Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (107 page)

Prior to 1970, the Steelers played in one playoff game in twenty-five years. I was three when the Steelers won their first Super Bowl, and by the time I turned nine they had an unprecedented four rings. With six world titles, the Steelers are the envy of fans who are not citizens of the Steelers Nation. Pittsburgh has won more Super Bowl titles (six), won more AFC Championship Games (eight) and hosted more conference championship games (eleven) than any other AFC or NFC team. They have played in more AFC conference championship games than any other team and are tied with the Dallas Cowboys with fifteen championship game appearances in either the NFC or AFC contests. With the exception of the 1960s, which featured only three Super Bowls, the Steelers have appeared in at least one Super Bowl in every decade of the contest.

Folks talk about
“America’s Team,” the Cowboys, as being the most recognized professional sports
franchise in the world. Sportscasters like to write stories on the dedication
of the Cheeseheads in Green Bay.

This
all pales in comparison to the role the Steelers play in the city of
Pittsburgh. The fans and the citizens are the Steelers. When the team loses,
they lose.

And this is what
makes everyone in that city completely nuts. Forget the fact that very few
professional athletes play for their home team, or that they even live there.
Forget that football is a game. When babies are born in Pittsburgh, the infants
are wrapped in Terrible Towels and photographed in the nursery. At one wedding
I attended (my own), the men in the bridal party whipped out their Terrible
Towels and waved them inside the church like it was the fourth down. In fact,
ESPN did a story in 2008 on which NFL city had the best fans. Pittsburgh,
without a doubt. The current home-game sellout streak for the Steelers is well
over three hundred games. There are forty thousand people on the season ticket
waiting list, which translates to fourteen years until you get a chance to buy
them. People have been known to will seats to their children.

My dad used to
take the AARP- (Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons) sponsored
trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland for the annual beat-down of the team hailing
from the Mistake on the Lake. Much has been made of this so-called rivalry.
While the stats may say the win-loss record is close, Pittsburgh has dominated
Cleveland for decades. In fact, up until the Browns’ win in late 2009, they had
not beaten the Steelers in six years. Steelers fans find it hard to take the
biannual games seriously.

In the 1980s it
was not uncommon for the Pittsburgh AARP bus to need a police escort back to
the turnpike that separates the two cities by about ninety miles. My dad told
me stories of rabid Browns fans throwing bricks through the windows of the bus
at senior citizens who happened to be Steelers fans. To be fair, the same types
of stories exist for Clevelanders who made the trip to Three Rivers Stadium.

Pittsburghers
would die for the Steelers. Some, like my grandfather, take a piece of the team
to the grave, as well.

***

I hate country
music. I love the Dixie Chicks. I have no problem making the distinction.
Unlike the chest-thumping antics of jackholes like Toby Keith, the Chicks are
true patriots. The dust-up with Dubya almost cost the ladies their careers,
their sanity, and their lives, but they did not waver in their disdain for the
preemptive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The notion of
unquestioned, undying loyalty to a cause, country, or team is not new. (You did
just read the section on the Pittsburgh Steelers, right?) In fact, Emma Goldman
wrote a controversial essay on patriotism at the time President Woodrow Wilson
started to ramp up the war machine in 1917. (Wilson won the election in 1916
with the slogan, “He kept us out of the war.”) From Goldman’s essay,
“Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty”:

What
is patriotism? Is it love of one’s birthplace, the place of childhood’s
recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in
childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too,
could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard
glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one ‘an eye should be,’ piercing
the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to
the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant
lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother’s knee, enraptured by
wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the
spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy,
joyous, and playful childhood?

Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the
essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe
is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who
have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves
better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any
other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot
to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the
others.

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like
manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the
child is poisoned with bloodcurdling stories about the Germans, the French, the
Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly
saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his
country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose
that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and
ammunition.

The beginning has already been made in the schools.
Evidently the government holds to the Jesuitical conception, ‘Give me the child
mind, and I will mould the man.’ Children are trained in military tactics, the
glory of military achievements extolled in the curriculum, and the youthful
minds perverted to suit the government. Further, the youth of the country is
appealed to in glaring posters to join the army and navy. ‘A fine chance to see
the world!’ cries the governmental huckster. Thus innocent boys are morally
shanghaied into patriotism, and the military Moloch strides conquering through
the Nation.

This
was written prior to World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam
War, the Cold War, and the War on Terror.

At
this point I must pause and make a very clear distinction between the ideology
of patriotism and the humanity of veterans. I have many friends and family
members who have served in past wars. I have a tremendous amount of respect for
those who have given their health and lives to allow me to live mine.
Patriotism is an ideology propagated by governments run by men who never have
to see or deal with the ugly consequences of war. In fact, every soldier I know
who has served during times of war says, to a man, that they hope their
children never have to do what they have done.

The
Dixie Chicks took as much heat for their stand as Goldman did for hers.
Although it’s hard to compare the situations across time periods and
situations, the principle is the same. When Natalie Maines said at a show in
London, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is
from Texas,” she expressed some of the same sentiments as had Emma Goldman.

For
generations, Americans have basked in God’s divine goodness. We sing songs
about how special we are, and the president does not dare omit the obligatory,
“God bless America” after a speech. Over the past two hundred years we have
become the Promised Land, a place of hope for people here and those abroad
yearning in their huddled masses.

