You're Making Me Hate You (26 page)

The hole in the wall was very visible from the living room; you could see the bedroom through it. But there was a closet door that swung open and obscured the light flooding through it. So I stuck a rag in the hole on the bedroom side and opened the closet door to hide the evidence—nobody was going to open or close it to get a better look if they didn’t know what to look for. By putting the rag in the hole, from the living room side it just looked like a hole in the wall, not the scene of a crime. I told my
cousins and my sister my plan and threatened them with silent violence if they didn’t toe the line. When Gram came home, she totally knew that something had happened; she just didn’t know what. That’s when I explained to her that “as I was vacuuming the hallway, that damn metal tube had come unhooked from the tube. The slip threw me off balance, and all my weight fell on the metal tube, which
then
punched a hole in the wall of the living room.” She listened dutifully, nodding a bit and studying the hole. Because the rag was in the hole on the other side, it appeared that it was only on the living room side. With a pinch of skepticism, she bought it. At least she said she did. I’m fairly certain you could still smell the gunpowder and there was still a bit of plaster on the floor. But she said she believed me.

My cousins and Barbo couldn’t believe it. Todd didn’t speak to me for a while.

Obviously I’m not twelve anymore. I’ve gotten older, but I haven’t gotten any better. You know what it is? I’m great at the big shit and the trivial shit but I suck at the little things. Well, they may not seem little to anyone else, but that’s how I look at them anyway. Cook a big dinner for the whole family? No sweat—I’m your man. But ask me to program a garage-door opener? Nope—I’m as lost as a remote in the couch cushions. Mow the lawn, call some shots, or wax eloquently about the Battle of Hastings in 1066? Gimme the ball skipper and I’ll take it to the hole. Adjust the settings in the car, change out the filter in the furnace or AC unit, or deal with some shit at the Department of Motor Vehicles? I might as well be ten years old with a bus ticket: I don’t know what to do, where I’m going, or who to meet when I get there. I know to some of you this shit is pretty simple. To me, it’s like trying to work calculus with a hacky sack. I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m great at some shit and
rubbish at others. But it took patience and about twenty years to figure it out.

If I’m being completely honest, most of my profound ignorance seems to circle around any dealings I have with money. It’s the biggest reason I have a very powerful man I only quietly refer to as “Mr. Shore” handling these things for me—and God help me, if I don’t call him “Mr. Shore.” He has a paddle in his office with my name branded into the wood. Money is a motherfucker if you don’t know how to handle it. I’ve mentioned some of my bigger financial missteps in
Seven Deadly Sins
. But those are just the whales. My pond still has a few quirky fish swimming in it. I once paid $100 to a guy selling speakers out of the back of a van. I received one speaker that I then had to drag home, only to find out from Economaki that it wasn’t worth a shit. One time I traded my old drum set for a guitar worth half as much. Can you see the trend here? I’m not great with “worth,” really. As recently as a year and a half ago I decided I was going to get tickets for my family and I to attend a Daniel Tosh concert in Las Vegas. Feeling like a real adult, I went online, found a site that was selling tickets, and bought enough for all of us. I didn’t look at other sites and I didn’t compare prices to see whether I could find them cheaper; I just hit “Buy Now.” You can imagine my embarrassment when I was shown I’d paid about four times too much for these seats. My defense? “But they’re second row!” It didn’t help my case.

If I had a defining story for how abysmal I am with money, it would be the Overpriced Rickshaw Story.

Now to the people who inhabit New York City and any other metropolis that is infested with these modes of transportation, you know what a rickshaw is. Anyone who has watched more than twenty-six episodes of
Seinfeld
may remember Kramer’s
gambit with his own rickshaw and the ensuing rigmarole. But for those who don’t know, a rickshaw is basically a bike connected to the backseat of a car, usually with a canopy of some sort to shield the passengers from the sun. The originals were more like carts, with the controller pulling it along by its two long handles like a running back training in the off season. But the modern rickshaw looks like it has more in common with Lance Armstrong than Forrest Gump, and you don’t need dope or new blood to tool along the mean streets of that city. They feel a little rugged when they first cast off, but once they get a head of steam going, they fly like a bomber on a night raid and inflict about as much damage on the flow of cars and trucks as well as your spine. Now you can visualize what a rickshaw is. So now my tale can begin …

