First Ten Pages of Lying Flatt.
Ok, you all want to finally hear my story and do it justice? Well, that’s great, man, it really is. You can say whatever you want to make yourself feel better now that I’ve been banished!? But for decades, I let you drag my name through the dirt—no more! You freaks got it all wrong. You called me a liar, an identity thief, a fake rocker, and everything else under the sun! But I’m none of those things, man. But I'm not dead. I've been here all along, man. Unlike all you sell outs now, I never changed for no one, and it’s time to set the record straight! You talk about letting me finally get to tell my own story—well… here it is, man. Take it or leave it.
It all started at the origin of all bullshit: New Jersey. Ewing Township, 1973. I was born in the eye of the bullshit storm. Nothing crazy, I wasn't raised by wolves; I just had the classic soul-crushing New Jersey upbringing. But I get it, you came here for the guts and grime, the green room sleaze. You probably don't wanna hear about my totally lame childhood—where I grew up, my siblings, crushed dreams, the rents, all that Freudian crapola. Well, too bad! It’s my life story, my rules. If you don't like it, get lost! Well, anyway, where was I… oh yes! The rents.
For starters, my parents were both overly Catholic, mindless TV-dinner mavens, libertarian taxpayers with two chips weighing down on their shoulders. Trust me, dude, I'm just as bored as you are, but it gets worse. They were both remnants of the ever-fading middle class, left in the current, ever-resentful working class, working ever hard for totally microscopic pay as both housewife and autoshop slave, respectively. Burt and Florence Flatt were two grody freaks straight out of an all-American test tube—nothing but two squares with sticks so far up their asses that I'm shocked they weren’t made better puppets of the state. And as the proud rock ’n’ roll sage you see before you, I'm still deeply ashamed and shocked to be descended from such a bloodline. Dude, it haunts me to this day. Even now, I get visited by the ghost of Bono in my sex dreams just to prove to me that I'm adopted and I’m actually his biological son! Anyway, they were both raised Mennonite in Pennsylvania's famously racist and cheese-friendly Amish country. I believe Burt’s father was Amish but still let him marry my mother, a Mennonite, which was very controversial at the time, somehow.
They married in their late teens, in ’64, but unlike most young people at that time, they were absolutely afraid and wholeheartedly determined to convert every last hippie on the face of the earth. They hated them. They wanted hippies, Black people, Jane Fonda, cars, modern medicine, technology, and just about anything outside of their own little sheep farm to either join them in pious boredom for all time or burn in hell. But naturally, since being religious zealots is a lot of work and doesn't make much bank if you're starting out broke and all, especially in the swinging sixties, it was even harder for them growing up in Amish country when most people in yee old Hershey, PA, didn't wanna join their cult—I mean church—especially the hippies or even the normies and townsfolk. So, my rents—God fuck their souls—as the middle children of two massive families, both with 15, 16 children each, felt compelled by the Lord above to do the next best thing to make up for their lack of hippie converts and disappointed families: have a fuck ton of kids. And so they did go forth and multiply, just like their parents (or at least they tried). Because that sure turned out… great for them the first time around. My “wonderful” parents and brothers are clear evidence of that. For the record, I'm never having children. Eight billion of us is more than enough. Besides, being a father of rock is already so much responsibility; there's only so much one guy can take.
But, even though my folks tried to have children, life doesn’t always go as God plans. So, after years of trying to conceive, my mother must have been desperate for kids to brainwash. She really was pushing 25 now and still hadn't popped out a little rugrat. What was going on in Wombville? Trouble in paradise, one might say? Well… at this point, you might be wondering why my folks were so gung-ho about making babies and why they didn't attempt to pop some offspring earlier in their lives? Why didn't they adopt or have any other purpose in life besides procreating, other than the whole replacing their failed hippie converts thing? Having kids was always gonna happen, but it was always gonna be for the wrong reasons. To this day, I wonder, did they have some kind of scheduling conflict? Burt’s blockage, or was Florence maybe out of bullets, or vice versa? You know, the truth is, attempts were made. My mother was never the warm, nurturing type. I like to think the holy ghost of Janis Joplin cursed them for wanting kids solely to be hippie haters, but either way, dude, shit was getting outrageous because now they were both starting to sweat and turn to some weird shit.
