Frontman: Stories From Life in A Rock Band. Part III.

So, I beat up a man for—what? Being rude?—feeling I had every right to do so, and now I was in handcuffs and en route to the Hoosegow. The Big House. The Pen. The Cooler. The Belly of the Beast. Tuscaloosa County Jail.

And, I must say, it was everything you look for in a jail, assuming you love jail: ugly and harsh, filled with the sounds of buzzers and heavy sliding iron gates and a large, cold room with several dozen incarcerated men coughing and grumbling and absent-mindedly adjusting their private parts. On one half of the room there were two dozen thin white cots arranged in top and bottom metal racks. These were cots which I intended to avoid for one million, trillion years, if necessary.

There was a toilet, too. More than one, if I remember correctly. The exact number of them is irrelevant, since—like the cots—they would not be used by me at any point in this lifetime. I imagined some colossal, brick-jawed indignant fellow inmate asking me, “Why aren’t you using the bathroom like the rest of us?” I decided that I would lie and say: “I have dyschezia,” leaving him in the kind of impotent stupor that comes from being unable to define words like “dyschezia,” and within hours the word would get around that the new guy had some kind of unpronounceable infectious condition. This was the best plan I could come up with at the time.

I found a reasonably unoccupied niche towards the back of the holding cell. I leaned against the wall trying to look both imperturbably relaxed and violently dangerous at the same time, secretly on maximum red alert in case anybody attempted to make me use the bathroom.

In time I began to realize that the other prisoners were actually fairly benign. This wasn’t The Green Mile, after all—my room was just a big temporary holding tank and most everybody there was in for some minor offense and they knew that one way or the other they would be released in a relatively short amount of time, be it 24 hours or a couple of weeks. I had no clue how long I was going to be there.

I should probably just cut to the chase here and let you know now: this isn’t one of those “scared straight” stories. I don’t in any way end up so rattled by my experiences On The Inside that I declare gravely, “Boy, oh, boy, I’ll never beat up anybody again! It’s the straight and narrow for me from now on!” As uncomfortable as I surely was, I remained basically confident that Pose was at that very moment doing everything possible to spring me, at which point I would continue my impulsive wackiness as the frontman for a super rad rock ‘n’ roll band and Woody got just what he deserved, anyway, didn’t he?

But there was something bothering me, nonetheless. I couldn’t put my finger on it yet, but I knew it had something to do with God. I’m not talking “theophany” here, but theo-something, definitely. I stayed in my niche, watching my jail mates, and let my theo-something quietly develop in the back of my mind.

By about sundown Adam Guthrie, Pain’s guitarist, showed up to deliver me from, if not the Belly, then at least the Esophagus of the Beast. He had been to a bail bondsman and paid to get me out. That, dear readers, is a true friend.

Now, six years later, beneath the multi-colored lights of City Stages, that same wonderful, hairy guy was hoping I would lead a West Side Story-style gang war with Train’s road crew. Smiling uncomfortably I shook my head and wandered off, knowing what a disappointment that must have been for all my pals. The whole initiative fizzled out and we trundled back to the van.

I never told any of them exactly why I decided to stand down that night. I never told them that after I got home from my day in jail in 1993 I made a secret promise to God to never get in a fight ever again.

I’m no pacifist—I’m a Just War theory guy, for one, and to this day I applaud the justice of whipping up on anybody who menaces old ladies, kids, mothers, the defenseless, or kittens. No, my promise was to avoid the endless, meaningless scraps with other guys which could otherwise continue under virtually any flimsy pretext: he looked at me funny, he tried to cheat me, he’s a butthole, et cetera. I didn’t want to fight for those kinds of things anymore.

The reason was not because I was in the process of developing a code of ethics. It was because I perceived that God was disappointed, and that was far worse to me than the sting of backing down from any conflict. So, I told God I wouldn’t do that again.

A seed was thereby plopped into a fresh furrow in my heart and swaddled with soil. Slowly, it began to send out tendrils meant to envelope the proud city I had made of my life and reduce it to crumbled ruins: the ne plus ultra of a life in Christ. My simple pledge was one tiny victorious step in that direction.

It wasn’t the content of the pledge that was the catalyst, though it is tempting to assume that. The catalyst was that I referred to God at all, that I took a part of my life and said without reserve: “This is yours—you can have it back. Sorry I broke it. I won’t screw with it again, I promise.”

So, Woody, wherever you are, if you’re reading this: I am truly sorry for attacking you that day. That was a lousy thing to do. Forgive me. And thanks for not pressing charges.

 If you missed Part 1, go here. If you missed Part 2, go here.