Re-CRUE-tited: Side 2

So you bought it?

Yeah. The first thing I did after I took the tape out of it’s case was put the case face down in a desk drawer and covered it with as much junk as I could, you know, just to be safe.

From what?

The case being a talisman to conjure Satan once the music started. Figured the more stuff piled on top of it, the less effective it’d be.

You’re gay.

Seriously, the first song “In The Beginning” gave me the creeps. The music sounded like something you’d hear at a human sacrifice and the static tinged voice talking about “in the dusts of hell with the blackest of hates for he whom they fear awaits you” was all pretty intense.

So, so wicked, I love this band. What‘d you think of the rest of the tape?

Silence

You didn’t listen to the rest of it did you?

I had to turn it off, I got too scared. Felt like the devil was gonna shout at me instead of me at him like the title suggests.

What. The. Hell?

Trevor, watch your mouth lest I fill it with sand again.

It was in the proper context, Mom. By the way, do you have any extra underwear? Clean preferably.

Not if you’re going to use them to make a parachute for your G.I. Joe action figures again.

I wanna gift wrap ’em in some nice pink tissue paper for Chris because he’s being a girl.

Then the answer is no, he can wear his own mother’s underwear and seek counseling. I know several psychologists that specialize in positive transvestite assimilation identity.

Trans what? Never mind, I thought you were my friend, man.

Not this second. And if there was some sort of way that I could simultaneously tell everyone you and I both know how much of a sissy you are and how disappointed I am in you right now I’d do it. Lucky for you that sort of technology doesn’t’ exist. Now go finish listening to that tape and don’t bother calling me back or calling me your friend until you do.

Click.

And then I was alone. I’d just bought Motley Crue’s Shout At The Devil and had made it exactly 1 minute and 30 seconds into it before I had to turn it off out of fear that Lucifer was going to pay me a visit via my stereo speakers.

I’d called Trevor (since checking these guys out was his big idea) for a little moral support and instead I was handed an ultimatum. I could either pledge my allegiance and soul to an entity that resided “in the dusts of hell with the blackest of hates” OR I could forever endure Trevor’s razor sharp heckling for not doing so. Once I saw my choices like this, shacking up with Satan for an eternity seemed like the easier of the two options to live with.

I went into my living room where my mother and two younger brothers were watching some cartoon show and envied how simple their lives were while I was on my way to face the most ominous evil of my existence.

I thought about asking my mom to accompany me on this spiritual suicide mission should the unleashing of this malevolent force be too much for me to handle and she could save the day by burning the heretical horror with the flames of her moral Christian outrage and Bic lighter, but then I thought better of it. This was something I needed to do alone. So I pulled up my big boy underoos and went in by myself.

I came out 6 hours later forever a changed person.

Yes, I’d ended up listening to the tape the whole day. By the end of it only one observation burned in my mind. It wasn’t if my newfound idols were a gang of lunatics with a lust for sex, drugs, & violence (which they were) and if they had a complete disregard to consequences, social backlash and jail time (which they did), but rather,  how my life had ever seemed remotely exciting before Motley Crue had broken in and entered it.

Up until this day I’d been force fed a steady influx of coerced religion, personal responsibility and  regulated pop culture influence (i.e. break dancing, Rick Springfield, baseball and Saturday morning super hero cartoons) it was almost as if I’d been primed to accept something as polarizing as Motley Crue and all the ethos they promoted.

These four heathens from L.A. ignited a roaring flame in an otherwise dark life of mediocrity. From their long hair and post-apocalyptic Mad Max regalia to their bone crunching music filled with messages of rebellion, hedonism and contempt for any and all rules, laws and universally accepted behaviors. This pack of bastards and their immoral code of conduct instantaneously became my new anti-heroes and mentors.

You can call it liberation or brainwashing depending on what side of the barbed wire fence your ass is sitting on. I preferred the former. Even before my indoctrination of Motley Crue  I’d come to a disappointing realization about my life; I was already sick of school and only 5 years into what was going to be a mandatory 12 and another 4-6 after that for college because the environment that I was being brought up in espoused that. Go to school, finish school, go to more school to get a job to have a family and every day will be a repeat of the day before it. For me that outlook was bleak and uninspiring.

Listening to the music of Motley Crue changed all that. It promised that life could be an adventure, it could be lived outside the box, in fact, it encouraged you to set that fucking box on fire as well as raising a Molotov cocktail to the institution that manufactured the box. It preached a different sermon than the ones being drilled in my head from attending church twice a week.