Their baby-making attempts were getting so wild. In fact, God must have started feeling bad for them, which is a scary thing when you're starting to feel bad for the worst two squares on the geometry board. Even though I still wouldn’t be born for another three years by this point, some days I wish they had kept it that way and gone off to convert poor suckers in South America or something. But by now, my poor, awful mother was so stuffy and bitter even her eggs turned to dust. She would never give birth to the perfect baby boy to impress her neighbors, pastor, and judgy parents back in the backwoods of Amish country. But both of them being too dirt poor to adopt, however, and too young to retire, put a wrench in things for sure. Not to mention my father being too drunk, useless, and pushy to remarry. So after all that, as a last resort, my narcs of origin decided the only option left on the table was to return to their second home: church. So they prayed to Jesus. Oh lord, they prayed for days and nights by the altar like they were chained to it. They wept, slept, and had revelations of the rapture at that altar—all for the Lord to bless them with a son because they didn't think a daughter would work for their overarching evil plan. After a lot of hard work on their knees, Jesus finally granted their wish. Nine months later, my parents returned to that same corporate Baptist church on the side of the interstate to baptize Kent, their first son. The next year, they returned again to baptize Kevin, and I was baptized there only a year later, in 1973, the same year my parents tried to ban us from listening to the radio because "Crocodile Rock" by Elton John came out that year and they were convinced it was promoting bestiality with actual crocodiles. Only church radio for us from then on. They weren’t shy about raising us from birth in their image. They had a burning hatred for what America had become. They wanted us to replace the “infidels” they saw walking the streets wearing slutty clothes, kissing in public, and listening to “the devil's music.” So to uphold the last remaining tenets of the American dream, they needed children to carry on their legacy. What legacy, you may ask? Just one of the boring Christian minority, living unlived lives in Newark, dying virgins, and loving Nixon—consisting mostly of yelling at hippies to get off their lawns. Either way, that was their plan: to raise their three “perfect boys” in their holy image. Boys who hate change, love America, and most of all, grow up to make a ton of money that they can use to retire to an overpriced, tacky Miami condo and never have to see us ever again.Oh, and how could I forget? Never question them in any way, or you'll suffer at the mercy of the belt and years of unrelenting Catholic guilt—not to mention guilt, dude. How do you think I helped invent the new genre of music “Church-Punk”? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Suffice it to say, they didn't really raise me; they more just brought me into the world hoping I’d be the “third miracle.” Instead, I was their third mistake they could never quite erase. If they knew how I would turn out at birth, I'm convinced they would have killed me right then and there, changed their views on abortion and everything. Not shy about it, they talk about it all the time. Because they hate hippies, but I'm worse than hippies. At least hippies have the decency to sing about peace and love and be happy in the face of injustice.
Instead of being angry about it. Instead, of being in the hardcore, punk rock, stantioc-loving, rock ’n’ roll crowd I run with. The rents really do think I'm the devil. Whenever I refused to go to church or do what they said, they burned my clothes—even all my shirts. They would go so far as to burn my neutral Guns N' Roses print pajamas for being “idol-worshiping.” cult uniforms, forcing me to have to go to the mailbox in Kent’s boring plaid all week, which is a fashion crime. Or that time they stole my DIO shrine, or my many, many photo FLEA stash, or old porn collection, or even didn’t give me a band-aid when Noodle, aka the bully from ninth-grade gym (we called him Noodle because he’d stretch your arms into noodles if you came on his turf, but everyone’s more afraid of his two little sisters everyone calls “Draw and Quarter”—they’re the real demons), pulled out my piercing after he tried to steal my bike. Or all those posers who work at Camelot Records who refuse to give me a job because I'm “not for real” and can't hold down a job. Or my folks saying it was my punishment from God. Everything in my life started going wrong, and no one did anything to help me because I was not… the type of thing you needed to elicit sympathy from other people then and… from what I’ve seen, now. From how my parents generally were with me from birth, I have every reason to believe they think I am the reincarnation of the devil himself, in a totally non-joke, somehow serious way. But they just told me I was a baby and to walk it off. Even though rock 'n' roll was in my blood, no matter how much they tried to spill it.