However,
patriotism comes with baggage. Even Natalie Maines could not escape it when she
issued a written apology on the band’s website shortly after her comments at
the show in London:

As
a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark
was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with
the utmost respect. We are currently in Europe and witnessing a huge
anti-American sentiment as a result of the perceived rush to war. While war may
remain a viable option, as a mother, I just want to see every possible
alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers’ lives are lost. I
love my country. I am a proud American.

Whether
Natalie really considered war to “remain a viable option” or whether this was
damage control is unclear. The point is that she still claims to love her
country and to be a proud American, which defines the precursor of blind
patriotism.

Why
are you here? Most likely, you are a US citizen because of another’s action.
Maybe your great-great-grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe or maybe your
mother huddled you to her chest as she escaped Cuba on an overcrowded raft.
Chances are, you live here because someone else made that decision for you.
Conversely, how did a citizen of Iraq become a member of that nation? Probably
the same way, but with an even greater tie to the past. People in the Third
World and developing nations rarely travel more than a few miles from their
place of birth over a lifetime. Therefore, citizens of “rogue” nations or the
supporters of the “Axis of Evil” simply had bad luck. They could have come into
this world in Poughkeepsie but had the unfortunate luck to land in Pakistan. We
inherit all of the identifying marks of culture. A child born into a poor,
rural village in southern Iraq cannot choose to be a Christian living in
suburban Houston.

When
you boil patriotism down to its essence, it is an attitude of condescending
superiority. Patriotism gives us the sense that our country has been
preordained by God to morally guide the rest of the world on the course of
heavenly goodness. And because of this designation any world leaders who
dispute our path become our enemies and, as such, enemies of God.
Unfortunately, we make no distinction between the leaders of countries and the
citizens of them. Patriotism allows the use of terms such as “Gooks” and “Sand
Niggers” because the “us vs. them” mentality can only work with an enemy, one
we create with derogatory names used without substance.

Patriotism,
like racism, must be taught. No child is born predisposed to love America. You
probably cannot remember ever being taught patriotism in school, because it
never happened. You were taught a prerequisite to patriotism that allowed you
to swallow the ideology with nary a thought.

Let’s
talk about pep rallies and school spirit!

***

If it were not
for pep rallies, I would have never discovered “Shout at the Devil,” the single
most influential recording in the history of the world. (Mötley Crüe’s “Shout
at the Devil” may not mean that much to you, but it changed me forever. Keep
reading, I’ll explain.) For that, I will be forever grateful to forced cheers
and overexcited athletic directors.

Bobby Halloway
scared the shit out of me. On some days he would crack jokes and make me laugh,
and on other days he would punch my arm so many times that I would not be able
to lift it at the end of the day. To this day I cannot figure out how he
managed to make it through eight years of Catholic school, given that he was
Satan incarnate. But then again, child-molesting priests seem to hang around a
diocese for more than eight years, so there you go.

I doubt Bobby
had parents. “Raised by wolves” is the term that comes to mind. If you were
standing in line for lunch, Bobby would punch you in the stomach and not take
your lunch money. He was so bad-ass that he wanted to inflict pain instead of
settling for the standard steal-your-lunch-money bullying. Because of his
predisposition to random violence and my fear of such violence, I did
everything possible to keep Bobby from unleashing it on me. We sat next to each
other at lunch and threw rocks at all of the popular kids during recess. Bobby
and I would sit in the back of the bus during field trips and see how much shit
we could throw out of the window before a teacher was forced to take notice.
Bobby never said much, which made reading his body language on any given day
difficult.

In October of
1983, at the impressionable age of twelve, Bobby and I sat next to each other
in the bleachers. Our seventh-grade basketball team had finished playing, and
we were there to support the eighth-grade team. This is not entirely true but
was the story I told my parents. Bobby and I used the opportunity to scope out
chicks, although I doubt either of us would have known what to do if we scoped
one.

Just prior to
the tip-off, Bobby removed the headphones from his head and placed them over my
ears. At first I heard nothing but the rhythmic grinding of the Walkman’s tape
heads, which had obviously taken a beating. (They belonged to Bobby.) Within
seconds, the most ghastly, horrific sounds filled my head. I can only assume
it’s what hell would sound like if it really existed. After a brief incantation
that had something to do with “all man’s sins,” the voice coming through a
battered megaphone swirled upward. At that moment, the short pause record
companies put between songs lurched forward, and I remember looking into
Bobby’s eyes. If I were gay, this would sound romantic. In fact, it was
terrifying. Bobby, knowing what was about to happen, snickered and nodded his
head at me, the only indication of not wanting to kill me that I ever got from
him.

And then the
riff, sweet mother of Jesus. Lovers of music can often use songs to mark
milestones in their lives. I have always been this way, and if you are too, you
will understand this moment better than those of you who are shaking your heads
in total bewilderment. Mick Mars ripped a sustaining chord while Tommy Lee’s
cymbals shined like the lips of Satan. After a few passes on the chord
progression, the gang vocals led by Vince Neil thundered through my
prepubescent head. “Shout! Shout! Shout! Shout at the devil!” I do not know who
is shouting at Satan and why they are shouting at him, but he is apparently
hard of hearing.