Your girlfriend is driving you to go kill your uncle that has molested you all those years.

I need to kill this motherfucker.

I remember walking in the house.

I'm an 18 year old kid.

I make my way back to his room and I looked him in his eyes.

I said, I'm the kid you used to molest.

And I beat this motherfucker unmercifully.

Now I'm gonna watch his world crumble.

And I dragged him.

He's laying there gurgling blood.

And I picked his head up by my hands and I said, I'll kill you and you will die by my mother fucking hands.

Do you hear me?

Who?

All right, dude.

Tj.

Yes.

I'm excited for this episode for many reasons.

One, one of our biggest listeners reached out and was like, bro, you got to get this guy on.

He's a neighbor of mine.

You've got to hear his stories.

And so I reached out and you have quite, quite the life you have lived from your childhood.

You dealt with a lot of abuse as a child.

Yeah.

Which led to you almost taking your life as a very young kid.

Yes.

Yeah, I want to get into that.

I also want to touch on.

You were in the World Trade Centers when it was struck by a plane.

And, and you got to see a lot of what happened that day and it changed your views on a lot of things ever since.

But in between that time, you've been in several bands, you've been traveling, and I know you got a lot of stories of everything and in between.

So I want to thank you today for coming on.

We're going to send you home with a fresh loaf of sourdough.

The girls got it baked up just fresh.

It's probably still warm for you waiting downstairs.

Sounds miserable.

We started, yeah, we started a little company, a little, little thing for homeschooling when we pulled our kids out a few years ago.

And it's kind of evolved into something now.

And so it's, it's doing really well.

And the girls get to learn.

I want information on that business and.

Entrepreneurship and everything that goes on with running a business.

We're kind of teaching them that is a.

As a homeschool project, I want to make sure I send you home with some wild chaos swag.

So, dude, as always, we just jump right into this, man, I want to have this conversation.

I'm really excited about it because you.

It just.

There's so many different things that have gone on in your life and have set probably the trajectory for it.

And you've Overcome a lot.

I could only imagine, in your years on this amazing planet.

So who are you?

Where are you from, man?

My name is TJ Frost, and I'm from.

I say from Buffalo, New York.

That's where most of my family had been.

We moved quite a bit.

My father was in the military.

He was in the army as a mechanic.

So we did.

You know, I've lived in probably nine, ten different states, you know.

Okay.

I was in nine different grade schools by the time I graduated eighth grade.

Okay.

You know, so seen.

Seen a lot as a kid, but I was raised by people that probably shouldn't have been parents.

You're speaking of your own parents.

Yeah.

Okay.

How so?

Why?

I. I think that there's a.

There's a narrative that people have there.

There's this.

This Cosby kind of thing that people want.

Right.

They.

They want to think that their parents are the best example of how to be.

Sure.

But unfortunately, sometimes your parents are the best example of how not to be.

Absolutely.

You know, And.

And you have to.

There's a reckoning that you have to have with that.

Right.

And so I dealt with a lot of child abuse, you know, in my life.

Neglect, torture and physical abuse.

Sexual abuse.

Who was this coming from?

Uncles.

Uncles.

Yeah.

And uncles that were protected by their moms, grandparents.

Okay.

And so.

And then by their friends.

The uncle's friends also would be sexually abusing, torturing, you know, us as kids, too.

So.

Who's us?

My siblings.

Okay.

And cousins.

You know, I mean, it was through the whole family, you know, really?

It was.

Yeah, it was.

It was pretty pervasive.

And so you.

For me, I was the oldest of five.

Right.

And so I think.

I think my abuse started when I was probably, from what I can tell, memories being what they are, probably like four.

Four years old.

Five years old.

And by the time I was five or six, I'd seriously committed, you know, contemplated taking my own life, committing suicide and by climbing a tree in the backyard and tying a rope around the tree and, you know, thankfully, a neighbor came out and seen what was happening and got me out of the tree.

At five or six years old.

Yeah.

If you don't mind me asking, what was going.

What was the sexual abuse?

I mean, you said torture, neglect.

I mean, are you just being burned with cigarettes constantly?

You know, sexual abuse.

I don't want to get graphic about it, but, you know, things that you don't do to children.

Right.

You know, I mean, pedophile, pedal.

Pedophilia, you know, and.

And.

And not Having a safe harbor, right.

Like I said, it was coming from uncles, but it was also coming from the uncle's friends, girlfriends, you know, different things like that.

You know, I remember one, one thing, you know, and not to be so graphic, and I apologize to your family if they're hearing this, but I think I was about 4, 4 years old, maybe 5.

And I remember my uncle and his girlfriend, we lived above these people and my uncle was supposed to be watching us and he took me and her sister, who was probably, I would guess, around the same age, and put us on the bathroom floor and made us do, you know, fellatio and cunnilingus on each other, you know, at four year old kids, you know, so, and this is a uncle and his girlfriend doing this, you know, so this stuff went on for a long time, you know, and, and it took a, I would say that it takes a lifetime to get to a place where you can manage that kind of thing, you know, when you can.

And I say manage it, not in like, oh, I've healed from this, you know, because a rape victim is always a rape victim.

It never goes away.

How do you ever heal from those things?

But you have to heal, you know, you, you, you have to understand that, you know, the world is a sick place.

But to learn that as a child when you have no protection, right, you parents aren't protecting you, the, any adult in your orbit is not protecting you.

No one's doing anything.

And it's, as I said, it was pervasive.

So, you know, you have to, you know, I've gone to a lot of therapy, a lot of counseling, pay attention to a lot of psychology and different stuff like that philosophy to get to a place to, to find a way to put it in a more useful place than have it be something that eats you alive.

Absolutely.

You know, and, and, and so that's.

Not easy to do.

And a lot of people probably never have the means or the ability to figure out how to get to that point.

And they just suffer with it until they eventually either take their life, go down to the bottle, the pill, whatever.

Their path is to try to ease the pain.

On being abused as a child, that's not an easy thing.

I think that I've always said I'm fortunate because I had good support around me even though I was a street kid.

I've been on my own, you know, as a young teenager, eating out of the garbage to live, living in a car, you know, you know, but I was fortunate because I had support of like good Friends.

I had a good friend of mine, his mom would, I'd crash on her couch from, you know, frequently and she was like a second mom, even though she was a junkie, you know.

Okay, how did you end up on the streets as a kid living in cars?

I think that you get to a point for me, I just got to a point that I was better off away from these people than with these people for sure.

And I did everything I could to not be around them because when I'd have to be around them, I.

There was this.

You were like compelled to pretend that everything's fine.

And, and, and being compelled to do something against your will can last for so long, I guess.

But if, if you have any kind of.

I guess for me, like I just don't have that spirit to be broken in me like that, you know.

And I think about the movie, if you ever seen it, Instinct, with Kuba Gooding Jr. And Anthony Hopkins.

I don't know.

Well, there's, there's a great scene in there, it's worth watching where Anthony Hopkins, he's some paleontologist or something like that and he studies gorillas in Africa.

And long story short, he's, he's winds up living with this gorilla family in Africa and there's these poachers and they kill the, you know, they wind up killing the gorilla.

Spoiler alert.

You know, his silverback, like the guy.

And, and it took him all this time to gain the trust of this gorilla and he family.

And then these poachers come and they kill this gorilla and he winds up as a murderer and he takes, you know, he doesn't speak to anyone.

Some time passes and Cuba Gooding's like this up and coming hot psychologist or whatever and he's going to be the guy to go and break, you know, Anthony Hopkins, who's a, you know, he's a, he's a genius level intellect kind of guy.

And so long story short, they take, they under armed guard, they take Anthony Hopkins to the zoo and, and they take him back to the gorilla cages and all these guys got their weapons on them and that, you know, and Anthony Hopkins picks the lock on the gorilla cage and he opens the door and they're all like, oh my God, what are you doing?

You know, and guns are drawn and he goes, he won't come out of there.

He's like, freedom is a dream he's forgotten, you know, he's like, this isn't a gorilla anymore.

This is something different, you know, and, and I think I look around Sometimes.

And I see that in people that they gave up early in their life on.

On who they are and what they are supposed to be or could be.

You know, I.

You know, I have two young kids and, you know, I'm a firm believer in that we are living gods walking this planet.

And that if you so choose to push your energy in a direction that you can manipulate matter and genetically modify things and go to space, but it requires an effort that, you know, in these stories that we used to read in ancient.

Ancient scripts, you know, of these, that these people did, you know, and so I. I think that I've held that my whole life that there's something important about us being here that matters.

And even though, you know, we might get the.

The grace of, you know, having 80 summers on this rock, you know, you don't live until you wake up to the reality that you've already cashed in 30 of those summers sometimes, or 40 or 50, and maybe you only got 20 summers left, and that ain't a lot of time.

And so I've seen, you know, child abuse and different things like that that destroyed friends of mine who.

Taking their life away.

Guys that were way more talented than me, funny, you know, great guys.

And I.

And it.

It wrecked them and destroyed them, you know.

And so that's kind of what led me to my musical career or whatever.

Not that I've ever made really any significant money from it, but I've been playing music since I was about 18 years old, you know, was that.

You're out.

Do you feel.

Is that a huge coping mechanism for you?

Was music?

Absolutely.

I remember the day.

I remember to like.

Like it was.

It seared in my mind for the rest of my life.

I was in eighth grade, and I was in an English class, and I was a. I was a student that I did well.

If I.

You know, all I had to do was make a little effort and I could do well.

I tested well.

I never did homework, but always, you know, on the honor roll, kind of one of those.

Okay.

I was.

I was the complete opposite.

Yeah, it's all right, man.

Testing isn't everything, but.

But so we had.

He gave us an assignment.

Mr. Carmody, I think the guy's name was.

I have no idea how I remember that, but.

And the assignment was to do some essay on some whatever topic that I think you were able to choose yourself.

And.

And so, like I said, I didn't.

I never did homework, you know.

So the day comes and, you know, he says, you can either turn In a report, or you can do a presentation, you know, verbally, in front of the class.

You know, I never thought about speaking in front of somebody.

I never.

I'm 14, you know, I'm a basket case.

I just.

You know, the year before, I just stopped pissing the bed, you know.

Okay.

So, you know, I mean, it's like I had a lot of really, like, trouble things, you know, most of my life, I thought I was concerned that I was destined to be a serial killer because of my childhood and these things that I had going on in my life where I'm like, somebody put this in me, though.

I'm not this guy, right?

So you're.

You're fighting this duality.

And.

And so he comes and he calls on me.

He's like, yeah, did you do the report?

And I was like, nah, nah, I didn't do that.

And he.

He's like, do you want to do a.

You want to do a presentation?

I said, sure.

I hadn't prepared anything.

I hadn't.

And I was a huge music lover already at that point.

Music.

Metal and hard rock and punk and, you know, any of that stuff.

And so I said, sure.

And I got up in front of the class.

Now, I had always kind of been a loner guy, you know, I had some buddies, and we'd listen to music, whatever, you know, drink, you know, party or whatever.

But it was not like I wasn't like, the popular kid in school, you know, I was big dude, long hair, you know, dirt bag, metal kid, you know, And.

And so I stood up in front of the class and I said, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna do my report on suicide and the song Fade to Black by Metallica.

Okay?

And.

And so I started reciting some of the lyrics to them.

And like, I said, I hadn't prepared anything.

I didn't know what I was saying, what I was doing, what was happening.

I just went with it.

And.

And I started talking.

And I realized in that moment that my whole life, I hadn't had a voice.

Right?

My whole.

My whole childhood, you know, there was no one to cry to.

Yeah.

There was no one to talk to.

There was no one to go to and say, hey, I'm being hurt here, and they're hurting your family, and all these things are.

It didn't exist.

Right.

It's like another world.

Right.

You know, and so.

And I realized in that moment when I was given this oral presentation, that the whole class was fixated on me, you know, And I may have had tears in My eyes, I can't remember, but I just remember the whole class was crying.

You know, I told them, you know, first time thought about taking my life.

I was five years old, you know, in the backyard with a rope around my neck and a tree, you know, and, and what.

This song, this music, that I didn't know these guys, you know, I didn't.

And, but the lyrics of that song were so powerful that it was like a mantra for me to know that I'm not alone.

Like somebody else, somebody in that band, whoever wrote that, that song, those lyrics.

Feels what I, what I'm feeling.

We are deeply connected in some profound way that I didn't understand at 14 years old.

But I finished the, the presentation and as I said, like, I mean, girls in the class crying, guys in the class crying, like, people coming up to me, oh, my God, I had no idea.

It's like.

And it wasn't about, it wasn't a sympathy thing or anything.

It was just like, hey, I'm telling you how I feel right now.

Yeah.

And this is the thing.

And, and that was a real, like, click moment for me, that your words have power, that you, you, you choose your words correctly and you're casting spells, right?

You can help people.

And that's been my motivation musically my whole career is to help myself.

Right?

Because it's cathartic and, you know, it's also painful.

You know, you go back and reopen wounds all the time.

Because every song I write, it's like I'm writing the last song I might ever write.

And so I got to make sure I put everything in there that I can.

Oh, that's a good way to look at it.

And, and, and so, but the, the drive was always to help people because I, I, I, I understood early on that being able to talk to somebody was a powerful thing.

Absolutely right.

And if you can get people to talk, that's a powerful thing for them too.

Right?

So, so that really, like, drove me to start pushing towards the idea of, like, how do I, my lyrics?

How can I help people if I can drop a couple?

Not that I had my life sorted out.

Not that I was doing great.

Not that, not that I wasn't a psycho basket case at times in my life and, you know, like, wanting to be dead.

You know what I mean?

For sure.

Just not wanting to be alive so much that it's like, man, can this please end somehow?

You know, and, and not realizing that through that, through that, that fight of not giving up and not giving into it and really Just hoping to reach out and give.

Look, here's a little breadcrumb for you.

Try this thing or think about it in this way.

It's powerful when you have people come up to you and say, you saved my life.

Thank you for writing that song.

You know, that's a.

That's a world shaking thing.

Like I.

There's one person.

Thank you.

