The Seven Deadly Sins (22 page)

People get uncomfortable wanting things. It makes them feel like Peter Lorre in
M
. They believe the Zen-like So Cal way is to let things come to you. If they do, partake. If they do not, they were not essential. Oh, okay, let me ask you this, Buddha: Did that $3,000 hand-knit, sweatshop parka come to you in a dream? Did all your silly colored rocks and sun crystals arrive on your doorstep from the Hippy Stork? No. You went out and fucking bought them like any religious nut. You chose to paw your way through bins of litter to find a matching set because your peyote circle would definitely stare and talk about you if you mixed summer
and
winter colored stones together. That shit is just not cricket in the Sect Set. I wish people would just own up to their fucking feelings sometimes. Sadly, that is just not how this board game is played.

Greed is a common facilitator for things like philanthropy as well. Celebrities compete constantly to appear the most charitable. If Angelina Jolie gives $1 million to Africa, then Madonna has to give $2 million to AIDS research. If Sting gives $3 million to cancer, then Oprah has to give $4 million to feed the homeless. Do not let these people fool you: It is all about the game at the end of the day. If it were true charity, you would not even know they were donating money. The whole point is for you to notice and take the hint: They are superstars, but they have
hearts of gold. But a fool and his gold are so easily divided. I am sure there are a few who actually care about their causes, but several hundred of them are not worth the checks they pray to Allah do not bounce. Greed can make you crazy, but it will make you even crazier if people miss all your attempts to
not
look greedy.

This blinking cursor is mocking me because it is 4:37 a.m. and I cannot fall asleep. I have heavy eyes and a tired body, but my brain refuses to shut off. You see, it has not really taken me very long to write this book. It all started with one chapter done in rapid fire typing and fingernails blazing. Then I finished another, and another and another. All of a sudden I was very nearly complete. My brain was getting cocky. It was getting greedy for more words, more syntax, and more precocious punctuation. It was whispering in my ears—which I know is impossible because it resides between said ears, but accurate nonetheless—“More, more, more for me,
Me
,
ME
!!” That is such a catchy little bit of prose that I cannot help but keep saying it. So because my brain was greedy for more progress, here I sit in the recesses of the night, tapping sentences into my red little window to the world. Hopefully soon these sentences will infiltrate a bound bit of refined wood pulp so you too can see what happens when insomnia and creativity make your gray matter appear as a faceless voice in your head. Before you ask—no, I am not schizophrenic. I am just crazy and cannot sleep. How can I sleep with all these voices? I swear that guy sounds just like me. My greed is manifesting itself in the guises of invisible Kerouacs and Thompsons who are sifting through my thresholds like cops trying to score some DNA out of my garbage. It is a little creepy here in Tennessee this morning, folks.

That reminds me: Gordon Gekko is one of the coolest movie names ever. It is right up there with Indiana Jones or Darth Vader. Gordon Gekko is a character played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film
Wall Street
and reprised in 2010 with
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
. If Ebenezer Scrooge is the grandfather of greed, Gordon Gekko is his bastard son. His philosophy is very simple: “Greed is good.” Now he may have turned into a serious son of a bitch in that flick, but on its face, the theory is sound. Greed can be good if kept at bay with reason. It can push you to make a dream come true and it can help you realize that life does not have to be about suffering and fasting. But like addiction, the bad end of this dirty pool is a shipwreck all too familiar in this country. Look at Bernie Madoff. I am sure that motherless whore seed has money stashed in places we will never even think to look. There are so many strikes against this guy that I would be hard-pressed to find one that would sum everything up. But I did. It is very simple: Anyone who steals from Kevin Bacon should have his knees pushed out the wrong way. I would want to be there so I could take pictures. And also so I could take a crack at him with a crowbar.

That is an extreme case, I know, but look at all the mayhem the world market has been going through for the last four years. This came from deregulating laws that were put in place for a fucking reason. This makes the S&L scandals of the '80s look like you just lost your wallet. This is unchecked greed and they do not care. Hell, most of the goddamn CEOs are still trying to give themselves pay raises. The president wants to do something, and Congress would back him up if it were not for the fact that
they are guilty of doing the same thing.
Greed is not a poor man's sin, but it is a poor man's burden. If these fucking
sycophants would stop staring at their bank statements long enough to look in the mirror once in a while, they might notice they are turning into monsters. People are losing their jobs, their investments, and their savings, which means they are losing their houses and their lives. Do these rich white fuckers realize that by raping the American dream, they have left us with a global nightmare?

Greed is not a friendly ghost sometimes. But logic would state that greed could be used as the fuel for ambition. Do not get me wrong: I have no problems with wealth. I have a problem with corruption. There are many people who have succeeded in their lives honestly (more or less), and I applaud them. This is not about my problem with capitalism. This is about my problem with egomaniacal materialism. These white-collar one percenters are destroying healthy business instincts and replacing them with shady stock practices and illegal kickbacks, leaving us with not only a crisis of faith but also a vacuum of ethical values. And the thing that I have never figured out is why almost all of them are Republican. Then it comes to me: Republicans do not care about the country. They care about their agenda. Then again, the Democrats don't care either. If they did, they would stand up to Republican bullies and tell them to go fuck themselves. Instead, they waffle and give ground like Chamberlain trying to talk his way out of giving Hitler an Old Stranger handjob in Versailles. The only real reason that most people find themselves moving to the Right is because that party has always exuded strength and confidence. Every once in a while, Democrats stumble on a happy accident and find a candidate that can hold his or her own against the elephants, but for the most part, they have been regarded as the Pussy Party since I was a kid. So
the perceived notion of strength overshadows the clear greed and lack of conscience. Two-party systems work, but they only work for the people who believe in a two-party system. There is a good bit of greed right there: The two-party system does not allow for other people to step up and do their best for the country, and when they do, like the Green Party or the Libertarians, they are painted as freaks or misfits by the major parties. So who is exempt from being greedy exactly?

