This is for the teenage girl in Toledo, smoldering in her room, thoroughly convinced that the God she’s been taught to fear and respect is completely full of shit – or at least holding as much in his fiery gullet as her insipid, clueless parents daily stuff into their chipmunk cheeks.
Yes, you, the girl in Ohio.
This is for you, sweetheart, you with the curdled face, still damp with frustrated tears, sequestering yourself in the metal sanctuary you’ve built.
Metal Church, Manowar, Accept, Witchfinder General, W.A.S.P, Celtic Frost – the posters with which you’ve lined your walls shield you from the stupidity of the parental world. They form a shiny, tiled halo about your tousled mane, as you stare up at the mundane ceiling of your room, imagining Flying Vs filling the heavens, a sea of six-string comets with raging red tails, born of the fury to rock, the unimpeachable power of a sinner’s raging heart.
Originals all, these glossy totems, the 80s being your current specialty, bought online with the money you earn watching neighborhood brats overdose on Sunny Delight and Cheetos.
We know where these images are sending you, young lady, where your battered little heart is going to look for its solace, and we know all too well the path you’ll take, but let us be the first to tell you, there is no refuge in the man in red – there is nothing radical about the Devil.
Now, that said, we need to make one thing clear.
This is not a moral piece.
It is not some digital tract and we are not pressing to be the Jack Chick of the Internet age – surely someone else already has that role comfortably covered.
No, rather we’re warning against association with the Satanic Lord because he is as much a part of the dogma you are spitting up as is God – and Jesus Christ – and your impossible mother, lingering over you with her dry church lips and her bitter sanctimonious eyes.
Call him what you will – Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satanus, Belial, Ehlis, Azazel, Ahriman, Mephistopheles, Mephisto, Shaitan, Sammael, Asmodeus, Abaddon, Apollyon, The Prince of Darkness, His Satanic Majesty, Hot Stuff – evoke his name as you pound upon your nightstand – it doesn’t matter, for he is simply part of the fable you are revolting against.
Do you understand?
He is the red-lettered KEEP OUT sign your Judeo-Christian upbringing has hung on the door of inquisitive thought – he is your father’s frown – your mother’s face buried in her hands.
You must realize that we are all travelers in a ship of morality, one partitioned on Dante’s plan. Those with little or no heavenly grace are left to burn in the boiler room. Those showing elusive promise are free to float in the spectral limbo of second class. Those having been so Chosen are left to ascend the upper decks – where paradise is always served.
The way to this triad of purification follows three simple paths, all taken at the same point.
We either choose to follow the sign, spending an eternity with God, combing the golden burrs of sleep from his great beard, or we dither at the holy crossroads, left to forever haunt with a friendly ghost, an intangible prisoner of Limbo’s high walls.
The rest will fall from grace, plummeting deep below the marker of morality – damned to work the wheels in the belly of Satan’s infernal machine.
Each choice is a compliant one, no rebel will you be to side with Old Scratch.
Don’t let those old biker flicks fool you. Hell’s angel is nothing but a devil loose in Heaven, a troublesome imp running ragged the skirting of the harpist’s gossamer robe, Marilyn Manson screaming in some Florida amphitheatre, Al Pacino bedeviling Keanu Reeves.
If you really want to state your independence, you must step outside of the doctrine of shame, the fortress of guilt, and begin to search for what you really are – neither Gabriel on high, nor incubus of the bottomless pit – but a living conscience, a well of understanding and intelligence not needing a sanctified elevator to gauge the depths of its perceived soul.
666 might be an area code, sweetheart – but you’ve got to live there to use it.