There's one person, you know, because it's like a.

A pay it forward thing.

I wouldn't exist if it weren't for the people in my life that loved and cared about me.

My friends and, you know, these people that when I was the weakest in my life, you know, they were strong for me.

Yeah.

You know, and so.

But it's also an uncomfortable place to be in when you've been neglected your whole life and you don't.

Your.

Your.

Your whole worldview has been corrupted and perverted.

You don't know to trust.

You don't know how to love you.

I mean, there was a time in my life I didn't think I could ever love a person.

I like, that just wasn't a thing.

And it was until I was an older teenager.

I was like, it just ain't a thing.

Like, I never will be able to.

Love someone because with that much abuse, it slowly just chips at who you are internally until.

And then it just starts turning off things.

So you're empathy, feelings, love.

I mean, I feel like that just kills you inside over times.

So then that took you a while to get all that, start getting that back.

And was that through music or just time of talking to people or just maturing, being out of that situation?

You know, it took.

It took a real long time.

I'm not gonna lie.

Something really significant happened when I was 18, I think it was 1819 years old.

I met a girl who, like I said, I didn't think I could ever love somebody, you know, that just was like a. I guess you're just a person that can't love, you know?

And.

And I met this girl at a party and we chatted a little bit.

It was nothing, you know, But I just remember leaving there and I was like, I just never felt anything like I felt talking to this person and.

And so didn't get her name.

Like I knew.

I didn't know if it was.

It was one thing or another, you know, and.

And so never seen her before.

Didn't know if I ever see her again.

And I was dating a girl at the time and I was like, I immediately.

I went home that Night.

And I broke up with her.

And she's like, okay.

She's like, why?

And everything was good with her, you know, But I was like, I just can't.

I can't be with you.

She's like, is there someone else?

I was like, I don't think so.

But I just knew that what I felt with this stranger, I had never felt before.

Okay.

It was powerful.

And so did you ever meet this girl again?

A week later, we ran into each other at, like, a white zombie and corn show or something like that, and.

And we exchanged numbers, and we started dating, and.

And so we dated for a while.

She's an amazing person, very sweet and all that stuff, but I was a very broken person.

Okay?

I was.

I'd say my suicidal ideation was really ramped up at this point.

You know, how many times.

Because you've dropped suicide several times.

How often or how many attempts did you take?

I mean, from the.

You said at the age of five, was the first attempt or serious action of taking your own life?

Was there was this reoccurring thing?

Was it just here and there?

Did it peak and then you would be good for a while?

What was the.

I guess the es and flows of these suicidal thoughts?

Because it seems to be.

It was a huge part of your life during that era.

Yeah.

Well, how many times?

I mean, I remember waking up in a bathtub with a straight razor, like, coming out of, like, a.

A psychosis, thinking, like, I wanted to slash my wrist, so I climbed into the bathtub so I wouldn't get blood everywhere.

It was something that never left me.

Okay.

It was a daily thing of just not wanting to be here anymore, not wanting to be alive.

And.

And I.

As.

Things would.

Things would be fine.

Like, okay, fine, maybe.

You know, and then maybe something was happening, and all of a sudden, it's like, I just can't anymore.

Like, there's just no point to this thing.

So it was something that never left.

Right.

It was just something that was like a constant toothache that you just couldn't get rid of, you know?

And so I remember coming home one day, and I'm curled up in a fetal position on our.

On our bed, and my girlfriend, she comes home and she lays down next to me and she says.

She goes, you got to do something.

Got to do something about this.

It's gonna kill you, you know, because I know that she would come home day to day wondering if I was gonna be swinging from the rafters or have my brains blown out all over the place.

You know, and she said, what?

You gotta do something.

You're gonna.

You're gonna die, you're gonna kill yourself.

It's something like, only bad is coming from this.

Yeah.

And she said, what can I do to help you?

And I remember at that moment, bam, that that was the first time I had ever heard anyone ask me how they could help me.

And you were 18, 19 at this point.

Yeah.

And I said, I need to kill this motherfucker.

That's what I need to do.

It's the only thing that will help me.

And so she said, let's go.

And I grabbed my baseball bat, she took me by the hand and walked me down to the car.

And she drove me to my grandmother's house.

My parents were living.

You're talking kill your uncle?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

I thought you were talking the demon, like, inside of you that you're battling.

No.

Okay, so your, your girlfriend is driving you to go kill your uncle that has molested you all those years.

And my siblings and all this damage that has been done, you know.

Okay.

And.

And so she drives me there, we don't talk the whole, the whole drive.

And I don't know what I'm going to say.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

Because again, remember, like, anytime I had to be around these people, I would just pretend like everything was fine for sure.

And now you're confronting this.

Yeah.

And so I. I remember walking in the house.

My grandmother's there, my mother was downstairs, some couple of kids are running around, my siblings and that.

And I remember just walking in and I left the baseball bat on the, on the porch.

And I walked in, I said, where's Voldemort?

We'll say, you know, and.

And they're like, oh, he's upstairs.

So I walk upstairs, I make my way back to his room.

And I remember not knocking on his door.

He goes, yeah, who is it?

I said, it's me.

I didn't know what I was gonna say to this guy.

Yeah.

You know, he's several years older than me.

I'm an 18 year old kid, you know.

And I said, it's me.

He goes, yeah.

And I opened the door and I looked him in his eyes.

He was on the other side of his bed folding laundry.

And I looked him in his eyes.

I said, do you remember me?

And he said, yeah.

What do you mean?

You're my nephew?

I said, I'm the kid you used to molest.

And I beat this motherfucker unmercifully.

Unmercifully and I dragged him lifeless by his hair, and I kicked my father's bedroom door off the hinges, and I threw his half brother down next to his bed.

And my father sat there reading a book, and he said, what's going on?

And I tell him, this motherfucker's been molesting me and your kids and all this other that he's done.

And I said, now I'm gonna watch his world crumble.

He's no longer protected by you.

And I said.

I said, he will die by my hands if I ever see him again.

And he's laying there gurgling blood, motionless, you know, whatever.

And I picked his head up by my hands and I said, I'll fucking kill you next time I see you.

If I ever see you again.

You will die by my hands.

Do you hear me?

And then they.

Then he vanished.

They moved him out into the country or something, but at least he was away from my family, you know?

Oh.

I mean, good for you.

Yeah, rightfully so.

Did your parents know what was going on all those years where they just turn a blind eye to it?

Or did they ever, like.

Did you ever reconcile with your parents, have this conversation afterward or anything?

Or did this.

Was this.

It was your closure that you could get with him?

When I was 14, I think I was about 14, I was in.

Going into my second.

I think it was October, going into my sophomore year of high school.

And, you know, I used to cut myself, burn myself, anything, you know, And.

And so I remember the one day they called and they said, you know, crisis services is coming to the house, and we're going to.

You need to talk to them.

Right?

They're afraid I'm gonna kill myself.

I'm like, I'm not gonna kill myself.

Because at that time, I didn't feel like I was gonna kill myself.

You know, this was a Me burning myself and cutting myself was.

It was enough of a fix to not want to just end it all, you know?

But as a parent, that's a pretty.

That's a pretty serious thing to watch their child do that.

Yeah, I would say so.

But understanding my parents, too, you know, it's like, all right, yeah, it's a.

It's a conundrum.

I'll say, you know, okay.

But.

So they.

They said, we're gonna have crisis service call come.

So they.

They come and.

And there.

This is an answer to your question, so bear with me.

But they.

So crisis service comes, and they say, well, we want you to go to the hospital and talk to somebody.

I said, well, let's set up an appointment.

Remember, I'm 14, so let's set up an appointment.

We'll go and I'll go.

You know, I'd talk to him for an hour at the house, like, well, we're going to bring an ambulance, and we'll take you by ambulance there.

I was like, why do I got to go by ambulance?

Why can't I just set up an appointment and go and talk to your fucking doctor, right?

And so they're like, well, let's just do that.

And I'm like, okay, fine.

So I concede.

I get in the.

In the ambulance.

They take me to the hospital.

There are several hours before anyone's even coming to talk to me.

They took my clothes.

My father's sitting in the room with me.

And after, like, five hours, whatever the.

It was literally five hours, you know, four or five hours, I'm.

I go to the door, I say, hey, you know, give me my clothes.

They say, you can't leave until the doctor sees you.

I said, what are you talking about?

I said, obviously, this guy's busy, you know.

I said, yeah, set up an appointment.

I'll come back and see him when.

When he's available.

They're like, no, you can't leave.

I was like, in my mind, I'm like, the.

I can't leave.

I came here voluntarily, from what I understood, but it was all right.

So I tell them to give me my clothes.

I'll come back.

They won't give me my clothes.

And so I. I was like, I'm leaving.

So they had several orderlies bum rush me, slamming me into the wall.

They tie me down with bed sheets to a gurney.

They're like, you're not leaving.

I mean, I'm literally feeling like I'm being kidnapped now.

Are you freaking out at this point?

Oh, I'm.

I'm blasting them.

You know, I'm like, you, right?

Yeah.

So again, I am answering your question.

But to understand some of the stuff that was happening.

So they locked me up.

They institutionalized me in this hospital.

I'm in there several days.

By yourself?

By myself.

I won't eat.

I'm in a room with two or three cameras on me and a bed in the corner.

I remember after several days, and as I said, I hadn't talked to anybody since the intake of that.

After the fact that they slammed me to a gurney, tied me up with bed sheets, and shot me up with some to knock me out.

Then I talked to somebody afterwards.

You can imagine how mad I was, you know?

Yeah.

And so.

So they.

I think it's like six.

Six or seven days later.

And finally one of the doctors comes in on his rounds.

Mind you, I haven't eaten in days.

I won't eat.

I won't go.

Because I'm not a crazy person, right.

I'm a broken kid.

I'm a damaged kid that's been being abused.

But they want me to go and sit and eat with people that are eating their own and, you know, like, they're whack jobs.

Yeah.

You know, and so that's.

That's a whole mental toll right there, watching that.

Yeah.

So I'm like.

I stayed in my room.

And so this doctor comes in, doing his rounds.

The one day he's got, like, I don't know, five or six residency students or whatever they are.

He says, this is one of our more dangerous patients on the floor.

And then my.

I don't say anything.

And I'm like, this motherfucker.

Never.

I've never even talked to this guy.

What do you know about how dangerous I am?

Right.

Because of some shit I was saying after you guys tied me up and fucking shot me up with fucking drugs and.

Yeah.

Like that.

React.

Yeah.

And so he's just a couple and walked out of the room.

So a couple more days, come back.

Finally my mother comes up.

Your mom hasn't come to visit you at all?

I'm in there several days before anyone comes to see.

Can come see me.

And finally my mother comes up.

I remember sitting on the bed with her, she said, why are you doing this?

What's going on?

And I tell her, uncle's, you know, Voldemort's been molesting me and all this other blah, blah, blah.

And to the day she died, she denies that that conversation ever happened, you know, but in that conversation, I said to her, I was like, you better get me out of this place or our relationship is dead.

I'll never talk to you again because I didn't do anything to be in here.

Well, they wouldn't release me.

They told her, we will not release him.

They wanted to send me away for observation for like a year and a half or some.

And I said, well, then I said, you better than get a attorney because you did this to me.

I don't.

I don't need to be in here, right?

And so some days happen, some of this.

And they.

They basically, my mother, I guess, threatens to get an attorney or whatnot.

And finally they.

They let me out, but they let Me out ama.

What's that against medical advisory.

Okay.

Because.

So if you do anything does happen, that covers their either.

Yeah.

So the following week I go back to high school.

I'm like I said, I'm the second.

This is my second month or fourth, fifth week of ninth, tenth grade.

You know what I mean?

So it's like.

So I go to the office, I say, hey, you know, I've been gone for a couple weeks and, you know, just want to know what class is.

Never had any problem in the school.

Nothing happened at the school, Nothing like that.

And they say, yeah, you don't go to school here anymore.

I said, what?

I said, why?

She said, you, you have to call this person.

You're.

You've been put on home instruction now.

I said, you're removing me from school for what?

Because I was in the hospital.

So, because I was let out ama, they, they wouldn't allow me to go back to school.

So I didn't even get to finish high school.

Oh my God.

And, and, and there was a whole rigmarole, which isn't.

It's a boring story.

But I couldn't get back into school.

Damn.

They wouldn't let me back in.

And, And I was, you know, no matter what logic I was like, if I, if I just didn't go to school, you'd put my parents in jail.

From what I understand.

I'm trying to go to school and you're telling me I can't go to school.

Like, I don't get it.

And they put me on this home instruction.

But the guy doing the home instruction, he was a principal at a school up the street, so he didn't want to do the home instruction, which he was supposed to because he's getting paid after he gets out of work.

So he'd have me come into the school to get like, work.

I was like, if I can come to the school and get the homework from you, why can't I just be in school?

Could never answer it.

But anyway, I didn't get to finish high school, so I wound up getting my ged, but to the point there was no reconciliation with my parents.

That sucks.

You know, there was no way for that to happen.

Yeah.

You know, I had a very fractured relationship with them.

See them from time to time.

Sometimes it was good.

But there, there'd be stretches, five, six years, I never talked to him.

There was just, you know, and, and now I, I have almost no family.

Right.

I just, I've opt out.

I.

You know, if you, if you can't get on the same page as where we're at.

I don't.

I don't give a. I got opt out from your nonsense.

So.

So you confront your uncle for last year as a child, you beat him to an inch of his life.

What did that feel like?

Getting revenge on somebody that abused you as a child?

It didn't feel like revenge.

It felt like justice.

Okay.

On my neck I have confront right here.

Being able to confront him, to think like my whole life like this guy had some power over me.

Even when he didn't have power, I gave him that power because probably at 15, I could have beat the living out of this guy.

Yeah.

Know what I mean?

But I was so damaged and broken, I couldn't see that.

And it felt like justice.

It felt like this is the order of the universe.

You've done this horrible thing that you must pay for and the person that you did it to is going to make you pay for it.

Absolutely.

I don't need some intermediary.

I'm not calling the police.

