• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Zakk and I became fast friends. We’d both been in show business since we were teenagers, we both loved the same music, wrestlers, and movies, and shared a goofy sense of humor. We were also quite competitive, and when I noticed he had started growing a beard, I smarmily (great word) mentioned that I could grow a longer one than him.

So we decided to have a beard-growing contest. I grew a goatee so long, that if it wasn’t braided or tied into a little bun it resembled Linda Lovelace’s bush in Deep Throat. I went months without cutting the damn thing in order to win that stupid contest, until finally it became unbearable. I shaved it off, and Zakk was declared the winner. He kept growing his and it currently hangs down to his waist, but for me it’s No More Beards.

I tried valiantly to beat Zakk Wylde in our beard-growing contest, but alas, I lost miserably. The weird thing was, Jess actually liked my frenzied facial hair.

The comedy continued a few months later when I was in New York City promoting Happenstance and I heard Zakk was in town for an Ozzfest gig the next night. I met him at a seedy little pub that had good beer and a great jukebox stocked with the best bands from the ’70s like Journey, AC/DC, Foreigner, and Bad Company. My party motto has always been, “It’s not where you go, it’s who you’re with,” and Zakk and I proved it by hanging out, drinking beer, and talking music until the bar closed at 4 a.m. Not wanting the night to end, Zakk invited me back to his suite to drink more. So we stumbled out of the pub and wandered down the street to buy more beer, playing car chicken on the way.

Car chicken is when you lie down in the middle of the street and wait until a car comes. Then you stay there as long as possible until rolling out of the way before you get run over. We were in downtown Manhattan and it was like Death Race 2000 as the cars swerved and honked trying to avoid the two idiots lying in the middle of the road.

Then we bought a dozen beers and a dozen hard-boiled eggs from a convenience store and walked over to the Waldorf-Astoria, which was quite a contrast from the Jerry’s Motel– Hourly Rates Available dive that Megaforce had put me up at. I guess Ozzy was making a little more cash than Fozzy.

Thoughts of sugarplums and strippers danced through my head and I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of huge rock star debauchery awaited on the other side of his hotel room door. But as Zakk slid his room key into the slot, he whispered, “You gotta be quiet, brother, my daughter and her friends are inside sleeping.”

There would be no snorting cocaine off the voluptuous backsides of exotic dancers that night, my friends, only a quiet march straight into the bathroom. Zakk closed the door and sat on the edge of the bathtub and I squatted on the throne. We said nothing as we drank beer and ate boiled eggs in silence, until finally our eyes met and we burst out in stifled laughter. Here was one of the greatest guitar players of all time and one of the biggest wrestling superstars in the world, hiding in the bathroom and sipping on beer in silence at 5 a.m. so as to not wake the children.

The comedy never ends.

The following year I flew to Ozzfest in San Antonio and was hanging with Zakk backstage on his bus. We’d thrown back a few cocktails and were bored, so we decided to go into the parking lot and play some baseball. Zakk grabbed a glove and a bat from the bus and announced that he’d be up first. So I threw the first pitch and it bounced off the asphalt a few feet in front of him. He started laughing and taunting me.

“Come on, brother! You’re throwing like you’re a member of the Backstreet Boys!”

I threw another pitch and this one careened wildly into the rapidly expanding crowd that had gathered to watch us play.

“That’s fucking terrible, bro! You’re gay and your parents know it!”

Murmers of laughter starting emanated from the mob and I started getting angry. I wasn’t going to let this dipshit rock star make fun of me in front of all these people. I focused on my target, assumed the