Tommyland

by Tommy Lee

  I thought about a lot of shit in jail, but when I was in that cage, I couldn’t think about anything else but freedom, about how much of it I’ve had all my life and how much freedom anyone who isn’t in jail takes for granted. Other than that, nature to me was reduced to cockroaches and flies. I’d get all excited when I saw them in my cell. I’d talk to them, I’d get down on the floor and watch them walk around. They were my friends. There were three that lived with me and I named them, Manny, Moe, and Jack—they were the roaches who lived in my trash. Those guys only came out when the lights went off at night. They must have done some bad shit because they acted like they were never getting out of that place. I just know they’re still there. What up, dudes? I kinda miss you guys.

  It’s strange to look at it now, and I guess this is some kind of natural reaction to a difficult experience, but I see moments in jail as if they are scenes from a movie that I’m not even in. There I was, up on a roof in a cage. I was left up there alone for fifteen minutes each week. I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to Thursday. But some Thursdays I passed on my cage time because I just couldn’t handle it. I cried every time I was up there, thinking about everywhere else I wanted to be. Those weeks that I didn’t go topside, I exchanged my fifteen minutes of fresh air for a book. I just wanted to read and find a positive message, which I needed. Those weeks, Buddhism helped me more than going outside and dreaming about being free.

  On my first day or two in there, I was initiated into one of the rituals that kept me going during my time in there. The brothers down the hall were beating on the metal bars, laying out a beat. I was so pumped to hear that, I’d jump up on my bunk and start playing the sheet of steel over my window. Drums! Thank God! Soon enough the whole block was rocking with beats. We did it all the time and you should have heard it. I wish I’d been allowed a tape recorder. You can’t re-create the sound of pent-up inmates—it is tribal, it is raw, it is so many voices and so many stories being released, all of them bouncing off the same walls that hold them all in. I looked forward to that every day. It was monkey see monkey do: It didn’t matter who started the rhythm, we’d all join in. And we’d fucking go off.

  I looked forward to the weekends more than anything—that was my chance to get out of my cell and see the friends who came to visit me. I don’t think I can ever thank them enough for sacrificing the time it took them to visit. They’d have to wait for hours in line, get searched, and deal with the hassle that comes with the corrections system, all to see me for just fifteen minutes. When you’re locked up, you find out quick who cares and who doesn’t. Seeing those friends was a lifeline, but it wasn’t easy on me, and I could tell it wasn’t easy on them. I’d be sitting there in my blue suit with my hands and my ankles shackled, feeling like I’d murdered somebody. I didn’t expect special treatment, but I hadn’t raped, killed, or done anything that most of the other inmates had done. I know everyone gets treated equally in jail and that being confined is a psychological process designed to break you down. But when my friends would visit, they couldn’t believe what they saw: I was chained to the seat like a mass murderer.

  There are two people who meant a lot to me when they came to see me. The first is Gerald Wil Rafferty, Ph.D., the man who has since become my life coach and spiritual leader. A friend told him to come see me while I was in jail. He changed my life and was there for me anytime I needed him. I was losing it in there: I didn’t know what to think and I didn’t know what to do. And when I met this stranger for the first time, I watched him walk up to the glass and wondered if he could really help me or if he was another one of those top-dollar, designer Hollywood gurus. He wasn’t. Gerald has such an incredible calming and wise presence that precedes him. Even through bulletproof glass, I could tell that he knew something I didn’t know and that he had knowledge I needed. He walked in holding meditational beads. He didn’t say anything, he just pressed his other hand on the glass. I put mine up to meet his, and I felt that this man had been sent to me. Right then I knew that everything was going to be okay. We both cried after that, looking at each other through the window. I wondered why he was crying, because I was the one in hell, and he didn’t even know me. Now I understand. He’s been nothing but a guiding light to me since that day. Thanks, Gerald, you know how much you mean to me.