I'm not doing any of these things.

We're gonna handle it right now, the two of us.

Are you glad you didn't bring the bat inside with you?

Would you have used it?

I for sure would have used it.

I would have killed him.

I mean, I almost killed him with my bare hands.

So it's when I tell you he was lifeless.

This dude was bleeding out.

He was done.

So I think it would have.

I would have beat his brains in for sure.

What did your girlfriend.

What was the conversation on the drive back after you got back in the car?

Family's going crazy.

Everyone's screaming, running around the house.

For sure.

Dude's dying upstairs.

I walk out, my mother's looking at me.

She like she's disappointed in me.

You let her down their up.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, because my parents don't got their together.

They're living in this house with this animal and my grandmother because they had no place to go because they made horrible choices.

You know what I mean?

It's like she gave me this look like I'm their shit up, you know?

And so at that moment I realized, like.

And, and same in the hospital.

I had this realization that my parents have four other kids that they had to care for.

And I was gone.

I'm a lost cause for them.

Yeah, you're the burden now.

And.

And I.

That's how I accepted it, you know.

But to answer your question, I walked out, I grabbed a baseball bat.

I looked like I. I gutted a pig from.

I was covered in blood from fingertips to neck.

I was covered in blood.

Not mine, but his.

Yeah.

And I walked out.

It's on my face.

It's everywhere.

I mean, it.

I had to look crazy, you know?

And I walk out and I got into the car.

It's like, we can go.

We didn't talk.

And shortly after, we wound up breaking up.

Because after that, the emotions of all of this stuff of my whole life that I'd carried around and tried to run from and hide from or kill or burn out of me or cut out of me, like, it was all coming back in a way that you're not you.

There's no, like.

There's no, like, manuscript.

There's no, like, hey, okay.

Like, I have a stomachache.

Oh, you should drink some ginger ale.

You know, there's.

There's no remedy, Right?

You just sometimes, and I'm sure, you know this.

That the only way is through.

There's no getting around it or getting over things.

It's just through.

You gotta go through it.

And so, you know, when you're.

When you're trying to manage this.

This wellspring of perversion.

And am I.

What am I going to become now?

Because the person I was is dead.

The person I was the minute I took my life back into my own hands and confronted this guy, that person's gone.

Okay, so let me ask you this, then.

Once you confronted him and dealt the justice that needed to be dealt to him, was that a relief?

Did that help at all?

Did it change the trajectory of how you started thinking?

Did it get you on the right path?

Or did you.

Did you still have so much to unpack?

I mean, did that.

I guess my question is, did it help?

Finding your abuser, beating him to an inch of his life?

I would say yes, it helped, but not immediately.

I didn't.

I didn't understand what was happening to me.

Okay?

Right.

You're talking about the death of a soul.

Right?

You've been this person for 18 years of your life, and that person's gone.

That person's dead.

That person does not see the world through the eyes of this broken kid.

Now, I've come into this adolescence, this broken adolescence of psychological frame of mind, right?

Where it's like you're fumbling around with primitive tools, you know, like, okay, I did this thing, but where do I go from here?

Right again.

With no guidance or anything.

Nothing.

There's.

There's.

There's no adult.

There's no one to talk to.

Right?

Like My.

My.

The person that I would consider most loving to me at the time was my friend's mom, who's a junkie.

She's a heroin junkie, which we wound up.

I want to being, you know, doing heroin and stuff and ODing and.

And what?

So it's.

Let's say there's the.

The chaos that came from the confrontation was something that I had.

Like, I said, I approached that door and knocked on that door.

When I was driving in the car, I didn't know what I'm saying to this guy.

Am I gonna walk onto that porch and chicken out?

Am I gonna walk in there and be like, maybe now's not the time, because whatever's going on, am I going to take care of myself right now?

Am I going to do this thing?

Like, second by second?

I had no idea what.

What is coming for me, but I just know that I can't live like this anymore.

And I had somebody that cared about me, that acknowledged that you can't live like this anymore because you will be dead.

You know, And I had already been a musician and writing stuff and felt the pull of that to say, like, I can.

I can do something with this.

I can.

You know, I've survived this.

Yeah.

This will not break me.

This will not kill me.

I'm not that guy.

And so, you know, but the chaos that came after is.

It's hard.

What came afterward is that when you turn the drugs, were you in the drugs at this point, or did that come later on?

I drank.

We'd party.

You know, we go into projects and booze and, you know, have, like, crazy benders.

Maybe we, you know, do some blow or something.

I mean, selling blow.

At 14, my other friends.

Mom was a dealer.

We were selling coke for her.

What?

And.

Yeah.

At 14.

Yeah.

And you're.

You're pushing drugs for your buddy's mom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How did that come about?

I mean, it wasn't.

It wasn't like, we're on the corner hustling.

You know, people knew you guys, and you knew them.

Oh, you.

You're at the skating rink.

You know, you're at the roller skating rink, and people want some action Sacks, you know, so you're like, yeah, I got them, you know?

Yeah.

And.

And then, you know, the.

The abuse that I brought on myself after.

After confronting him of then getting into drugs, drinking.

It's funny, there was a time where I wasn't drinking, but I was doing drugs, you know, like.

But it.

There was no preparation.

It wasn't like, look, like you, you, you're in the service, right?

It's like, all right, bam.

We're going to put you in basic training.

And you're like, okay, all right.

You're going to do push ups, you're going to do these things, all right?

Climb that wall, whatever, all the things.

And you're like, okay, all right, now we're going to do this thing.

And there's some progression from the things you learned.

It's just like, here's your life.

You were here.

It's shit over here.

Now we're going to drop you into this bucket of.

Over here.

There's no, there's no, like, hey, you're going to.

Some of these things that you learned along the way are going to be valuable here.

And you're can't make sense of all.

Of this out on your own as a child.

Yeah, yeah.

Which you're not.

I mean, you're just, you're just trying to survive with the trauma and everything.

Every day is survival, man.

Every day is survival.

Every day is.

I told somebody one time, I was like, it's such a sad thing when I think about it, that some people have to give themselves a reason to kill themselves.

But I go to bed trying to give myself a reason not to kill myself.

And, you know, when you and I think there's a.

An aspect of negativity begets negativity, you know, it's like.

But when all you see and all you know and all you've known that your whole world has been destroyed, reverted, twisted, it's, it's.

It's a different thing.

Right.

You know, I'd have friends as I got older, I'd have friends that complain about their parents or whatever and be like, you're lucky somebody even gives a fuck about you.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Because somebody could tell you they love you, but if you're not speaking the same language, right, like your idea of love and my idea of love are different.

You don't get to.

I don't get.

You don't let me get abused and tortured and cigarettes put out in my face and different things like that.

And, and then tell me you love me.

Like this is incompatible with me, you know?

But you, you're really.

In that time after, I had to really try to build a worldview that was palatable to the person I was becoming.

Was the person you're becoming a better version or is it just a different version?

Did you, did you like the person you were becoming?

I don't know.

I don't know that I even thought much about it.

Okay.

You know, I. I knew that I. I didn't want to be a serial killer.

I knew that I didn't want to be violent.

I knew that I didn't want to be damaged.

I didn't know how to not do that.

Yeah.

I wasn't certain how to get there, but I knew.

I knew the things I didn't want in my life.

Did you have.

Did you have serial killer thoughts in a way?

Did you ever, like, And I asked this because I'm not leaning into, like, yard now or anything, obviously, but a lot of kids that are abused, they start hurting animals, and then animals turn to people and things like that.

Was that a path?

Did you ever start.

Go down that you realize real quick or you'd never.

You just started to snuff it out before everyone went there, because you're listing pretty detail, you know, violence, serial killer tendencies, or, you know, thoughts, whatever it may be, you know, all these things that you don't want to be.

Were those things that you were battling.

I think they were things that I kept in my periphery, okay.

Because I knew that, you know, I used to study serial killers and what, you know, you want to understand the.

The.

The thinking that will bring somebody to this thought.

And a lot of them have some pretty traumatic childhood, right?

So I had all the earmarks that all these.

These people had, but I was determined that that was not what I would allow myself to become.

Even if it meant me taking my own life if I felt like I got close to that.

Okay.

But there are certainly things where I've been in a lot of fights in my life, a lot of really violent fights, and almost like a blood rage, like, if we're fighting, you pay for everything.

You don't get to pick and choose how the bear mauls you once you've poked them, you know, and so I didn't have a lot of restraint in the idea.

And I.

You know, you're a big guy, you know, I don't consider myself a big guy because I know big guys, like 6 foot 5, 340, you know, like giants, you know, But I'm a bigger dude, you know, and I'll mix it up if I have to, but when you do that without restraint, and you could seriously, you could kill someone with your bare hands, I'm capable of that.

I know that.

If you're not careful, you know, and.

And even you'd never had a father teaching you how to control any of your emotions, how to control the rage, the Anger and these other things.

So you're.

You're learning how to cope and deal with your dad and uncle and are probably helping stoke the fire to that instead of sitting here teaching a young man how to be able to use his emotions.

Everything's like that.

So you're.

It's wild to me that you've made it this far by just by going through all that all on your own.

I have a funny story.

I find it funny.

I also know that it's highly disturbing.

Okay.

But you had mentioned my father and I must have been about 7, 8 years old.

Maybe I was 9.

Somewhere in there, you know, you're under 10.

And it had to be around that time, 8ish.

And I was the oldest of five.

My parents are a wreck.

They're a disaster.

You know, my father worked his ass off.

Very talented.

Both my parents are highly intelligent people.

Very intelligent people.

Which was always confounding because I got two highly intelligent people that can't make good choices and good decisions.

Yeah, it's fucking maddening, right?

And so they wanted me to, you know, they had me do the dishes.

Every dish in the house is fucking dirty.

I'm eight years old.

I don't want to do the fucking dishes, right?

So twice my father sat with his pistol in his lap once to make me do the dishes while he sat there for hours having me stand at a sink doing dishes against my will.

And then another time, they wanted.

My mother used to make liver.

I fucking hate liver.

And onions.

Yeah, yeah.

Apparently she was great at it.

Liver, onions, bacon.

You know, that boomer generation, they ate a lot of that, you know, but.

It always tastes like a roll of pennies to me.

I couldn't eat it, you know, the two, two minerally.

And so it was time for a Mexican standoff.

Because you make this meal and I'm like, I ain't eating it anymore, you know, and again, it's around the same age.

And my father said, you're eating the food.

You know, we're poor, we got no, you know, and.

And he goes, you're.

You're not leaving the table to eat that dinner.

I'm like, I ain't eating that dinner.

So I guess we'll sit here all night.

He sat with his pistol on.

On the table.

I'm probably 7, 8 years old, whatever it was.

And sat there all night with this plate of fucking liver in front of me until the next morning at like 6:30 in the morning, he says, get up and go to school.

We just sat there staring at each other, dozing off or whatever.

And then I went to school.

I never had to eat liver again, though, you know, so dang.

Dealing with a different thing here, you know?

Yeah.

And so at 18, when you're trying to make sense of an un.

You know, a nonsensical world at this point, you know, you.

You don't.

There's no.

Like, you don't know how to get there.

Right.

Especially, you know, I'm.

I'm sleeping with friends, Mom's friends there.

You know, I'm 50, 14 years old.

These women are 35.

You know, weird shit like that.

You know, it's like you're just.

Every person around you isn't the person to go to.

To help you.

So you had nobody.

Nothing.

Nothing.

You're a feral child, 1000% close as you can get.

Yeah.

And, and, and, and let me say this.

This isn't a pity party for me at all.

Because the one thing that I always told myself, even from a young age, and anyone listening to your podcast, I hope, if anyone has dealt with this stuff or whatever, is that you got to be careful about the things you normalize in your life.

Right.

It doesn't matter where you came from, doesn't matter how you were brought up.

You know, these things matter in the sense that they formed opinions and ideas about you.

But those things can be changed.

Absolutely.

You know, and.

And I always thought that no matter how bad I had it, I know that other people had it worse.

I know that other people lived in nightmares that I couldn't.

I may not survive.

You know, I know the stuff that I survived, people taking their lives over for sure, you know, just one little fraction of it.

And, you know, we'll get in this other stuff, you know, and, And.

But that.

That's such an important thing, man, that, you know, you could survive anything.

Absolutely.

You know, but it requires you to know that when you're weak, you got to have strong people around you.

I like.

I've never heard anybody say that.

I'm going to steal that for sure.

Is.

Thank you.

Careful how you normalize things.

Because I feel a lot of people normalize their problems or their disabilities or their ptsd, and it becomes normal.

It's my life now instead of trying to find.

Because I deal with a lot with vets, right.

And I talk to these guys, and my biggest thing in the last couple years has been trying to create new identities for them, because now that you say this, it clicks for me.

It's like they've normalized being a Disabled veteran.

Right.

They've normalized being this grumpy old piece of.

And all my kids are gonna just hate me just because, like, you know, because we normalize these things instead of being like, that's not normal.

Right.

This happened 20.

I'm not for you, but, you know, a lot of guys happened 20 years ago.

This.

Sure.

You know, and so I really.

That.

That's.

I like how you say that.

I've never heard anybody put it like that, but it to me, like, that's.

That's what makes sense, is trying not to normalize the negative on things or certain things.

Because we as humans tend to.

When you're around and you're surrounded by, oh, that's just normal.

That's just my life now.

That's how it was.

It was just.

That's just.

That's how it's supposed to be.

No, you know, it's.

Well, when, you know, if you look at, you know, different guys, I. I watch videos of like, Vietnam vets talking about you know, being, you know, going through the jungle, and then they come upon, like, again, I'm gonna up these words, but platoon, battalion, you know, group guys, whatever.

And this guy's arms are chopped off.

They dismembered them.

This guy's arms on that leg.

And that leg's pushed on where somebody's head should be, and the head's down where a leg should be.

And black guy's head on a white guy's button.

Just all this stuff, you know, guerrilla warfare.

And.

And it's like, you see these things that you have a new normal, right?

And.

And you can always have a new normal, but it.

