Punk rock equals violence: violence against life, violence against government, violence against your parents. The ironic thing was that we took it out on each other.

When I go to bars to see bands now, I actually go to see the band and not the floor or pieces of me on the floor. I've passed that stage. I have other ways now. But there are nights that I do miss and then there are nights that I don't.

What was I doing. I just downed three glasses of beer and now I am at another bar with another band. I begin to rock gently back and forth as I creep through the crowd. Bip bop un tis un tis was my mating call. Silently I screamed in my head. I had my thumb lodged over the spout of my next bottle of beer to stop the graceful foam-filled flow of alcoholic fluids. Meanwhile, from behind me, the other rockers didn't seem so careful for I was repeatedly showered.

What was I doing. I gathered in front of the rest of the crowd like so many times before, though something was queer; something seemed alien. While my intoxication fought off my karma, my body soon began to feel what was wrong.

Minutes earlier I remember looking down at the floor, while making sure it was free off dangers, I set up my punk rock defense systems, bending my legs slightly with one foot forward to protect from a stray body flying toward me. A bottle falls to its end on the floor and I am brought back to reality. A glimmering wet shine covers the floor. Suds spatter and another one falls. Bodies start gathering in an army of dancing rage and the first man falls.

Bottled violence filtered through the masses and everyone joins in. A few pushes and a few of us privileged souls are sliding to one side and pushed to another gripping our beer and flickering cigarettes. The pit was unleashed.

What was I doing. Suddenly instead of being danced along in camaraderie, I was being shoved into the singer with legs a-tangle in mic cords. Cigarettes were crushing and burning holes in our clothes. One man down, then two, falling on what was minutes before just puddles of beer but now is broken shards of glass. Two forearms are raised from the floor, bloody with pride. By recalling my days of physics, I try desperately to keep my weight centered so I will slide instead of fall. This didn't make matters any better.

Days later when I thought back, I wondered if hitting the floor and getting trampled would actually be any worse than how I was sliding into amps, band members and speakers to only be thrown by some ogre back into the chaos.

The ogres were the worst part: 200 pound, beer-for-breakfast, cigarette-for-lunch, high-school-dropout, factory workers, that seemed to get all their fun by throwing around guys like me, waiting for us to take a fall. They encompassed the perimeter. Between each toss of me in the giant ping-pong game, I tried to think of a way out. There was none in sight. My only plan was to disperse between the bodies when the set ended.

But as fast as I tried to reason that I could make do until then, I was thrown clear across the floor to land on the side of one foot, sending all my 130 pounds through

my knee, collapsing my ankle, jolting my arm into an amp head. From there I limped onto the side into retirement.

I read an interview with Ian McKay months after this incident and he talked about why he is not playing the same kind of music that he was with Minor Threat and why he doesn't allow mosh pits at shows. He explained that it's cool if people dance but once people start getting hurt, than it isn't for the music anymore.

I used to feel like something was missing when I didn't get hurt at a show. I guess you were right, Ian.