It was around this fateful era, the summer of ’84, my parents realized I was the odd kid out. They just couldn’t handle my raw animal magnetism. Legend has it, when I was a newborn, the doctor dropped me on a pile of Black Sabbath CDs and it cracked my little skull right open. There was blood everywhere. My parents screamed and almost blew a vein or two. But after the surgery, a piece of my brain had been replaced—the one that controls impulse control, of course. So I was reborn, like a rock ’n’ roll Frankenstein. The rock gods blessed me to survive, and as I emerged from the operating table like Jesus Christ Superstar from the cross, the heavenly light flooded me as I sat up and cried tears of destiny. It was that moment I knew I was destined to be a rock star. But I didn't choose rock ’n’ roll; rock ’n’ roll chose me. That’s also how I got this gnarly scar on the back of my head.
Aside from thinking I'm the devil himself, my parents bought into the widespread panic around all things rock ’n’ roll at the time. They believed that satanic panic was running rampant and metalheads were sacrificing little girls to Satan, who was also being summoned by Dungeons and Dragons and playing Led Zeppelin backwards. So naturally, as the signs of my emerging rock ’n’ roll ethos became undeniable, my parents started to sweat and wonder if the Lord of Darkness was somehow involved. I mean, just look at my track record so far (these are just the highlights): When I was 10 months old, my first words were “Let’s get it on” (Marvin Gaye had the number 4 song of the summer). When I was two, I sharpened my teeth into fangs on my mom’s nail file so I could bite the hand that feeds me more successfully. When I was four, I stole my mom's eyeliner and never gave it back. And when I was five, I formed my first band with some first graders who couldn’t play for shit. Dude, they were babies. They couldn't keep up with my clear path to rock ’n’ roll mega stardom.
When I was six, I refused to get a haircut so I could grow out my full hair metal shag (as God intended). When I was eight, I broke a kid's leg in the schoolyard while pulling my hair. But there was a silver lining: that year, Mötley Crüe was formed, so I realized I was gay. But even when I was in middle school, my parents had already made it extremely well known to every family in the neighborhood that they “did not approve of my lifestyle.” They tried so many times to take me to church with them, Bible school, Boy Scouts with my brothers, football camp, put me in a suit, brush my hair, introduce me to neighborhood girls, burn my rock shirts—they were just fascists, dude, you have no idea!? From day one of parenthood, they did everything in their power to squeeze me into their oppressive, All-American mold that Kevin and Kent slid so neatly into. Well, I’ll give it to them; their brainwashing worked on my brothers for fifteen years, but it never worked on me, and they hated me for it. I was living proof America was a dying empire, and they wanted to hide the fat, rock ’n’ roll proof at all costs, in case I made too much sense to the neighborhood rejects. My parents, by this point, were desperate. They did what they always did in times of great desperation. They returned to the church’s doorstep to give me the appropriate number of exorcisms. And as you know, the church was known for its totally not traumatic treatment of children.
But when that didn't work, and the demons had refused to leave my body (probably because they were having such a great time in there), our local pedophile priest, Joseph Angles, decided I needed “professional help.” So after the electric shock therapy, hypnotizing, homeopathy, crystal healing, and helping to get a radio psychic’s ratings up, everyone declared that I was absolutely, totally, undeniably beyond help. But if anything, their futile attempts at “setting me straight” only gave me more ideas for rock songs. Also, demons are hot and cool, actually—funky red naked dudes who wanna take over your body and make you horny and evil, but in a cool way and give The Big J a hard time. I don't know, man, sign me up. Yeah, the church had a way of making sin seem totally gnarly each time they wanted us to fear it, like a way to backfire hard. Keep at it, guys, see where that gets you!
