predicates, the mystery cream in our Oreos. We can be bad all on our own, but we need someone else to talk the cops out of giving us a ticket. It is the habit of the Church to find new scapegoats for our actions. Maybe that was the whole reason they were put in charge to begin with—so they could find us ways to alleviate how fucked we felt. Hey, it makes sense: If there is a group of people who can create savory myths out of thin air, it is the Church. But if we all set our feet on the ground and took the beating once in a while, we would see it is just more evidence of what we
do
. Human beings fuck up all the damn time, so get fucking used to it. Save your complaints—I am the DMV of giving a squeaky shit about your troubles. Life sucks, so grab a straw and suck it.

I believe how we feel is just as responsible as who we are when it comes to what we do. Depression can fill our lungs with lead and bury us alive under a mountain of ennui. Dwelling on past mistakes gets you nowhere in a taxi where the meter never stops running. I once spent a whole week in my pajama bottoms, tethered to my couch, ready to let oxygen off the hook. I did not want to move, I did not want to breathe, I did not want to feel, and I did not want to think. I just wanted to wallow in my bullshit until someone came to take the pain away. The thing I did not realize was the only person who had the power and wherewithal to do so, ironically enough, was the one living in his pajama
bottoms and wasting time on the couch. For those of you not paying attention, that person was me. Since then I have never let myself get too far off of the reservation. I take what I can and dump the rest before it gets overwhelming. Life will give you buckets of blood sometimes, enough to drown your sorrows but too much to float on. So you have to find a way to paint the walls with what is left over. You have to empty the vats before it becomes too much because we all know it is perennial. It never stops, so never stop trying.

By the by, I am aware that some people fight off any slothful traits with pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and barbiturates. I am very happy to report I have no need for any of these dangerous stimuli. All I need is a pot of coffee—a pot of coffee, a mouthpiece, and a tranquilizer gun for when the froth becomes too much for the roommates. Throw on the java and watch me go. I can wade through my musings like an armored tank division. I had my fill of uppers and coke in my teens. I left the thrills of the 7 percent solution in the death throes of my young adulthood. Besides, if you have a craving for a drug that kills your boners and drives you banana shit, you have more problems than finding ways to fill your dance card, friend. What the hell are you going to do with your time? Beat up monks and dry hump Chryslers? Does any of that make
any
sense to anyone? I would rather be bored for a little while than sell out my tenders for a pick-me-up. I am naturally hyper as well, so I am all set. What a super-fucked situation to find yourself in: all spruced up and no one to blow. Make mine massive, because there are worse things to have to deal with than your own imagination. It is just a question of how long it takes for your scrotum to pull apart like a tire patch set. That's one “Just Say No” ad I would kill to direct.