  Gerald set his answering machine to accept all collect calls, so I could call anytime and just talk. There were times when I couldn’t take it anymore, when I left messages about how I wanted to take my pants off, wrap them around my neck, and hang myself from the light fixture in my cell because I couldn’t stand being in jail another day. I could call him and talk about anything at any time: I could just call and cry or spill any random thought that came into my mind. He became my sanctuary.

  Sometimes I just called to hear his voice on the answering machine—sometimes that was all I needed.

  The second person I want to thank is my best girl friend, Diane. I don’t have the ability to put into words how she made my time in jail as pleasant as it could possibly be. I had a phone in my cell and could call her collect any time of the day and most of the time she was there to talk to me. I’ve always been able to relate better to women than to men and Diane was there for me; she was my angel. I would call her and she knew by the sound of my voice what I needed, whether it was music, a shoulder to cry on, or a best friend. Some days, she would just put the phone down for an hour and let me listen to music over the phone. I’d be on my cot, with the receiver to my ear, crying and listening to Sarah McLachlan. Let me tell you, when you call collect from a county facility, the charges are double and not once did Diane ever mention the cost. She is the only girl friend—and I mean a true girl friend—whom I’ve had in my life. She came to see me all the time and she was there for me all the time. My wife didn’t come, none of my exes came, but Diane did, and I’ll never forget that until the day I die. She’s heard it all and she knows it all—and she helped me make sense of my life when everything became nonsense. I’m at a loss, trying to put this down right now, because I don’t think the English language can capture how much I feel for her for being there for me—those words just don’t exist. All I can say is that from the bottom of my heart, D, you kept me alive, and I’m forever in your debt. I love you. And if you weren’t my best friend—and married to the man I introduced you to, who is also one of my best friends (and one of the best fucking DJs in the world)*—I’d marry you in a heartbeat.

  I’d like to take a minute to thank everyone else who came to see me in jail: my mom and dad, my sister, Athena, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars. And last but not least, Bob Suhusky, I’m telling you now, you’re a good man. Thanks for looking after my house, even though a bunch of fuckheads broke into it—that wasn’t your fault, bro. While we’re on the subject, I’m convinced that those nasty Pilferazzis are to blame. It wasn’t hard to find out that I was living somewhere else for a while. Whoever did it smashed the glass front doors of my house and instead of stealing the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of studio equipment, all they took was my 35mm camera. They were clearly looking for pics from my Going to Jail party. Whatever. For the record, Bob is the one who set my answering machine to accept collect calls, so he’s partly responsible for Methods of Mayhem. Without Bob, all those lyrics and melodies would never have made it out of the concrete walls of my cell. Thanks to my friend Bob Procop as well. I’ll always remember his visit. He strolled up and slapped porno mags against the glass. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

  WORD MUTHAFUCKA! IT WAS THE FIRST PUSSY WE’D SEEN IN MONTHS! I WAS TIRED OF GETTING CHOKED, I THOUGHT I WAS FINALLY FREE!! YAY!

  It was less than a minute before the wardens confiscated his porno, but it didn’t matter. I kept those images in my head for the rest of my stay. You rock, Mr. Procop.

  In jail, any “famous” person is separated—they call you a K-10, a keepaway—from the general population. But I began to feel so disconnected in solitary confinement that I started to think it wou
ld be better to be put in with the other inmates than be alone every day. When I was up in the cage I’d look across the roof to where the other convicts were playing basketball and lifting weights, and I wanted to be over there. I just wanted to talk to someone—anyone. I asked the guards if I could do that and they shot that idea down real quick. They told me that Robert Downey Jr. asked for the same privilege until the wardens caved and let him go out there. They said it was all of five minutes before motherfuckers were all up in his face. The guards told me he mouthed off and got his ass beat real bad. I said, “That’s cool, I dig the cage.”

