"The thing that always bothered me was," he says, "this is the exact same thing. Nixon came out and said Manson was guilty during the trial, because Nixon was being blamed for everything that was wrong about the culture. Then the same thing happened with Clinton saying, 'Why are these kids acting so violent? It must be Marilyn Manson. It must be this movie. It must be this game. Then he turns the cheek and sends some bombs overseas to kill a bunch of people. And he's wondering why kids have bombs and they're killing people…"
Manson brings out watercolor paintings he's done, bright and dark colorful Rorshsach-test portraits of McGowen. Paintings he does with-not so much the paints as the murky rinse water he uses to clean his brushes. One shows the grinning heads of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold impaled on the raised fingers of a peace sign.
"It turns out that they weren't fans," he says. "One Denver reporter did enough research to prove they disliked me because I was too commercial. They were into more underground stuff. It pissed me off that the media took one thing, and it just kept snowballing. And it was because I'm an easy target. I look guilty. And I was on tour at the time."
He says, "People always ask me, 'What would you have said to them if you could talk to them? and my answer is, 'Nothing. I would've listened. That's the problem. Nobody listened to what they were saying. If you'd listened, you'd have known what was going on."
He says, "Strangely, although music is something to listen to, I think music listens back because there's no judgments. A kid can find something he identifies with. Or an adult. Here's a place you can go to where there's no judgments. There's not someone telling you what to believe in."
Manson deals his sixth card: the Star
"This card is the future," he says. "The Star. This means great success."
He says, "For a long time, I never saw myself getting to this point. I never looked beyond this because I thought I was either going to destroy myself or someone was going to kill me in the process. So in some ways I have beaten the dream. And it is scary. It is like starting over, but that's good because that's what I needed. There's been a lot of little rebirths along the way, but now I feel like I've born over into where I started out, but with a different interpretation. I've gone back in time in a way, but now I have more ammunition, more knowledge to face the world."
He says, "The natural thing for me to do is to be involved in movies, but it really has to be on my terms. I think I feel more suited as a director than an actor, although I like to act. I'm talking to Jodorowsky, the guy who did El Topo and The Holy Mountain. He's a Spanish director who worked with Dalí. He wrote a script called Able Cain and it's a fantastic thing. He's had it for about fifteen years, and he hasn't wanted to do it, but he contacted me because I was the only person he wanted to work with. And the character is very different from what people know of me, and that's the only reason I'm interested because most people who approach me, they want me to do different versions of myself. It's not really a challenge of any sort."
In the spring of 2001, Manson plans to publish his first novel, called Holy Wood, a narrative that will cover his first three records. In the attic, he sits on the floor, leaning into the blue light from his laptop and reads the first chapter out loud, a magical, surreal, poetic story, crammed with detail and cut loose from traditional boring fiction. Fascinating, but for now, top secret.
He deals his seventh card: the High Priestess
"This one," he says, "I'm not sure about."
People who come to interview Manson, his publicist asks that they not publish the fact that he stands whenever a woman enters or leaves the room. After his father was disabled with a back injury, Manson bought his parents a home in California and supports them. When checking into hotels, he uses the name "Patrick Bateman," the serial-killing character from Bret Ellis's novel American Psycho.
He deals his eighth card: the World
"The World," he says, "placed appropriately here represents the environmental or outside things that can prevent you."
He says, "I had a great, interesting experience in Dublin. Because it's very Catholic, I did this performance on the European tour. I had this cross made of TVs that burst into flames, and I came out-I basically was just nude except for leather underwear. I'd painted myself all charred. I came onstage, the cross was on fire, and I saw people in the front row turn around and face the other direction. It was unbelievable. It was the greatest compliment in a performance. They were so offended-and it's unbelievable to me that someone could be that offended-that they turned around and looked the other way. Hundreds of people."
Manson deals his ninth card: the Tower
"The Tower is a very bad card," he says. "It means destruction, but in the way that this is read, it comes across like I'm going to have to go against pretty much everyone. In a revolutionary way, and there's going to be some sort of destruction. The fact that the end result is the sun means it probably won't be me. It will probably be the people who try to get in my way."
About his novel, he says, "The whole story if you take it from the beginning is parallel to my own but just told in metaphors and different symbols that I thought other people could draw from. It's about being innocent and naive, much like Adam was in Paradise before the fall from grace. And seeing something like 'Holy Wood, which I used as a metaphor to represent what people think is the perfect world, the ideal that we're all supposed to live up to, the way we're supposed to look and act, and it's about wanting-your whole life-to fit into this world that doesn't think you belong, that doesn't like you, that beats you down every step of the way, fighting and fighting and fighting and finally getting there and realizing that now that you're there, everyone around you are the same people who kept you down in the first place. So you automatically hate everyone around you. You resent them for making you become part of this game you didn't realize you were buying into. You trade one prison cell for another in some ways.
"That becomes the revolution," he says, "to be idealistic enough that you think you can change the world, and what you find is you can't change anything but yourself."
McGowen calls from the airport, and promises to call again when her plane lands. In a week Manson will leave for Japan. In a month, he'll start a world tour in Minneapolis. Next spring his novel will complete the past decade of his life. After that, he'll start again.
"In some ways it feels like-not a burden, but a weight has been lifted by putting to rest a long-term project," he says. "It gives me the freedom to go anywhere. I feel a lot like I did ten years ago when I started the band. I feel that same drive and inspiration, and that same disdain for the world that makes me want to do something that makes people think.
"The only fear I have left is the fear of not being able to create, of not having inspiration," Manson says.
"I may fail, and this may not work but at least I'm choosing to do it. It's not something I'm doing because I'm stuck with it."
Manson deals his tenth card: the Sun
The two Boston terriers are curled up, asleep on a black velvet chair.
He says, "This is the final outcome, the Sun, which represents happiness and accomplishing a great deal."