It's not like a, you know, ordering a sandwich at a deli, right?

You don't just get to pick.

I want it like this and that.

You have to work towards it.

Yeah.

And you're going to fail a lot.

And that's the thing is working through, like, when you so many times where I'd like, wish I wouldn't have done that thing, why did I, you know, why did I this, why did I that, why did I say that thing?

Why didn't I do this instead of that?

You know, it's like, but you can't.

You can't give up the mission, right?

You can't give up to say, like, I just can't get there.

Yeah.

Because I always think, well, if that guy can do it, I can definitely do it.

Yo.

No matter what it is, you know, and.

And even if I can't get there, you know, even If I can't get there, that.

But that's the direction I'm going.

Yeah.

You know, and if I fall short of it, then I fall short of it, you know, But.

But this isn't okay.

I can't.

This can't ever be a thing.

This is not supposed to be normal, you know?

So, you know, when you.

Man, I. I have so many stories I could tell you be like, dude, you guys shut the up here.

Because it's.

Bro.

I mean, I've seen my first person murdered.

I was probably 10 years old watching him have his head beat in outside over a storm drain while I'm hearing his head cracking coming through a window over a storm drain while this guy's beating him to death.

You know, I'm seven, eight years old.

And our neighbor used to live upstairs of us.

We lived by a junkyard.

And my father and this guy, we.

He'd go and they go and unload trucks in the morning, like from a farmer's market, and.

And get, you know, get paid cash, you know, under the table.

And the one night Hank was the guy.

Hank decided to go without my dad.

And I remember we were watching the movie the Fog.

I'm probably seven or eight, so.

Watching the Fog.

I mean, think about what I'm telling you here, okay?

You know, I'm a fucking kid watching a horror movie with my parents or whatever.

And.

And I don't know, it's maybe sometime early evening and 6ish.

6:30 to 8:00', clock, something like that.

And Hank used to wear clogs.

And we had a wooden porch.

So whenever he come home, you hear plopping up the porch with these clogs, you know, and so I hear these clogs clomping up the porch.

And then I hear the door open.

You know, I'm in the living room here, and it's a split duplex.

And.

And I hear bomb, bomb, bomb on the.

On the door.

So I go over to the door, I. I imagine a tank, right?

And I was like, who is it?

And I hear Hank.

I was like, hank.

And I opened the door and there's this guy standing with a hunting knife sticking out of his chest.

He had just been stabbed five times in the chest.

Some dudes rolled him for his cash that he got from fucking unloading the trucks.

And I'm watching this guy, like, bleeding out in front of me.

And I yelled at my mom.

I'm like, hey, Mom, Hank needs your help.

You know, He's.

I mean, I.

The guy survived, but he.

They Stabbed him five times and left like a Rambo knife in his chest, you know, so it's like the stuff that I've seen in my life, you know, and it is, it will become relevant to when we talk about 9, 11.

Okay.

Because I've carried these things.

I thought about these things, you know, from a young age, you know, I mean, a four year old kid.

Yeah.

You know, it's just like people, they're making me do this.

Teenagers, 16 year old kids are making me do this to their sister and you know, so it's like when you live and think about these things in your life, who you are, what you are.

I don't know what I am anymore.

Right.

You know, I'm like, I'm some kind of monster that's been put in a human form that, you know, I've been broken and dissected and ripped apart and put back together myself with broken pieces and parts to, to exist in this world.

And despite all of that, I'm like, I'm a good person, you know, I mean, like all this I've been made to do and part of.

And this.

And it's like, I'm a good person, man.

I'm gonna fight for that.

Even, even if.

When I stand at heaven's gates, like, bro, come on, you, you know where you got to go?

I'm like, all right, well, I tried.

No, they don't work like that.

I. I don't know.

I don't work like that.

I don't know.

But, but the thing is, is that, you know, these things in our life are important, but you gotta, you gotta normalize the importance of what it is, right?

Because sometimes you're learning things that you can't, can't understand at the time.

It might take years before you finally, you know, it happens all the time.

Writing a new record right now with my band, the Elite, and I've been voraciously gobbling up philosophy for the last two years working on this record and, and I go through and I, you know, reopen all these wounds and I inspect every piece and part of me in there.

It's like, is, Is there still something hiding under there that I got to get out?

Is there still something there that needs, you know, and, you know, and so you're constantly like opening these wounds and going back in and then all of a sudden it's like, I'll write something and it'll click.

Something that happened 30 years ago in my life and I'm like.

And it helps me make sense of it.

You Know, and so I think for people going through these kinds of traumas, it's vitally important that you don't shy away from it.

Okay?

Because it's down in the slime, in the inside of us where the answers are.

And sometimes the answers aren't what we want to hear.

Oh, sometimes the answers are, man, you know, you got to make this choice for you that.

Because if you're not okay and you're not good, and I'm a father, I'm a husband, you know, I have.

I'm in bands with guys, like, people counting on me for stuff.

It's like, if I can't show up, if I can't be there, what good am I?

Yep.

You know, all the people involved with everything you've gone through, did.

Have you ever found forgiveness for any of them?

Have you ever found a places to.

Not when.

I mean forgive them, not be friends with them again and invite them into your life.

But as for me, I asked because, like, if I don't forgive somebody, I can never get past it.

Doesn't mean I'm gonna be boys willing.

It doesn't mean I'm ever gonna trust them.

Doesn't mean I need them in my life.

Nothing.

They could rot in hell for all I care.

But there's a point of me where, like, if in order for me to move on and close a chapter, it's like, okay, he was this person for whatever reason or they were, did this to me for whatever reason.

Have you ever found.

Have you ever tried to look and look for like, not a reconcile, but just as an acceptance and they're just who they are and time to move on, or are you just.

That's who it is, who they are.

It.

What you're talking about is such a powerful thing.

Absolutely.

It takes a lot.

And I'll tell you, I've been on a spiritual journey my entire life.

You know, I was raised by a lesbian Catholic and a Baptist fucking nut job.

Okay.

So I've every which way.

Religion.

Religion, yeah, okay.

Was like a cudgel being used against me.

And so for a long time, I shied away from it, you know, but as I think back, and I've.

And I've been doing this a lot in the last few years, the last five years since my daughter was born.

The power of God, the.

The.

The.

The essence of God, the pull of God, for me towards it is undeniable.

And I know that there's been.

There's so many times I could tell you where this is divine intervention.

Absolutely I'm only alive because of divine intervention.

And there's three, like really significant things that I tell you.

I should be dead.

I should be dead if it.

But this is God.

God did this.

Okay?

I was homeless, living on the streets in Pittsburgh and in the middle of winter.

And, and I used to, I went to, I went there to go to college and I think I was about 23 years old to go to like the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

And I was in there for about a week and a half.

I was in a dorm room with a bunch of rich jerk off kids.

I wound up getting a case of St. Ives, pounding that down and throwing their TV off the fifth floor balcony.

I was like, I'm gonna murder these guys.

I gotta get out of there.

So homelessness was a better option for me because violence was coming, you know, so I'm homeless on, on the streets.

I got some people down there.

I know, but I would ride the.

What I would do is like, certain nights is freezing cold in Pittsburgh, right?

You know, you're from the east coast, you know, so.

And so I would ride the bus.

I found a bus line that would ride run till like 1:30 or 2 in the morning or something.

And I'd, I'd ride the bus for as long as I could until the bus line ended.

And then I go find somewhere to sleep in a doorway or whatever.

And so I would ride this bus line, you know, a couple times a week or whatever, a few times a week.

And, and the one time we're going, we're on here and I'm talking, I got to know the driver a little bit because I, you know, he kind of knew my story.

He's like, I'm on the bus every night, you know, these freezing cold nights.

You know, here's this dumb kid on the bike on the bus for God knows whatever reason.

So he kind of knew my story.

And I'm sitting there talking to him and it's just he and I, it's a driver and me, I'm sitting up in the front and we're going through this industrial area.

I mean, there ain't even rats out, you know, it's desolate, there's nothing around.

And, and I'm talking to him and I'm like, man, I gotta find some place to live.

I can't keep doing this, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And he goes and he's like, you know, we're just John.

And the bus stops.

It's probably like 1:30 in the morning.

Bus line's got maybe 20, 30 minutes.

Excuse me, left.

And.

And this blind guy gets on the bus.

And I remember in that moment, bam.

I'm looking at him and I'm.

I'm in the worst place in my life.

I'm homeless.

I'm, like, in a strange city.

I'm not from there, you know, I'm, like, trying to hustle food wherever.

I'm, you know, I mean, I'm.

I'm down and out, bro.

You know, And.

And this blind guy gets on, and I'm like, Sorry, man.

Oh, you're good, man.

Take your time.

And he gets on the bus, and I'm like.

I feel so much pity and so much sorrow for him, to think, To be.

I know how horrible this world is.

I've seen the worst in people my whole life.

To be in this world, blind, to not even be able to look out for yourself.

And when he got on like a boss man, he got on.

He sat down in his seat.

Bus starts taking off.

I go back, starting talking to the bus driver.

Remember, I'm in the worst place in my life right now.

And the blind guy says, hey, friend, can I give you some advice?

Because I continue talking with the bus driver, and he says, you know, if you're looking for a place and you ever rent, don't rent from these.

These landlords or slum lords.

They're scum.

Foreign.

I was blown away by the idea of this guy that I felt such sorrow and pity for offering me advice, offering me a hand, even though I don't remember the people's names.

He said, but it was the idea that I couldn't imagine living a life like that with the.

The.

That I've been through.

Yeah.

And I thought, wow, man.

And that changed everything for me at that point.

My thinking, I was like, I gotta.

I gotta take my life back here, you know?

To me, that was divinity.

There was no.

No.

Like, was it a coincidence?

No coincidence, no.

You know, But.

And I'll.

I'll tell you one other one real quick because it.

It has to do with the idea.

You have water right here next to you if you need it.

Oh, thanks, bud.

About the pull of God in my life, that I might have been about 25ish at this point.

I'm in another band, some friends of mine.

I'm with my buddy Eddie.

Amazingly talented guy.

You know, abuse and trauma stole a chunk of his life.

One of the most talented guitar players.

Funny as all.

He could have been a comedian, musician.

He would have been a rock star, without a doubt.

Yeah.

And so we're on our way to band practice and getting on the freeway and my car stalls out and so push it off to the side of the road.

It's on the on ramp to get on the freeway, the 90.

So and, and so I get out of the car, I go in the front, I open the hood, get underneath.

I'm start monkeying around with wires and shit under there.

I had a vacuum hose leak.

My buddy's in the car and I turned my head and I say, hey, turn the key, you know.

And he's turning the key.

Okay, not nothing happened.

Okay, under there again, under again.

All right, Turn the key, you know, nothing happened, nothing.

Third time I say it, fucking lady smashes into the back of the car at about 40 or 50 miles an hour.

You're standing in front of.

Standing in front of it.

So you end up in the engine compartment.

I go flying ass over tea kettle through the air.

I'm laying on the ground.

I don't know what happened at this point.

Put this together after and I'll explain to you how.

And I'm laying there and I see the car.

She hit the car so fucking hard that it's going down in the ravine.

Now it's going back up onto the freeway.

My buddy's in the car.

I see him dive out of the window.

I'm laying there, I'm like, oh, at least he's okay.

Like he was able to jump out of a window, you know, while the car's moving.

Stu's laughing all the time, joking all the time.

He comes running up to me in terror.

He's like, bro, don't move, don't move, don't move.

He thought my guts were go.

Like if I would turn over.

Everything's spilling out of me.

Yeah.

So brought to hit the car.

She's running around screaming, whatever.

I'm telling her, shut the up.

You should never came over to see how I'm doing or nothing.

You know, Worried about her car.

Yeah.

So I apologize for the swearing, man from New York.

You know how it is.

The wild Chaos podcast, man, they've heard it all, I bet.

So it's about 4:30 in the afternoon.

The ambulance shows up.

They tell me my neck is so swollen I can't put a neck brace on you.

We got to strap your head to the board.

We don't know if your neck's broken.

You can't move.

Like this is.

This is a serious thing that's happened here.

All right.

They tell me I'm not going to walk for a Few months, you know, I don't know how up I am.

I mean, it happened real quick, you know?

So he.

We're in there and like 11:30 at night, I walk out of the place on crutches.

Okay, right.

So like a week and a half later, I go with my grandmother to go and pick up the belongings out of the car and walk in.

The lady's on the phone.

She's.

I was like, hey, I'm here.

It was a Honda crx.

So it's a little shit box hatchback, you know.

And she says, I mean, you know, she's on the phone.

I said, yeah, I'm here to get this.

The stuff out of the Honda, you know.

And she's like, hey, I got to call you back.

She hangs up the phone.

She goes, oh, my God.

She's like, you are so lucky to be alive.

I was like, you don't gotta tell me.

I know.

I lived it.

And she goes, you must have been wearing your seatbelt.

I said, seatbelt.

I said, lady, that car hit me.

I was standing in front of it.

All the color left her face.

She looked like she was staring at a ghost.

So she takes me to the car.

The girl hit the car so hard that it twisted the rear end of the car up almost onto the roof.

It blew every window out of the car.

It.

The force from behind, it ripped the radio out of the dashboard.

Okay.

And it.

Like everything's just laying right there.

How is your buddy?

Okay.

The front of the car.

You could see where the.

The car horseshoed around my body.

You could see where the.

The hood of the car horseshoed around my neck and accordioned in.

You could see where my toes smashed through the windshield because I had steel toe docks on, and there were two toe imprints.

And then you could see where my head smashed the windshield on the other.

So what I think happened is that the hood.

The car hit me.

It hyperextended my knees backwards somehow, flipped me over the hood.

My toes hit the windshield on the driver's side, and my head hit the windshield like support rod on the passenger side and then sent me flipping through the air.

And.

And when I looked at that, I was like, only God can do that, huh?

Only God can do that.

And so.

Holy crap.

You know, the.

These things in my life where I'm like.

I feel the pull of God's power for sure.

Presence.

Seen it with my daughter's birth, my son's birth, all of it.

It's.