  In jail, all you do is eat, shit, work out, read, think, and sleep. I filled some trash bags with water and used those for weights, until they took them away. I did push-ups, I did handstands against the wall. I did anything I could think of to make one more day go by. My lunch came with an apple that had a sticker on it, so I took those stickers and made them into a huge flower on the cell wall. That kept me sane until I was allowed pencils and paper—that was a good day. I drew this amazing sketch of me under a tree, in the middle of nowhere, looking around at my life. I sat and made that picture in one day: It was a portrait of where I wanted to be. I love to draw, I love to put my feelings into symbols, but I’ve always been too impatient to take the time to sketch. Sitting in my cell it was amazing to learn that I could in fact do it well. It was the coolest picture I’ve ever drawn. (And I’ll probably never do one like it again.)

  After a while I realized I had two options: I could make jail a really shitty experience or I could make it a positive thing, as much as it could be. I looked at my life to figure out why I was there and what I needed to change. I asked myself why in so many ways.

  That was the upside of jail. I would have much rather done that soul-searching under a tree or in some rad cabin in Montana. When I knew I was leaving, that picture I drew of myself was the last thing I took off the wall. I still have it and I’ll always keep it. I’m looking at it now and it’s like smelling something from childhood: It brings me right back—a little too efficiently—to my cell. I hope the statute of limitations is up on this, but I took something else when I left: I took my jail shoes. They’re black with a piece of gray rubber on the toe that says “L.A. County Jail.” To this day, they’re my constant reminder of where I never, ever, ever, ever, EVER want to go. And they sit right where I can see them every day—in my studio.

  You want to talk about powerlessness? Check this. I had been in the slammer less than a week, and loud and clear, I hear some inmates down the hall shouting, “Hey, Tommy!” I’m like “Hey, what up?” Those guys had a TV in their cell and they tell me how they’re watching my wife hanging out on the beach holding hands with “some surfer dude” on Entertainment Tonight or some shitty Hollywood news bottom-feeder show. Whatever.

  I never saw the guys who kept me up-to-date, but those cons were like the fucking Enquirer, informing me of every way my life was turning into one big pile of shit. They were there when Pamela was on Jay Leno and Jay asked her in a really condescending way, “You’re not going to get back with Tommy, are you?” Jay’s audience booed and thanks to my fellow prisoners, I got the play-by-play. Pamela told Jay, “No,” she wasn’t getting back with me.

  Imagine being locked up and hearing, through your fellow locked-up fuck-ups, that your wife is moving on. If that isn’t going to teach you that you’re no longer driving the bus down the highway that you think is your life, I don’t know what is. It fucking sucked and at the time I wanted to see what was going on, but thank God I didn’t have a TV. That box would have been in a thousand pieces, along with the bones in my hand and probably other parts of me that I’m glad are still intact.

  To tell you the truth, what I’ve just told you is the least of what I saw and what I learned in jail. It changed me—how couldn’t it? One of the saddest things I noticed in jail is that there are so many disturbed people incarcerated who have no outlet to learn about anything or get motivated to better themselves in any way. The libraries in jail are wack. And if there is any place that could use a supply of meaningful books, that’s it. There are maniacs in there, locked up, with no information to learn about the world, which guarantees that they’ll be exactly the same when they get out. Good luck to you if you’re in jail and you want to change. All you can get access to are old stupid books that say nothing. The library cart was full of fiction—and there isn’t a place more in need of nonfiction than jail. Fantasy means shit when true reality is all around you.

  I was fortunate enough to have books shipped to me during my stay. And all I kept thinking when I got out is that maybe some of those guys, had they had the right resources, stood a chance to change. It wouldn’t help all the convicts, but having real books to read would help some of them—and if the taxpayers’ dollars went to that, it might make a difference.