I was only thirteen years old…what’s the rush?! They had loads of time to try to shove me into that conformist mold. If they could have, they would've sent me off to war, but I was too young. Plus, the Vietnam War was over, and their patron Saint Nixon was old news. So for now, they were stuck with me and all that came with it. But on the “bright side,” they just elected this movie star guy named Ronald Reagan to the White House, so we’ll see how that goes for them. Meanwhile, my two older brothers were the most perfect little angels. They were as smart, obedient, Catholic, heterosexual, sexist, and boring as my folks could have ever hoped for. Then there was me, always cast aside, ignored, and put in a cage like a feral pit bull. By the time we hit middle school, my parents had totally given up on me, and man, they were not shy about it either. They constantly shoved their favoritism down my throat. They ran our household like a horse race, I swear to God. They would pit us against each other to compete for every little sliver of their approval, and you know just who the judges favored. They were so blunt; they even cut me out of family photos and burned my birth certificate on the back porch. My mom lied to her ladies at the hair salon that she only had two sons, and my dad constantly denied that I was his flesh and blood. As a cover, he started claiming I was an orphan from Las Vegas they took in briefly, out of the kindness of their hearts. My brothers themselves were absolutely pampered. My folks made sure they had the best tutors, the best schools, the best school equipment, even when they could barely afford either. Not to mention getting them both the prettiest girlfriends (mostly daughters of their church ilk, trying to marry off their eldest daughters before they developed a personality). My oldest brother Kent was, expectedly, a royal cunt. He inherited the douchebag gene from both our parents. Kent really was just an extension of our parents’ reign, getting straight A's and being a straight-A asshole from 1st grade to 8th. So of course, as soon as we hit high school, Kent was at the top of the food chain. He did all the classic bullcrap popular nitwits like him got up to in 1985, like bullying the nerds, being star quarterback, and banging and claiming every pretty virgin from here to the city limits. So, naturally, every teacher, parent, student, and McDonald's worker in town expected him to go to Harvard, even when their grades and coaches were all pointing them towards a football scholarship. Our folks always had to push extra hard. They wanted my brothers to become big-shot corporate lawyers and bring the township a bunch of money, or something. Which gives them a get-out-of-jail-free card for just about any crime you could think of. Never gonna happen if you ask me. Their heads are in the clouds, and either way, all that shit grosses me the fuck out. Sellouts like my folks and my brother are the enemy of a rock god like myself. Well, I had to learn early.
But then there was Kevin. He was a rare gold nugget in an ocean of mediocrity. I held off talking about him until now because he was the only fond memory of my childhood, so I had to save the best for last. He was absolutely crushed by our parents’ ungodly pressure to be perfect and get perfect grades and pull the family out of poverty. Kevin and Kent were in constant competition, our folks constantly pitting them against each other, because no matter how perfect Kevin was, Kent was always better. And Kent was anything but good—the douchebag of the year award went to him every time, future lawyer for corporate buttfaces no doubt. I hated his guts almost as much as he hated it when I blasted AC/DC at 3 a.m. But Kevin was actually a good guy, and after a while, he grew up and quit being such a kiss-ass. I mean, he still had to be perfect or else, but he managed to do it without being a raging dickweed in the process. He was the only person who didn't participate in the constant dog-piling and hostile climate against me that everyone seemed to be totally wrapped up in. He actually enjoyed spending time with me without being paid. In fact, he often fought to do so despite the pressure. And lucky me, he had good taste in rock music to boot! He wasn't satisfied with listening to Bruce Springsteen in the corner and sucking his thumb like the rest of them. He even stood up against bullies and our parents when they were bringing down the hammer on me. He was a popular kid too, so h
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