It's undeniable.

But see, I know that I am tragically broken, and I will be my whole life.

And so that forgiveness.

I've heard people say that, you know, hatred is like a Swallowing a poison pill, hoping somebody else gets sick or dies from it.

But see, for me, that hatred and those things, they have.

I have found a way in my life that they matter more, that I keep that in to me because I put that in my music, put that in my songs, because I know that there's kids out there that don't have support for sure.

I know that there's adults out there that don't have the support.

And.

And it's not that I.

They may never hear of me.

They may never.

It might not get there, but it might get to one, and that's why I do what I do.

Have you ever thought about writing music for forgiveness?

What about the people that have gone through the journey?

Well, I do.

I mean, I.

My.

All my songs, man, I. I write from multiple perspectives, okay.

Depending on where you're at in your life, you know, when you listen.

And I hope that the breadcrumbs in there are valuable to somebody no matter what point in their life that they're at, you know, because I'm not done with my journey.

Right.

I'm still going, you know, and so.

But that.

I don't think I'm capable of that forgiveness, man.

I don't.

I don't.

I would never.

I would never put that rage down.

I would never put that hatred down because these people.

I'm a firm believer, man.

And no matter what's happened in your life, no matter what kind of.

You've been through that you have a moral obligation to protect the people you love and care about from their own.

Absolutely.

And so I keep it close because I never want it to blindside me.

I can't let it out of my sight because I know how violent and dangerous it can be.

How do you control it, then?

I mean, obviously you're not bottling it, because then that overflows its points.

And, you know, I write.

I write all the time.

I work out.

I started cold, plunging.

Okay.

You know, it's funny.

I go.

I go to the river.

I went.

I was there yesterday.

It was.

The river was 36, and it was 25 out.

It did, like, six minutes in there.

And I just stare at the sun.

And I thank God for my life and my family and everything.

And I want to find a way to unfuck someone's mind if I can.

Yep.

And so I'll keep searching.

And.

And to me, that's helpful for me.

It's not.

I don't.

I don't feel like I'm ever out of control because I have control of it now.

It doesn't control me.

I.

If I need to.

If I need to feel a certain way, I go and find.

I go and get it.

I go to the apothecary and I pull it off the shelf and I say, here's what we need it.

And then when I don't need it, it's gone.

It's not a thing, you know, but having.

Having that level of control again, it requires effort.

Oh.

It requires being realistic to know, you know, being true to yourself.

You have to always be true to yourself because you can easily put yourself in situations that you know will undermine, you know, will only empower your enemies against you.

You know, so if you don't keep control of it, you will become your own worst enemy.

As we've, you know, many of us have.

Have been, you know, so.

Music's such a powerful thing too.

Like, I'm a big music, nice music.

It.

If I. I think she's the same.

She.

If.

If I find myself a couple days without listening to certain music, I start getting irritable.

What do you listen to?

What do you.

I.

Honestly, everything.

I could go from the most classical music to the most Viking death metal and everything in between.

It just depends on the mood, the feel.

Yeah.

I can't listen to half the new that's coming out these days.

It's just such garbage.

And I'm like.

And, you know, it's fun arguing with the young kids because I don't like, why are you listening to all the mom and I. Yeah, our music, you know, like, we were the last generation of good, like rap, good metal, good raw, everything.

It just.

I.

There's some.

There's actually some new up and coming bands like you find every now and then.

But, yeah.

Hard to find though it is.

It's all the underground stuff.

And that's what her and I always.

On the search for where I'm always.

She'll send me steadyness.

And I'm like, hey, if you check these guys out.

Yeah.

And so that's great that you guys.

Have that music is a.

The wife, she's not.

She's more of a reader.

So is our little one.

She a reader too?

But yeah, for her and I, it's music.

Like, I.

Even when it comes to podcasts, there's a couple every now and then I'm like, oh, I want to check this podcast and I'll listen to them.

Yeah.

But then I check.

I catch myself straight back to music.

As soon as there's a gap or a pause, straight back to music.

And then.

Because I'll drive for.

Dude, I could drive for 14 hours.

As long as I have music, I won't.

Even if I never needed to stop, I would not stop.

Like.

Yeah.

So I'm a music person, for sure.

Awesome.

I connect with music.

I feel music.

And that's where I've gotten a lot into.

Because a lot of people always ask me, like, because, you know, I'm on a spiritual kick and journey.

Like, I'm getting back and deep into my faith.

And a lot of people ask, like, how do you find it?

Worship?

I could listen to a thousand pastors talk.

I might be able to connect with a handful, right.

That speak to me, that they captivate my heart, my thoughts, my.

Everything that's going on.

I'm like, okay, I can get behind Sky.

It doesn't matter where it is, who it is, how it's being sung.

Like, for me, worship is.

That's where I'm like, okay, this is my church.

Like, huge stadiums of people worshiping together is like, my dream.

Like, that's awesome.

I can go to one of them.

Dude, all.

Leave it all there, die the next day.

Cool.

Like, check.

Right?

That's.

That's.

So.

That's me.

So hearing you talk about how you're putting all this through music, like, I'm like, okay, cool.

Like, I can't relate.

Some.

Not.

Not writing music, but when I'm one of.

I'm your audience fan, man.

So I'm a fan.

So when you talk about the one person being able to listen, there's so many people we've talked to and kids and people that, like, I can't.

It's hard for me to judge people like.

Like the Swifties.

I don't have Swifty kids, thank God.

But you hear them talk like Taylor Swift, and I like that.

That's not music.

But if it's helping them, in a way, I guess it's helping them.

So it's hard to, like, not, like, cast a shadow on their shade on them, you know?

Well, generationally, though, too, it's tough.

And.

And the music.

Music has changed tremendously.

And it's changed because access to music is different.

Y.

And how music is created is very different.

Yes.

You know, you think, like, back to Black Sabbath, you know, their first two albums came out in, like, a year and a half apart.

Yeah.

You know, and.

And.

And they Are masterpieces.

Yes.

You know, but now you got, you got people that'll spend a year, two years like creating one song in a bedroom, but they know how to manipulate an algorithm so they can get the numbers and, and, and it's all like, it's very curated and weird.

That's not to say that there's not talented people.

I've got buddies that are engineers and, and Grammy nominated artists that are a friend of mine and you know, different things like that.

But music now, like anyone can make music.

Oh yeah, there's no gatekeepers, you know, you can, you don't need a producer anymore.

You don't need to know anybody anymore.

It's just.

That's right, that's right.

You know, but it also changes how people receive music, right, because pop music, like I, I listen to everything, right?

I, I love Ray Charles and you know, Johnny Cash and Holland Wolf and you know, I, I go back and I'll listen to.

That's from the 1920s, you know, some Cab Calloway or different stuff.

This talent and you know, the voices.

At the end, all of it now, you know, and, and there's so many, like throughout the years, so many great artists, you know, and, and think of like a Led Zeppelin, you know, I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

But now like when you get into this new, new phase of where music is creators.

There's a guy out of, out of Wales called Ren.

I don't know if you've heard Ren.

I feel like I have heard, man.

He's, he's a, he's a guy that.

I don't know much about him.

I've seen a bunch of his performances.

He'll go and do some busking on the street and he's just, he's amazing and he's kind of like a rap guy, but then there's like kind of folk, but then there's kind of metal.

And it's a real like hodgepodge of like different styles and different things put together, but done in a very unique way.

Super talented, man.

And that's what I like.

Talented.

I love people with this like a raw talent.

That's what.

And I think, you know, even, you know, you look at someone like a Kendrick Lamar who, you know, his, I think it was like Section 80 was.

That album to me, man, is a masterpiece.

Modern hip hop record, rap record, whatever the genre is considered.

But then the stuff he's done later, it's just like kind of bullshit, you know, it's like, man, you.

He did Something that was so like wholly unique and, and just like him, you know, I mean like if you think like a Biggie album or you know, any of this stuff and you know, bands like Stained or different, different.

These different artists that.

There was a thing where like in the new metal era when it was coming up, everyone was doing their own kind of thing.

No one's trying.

But now it's like you got 50 bands that are trying to sound like one band.

Oh cop.

Yeah.

You know, it's just like.

Or now it's like the AI stuff is infiltrating all this stuff.

So I think it's hard, you know, and for me it's very difficult because I abandoned all social media some years back, you know, through Covid and stuff.

I had friends that were losing their mind, like just off just going batsu.

You know, I was like, man, I.

Got a lot of things about a lot of people that.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

And.

And I was like.

And.

And political discussions again and we're going to get into some of that where it's like people are just.

They're so ill informed.

They don't want to be informed.

They want to retreat to their little like places.

And it's like I seen it infiltrate music and that like killed it for me.

Soon as you start pushing an agenda with things, that's where I'm out.

I seen it with music that really fucked me up because, you know, I, you know, when I was a kid, I go to see like destruction and the CRO mags and like these people, these are outlaws to me.

These are people like they ain't singing pop music.

Yeah.

You know, they're doing some shit that, you know, you're lucky if you could fill a fucking a cake, you know, Knights of Columbus hall or something, you know, and, and then I'm hearing some of these guys like telling people to go and get a jab and I'm like, whoa, what the fuck just happened?

Yeah, and then trying to like.

And we're hardcore dudes back in the.

Day where and wherever you are in that, man, I don't give a shit.

That's somebody that's your own personal business.

But, but the problem is, is like you see people like giving these false equivalences, like, well, I used to do cocaine, so go get the jab.

It's like you, you're not even talking about the same thing here, you know.

And then, you know, you got a band like Rage against the Machine.

It's like you got 25000 people out here with mask on screaming, you, I won't do what you told me.

It's like, bro, you didn't let anyone in that wasn't fucking vaccinated.

Like, what are you talking about here?

It's ironic, isn't it?

It's like you've missed the plot, mister.

I'm going to stand up against the government and the regime and everything else.

And now you're, now you rage for.

The machine, it's like, you know, and rage for the machine, you know, and it's like so much of that stuff.

So I abandoned social media, which hurts me mute as a musician, right?

I mean my guitar player, you know, my guitar players in different band, you know, two different bands and you know, they have social media and my drummers have social, you know.

And it's just like for me, it's one of those things that I've seen like so much perversion in my life, for sure.

And I see how that even the social media has perverted people's thinking.

Well, just, yeah, it's, you know, verted itself the whole entire thing, you know, it's like I just, I just had to abandon it.

And I think it's hurt me in the music world, right, because everyone wants access to know.

Like when you go and take a, and what sandwich you're eating for lunch and you know, it's like, I'm a carpenter.

I do carpenter, you know, I'm building, working on our house.

I do, you know, take care of the kids, doing.

It's like I'm never sitting around.

Like just, just sitting around, right?

And you know, I would see like in that when I had social media that, you know, some guys are posting four or five times a day.

I'm like, when the.

Do you have time for that?

I don't know if we shift gears here or not because we're an hour and a half into this because I feel like I could do a four hour episode of just your life story, but I know we want to get on to the World Trade Centers.

I want to kind of leave it up to you because I'm down, man.

Let's.

Okay.

I know we came here to talk because you were in the World Trade center, but damn, dude, I, I feel like we haven't scratched a surface.

Oh no, for sure.

Anything.

So that's where I'm like sitting here.

Like, damn, we can get into it.

And then, you know, I guess I.

Could always have you back, right?

You're right down the street.

So worthwhile.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay, dude, you were in one of the World Trade Centers, the first World Trade Center.

Yeah.

I was in the north tower.

You were in the north tower when it got hit by the planes?

Plane, Yep.

Walk me through the day that you were in the north tower when it got struck by the plane.

So I, I worked in the city.

I worked in Lower east side at a bar, Shout out to Whiskey Ward, Great bar.

And I worked there in the, in the evenings.

I lived in dirty Jersey.

I was living in Bayonne at the time.

And.

And I, I worked in the union, so I would, I worked during the day doing construction.

I work at night at the bar.

And then that was my life.

I'd, you know, work and sleep, work and sleep.

And.

And so I got laid off at and from the union, and so I had to go to unemployment.

Now I'm never in the city in the morning.

I'm in the city at night, right?

So they tell me I got to go to Unemployment.

I'm like, I look up the office, okay, It's a couple blocks over from the Trade Center.

My girlfriend at the time, she worked at a sandwich shop up on 14th and 6th.

And so I was like, well, I better get there in the.

Right.

In the morning or I'll be, you know, I won't leave until 8 o' clock at night, you know, because million people going to be in there.

So I was like, it.

I rode, I rode the train in at like 6:30 in the morning or something like that.

The.

The office didn't open until 8 o' clock, or I think it was about 8 o' clock when it opened.

So I rode the train in early so I would, I wouldn't oversleep and I could, you know, be there.

I went to the office.

I slept on a bench out in front for like an hour and a half waiting for the office to open.

I didn't have an appointment.

I get in there, I'm like one millionth in line anyway because everyone else got appointments.

And finally I start talking to the lady and I said, hey, you know, bomb, bomb, bomb.

This is what's happening.

You know what I mean?

She's like, oh, you're at the wrong place.

You got to go to Staten Island.

Oh, I was like, staten Island?

I'm like, my day's.

I got it.

You know, I'm like, I gotta go home.

Yeah, try again tomorrow.

You know, by the time I got to Staten Island, I was just like, you know, whatever.

So I go back to the Trade center and I'm walking in the Vessi Side door.

And the vessi.

Side door is the side that the plane impacted.

Okay.

Okay.

Have you ever been in the Trade center before?

No, I've never even been in New York City, and I'm from New York.

So what's a hole?

That's why I've never.

I've never had a desire to go.

Shame.

I hope they work that out.

But.

So.

The Trade center, the two buildings, north and south tower, underneath that is like a mall.

Like the concourse level is a mall.

Okay.

Tons of stores, you know, clothing stores, food shops.

The door I walked in, there was a Sbaro was there, and a watchmaker was on the other side.

And you walk, you know, walk in down this long corridor, and then once you get in there, you walk across the floor, and then you get over to an area where there was a bank of escalators that went down to the PATH train to go back to Jersey.