  What I saw in jail was more insane than anything I’ve ever seen anywhere. And it changed me—I was in solitary, but there was a hole in my wall that my neighbors could pass things through. Even if you can’t see anyone else, you are connected, a part of a community whether you like it or not. I learned that inmates are the most resourceful people in the world. They make homemade wine that they call “pruno” out of juice, sugar packets, bread, and yeast. They put it in a trash bag and let it sit for a couple of weeks. When it’s ready, you hear a huge cry, all down the cell block: “Pruno!” The pruno would make its way around, delivered by the trustees. These were the lucky inmates—they get chosen to sweep the floors, clean shit, and serve the food, and they’d use their advantage and access to steal whatever the other inmates needed. Put it this way: If you’re friends with the trustees, you could get whatever you want. They’d change all the time though, because they always got busted. When the pruno was ready, they’d bring it down in a plastic garbage bag and hold it under the door. I’d pull the bag from underneath the door and they’d push on the other end, sending the liquid and the whole package through the inch-wide crack at the bottom of the door into my cell. The first time a batch of pruno was ready, I heard someone way down the cell block yell, “Send T. Lee some of that motherfuckin’ shit!” It tasted like ass, dude, but it would get you fucked up. Sometimes the wardens would come down and bust the guys making the pruno. And then we’d all have to wait another couple weeks for the next batch to ripen.

  There were so many motherfuckers in jail who didn’t give a fuck about what was going to happen to them. If you’re caught smoking weed or cigarettes or doing heroin in jail, you get another year added to your sentence. Most of the guys didn’t really give a shit about that. I’d be sitting there in my cell, being offered everything—and you can get anything you want in jail. A joint would come through the hole in my wall and I’d say, “Fuck that, dude. I’m outta here in a few weeks.” Guys would take one cigarette and make four little pinner cigarettes out of it. It was crazy to get one whole cigarette. I hadn’t had a cigarette for weeks in jail and then one day, all of a sudden a little rollie—that’s what we called them—comes under my door. I look out my little window and there’s the trustee who chucked it to me. Unfortunately, I don’t have a light. The guys in the cell next to me told me how to make fire MacGyver style. They told me to chew the wood of my pencil and pull out the lead, and then stomp on my plastic razor to get the two blades out. I was then instructed to put the blades in the electrical socket, wrap toilet paper around the pencil lead, and touch it to the blades. It lit up in my hand and I torched my miniciggie. I stood on my bunk, blowing smoke up the vent. I was loving it—until I realized that I could stay in jail for another year if I was caught. I threw that thing down the toilet fast.

  I learned so much crazy stuff in jail. You can make a dagger out of newspaper if you roll it up tight enough and sharpen it against the floor. You can take the roller ball from the deodorant you’re given and if you rub it on the floor long enough you can make dice. You melt the black combs you’re allowed to mark them up. Once you’ve got dice, you can gamb
le.

  When I was in jail, all I wanted was to get out. I sat and thought about why I was there and what I would do to make sure I never got there again. So many guys in there didn’t care though. They didn’t think they had anywhere else to go. They got fed every day, they had a place to sleep, and let me tell you, there were more drugs available in there for free than there are on the street.

  The trustees came by offering heroin, pills, everything. There’s a hospital in jail, so every drug on earth was available. They’d ask me what I wanted but to me it always felt like I was being set up. One day, the chief warden pulled me into another room and told me that a couple of the trustees didn’t dig me and wanted to poison me. He just wanted to let me know.

  After I was in there for a while, there was one day when I looked out of my little twelve-by-twelve-inch window and saw the guards carrying away some stiff, dead, blue-lipped motherfucker. You can’t really ask what happened when someone dies in jail because no one says anything—not the inmates, not the wardens, no one. It was like it never happened.

  If that wasn’t insane enough, the whole time I was in jail, I signed more autographs than anywhere else I’ve ever been. I found out that there are a lot of fucking Mötley fans in jail, which is pretty scary. Each day, the wardens would take inmates from different wings of the jail out for a walk and as they’d pass my cell, slips of paper would fly under my door, asking me to write a note to guys’ girlfriends, brothers, or to whomever it meant something.

  I’m not sure how many of you can relate to this, but the day that you know you’re getting released from jail is the best day of your life. You know you’re getting out, and you wait all fucking day to hear your name announced over the speakers: “T. Lee, roll it up,” which means roll your shit up and get out. You don’t know what time it’s going to happen, so you just wait. When your name is called, all your homies start shouting, “Yeah! Dude, rip it, good luck! Don’t come back!” As I was leaving, I looked back, knowing that all of them are going to be there for a long time. They’re still there, I’m sure, and that’s tragic.