A few years ago Steph and I had brought the kids out on the Mayhem Tour with us: Griff, my niece Haven, and my nephew Drew along with my sister-in-law Jackie and our family friend Kira. We were lucky enough to have a couple of days off in New York City, so we all went on a family sightseeing adventure. Ironically the day would be capped off by dinner with Mr. Shore and his lovely wife. When it was time to head to the restaurant, we discovered there were a few too many of us to get in one cab. No big deal: there are cabs all over the island. But I had a better idea, and by “better” I really mean “a terrible idea that started out as an innocent way to have fun.” Don’t all terrible ideas start out that way? I’m sure when Napoleon invaded Russia, he was thinking, “Christmas will be great! Snow and vodka for EVERYONE!”

I’ve been coming to NYC for years now, and in all that time I would watch the men and women ripping around on the rickshaws with a subtle sort of fascination. They always had people
onboard, they were always moving as fast as their legs would scramble, and they were always engaged in what appeared to be daredevil stunt work, crossing against traffic and flying through intersections like hybrid demons hell-bent on getting to their destination. In all my time going to the city I’d never taken the opportunity to get in one, to taste that speed and insanity for myself. At that moment, standing there trying to get my family from point A to point B, I decided the time for waiting was over, and I was dragging the people I love with me. I flagged down two of these hellions, loaded up my brood, and, with a smile, we headed deep into New York rush hour. I should have known it was too good to be frugal.

The ride itself was a blast. We were shooting gaps and running reds all the way across town. My kids were losing their minds. Steph was laughing her ass off. Even though I was sweating through my clothes, I was really enjoying it. Griff’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head. Our bike-riding freelancer was peddling his ass off, dodging fenders and bumpers with no real thought to our safety. But it didn’t matter—it was exhilarating, invigorating, and fascinating. You can’t see the depths of the ocean in anything but a submarine; there’s no way to get out and experience that world without a bunch of protective gear on. But being in that rickshaw, doing some serious human-powered speeds, it was the closest you could ever get to experiencing traffic without a car, like you were flying through the streets with none of the protection that the backseats or front seats afford you. It was like a ride at Disneyland. “You’ve flown over California—now DRIVE THROUGH NEW YORK WITHOUT BEING ENCLOSED IN A CAR!” It was an astonishing ride.

The bottom fell out of our boat when we reached the restaurant.

I’d hired two of these rickshaws, three of us in each rig. I didn’t know there was a pricing list on the side of the basket with a ridiculous breakdown of each charge. There was a charge for each person … fair enough—cabs are like that too. But it was a
full
charge for each person, not just a percentage like it is in the taxis. Then it just got fucking stupid. Every mile was a different charge. Riding on a street was a different charge. Riding on an
avenue
was different charge. Riding on a
boulevard
was a different charge. It may be the anger with which I’m remembering this shit, but I’m almost certain that a left turn was more expensive than a right turn. So, all in, a two-and-a-half-mile trip for six people in two rickshaws, something that might have cost a miniscule amount in a regular cab … cost me $300. As rad as that ride was, I find it extremely difficult to find a way to justify that price. I’ve had cheaper plane tickets. But because I didn’t ask how much it would cost, because I didn’t know to look on the damn thing for a price list, because the guy was arguing with me that it was my own fault for not knowing what I was getting into, I swallowed my pride and paid the price. I’ve said before that the hardest lessons are usually the best because the pain gives you memory and you can’t erase that kind of knowledge. All I can say is my family loved the ride, my wife didn’t kill me for how expensive it was, and that rickshaw driver is fucking lucky I wasn’t carrying my Louisville Slugger with me.

I didn’t tell Mr. Shore about the incident. I won’t send him a copy of this book.

Please don’t send him one, because he scares me.