So I'm walking, get to the door, walk in the door, walk down the corridor.

Bing, bong, boom.

Make my way across the floor.

I get just to about the.

I get to the top of the bank of the escalators, and all of a sudden, people are running every which way, screaming, right?

And I'm like, you know, and, like, I can't.

They're not running in a direction.

They're just running everywhere, right?

They're not.

I can't see.

I'm trying to see.

Are they running from something?

A guy got a knife, a gun, Is there a thing?

Right?

But it's just people scattering every which way.

Where's the threat?

And finally, some, you know, and this is seconds.

I'm talking seconds, right?

Some older woman, you know, I'm 53 now, she might have been 50 or 50, 60 years old, who knows?

But she, you know, older lady comes running by screaming, they bomb the building.

They bombed the building.

And I remember, you know, my buddy was living in New York in, like, 93, 94, when they bombed the first time with the Ryder truck in the basement.

And I immediately, like, I gotta get out of here.

So I start running back to the corridor that I just had walked in, and it's filling up.

Hundreds of people are already, like, flooded doors.

I just walked in.

You can't get to them because there's a hundred, two hundred people blocking the corridor, right?

And they're all screaming, go back.

You can't get out this way.

Go back.

Go back.

You know?

And I immediately, bam.

I was like, my.

The mindset I had was, there's not a fucking force on this planet that will keep me from going through these doors.

If I got a cannonball through them, I'm going out those fucking doors.

So I push my way through the crowd, and I push my way up to the fucking doors, and I look, and there's fucking debris on fire outside the door.

And it's debris from the building, debris from the plane.

I don't know what this is yet.

I just see that there's fire outside the door, and all these people are standing there, and I'm thinking, why the fuck are we standing here?

These doors are unlocked, right?

And I'm looking around, and I work in construction.

You know, I've worked in a cemetery.

I've.

You know, I've.

I've done a lot of different stuff in my life.

So I'm just assessing what.

What I'm looking at in seconds.

In seconds.

In the building.

There was a cantilever to the building.

So I opened the door, and I start shoving people out.

I said, you got to get out.

Stay tight to the building.

You got to get out.

Get out.

And I'm pushing them out the door, and I'm shoving them down the side of the building, right?

And I'm.

I push maybe 10, 12, whatever, some, you know, some amount of people, and I'm shoving them out the door.

And then finally, I, like, bolt out the door and I run across the street.

So you got the flow going out.

I got the.

They're stand.

No one's moving, bro.

They're just standing there waiting to die, is what's happening.

And so I get out the door.

I get across Vessie.

I'm standing at Vessi in church, and I make a phone call.

I call my girlfriend.

I'm like, they just bombed the building.

She's like, you got to get out of there.

It's all over the news.

Blah, blah, blah.

Now I'm hearing that a plane hit it.

I'm here.

Looked up yet?

I looked up, but remember, first thing I heard was a bomb.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking, how the.

They get a bomb on the 80th floor?

Like, your brain ain't working right.

You know, you're just like.

I'm, like, trying to assess like some csi, like.

Yeah.

You know, And I'm.

You know, I'm just like, what the.

So I call her.

It's like, you gotta get out of there.

And then I call.

No one can get calls out.

Some.

I still have the phone.

It's like some old Nokia phone.

I still have the phone that I've called on.

You know, I made three calls before I couldn't make any more calls.

I called her.

I called a friend of mine that was in a band.

He was up at Roadrunner Records.

I call him like, bro, I was in the Trade center, and he's like, bro, come meet me up at Roadrunner.

And we're gonna.

You know, they shut down the city.

I mean, chaos is.

It's crazy, right?

So.

And then I let some lady call, make a call because she couldn't get a phone call out.

So I'm standing there, investing in church.

Police are ushering us across Church Street.

Buildings are emptying, people.

I mean, there's, I don't know, 50,000 people, like, coming out of this building.

Thousands and thousands of people, you know, And I'm standing.

I'm standing at Church street, and I'm looking up and I'm looking at the building, and all of a sudden, like, fucking, you know, guys, people are jumping, you know, one after another, they're coming out of the building.

Did you know there were people jumping?

Like, immediately.

Yeah, you knew immediately.

Yeah, yeah, you.

It was on.

Unmistakable.

Are they landing in front of you?

Are they hitting the awning?

Where?

What?

Well, they're.

You.

They're hitting, probably that they're.

The.

The towers came up, and I think there wasn't, like, an awning type of thing around the base.

I can't say that I hit.

Seen anyone hit the ground, but I could tell you that in my mind that I was hearing feeling, or like, the feeling of hearing something, like they would land like sacks of potatoes landing on the ground.

Is it loud?

I mean, it's loud.

People are screaming, puking.

You know, screaming.

Don't jump.

I mean, it's mayhem.

It's bedlam in the streets right now.

You know, one after another, people are coming out of the building.

And I'm staring at the building.

I'm just like, man, I don't.

How.

What.

What.

What's going on here?

Like, what's happened?

And again, I'm hearing a plane hit it.

I'm hearing a bomb went off.

I'm.

You know, and it's, like, completely disorienting, right?

So then I start, you know, I. I start walking up Church Street.

I'm there, like, several minutes, 10 minutes.

When I hear the timeline.

Like, sometimes they'll do a timeline.

It's like, oh, at 8,59, this was this.

And.

And they go.

I know every footstep where I was when I hear that timeline.

So whatever.

The.

The span of time from in between when the first plane hit to when the second plane hit.

Yep, Okay, I know, right?

All that.

Where I was and what was happening.

So several.

10 minutes, whatever it was, I. I can't watch another person jump to their death.

How many do you.

How many people do you think?

Seven, ten?

I don't know.

I mean, it was like, enough.

It was like one after another.

They're coming out because I know they're coming out because they're on fire.

They're on fire or there's fire pushing them out.

This.

They're like getting near this door.

And I worked on skyscrapers.

I worked on the Goldman Sachs building, which was the tallest.

Tallest building in the Tri State area after the.

After the Trade Centers fell.

So I've been up, you know, in these buildings when the wind is crazy up there.

You know, when you got a giant hole in the side of a building 80 floors up, the wind is wild.

You know, I could tell you it's wild for sure.

So you're thinking about all this stuff and whatever.

So I start walking down Church Street.

I got about five blocks away from.

From Vessi and Church, and I can't remember.

It's either Murray or Warren.

The street I was at, and I remember turning, and I'm looking at the building, and I'm seeing the paper and billowing out and flames billowing out and the smoke coming out and, you know, paper floating to the ground.

Like, you know, you're just watching all this stuff, and I'm like, man, what the is going on?

And I see.

I see the second plane banking around the building, and I remember thinking, I'm like, man, this plane is so low.

Oh, my God.

They trying to get a.

A look at what happened.

Like, you.

You're not thinking it's a jetliner.

Like, they're not just gonna go and like, hey, let's go see what happened to that building.

They're gonna fly down into the city, right into the skyline of the city.

But I see this plane banking around the building.

And I remember I'm just like.

I turn and I took two steps, and I hear an explosion that makes every hair on my body stand on end.

And I immediately start running because debris is being shot down the street.

Like it was shot out of a cannon.

So it hit from the backside of the building.

So it came out towards your direction.

Correct.

Okay, so when.

Whenever you see the footage of the tower being hit, the second tower, there's a very pronounced ball of fire that shoots out in an unmistakable arc.

Okay.

And that's one of the engines from the second plane.

And I know that because five blocks away, as I'm fucking running, trying to get around the corner of a building, because shit's flying down the fucking street.

Bricks and all kinds of shit being flying down the street.

And I don't know what this explosion was, because I turned, you know, I took two steps, and then you hear an explosion.

You're not like, hey, what just happened?

You're just running, you know, And.

And I run around the corner of a building, and that engine flew five blocks away and smashed down in the sidewalk across the street from me.

As I got around the corner of a building, it flew over my head and.

And it hit.

I don't know if it hit this woman.

It was.

She was an older black woman.

I remember being in a royal blue dress, laying face down.

I don't know if this thing landed next to her, if it.

And she had a heart attack.

I don't know if it hit her.

I mean, she was a couple feet from the fucking thing.

But within seconds, I'm trying to dial 91 1, right?

I got 9 and 1 into my phone at a full sprint across the fucking New York City block.

I'm running towards this woman to see, like, what the fuck happened.

And before I can get the third number in my phone, FBI is on the scene.

They grab this woman, they fire her into a minivan, and they sequester the scene.

I'm telling you, seconds, seconds after the explosion that happened 44 floors up in the air, five blocks away, you know.

So how in the hell.

I don't know.

I. I mean, obviously, all kinds of law enforcement were out, you know, 10, 12, 15 minute, whatever had passed already.

So, okay, you know, maybe they're in, coordinated.

Like, we got to get so many blocks out.

And I don't know, but it was all, like, wild to me.

Yeah, you know, I was like, what?

What the.

You know, and I was just.

I'm looking at the engine.

The engines four, you know, five feet high.

Four or five feet high.

Three and a half.

Maybe four or four and a half feet in diameter.

Thousands of pounds.

And this thing was shot, you know, five blocks, you know, I mean, what is.

What do they weigh?

Several thousand pounds.

You know, so it.

And I wound up walking.

I walked up 6th Avenue up to 14th.

Girlfriend at the time were in the.

In the basement of her sandwich shop because they've shut down Manhattan.

Can't get out, can't go anywhere.

Bridges are closed, ferries are closed, tunnels are closed.

Can't leave the Island.

So I remember we're watching on some little TV down in the basement, and they said that South Tower was, was coming down.

So it was the second tower hit.

And I remember watching the second tower crumble in the distance.

You know, I'm 30 blocks away or whatever at this point, but it's a straight shot down 6th Avenue that I'm watching.

I can see the tower falling.

No, I'm like.

Like a piece of you die.

Oh, yeah.

Died.

Yeah.

So.

And I connected with my buddy and he says he just found out that they were running ferries out of Chelsea Piers to get back to Jersey.

He lived in Jersey.

He's like, come meet us at Chelsea Piers.

We can get in the queue and, you know, we can get at least get back to Jersey to get out of the city.

So standing at Chelsea Piers waiting to get on the ferry.

And I'm on the ferry, we're on the Hudson.

And as we're.

You're kind of like.

I mean, the Trade center is right there.

You know, you got a front row seat and, and then the set, and then the North Tower was coming down while I was on the ferry.

And I literally felt like I could put my hand out and have it fall through my fingers.

Like that's how close it felt.

Even though, you know, you're not that close.

But it was, it was, it was a heartbreak because whenever I, you know, I'm from upstate New York, you know, and so I'd go home, you know, visit people or whatever.

And when you come home, like, the first thing I'm looking for is Statue of Liberty in the Trade Center.

You know, those are gone.

The Trade center is gone.

So like some three, two or three days.

I think it was maybe two, possibly three, trying to figure out how to go back.

I want to go back there, you know, and at a buddy that lived down in Alphabet City, which is like below 14th street, okay, above Houston kind of area, and couldn't get.

You couldn't get to lower Manhattan.

Like below 14th, you had to live there, but below Houston you couldn't go.

Okay, so he lived on like third or something.

So we're at least able to get to Alphabet City.

And then, and then we snuck down through Battery Park.

It's a ghost town.

There's no.

All these apartment building.

There's no one there because it can't be there.

And you're walking through piles of ash.

I mean, I'm, I'm in, I'm realistic that I'm walking through dead bodies here.

These are people that are incinerated here.

And you could see like papers that came off of somebody's desk and this and that.

I mean, seeing all kinds of, you know, it's all blown out all over the place.

And, and we got about, we got just about up to Battery Tunnel, which is a couple blocks away from ground zero.

And, and there's a National Guard perimeter up.

And I'm watching all these guardsmen walking out with black bags, you know, body parts, obviously.

I went up to the soldier at the, at the, the, the barricade, like the checkpoint.

Yeah.

And I said, I said, hey man, I was in this building, you know, I want to help, I want to volunteer.

I was like, I'm, I'm well suited for this.

I can cut with a torch.

I worked in a cemetery.

I do construction, you know, like go through them, like rattling off all this stuff.

I'm like, I'm the right guy to be in here.

You know, I've done has, yeah, hazmat work, Asbestos abate me.

I understand respiration, respiration, all this stuff, you know, I'm just like, anything to get me in there.

And the guy looked at me, man, he had such a sad, sorrowful look in his face and he said, man, go home.

Go home.

Go be with your family.

He's like, we got so many volunteers, we can't, we can't even organize them.

He's like, you got, just go home.

There's nothing you can do.

That's got to be a weird feeling.

Survivor's guilt, you know, kind of thing, you know, like I just wanted to help.

Yeah.

You know, kind of thing.

It was weird in the, in the, in the sense of like, I felt like I was really suited for that.

Right.

But also, again, like, it, it's a blessing I didn't go there.

The asbestos, the chemicals, the, all of it, man, that went into that.

I had a, I had a friend.

I brought this to show you.

My buddy Coin.

He, he worked on the pile doing search and rescue.

I think he said.

He got there September 12th and he said, him and his guys again, platoon, battalion unit, whatever it is.

I think they, they're called the WMDs.

Weapons of mass destruction kind of thing.

Shout out to Sweaty.

He, he said that he got his guy, he's got them all suited up now.

He got him suited up in the scba, you know, because a paper mask can't do the same thing as a half face respirator, and a half face respirator can't do the same thing as supplied air, you know.

And it depends, it depends on a lot of criteria.

One is like exposure, like particulate exposure and what, what that is the concentration of it in the area you're working in.

So he, he knows that this is a, you know, the amount of chemicals, the amount of this, the amount of the asbestos and, and all the stuff.

So he has his guys all suited up in SCBA and supplied air and stuff and they go out to the pile and they run up to the commander and like we're ready to do our, you know, put us in coach.

And he looks at me, says, what the are you doing?

He said, go get that off, go get a half face respirator on.

You're gonna freak everyone out here.

You can't be out here in this, even though knowing that's the gear they should have been in.

So my buddy said they worked all night on the pile.