Go out and live instead of living in fear. The fear of god, the fear of judgment by others and especially the fear that you shouldn’t be the person you’re supposed to be. I could be a pretty insightful 10 year old when I wanted to be. And I took that message to heart. Everyday COULD be different. Filled with girls, long hair, cool clothes and a devil could care less attitude. In fact, the way I saw it, the best (and purest) way to attain this type of lifestyle was to be a musician in a rock band.

I called Trevor back after my 6 hour audio journey of enlightenment.

I listened to the entire tape, over and over again. Motley Crue are my new favorite everything.

See? I told you how awesome these guys are! You know what we should do now?

What?

Start our own band, we can be just like Motley Crue.

Can we call it Motley Chris?

NO! I’m not going to be in a band named Motley Chris!

I’ve already told you, Trevor, NO BANDS! You’d make a better magician than musician.

How’s that, Mom?

Because you can disappear when I’ve grown weary of you…like right now, it’s late and past your bedtime. Go to bed.

I’ve gotta go, we’ll talk about the b-a-n-d. Tomorrow at school.

You need to go to bed now, Trevor. You become mentally incapacitated when you’re tired.

How’s that?

You think I can’t spell when I’m in fact the one that taught you to. No bands, only bed!

Talk to you tomorrow, Chris.

Bye, man.      

Remember, remember the 7th of NoVember.

This November 7th marks a historic day in the history of all things historical. I’m not speaking in regard to it being the day AFTER our nation chooses just who is going to take this broken horse of a country out behind the stable and finally put it out of it’s misery. My excitement towards the 7th day of this month lies in the fact that it will be the 25th anniversary (silver for those of you wanting to buy a gift in observation of this momentous day) of me losing my virginity.

That’s right people, I’ve been exchanging bodily fluids, lies, excuses, regrets, currency and communicable diseases with girlfriends, pseudo friends, internet dates, strippers and total strangers for…a quarter of a century and still going strong. I’d even go so far as to boast that my proficiency rivals that of any modern day assembly line with a 90% approval rating…because I don’t pay attention to those who criticize and just don’t care about the other 10% of the people I’ve been with because I was intoxicated for days or months at a time.

“But, Chris, what humble beginnings did you come from?“ Is a question no one’s bothered to ask because no one gives a shit about the answer. Well friends, I’ll go ahead and tell you about the day that changed my life forever anyway. Besides, what else is there to do right now with your mobile device while you’re on the toilet, Jon Dove? Or working out at the gym, T.J. Likes? Or still hanging out in your closet, Mike Delfs? Or planning an all out armed Christian revolution if Romney losses, James Johnston? Or watching your husband plan said armed revolution Angie Johnston? Or trying to remember where your keys & I.D. are Stacey Lynn? The answer is; Nothing. So, enjoy…

It was 1987 and Def Leppard’s Hysteria album was dominating the airwaves just as Tawny Kitaen laying spread eagle on a Jaguar for Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” video was dominating MTV. I had just turned 14, my parents were newly divorcees and I‘d been stuck in the same catholic school for the past 8 years.

Top that off with gorging myself on a steady cultural diet of hair metal music and Cinemax After Dark movies (Emmanuel were a fave) and the sexcapades both those entities espoused and any 5th grader could predict that I was well on my way to becoming a teenage sex statistic with either an unplanned pregnancy or STD.

Two months prior to 11/7/87 a girl by the name of Stephanie Meyer had started at our school. She was a new face and had a long history of changing schools as often has her meth smoking, bartending mom changed boyfriends and addresses. I’m fairly certain that one can already surmise just what type of home life she had and why it would make perfect sense that she became the Yin for my Yang as well as the yin to a dozen other’s yangs also.

Steph (as she hated to be called) and I had been “going together” for quite some time because she liked Mexican guys, or as her white trash vernacular dictated; Beaners. During our tenure we’d made out, wrote letters and gave ourselves the same theme song Tawny Kitaen used for attempting to have intercourse with a motor vehicle on MTV. We also had one minor break-up which was quickly remedied by me wearing a fedora to school the next day and winning her back on my wardrobe alone because even then girls were stupid when it came to douche bag swag.

The 7th fell on a Saturday and Stephanie had called me that morning to tell me her mom was out of town and we should hang out. I quickly concocted a story to my mom about how I wanted to meet some friends at a local recreation center to play basketball and video games that just happened to be down the street from Stephanie’s place. My mom, acting against her better judgment (which would become a recurring thing in all matters Chris related for the next 4 years) agreed to drop me off at the Rec center and told me she’d be back in 4 hours.