I know one thing: The more people try to repress natural feelings, the more they come screaming to the surface in a darker visage. Honestly, dealing with things naturally is the only way to develop maturity and common sense. The benefits of experience far outweigh the tenor of teachings. You never know when those teachings will be laced with personal opinion. In other words, be careful who you listen to because you never know if you are hearing fact or conjecture. Common sense is not so common anymore. Here is the deal: If you do not need greed in your life and are completely satisfied with low-risk contentment, then that is fine with me. This is not a telethon for greed. But if you are a driven person who longs to make something exceptional out of your life, then why should you not do your thing? Again, greed does not always have to be a path to utter destruction. It can be a path to terrific things and stupendous achievement. It all comes down to how you live your life. Greed is a tool. Take a minute to think about that. No, it is okay—I will wait. I have to pee anyway. I will be right back. Help yourselves to chips and dip. Do not eat all of it and no double dipping. That means you, with the moustache—do not get your face pubes in my taco dip. Seriously! Keep your boner broom away from my bean dip! Everyone have enough punch? I do not know why I am serving
punch at a party that only exists in my head, but fake punch is better than no punch at all, right? At least it is not a fancy-dress or a vicars–and-whores party—I am not completely weird.

Take your meds, Taylor, for fuck's sake.

On a fairly serious note, if you want to see real greed in action, take a casual stroll through any casino in Las Vegas or, for that matter, the airport or any convenience store that has electricity. If greed is a giant hunting knife, then gambling is John Rambo, using it to not only garret people's windpipes but also to sew up any pesky wounds obtained in battle with the needle and thread stored in the knife handle's trusty secret compartment. Las Vegas, at least on the strip, is a wondrous theme park with a cast of characters that any fiction writer would masturbate over. The funny thing is that people who are well off enough to gamble and lose are called whales. People who cannot afford to gamble and lose are called addicts. So who is greedy and who is an athlete? I watch the
World Series of Poker
all the time, and whenever someone goes all in on a pair of tens, I just want to smack that person in the face with my dick. Greed is never a good partner when you are trying to bluff. You sweat like a sex offender and your give away tells like a kid with AD/HD. When too much is at stake, gambling is no longer recreational. It is greed, pure and simple. Greed takes over when you are trying to break even, or at least cover your losses. Greed turns a man with a poker chip into a man with an obsession.

I have been on both sides of this. On the lighter side of gambling, I was strolling through the Rio one night and found a $25 chip lying on the floor. I had imbibed a few cocktails and was feeling lucky, so I said fuck it and muscled up to one of the
blackjack tables for a few hands. I walked away with $800 even after I tipped out to the dealer and the waitress. I was ecstatic. I bought a round of drinks for some friends and managed to hold onto the rest of it long enough to buy a beat-up pawn shop acoustic guitar that I use to write the majority of my songs with to this day—a happy ending to a pretty cool story. Nobody died, nobody sold their car, and nobody felt compelled to clean out the children's college funds, so well done, right?

The darker side of gambling never even occurred in a casino. It happened about 2,000 miles from Las Vegas, and there were only three people in the game. We were playing a game called In Between, wherein a deck of cards is dealt out two at a time into two piles. For every two cards played, the betting occurs when you have to guess whether or not the next card will fall in between the previous two. Say the first card is a king and the next card is a three. If you place a bet, the next card has to be a card from the queen to the four. Sound simple? It isn't. If you catch a queen, two, and the next card is outside those two, you pay what is in the pot. If it is either a queen or a two, you pay double. It is a game that can generate a healthy money pool very quickly but, in the process, make the players pay a heavy price if they get in over their heads.

Now the great thing about gambling among friends is your odds of winning double. But the bad thing is your odds of losing stay the same. I would love to say I did not lose $30,000 in a round of private gambling, but I did. It sucks even thinking about it, but at the same time, it taught me a few valuable things about myself. For one thing, I paid up as soon as I could. I did not have $30K on me at the time but neither did anyone else involved in the game. It was the right thing to do and I am an honest person, which leads me to the most important thing: Honor
your debts. It is easier to cut your losses and walk away clean than to get into the cycle of using other bets to pay for debts. I do not ever want anything like that hanging over me. The second thing I learned was that you should not gamble with money you do not have, and by that I mean do not gamble when you cannot afford it. These days I only gamble with money I have in my pocket or whatever I get from
one trip
to the ATM. It will keep you from making greedy mistakes and it will keep the fun in your gambling. By the way, I do not say gambling habit. A habit is something you do every day, a quirk that develops around your personality and your daily movements. A gambling habit is a gambling problem, and I will not subscribe to using euphemisms to cover the fact that some people have a problem with gambling. I am not encouraging people to gamble their money away; I am encouraging people to gamble responsibly and for fun.

Right now you might be asking why I paid that kind of money in the first place because it was between friends and there was no compulsion or rules to make me do so. That is very simple: honor. I know it may sound stupid to some people, but honor is to be expected as well as practiced. If I had been on the other end of that deal, I would have expected to be paid. I would have expected that debt to be honored the same way I honored my loss and paid in full. Honor goes both ways, just like greed. So if you have honor in your life, greed will never get a nasty hold on you. Greed takes a sinister turn when you dump honor by the side of the interstate like a hitchhiker that refuses repeated requests for a happy ending. But when you take the high road and respect the whims of fate, you and your wayward passenger will get to where you want to go safely and quickly.