Next morning, you know, whatever, six in the morning, whatever it was, they're all covered in dust and all the, everything all dusted out.

And he went and sat down with one of his commanders or whatever and the guy's chain smoking, you know, five packs of cigarettes at once or whatever and sweaty blows his nose and nothing but blood comes out.

And he said, he looks over at his guy and he said, give me one of those cigarettes.

It's gonna be a long, long night.

You know, he's told me that most of the guys from his unit has since then had some sort of bladder cancer or stomach cancer because they were exposed to something that.

Yeah, they, even if they were in supplied air, the risk of being exposed is still very high.

Right.

If you don't get a good seal, any, any number of things could happen.

So.

But the fact that these guys were sent in there specifically under prepared, you know, on purpose.

On purpose.

Right.

For optics.

Right.

All for show.

Right.

So, God, that's, that's the most, that's, that's the military though.

That's the whole.

Just that those are the things that drive me nuts.

Like you knowingly know this, what is going on, what's in the air, the chemical, everything that goes into it.

But you don't want to freak people out, but you're willing to put your whole platoon at risk for God knows what.

Same with the firefighters and every first responders, everybody involved.

It was all just like some dog and pony to like, don't want to scare people.

Like you're.

Well look at the, the, the.

Not to cut you off.

Christine Whitman, I think she was the governor of Jersey at the time or head of the epa some.

She told people, you know, don't worry about this cloud that's floating over the city.

Yeah.

I mean, it's got silica and it's got all kinds of shit, chemicals, all this stuff.

Don't worry about it.

You know, you don't need a mask.

Get a mask.

Don't get a mask.

It doesn't matter.

It's like you knowingly are telling people, don't worry about protecting yourself because they don't want to alarm anyone that you know so often.

And I've seen it more.

And at 53, man, and again, the life I've lived and things that would.

It's like, don't treat me like a fucking child.

Don't.

Don't tell me that I can't buy cigarettes, but I can go and murder in another country for you so that you can fill your coffers up, you know?

Don't treat me like a child.

Don't tell me that I don't.

You know, the same.

When the anthrax thing happened, you know.

You know, they're telling you to go out and buy plastic and duct tape, but they're not telling you how to build a hermetically sealed decontamination unit.

Just bring your mail inside, make sure your windows are taped up.

You know, it's like, you're not helping people.

You're not.

You don't give a.

About helping people.

That's not what you're doing.

They'll say, well, we're trying to avoid mass panic and blah, blah, blah.

Look, we need a calling of the herd.

Yeah.

You know, as sad as it is, and.

And, you know, they say God's plan is better than ours, you know, so you got to have hope in that.

I guess time will tell.

But when.

When.

When you have.

I had 200 people standing in front of me that wouldn't help themselves, that were gonna.

They would have perished.

More than likely.

They might not have left those doors for all I know.

Maybe they would have.

I don't know.

But they weren't and they didn't when I was there.

No one walked out those doors.

You had 200 people in a fucking hallway, and not one of them walked up to a door to see that it's unlocked, to open it, to see is there some way to get out of here.

Not one bit of initiative.

So, you know, you could flash forward now through the COVID stuff.

You know, they're telling you people are dropping dead in the streets, but you're not seeing that you turned on your neighbors Turned on your friends, you turned on your families.

You know, that day changed me in ways I could never imagine.

Just like I was telling, you know, when you go from pre 18 years old confronting your uncle to now you're in this new normal, Another moment where divine intervention put me in a place, you know, that I'm never in the city in the morning.

This is one.

It wasn't like some random hat, you know, like you're always in the city.

Of course the, the chances are greater.

It's like I'm never in the city in the morning because I work in Jersey in the morning, and then at night I'm in, you know, so did the moment.

I know you didn't think of it then.

Did you ever reflect and look back on watching those 200 people just not even make a decision to get out of there?

And you doing that, did that ever like, wake you up to how humans are.

Can be so easily just frozen in fear or not even to think like, hey, let's push this door open to see if it's even unlocked.

Did you ever, like reflect on that moment where you, you making that initial movement and getting the flow going, got those people out of there.

It's such an interesting question because I went.

I went to.

I've seen lots of therapists in my life, as you can imagine, and thankfully I have.

And I went to a guy who was an ex Marine.

He's a therapist.

And I'm like, man, I just.

I've had a crazy life, man.

I. I need somebody to help me, like, rein it in, you know?

Sure.

And.

And so he's talking to me and he asked me that question and I said, I'm like.

He said, what do you think about in that moment?

And I said, I feel like when I think about those 200 people standing there, I am.

I'm awash in a crushing sadness that so many people stood frozen, unable to help themselves.

And all they had to do was walk out a door.

All they had to do was make sure to look up and walk out a door.

And he said to me, he's like.

He said, you know what I hear?

He said, I hear that you're a hero.

And I was like, I don't feel like a hero.

But if you weren't there that day.

I don't feel that, you know, But I do think about it, but I don't have that sadness anymore.

And he said to me, and I told you it would come.

This would circle back.

When we were talking earlier, he said, everything in your Life prepared you for that moment.

He said, everything that you lived through and everything that you dealt with.

And he said in that moment when everyone was frozen in a panic and in fear, you weren't.

You just decisively moved.

You calculated what needed to be done and you did it.

And I had never thought of the burdens of my childhood and my early life and that in a positive way until that moment.

Yeah, I mean, I always thought like, man, I survived this stuff and you know, what.

What I've been able to survive, you know, maybe it can help someone else survive it or survive something similar or get through whatever the thing that they're doing, you know, But I never thought of it in a way where.

What a gift God gave me to be able to.

To bury, to bear the suffering that I've gone through.

So that in a moment when it mattered, I was able to help.

I was able to.

To not be the one to let everyone perish, to not be the one that couldn't help or do that.

And.

And that was the first time, it was the first and only time I had ever really thought of.

Of that burden of suffering being something positive, you know, and it doesn't change the fact that every.

All the lies and that.

That have come from that day now too, that we know, 20 something years later, you know, it.

But I. I hope, you know, it's.

I hope that in that those lives that maybe I helped, you know, maybe save them, I don't know, that.

That they were able to do something with their lives, that they.

They paid it forward somehow for other people too.

You know, it's.

It's probably very interesting to think back of how you've been able to survive or thrive in chaos through your whole life for that moment that potentially led to you being able to save 200 people's lives just by you being like, door glad.

Okay, five.

And just being able to process, you know, and like, it's like the fog of war, you know, everybody sees things differently and everything's.

You could have.

You could ask those 200 people this, what Ha.

And they would all.

You'd have two different 200 different stories.

Absolutely.

But the fact that of all those people just standing at a doorway, frozen like deer in a headlight, and you're behind them like, no, like, gotta get out of here.

What's my next move?

Okay, get to the door.

Where are we at?

And then to be able to process that, that's.

That's not just something I feel most people aren't born with.

That's Something that's created and I and on for the other people shows you that most people go through their whole entire life and never have to be put in these.

A stressful situation or an environment or to be able to think under stress.

And then you just go through our cubicles and we do our nine to five and we're stressed out because the memo didn't come in in time or whatever it may be.

GPS report.

Yeah, right.

Where's my stapler?

It's so exactly right.

And then when you get put in these situations and people freeze and that's a huge lesson for me that I've learned.

Like my kids have seen it several times.

We've been in situations a family and I'm like, bing, bing, bing, gone, move, do not stop, get out.

Like there's our door, go.

You know those things, not anything crazy.

We've had actually a couple of near death experiences as a fit because we're on the road a lot and I've, we've been in some situations where it was like I never even hesitated and it was, got us out of there.

And my whole family's like, holy.

But that's what I always teach my kids and my wife and I are very big on raising our kids under pressure for certain situations.

This is why I think it's great for kids to be in sports, combat sports, things like that.

Because it doesn't seem like a lot when you're younger, when you're stepping in, into a mat, into a ring as a child and you're competing and you're fighting and it's.

Then it becomes normal.

When you would take a normal kid off the street and put them or talking in front of a crowd of people.

It's, it's the fact that you are able to process which most people just shut down, shut it off.

I'm just gonna go with the herd, right.

What's everybody else doing?

You could ask my, my whole family, what's everybody else doing?

Dad's gonna be going, right, I'm slipping out the back door.

Because wherever everybody else is like, okay, if they haven't figured it out, that's not my solution.

Right.

So that's why I asked that question.

Because that's how my mind works.

I wouldn't, okay, if I would have scanned everything like that's my only option.

When you were saying there's nothing that was going to stop you.

Right.

That's how my family has it ingrained.

If there's ever a situation there's not going to be anybody or Anything that stops me for getting my family out of a situation or off the X, which, you know, military terms.

Anything bad.

There's nothing.

When you were saying that, I was like, finally, like, it's.

You don't run into many people.

Like, I will.

I am doing whatever it takes to get out of this building.

And.

Well, and.

And you're exactly right.

So many people.

And look, it's so funny, man.

When I, you know, when I lived in California, don't hold it against me.

But I had to do my stent.

I met my buddy who's taught me everything about carpentry.

I know he's wildly talented, amazing guy, very devout Christian, you know, just.

He's like an older brother to me, you know, And.

And he tell me, you know, I.

We'd be, you know, chopping it up, just John or whatever, and I tell him some stories from my childhood, and he'd be like, no way.

Is that real?

Yeah.

You know, I tell.

Tell him some stuff, and he's like, what the.

And I was like, I got a thousand of these stories for you, bro.

You know, and he's like.

He's like, I've never.

He's like, I've never known anyone to even deal with a fraction of what you know, let alone like the amount you know, or whatever.

And I think that's how a lot of people are.

It's that they.

It's.

What's so strange now with, like, the social media stuff is that some version of some reality is being shown to you.

Mm.

Right.

But if you never been anywhere, you've never been around different people or whatever, and you just think everyone's the same ever.

No twins aren't the same.

No one is the fucking same.

Nothing is the same.

You know, and then when you start getting into cultures and these things diverge in very wild and different ways that so many people just.

It's just people.

It's like these people want you dead.

They want you dead.

They don't care.

They don't.

They don't share your morality.

They don't share your ethics, and none of.

There is no there in any reality.

You are dead.

Given they get the option.

And that's just how it is back.

On them for one second.

Right?

That's.

I've.

So I've.

Obviously, I've traveled the world and been very fortunate to be able to go to some pretty whole places and some really pretty cool places.

But one thing that I see on social and you bringing this up is guests will tell stories, and then you get the cap.

Never happened, does it?

And I'm over here hearing, you know, guest stories and I'm like, oh, dude, that's happened to me.

I've been, I have a buddy that's happened to.

So I can relate because I have.

I don't want to say I'm this world traveler or whatever, but I have a book of adventures, stories that has happened, things that I've gotten away with.

I should one day.

It's.

I just gotta make sure the statute of limitations are all inspired.

It's.

So change the names.

Yeah, right.

So I've been able to see and deal and handle some wild.

But then when you, these guests will say, like a buddy of mine was a correctional officer, came out, was telling stories, then people are messaging me like, bro, I was there for that.

Oh my God, dude, that was so right.

And then they're all the comments, no way, this would never happen.

This would know.

And I'm just like, man, what life have you lived to never think anything like this would ever happen?

Well, let me add on to that and put it in context of the 911 thing.

So I have a buddy of mine that I've been friends with for.

I mean, we were friends since we were teenagers, 15ish years old, 16, whatever.

And so he's known me my whole life.

Several years ago, we're talking, he goes, man, I gotta tell you, I don't think planes hit those buildings, man.

I said, what are you talking about?

He goes, I don't think planes hit those buildings.

I've been watching these YouTube videos.

I said, what?

I said, YouTube videos.

I said, what the fuck are you talking about?

He goes, yeah, you know, it's like there was like a hologram or this or that.

I was like, bro, I said, you've known me for over 30 years.

I said, so either you think I'm a fucking liar or you think I don't know what I seen with my own eyes.

Okay?

I seen a plane and then I was almost hit by an engine of a plane.

So you got it.

But, but did you see a plane hit the building?

No, no, I didn't.

I'm not a hologram guy.

I've seen, I see what you say, but I'm just asking the question.

So, but the thing is, is that that was a very stark wake up call because this was several years ago for sure that here's somebody that knows me, knows me not to be a liar, knows me not to be like some fucking making bullshit up guy.

And even though he knows me Personally, he still doubts what an actual fucking eyewitness that he knows and trusts tells him because of some, some fucking video made in a basement by some kid or whoever.

You can see it's a green screen and they automatically believe it, you know.

And so this, this is the danger where social media and this stuff and, and that was several years ago now, like the deep fake, cheap fakes, all this shit, this AI stuff, we're moving into a world where people are no longer going to know what's real anymore.

You're not talking to real people and you're not out doing real shit.

You're not going to really know what's going on.

There's gonna be a whole generation, your kids, your kids, that whole generation for sure.

She, I mean, she's old enough to see it, but like our youngest, she'll show me stuff.

Dad, look at immediately I'm like, say hi.

She's like, like got me.

And I'm like, and we feel bad.

And she, she made the comment, our youngest made the comment month or two ago.

She goes, you know what sucks, dad?

I'm like, what?

She goes, I don't even know it's real anymore.

And it crushed me.

And I'm like, damn, we're here.

Trees are real, the river's real, mountains.

Are real, Outside is real.

You know, the thing is, is that they've done a really good job of like cleaving a bunch of people away from, you know, the herd, right?

And they, and they've taken, you know, what is a neuroscientist, neuropsychologists.

There's like 80, 20, you know, divergence in thinking or whatever.

Well, that 20 also has an 80, 20.

Yep.

You know, and it breaks down even lower and lower and lower.

And you, that's why you wind up with weird groups.

These guys.

I'm, I'm with this guy, but.

Yeah, but you guys think different things here.

Yeah, but we agree on this other thing, you know, it's, it's, it's become a really useful tool for divide and conquer.

And it's, and it's, it's an old tactic.

Thousands of years, you know, they've been running divide and conquer.

And it, it's wild to me.

I never, I hadn't been political up until this point.