This gave me a two hundred and forty minute window of opportunity to eradicate my virginity once and for all. Most if not all teenage boys view the losing of their virginity the same way a cancer patient views remission. This may sound a bit dramatic to the laymen (females the world over) but if you ask any puberty stricken guy if he’s stoked about the prospect of being a virgin for the rest of his life and the consequential  social backlash attached to it, his answer is a deafening “FUCK NO!“ To us virginity is a curse. It’s The Original Sin we’re born with and our job is to exorcise, vanquish or cure it A-S-A fucking P.

I’d spent countless years wondering how I was going overcome the congenital condition I suffered from and now, on this day, it seemed as if a solution was in sight. Some might even call it providence.

Stephanie met me at the Rec center and we immediately did what most kids do without money, a car or the moxie to suggest having sex; we walked around aimlessly. Finally after two hours and many miles later, she suggested we go back to her place. I’d like to say that I remember it beat for beat but it’s been twenty five years with lots of drugs, alcohol and grey hairs filling in that time. I can remember that her room looked just like a room from an after school movie about kids who have sex and something terrible happens.

Posters on the wall, a bunk bed she shared with her older sister who I can only guess was busy doing the same thing at some other boy’s place. Clothes strewn about and a personalized license plate one of her mom’s boyfriends had stolen off a car that said “CUDDLES” on it.

I remember everything was so…easy. There weren’t any awkward moments, everything seemed to transition the way I’d watched thousands of times in movies. I had no idea how to move so I just faked it and figured slower was better. Which seemed to work because this shit went on for almost an hour.

I know, I know, when I tell others about it, they, as am I, are surprised that my maiden voyage out into the seas of sexuality lasted so long without any cataclysmic mishaps. I can't explain it either but the funny thing is, I never came. I'm guessing for all the low-grade education I’d gotten on sex from music and movies, no one bothered to mention the bonus part at the end, or better put, the bonus part that signifies the end. And truth be told up til then I’d never masturbated because again, it wasn’t in any of my reference materials and I think any of my guy friends that were doing it at the time sure as hell weren't going to talk about it with any other guy at the risk of being called a homo. Simply put, I had no idea my little fella could do that.  But I was informed on everything I needed to know from someone I never wanted to hear it from soon enough.

We finished and got dressed, I walked down the street and sat up against a tree outside the Rec center as I waited for my mom to pick me up. The sun was setting and the leaves had already turned and covered the ground yet it was still mild out. I fell asleep while waiting and that’s when I experienced the next best thing about sex, the after sex nap. Angels and dead people couldn’t sleep this peaceful.

The sound of my mom’s car horn put an end to my very first post-coitus slumber and on the ride home she could tell something was different about me and that’s when she figured it was time to get her own hands dirty.

You know, Chris, masturbation isn’t a sin. It’s the act of touching your private parts to give yourself pleasure. God doesn’t frown upon that, contrary to popular belief.

Wha-

He does however frown upon sex before marriage.

I-

When you have sex with a girl and ejaculate inside her, she can get pregnant. That can cause problems, just ask your 16 year old cousin Sarah. Ejaculation is the act of spewing seamen. It’s a white discharge that comes from your penis. It makes babies…

But-

…except in the case of your father. He told me his seamen couldn’t do that. That’s why you and your other brother are adopted and why we were all surprised when I got pregnant with your youngest brother. Your dad blamed me for having an affair. As if.

Mom, I-

Heavy petting is also an infraction upon God. Better to just keep your hands to yourself and on yourself. But don’t let your brothers catch you doing it, I don’t think they’re old enough to get anything out of it and they’ll  probably end up hurting themselves.

This is all-

A talk your Dad was supposed to have with you but guess who gets stuck doing it. Did I ever tell you I was going to become a nun before I met your father?

Several times.

Then you know what I’m saying about God’s likes and dislikes are legitimate, yes?

In the end my own mother filled me in on some of the more embarrassing things pop culture had left out about sex as well as giving me a thumbs up, or open palm salute, to jerk off. Stephanie and I went on dating through out the year with a lot of fights, tears and break ups and I think it’s safe to say she had sex with most of my friends and a lot of strangers as well. Surprise, surprise.

It was a very realistic introduction to just how confusing and vicious sex can be for a kid wrestling with the emotional burdens of adolescence. I sometimes wonder since she was my first impression on relationships that somewhere I came to mistake dysfunction as being normal. Then again, maybe I just like crazy women because they make me feel sane.

I lost touch with Stephanie after my 8th grade year but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out she had a myriad of children, addictions, diseases, stage names or any combination of the four. Then again, maybe she’s picked herself up by her stripper heel straps, overcome adversity and started writing books about vampires and werewolves being in love. But I seriously doubt she’s THAT Stephanie Meyer. Mainly because I’ve checked already