This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx (15 page)

1. Be impeccable with your word.

If you say you’re going to do something, for God’s sake do it, no matter what. It can be a threat or a promise, but do it. Your word is who you really are. Always keep it, and use your word to motivate yourself to higher levels.

So, if I promise to kick your ass, trust me, you’re gonna get your ass kicked. Just as I say this: I will leave my mark on the world of photography, and I will do it on my own terms just like I did with music, and I promise you it’s gonna kick ass. I knew it the day I did the “You Will Not Grow” photo sessions, and I still know it now.

2. Don’t take anything personally.

When I was in high school in Seattle in the 1970s (best time for music
ever
), the school districts had just started busing. For those of you who don’t remember, busing was a way to break down the racial barriers in big-city school districts. There still were predominantly white or black schools at the time, and to be honest I thought that making them more integrated was a wonderful idea. The only problem is kids are kids, and kids from different backgrounds don’t always understand anybody else’s reality. (Man, we haven’t really made much progress in that area, have we?)

Anyway, I would walk down the halls of Roosevelt High wearing these tall, clunky platform boots. At the time I was so into David Bowie that I would emulate my hero by wearing vintage men’s suits three sizes too small and usually smelling of dead people. I had this wild, shagged-out, overdyed, crazy hair. (Man, I haven’t really made much progress in that area, have I?) Of course, there was the makeup and the nail polish, and my new schoolmates did not get this at all.

So came the insults. “Hey, it’s Alice Bowie!” or “Is it a he or a she?” Or the usual one that started the downward spiral and eventual black eye: “What are you, some kind of faggot or something?” Then came the fistfights, bloody noses, and, of course, being thrown out of school.

What’s my point? Well, I didn’t take any of it personally, because I knew they were idiots. I might have been a drug dealer and a bit of a punk, but I wasn’t destined to spend my life in San Quentin. These guys were real tough motherfuckers with even more fucked-up childhoods than mine. I was just an eyesore with a dream who gave them an excuse to blurt out bullshit. I was just another reason for them to gang together and pick on the weirdo. It made them feel good and, to be honest, maybe I was doing them a service. (Even though the time I slammed a guy’s tooth through his lip he didn’t thank me.) They couldn’t help themselves, just like I couldn’t help myself. “You gotta do what ya gotta do to get ya through,” I always say. To this day I don’t take it personally, like a million things in life that crossed my path and pissed me off or maybe even bloodied my nose. I ain’t renting out space in my head to anybody. It’s too crowded in there already.

BEAUTIFUL
fig.b24

SIDE SHOW
fig.ss51

3. Don’t make assumptions.

You know the old saying—I still remember hearing it as a kid: don’t assume, because you make an
ass
out of
you
(or
U)
and me. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

I think that’s right. I have walked a rocky road at times because I assumed she was a bitch, or they didn’t like it, or, worse, that nobody loved me. The lessons don’t stop just because you get kicked out of school, so I sit here pondering old decisions…old assumptions.

When I was younger, I always assumed that not too many people would ever really get me. I spoke my mind even when I was told to hold my tongue (remind me to work on that), and I did what was right even when I was told it was wrong (remind me not to work on that). I guess I just assumed that because you didn’t get me, you were fucking with me. I assumed that I would exist in the dark underbelly instead of where the normal people live. I assumed I wouldn’t live to see thirty. I assumed a lot of stuff that never came true. That’s the embarrassing part about assuming: you’re almost always wrong, or at least I have been.

Of the four agreements, this has been the hardest to live up to. I have to work on this daily, even minute by minute sometimes. It must be a form of rebellion that lives in my DNA. For example, I assume for some reason that nobody will really get my photography, so I feel the punk-ass fucktard inside me start to flare up. It happens so fast I can barely catch it, and then it goes away in a flash. Some parts of us never change. But maybe we get just a little more of ourselves under control as we work on this stuff in our lives.

4. Always do your best.

Believe it or not, I don’t have too much to say about this one. I mean, if you’re not already doing your best, then you’re just flat-out stupid. (I’m now doing my best not to laugh at how ridiculous and rude I am sometimes, though I am doing my best here to make you think.) Life is like a huge opportunity to change the way we think and see things. I hope the way I see things (in photography and life) might make you think, and maybe you will pass it on and so on and so on. Consider this: I am doing my best to write my second book even though I was asked not to return to high school. If an illiterate rock musician can write a book, then you can do anything you want, too. Maybe just follow your heart. And these four simple principles.

DEATH TRIP
fig. dt48

Skin

By Sixx:A.M.

Paint yourself a picture

Of what you wish you looked like

Maybe then they just might feel an ounce of your pain

Come into focus

Step out of the shadows

It’s a losing battle

There’s no need to be ashamed

They don’t even know you

All they see is scars

They don’t see the angel living in your heart

Let them find the real you buried deep within

And let them know with all you’ve got

That you are not your skin

When they start to judge you

Show them your true colors

And do unto others as you’d have done to you

Just rise above this

Kill them with your kindness

Ignorance is blindness

They’re the ones that stand to lose

VAIN
fig.v51

A Self-Help Mantra of My Own

Dead on arrival, overdosed on heroin, cocaine, pills, and alcohol. Dead to the world and a thousand other true stories and maybe a million clichés. Yes, I was
that
rock star with collapsed veins running up and down his arms, underweight and overinflated with ego, fear, and greed. They say I was flat on my back on a gurney, popping a wheelie headed straight to hell. I may have been damned, but I’d be damned if I was gonna die a millionaire junkie that night (or anytime soon after).

So after I crawled down from my own personal crucifixion came the awakening and finally the resurrection of Nikki Sixx. I climbed up that wooden cross years before, the weight of the world bearing down on my soul, nails and hammer in hand so I could crucify myself. I needed no help, yet I felt it was my duty to scream all the while that I was the victim. Self-inflicted nails drove deep into hands and feet as a thousand needles plunged into my arms. I would blame it on my mother, my father, my fame, and anybody or anything else in line of my adolescent fire. I had taught myself that disconnecting from society, friendship, and love was the best way to deal with my abandonment issues. I won, you lost, and I paraded the body bag of victory around for the whole world to see.

But it was me in that body bag, not anybody else.

Funny how long we can carry some of this stuff around. I mean, I don’t know how much stamina you have, but a dead body is heavy, especially when it’s your own.

I am without a doubt the luckiest man on earth, and I think anybody who read
The Heroin Diaries
might agree. I do not want to relive my final night too many times other than to remind myself that I am without a doubt a drug addict and an alcoholic. Yes, I am in recovery from my disease, but what I really get high on is my recovery from being an asshole.

At times I’ve wondered if that isn’t the core of my disease anyway. Once I didn’t drink or do drugs, I still needed to resurrect and eject the poison from my soul and my brain.

Recovery comes in many forms, but for me it mostly comes in gratitude and awareness. We use these to mirror our lives and hope it rubs off on the nearest passerby.

We live by example, and here are a few that have been negotiated in my brain since sobriety. Either that or I have stumbled upon them accidentally in the last few years. Whichever, these are my own personal principles to live by.