Up until 9, 11, I didn't pay attention to politics and a bunch of fucking jerk off stealing money from me, you know, or stealing money from our country, embezzling money, doing dirty.

You know, it's like CIA, FBI, I don't know I think they're probably all scum, you know, I mean, but then, and then all of a sudden I got a buddy, he's in the FBI and he's an amazing guy.

I'm like, well, maybe they can't be all scum because he's not a scumbag, you know, but, but the thing is, is that the world's a complicated place, right?

And, and all this like geopolitical stuff now that we've been forced into, like paying attention to, which we should, you know, we should.

You got to know what's going on, you know.

You know, the west is the, you know, the, the, the west is the people that fucking abolish slavery.

The west are the people that, you know, fucking fought the Nazis, but somehow we're Nazis and we're racist now.

Yeah.

You know, it's like these things have to be pushed back against, you know.

And the strange thing like the 911 thing that was always felt really weird to me and what you're holding there, just so your, your guests know, my, I had a friend, her brother died in the Trade Center.

He was on the 106th floor, Sean Rooney.

And he, he was above the impact zone of the North Tower.

He couldn't get out.

And he was talking to his, his wife on the phone, telling her where he's at.

I'm in the office, I can't get out.

She's like, just stay there, they're coming to get you or whatever.

And he's like, you know, tell, tell the kids I love him.

And he rode the building into the ground with his wife on the phone.

Tell him to tell the kids I love them.

She, she was a very staunch advocate for victims rights of 911 and she was a huge thorn in the side of, of the government because she wouldn't let it go.

Her husband's dead, right?

She sees all this.

She's then killed in a plane crash after she had met with maybe Obama or.

So I forget who.

It was just a like day or two after outside of Buffalo, New York and Clarence, plane crashes.

She's dead now.

Is it a coincidence you got two people killed, plane crashes and I don't believe in coincidence.

You know, the amount of coincidences that surround 911 are wild.

Right?

So there's, those buildings are 110 stories tall.

They want you to believe that 210 story buildings on a fluke, first one hit through the 80th Floor Jet Magic jet fuel caused desks to burn.

I mean I worked on these skyscrapers.

Man reporting 650, 700 yards of concrete a day per floor, reinforced concrete, welded steel girders, all this stuff, you know, fire protection, all this stuff.

And they want you to believe that these build this building pancaked into its own footprint on a fluke.

And then the second building, the whole corner of the building, another 110 story building, whole corner of the building taking out, taken out the kinetic force, I mean alone come also with the idea that this several thousand pound engine flew six, seven blocks away, that that building also pancaked into its own footprint same way.

Right.

They want you to believe that a building that wasn't hit by anything, at most maybe paperweights flying off a desk or some burning paper landing on its roof.

They want you to believe that Building 7 collapsed into its own footprint hours later, days later, just on its own again.

Was it days later?

I think it was days.

You know, I've demoed six story buildings.

Nothing crazy, but still six floors.

But months of, months of effort went into like making sure that that building's falling into its own footprint.

You got 210 story buildings falling into their own footprint.

You got another building collapsing into its own footprint.

Looks like controlled demolition.

But they want you to believe that Manhattan's built like a house of cards.

And this building's foundation shook that building.

And this, you know, it's like, it's hard for me to believe because I've worked on these buildings.

I didn't work on the Trade center, but I've worked on skyscrapers.

Like I said, I worked on the Goldman Sachs building and what you're talking about, for everything that you see above the ground in New York of like these structures going into the air, you got you almost equal that going in down into the bedrock of the island for sure.

Reinforced concrete and all this.

So it's like there's a lot of fantastical things that surround that day.

Our President stood on the news and said we're going to go to the places that harbor terrorists and promote terrorism.

It's like, all right, well 14 or 15 of these guys are Saudi Arabians, but we're going to go to Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's like, where did that sleight of hand, like magic shit happen?

Yeah, because then they shifted it to Muslims.

Right.

So what's interesting me though.

Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

I was gonna say what, what you're holding there is a piece of the Trade Center.

So my buddy Sweaty who gave me the, the coin, he's working on the pile doing search and rescue and, and he Told me this story.

He gave, gave that to me.

He came out to a show I was playing in Rochester and he was singing for a band called Moment of Truth.

And he's still in the military from what I, what I'm doing, what I know, and, and he gives me this, this stone and he says, I want you to have this.

He said, it saved my life.

Damn.

And I said, why are you giving this to me?

He goes, you should have it.

And he told me, he said, he's working on the pile doing search and rescue before Building 7 comes down.

And they said, he said, they said, the building's coming down, evacuate the pile.

And then the building starts coming down.

He takes off running and he trips over this piece of stone.

And as he falls, where he fell, he falls flat down and a piece of concrete and rebar flies over where he would have been standing had he not tripped and fell and wrapped around like a post or a pole or some.

He's like, it would have killed me all because of this, because of that.

So.

And this, this other, this candle holder that you're showing.

So my, my friend that, you know, I told you her brother passed away in the Trade Center.

Sean Rooney, a year later.

I think it was maybe a year after, or two years after every year they, on 9, 11, they'd have the victims, families come to New York City.

And you know, and so they gave them that.

And, and it's, it's debris, it's soil and that from the Trade center site.

So you can see there's like some.

Yeah, there's bolts and nails.

Nails and different things in there.

Something happened that day that changed the world forever, but changed our country forever for sure.

Because they took our privacy away.

They told us we gotta, we gotta take your rights away so that we could protect you from other.

These other people done all these things.

They want you to believe that a plane vaporized in a field in Pennsylvania.

They told you this heart wrenching story about how these people have phone calls with their loved ones on a plane telling them, we're gonna roll on these guys on an analog phone system on a plane traveling at erratic speeds, at erratic elevation changes.

This is back then, not today.

That's always my question.

And nobody ever talks about it.

You mean to tell me the whole plane full of Americans, not one motherfucker stood up and was like, no, no, not gonna happen.

They're telling you this plane vaporized.

Yeah, well, no, there's no.

The wreck.

I mean, you look at the, the site, there's no Luggage.

There's no tires.

There's no fuselage.

There's no bodies, there's no seats.

There's.

Look at every plane crash in the world.

Planes don't vaporize, right?

So there's that.

And then the.

The.

You know, again, these are just things about 911 that I think people should think about.

Right?

I don't have any answers.

I don't know what happened that day, you know, But I do know that the amount of coincidences that had to take place in order for that to happen don't happen in reality.

How do you have a group full of Israel natives on video chanting and filming everything?

And then the cops stopped them and questioned them across the harbor, and they said they were.

They were here to capture the moment.

Like, how do they know about it?

All documented, right?

Like, it's wild, man.

It is.

It's.

It's insane to me.

And I. I bought into it.

That's why I joined the military, of course.

Right?

But it's like, you're not.

I'm you.

Blood for blood, man.

You know?

You know what I mean?

It's like, you want to punch me in the face?

Fine, I'll chop your arms off.

You know, we're gonna go fight these dudes, and I'm a New Yorker, and I'm gonna.

Oh, yeah, I'm signing this dotted line.

Like, where do I sign?

Yeah.

And then it's.

Now we look at it and I'm like.

Like, none of this makes sense.

None of it.

You're telling me, like, the steel beams that are, like, melted, you're telling me jet fuel did that?

I'll tell you something.

Immediately after.

When?

Back then, every year, I would torture myself and I'd watch every thing, everything on 9 11, anything they put out.

Military Channel, History Channel, Learning Channel, this channel, the Science Channel, this channel, that channel.

But the amount of propaganda was wild to me because when I started to notice is like, look at this graphic.

We made a graphic, and it's animated plane.

And look, look.

That's exactly how it happened.

And then I'd see them running bullshit fucking experiments.

I remember one.

I don't know if it was on the Learning Channel or Science Channel or whatever.

And I'm watching, and they're like, okay, we're gonna show you how the jet fuel melted these beams and collapse and pancake this building into its own footprint.

And I'm like, okay, please enlighten me.

So they're out in the desert.

They got a big pit.

They fill it.

It's filled with jet Fuel.

They take like some 6 inch, like aluminum I beam, like put it over this pit and they, they light it ablaze and they're like, look at it go.

And we're gonna watch this beam crumble under this and nothing.

And I think it was aluminum.

I could be mistaken on that.

But anyway, they got this thing going.

Nothing's happening to the beam.

And then they're like, well, we need to add some weight to it.

And then they go and put some weight in the middle of the beam and it's like, bro, you're not even talking about the same materials here.

No, I mean, the beams that they use to make these buildings are not like little 6 inch I beams.

No, that's not what's going on.

You know what I mean?

They're not.

You don't have it encased in concrete.

You don't have it wrapped in asbestos.

You don't have all, all this other going on it.

You just got some beam over a, over a pit of who the knows what it is, trying to make some false equivalents of, of what you're trying to explain what happened.

Well, that's what people don't understand.

If you stripped everything out to the bones, that's the majority of, of the floors.

Everything.

Only thing that we're.

That's really flammable, I would say would be tiles, Kate.

The, the top ceilings and desks.

Wiring harness.

The wiring and the harnesses and the desks.

And then the carpet on the floor.

Even underneath that solid concrete and your.

Reams of paper, you know.

Yeah, whatever.

Whatever you brought in the year that you belong to, that's all that was burned.

The building was not flammable.

Like you're talking pure concrete and steel.

Well, what gets wild, you know, and obviously I'm sure I'm not the only one went down the rabbit hole of like, you know, this conspiracy and that conspiracy and all this stuff.

But, you know, there is no denying the fact that the Empire State Building was hit in the 40s or 50s by an airplane.

Yeah, these buildings were built in the 70s with the idea that we had jetliners now, you know, and a plane impact is a real possibility.

There were structural things that went into these buildings.

And again, I'm not saying I know even a fucking fraction of what happened.

I know a country went into trillions of dollars of debt.

I know that we, we sowed chaos throughout the Middle east, all of it.

I get it.

And if these motherfuckers did it, then fucking turn, turn the Middle east into a fucking Glass parking lot.

I don't care.

But I just don't believe what they, what they've told me.

No, I don't.

If you told me that these buildings, hey, you know, when we build these high street, high skyscrapers, we have, you know, thermite packs built in in case there's a collapse and we got to bring it to the ground.

We, we got to set them off and we do that.

Then, then fucking tell me that.

But what you're telling me didn't happen, right?

What you're telling me, you know, you want me to believe that in one of the most heavily trafficked international tourist cities in our country, fucking Washington D.C. that you can't find a fucking stitch of photographic or videographic evidence or a fucking eyewitness to tell you they seen a plane flying through D.C. you got people from every continent with every piece of advanced equipment of photographic and videographic technology.

70s back then, you know, I mean, it's just again, the absurdity and when, and you go back and look at the footage at the, at the Pentagon and it's like, okay, I got two buildings that I seen that had a fucking wing impact from a jetliner, but now I got a little hole in a building and there's a whole big show going on.

There's a big spool of industrial wire and there's fire and there's people running around and whatever.

But man, I mean, it just seems like there's a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of shenanigans and bullshit that they've wanted us to believe and they used, they tugged at our heartstrings and they, at our patriotism and whatever, you know, and the thing is, is that, you know, is it Benjamin Franklin that said, you know, now after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, he said, now that you have liberty, let's see how long you can hold on to it.

Our country's 250 years old, man.

It's time, you know, and, and the thing is, is that I don't understand that in this day and age after, you know, I witnessed what the, the worst terroristic attack, so called, if I don't, if, if our government had something to do with some part of it, they must.

Narrative, yeah, whatever, right.

That today you're telling me we got a communist Muslim mayor as the mayor of New York City, you got people saying they're socialists and they're.

This country has to decide what its identity is for sure.

You know, and these, there's a lot of brain dead people And I'm not knocking them, because most people want to get up, they want to drink their fucking coffee, they go to work, they do their toil for eight to 10 hours, whatever it is.

They come home, they have a beer, sit on the porch, maybe play with their kid, fucking pat them on the ass, have their dinner, fall asleep in their chair.

And that's every day for them.

And I get it.

Because life is hard in the best of times.

Your time is short.

Life is hard, you know, so if you, if you.

Now, now you're being asked to think about things that are so beyond your scope of understanding, because I don't know what's going on in Ukraine and I don't know who the fuck the Palestinians are and Somalians and these people, because I live in fucking Cleveland, Ohio, and I just like to be able to take my kid to the park and play, have them play on swings and not worry about getting fucking stabbed or shot.

Yeah, but see, your life has to be worth protecting, right?

And the minute you're not protecting it, somebody will take it from you.

Somebody will take your country from you.

There are countries out there that don't share our morals, they don't share our ethics, they don't share our optimism.

You know, is it a perfect place?

No, it's not a perfect place.

Is capitalism a perfect solution?

Maybe not, but it's better than what anything else we've seen so far, you know, so when I hear, like, somebody, I'm a socialist, then go live in a socialist country.

You're a communist.

Go live in a communist country.

Because I have friends that escaped the Soviet Union after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Armenian friends, you know, Vonses, and, you know, they tell me, you know, when that happened and there was no food, here's your.

Here's your ticket.

Go get your fucking pound of meat for the week or whatever.

But there's no food there because they're selling it out the back door because their families are starving.

You're paying Russian mafia to fucking get you out of the country, and they're just stealing your money.

You know, these people, you know, my immigrant friends that I've talked to, they're like, this is communism.

I lived through it.

I know what it looks like.

And this is it.

These are the things they do.

They take your music from you.

They take your communication from you.

They shut down your speech.

They do these things.

That's how they implement the fucking takeover, you know, which has been slowly happening here forever.

And.

And so, you know, these people, man, that are bottom feeders.

They're fucking lazy.

Whatever it is, you know, I get it.

You're in the go along to get along gang because, you know, fucking life is hard.

But when somebody is a fucking IQ problem or they have a fucking perception problem or they think no one's illegal, well, that's not how the real world works.

Because there ain't a country I can go and post up and just fucking, hey, I'm in Russia.

I'm here.

You got to deal with me now.

Give me no free Medicare.