I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to figure out why my brain works the way it does. I’m no scrub, man: I can do my own laundry (sorta) and change the oil in my own car (not very well, but you get the idea). I can handle bigger pictures a little
better than the smaller snapshots. It’s fucking frustrating, not just to me but also to my family. Occasionally my wife will ask me to perform some menial task, and I’ll feel a look cross my face like a shadow on a stone in the Mojave Desert. I know it’s a visible change too because my wife
sees
it happen, looks at me, and says, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” In the past I used to sputter and puff up like it was a strategic blow to my manhood. Now I just shrug and say, “nope.” As you get older a funny thing happens: you stop giving a shit. It’s awesome, really. I don’t give a fuck anymore about what I wear, where I’m going, or whether anyone cares about it. It’s wonderful reinforcement for an ego that has spent a few too many times in the gladiator’s circle, picking bits of sand and blood out of his eyes.

I think it’s because of the way I grew up. I’m not going to harp on the suck-fest or regurgitate the abuse; I’ve documented that in other tomes. This is more about the effect than the cause. Because of the way I grew up, I had to learn how to do everything on my own. I had no father present to point me in any direction, and because the whole parental unit in general was spread pretty thin, I had to do things my way—that is, the hard way. I learned to cook, clean, drive, work, love, live, spend, hate, fight, run, smoke, think, fail, win, fuck, and regulate on my own. I was basically surrounded by a horde of adults who had no fucking clue how to keep their shit together. So it was a matter of survival: I either had to figure it out or crumble under the weight of my own psychoses and shortcomings. Neither of those choices was very appealing, but I’d be damned if I was going to fail. So I did shit the hard way or came up with shortcuts that did more disaster than good. In the winters I would go out and clear all the snow off of my Gram’s car. Because I’m a little short, I used a broom to reach the stuff on the roof and
whatnot. It got to the point at which I was using it on the whole car because it was faster, fairly efficient, and I could get in out of the cold quicker. It wasn’t until the summer that I realized by using a broom I was scratching the holy hell out of the paint on my Gram’s car. What’s more, it was
very
noticeable. She was, suffice it to say, very displeased with me. That’s just a tiny taste of the consequences involved in developing your own thought process.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I have a habit of thinking outside the box and the norm, which is probably why I write and act the way I do or come up with the different stories I like to imagine. It’s taken me around the planet several times, allowed me to publish a few books and grow a moustache for a movie role, and, essentially, let me get away with proverbial murder with my friends. But they never let me forget that quite a few of my wires are crossed and mislabeled. Hey, what are you gonna do? When I wasn’t in a trailer, I grew up on the road. Normal isn’t exactly in my fucking wheelhouse when it comes to practicality or reality. Besides, I can smoke through my belly button. What can all of
you
do, fuckers and truckers?

Then there’s the scary shit. Have you ever been sitting somewhere by yourself … and you suddenly realize you’ve been staring into space for like an hour? Oh, and the spot you were peering into? Someone is now sitting or standing there—you didn’t even notice they’d taken up residence, but now they’re staring right back at you, convinced you are the village rapist, waiting to toss them in your raper van and make off to the rape cave. By the time you come to from this incredible stupor, that person has made the rounds and told everyone in the area that you plan to probe them all. Before you can move, they’re inching toward you ominously, pulling mace and perfume bottles out of
massive purses, determined to recreate a scene from the classic movie
M
—and guess who they’ve picked to be Peter Lorre? Lesson being? A person can be obstinate, but a crowd can be made up of cock-sucking bastards.

They ruined my best Cramps T-shirt too …

Where was I going? …

See? It’s
that
shit, right there. My tangents run further than if Usain Bolt was on a fat line of crank cut liberally with rocket fuel. What in the actual Fuck?! I know sometimes it’s fun to follow a thought to the end of a trail, but Judas Priest on stage at Wembley, where does it
end
? Should I have cause for alarm? Should I consult a physician or at least David Copperfield? Before you say, “Why not Criss Angel?” … DON’T. Let it be known that I’ll touch you with a dead man’s pinky toe if you mention that guy’s name. Criss Angel looks like Don Knotts auditioning for the role of The Crow. GODDAMNIT, I FuckING DID IT AGAIN! I’m going to go smoke—it helps me focus (and take a shit—DAMNIT! AGAIN!). I’ll be right back.