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Guitarist with no arms faces reality TV

By Larry Knowles

September 11, 2006

San Diego--Mark Goffeney is an unlikely guitar player. For that matter, he’s an unlikely basketball player, football player, driver, or whatever else that requires the use of one’s arms. Goffeney, you see, doesn’t have any arms. He was born without them.

Since birth, however, he’s managed to turn his disability into ability. At one point or another, he’s done all of the activities mentioned above, and while basketball and football were hobbies of his youth, he still plays the guitar and drives.

Star Tomorrow fans have taken to Goffeney and mates, and Big Toe made it to the semi-finals of the competition. “This guy has got such a good personality and what he does is amazing,” says show panel member, music producer David Foster. “There’s got to be a place for him somewhere.”

While Goffeney is driven to succeed, that’s about all he’s driven to. The 37 year-old father of three is a licensed driver—and he’s had as many adventures on the road as he’s had on stage.

In 1998, for example, he was driving home from a gig at a coffee shop late one night and stopped by the police at a road block in El Cajon. When an officer yelled for him to put his hands out the window, Goffeney yelled back, “I don’t have any hands!”

The officer then drew his gun, took cover behind a car door, and took careful aim at Goffeney. “Get out of the goddamn car now, or I’ll shoot!” he cried.

“I swear to God,” Goffeney replied desperately. “I don’t have any arms!”

The officer nonetheless insisted he get out of the car and lie on his stomach. The only problem was, Goffeney was strapped in by his seat belt, and getting out would have required a lot of thrashing about.

“I knew that if I were to try to get out of my seat belt,” Goffeney recalls. “He would have shot me.”

Instead, Goffeney called back, “I’m disabled. It’s going to take me a minute to get out of my seatbelt. Don’t shoot!”

The crisis was diffused when the officer crept up to driver’s side door, grabbed Goffeney by the shirt, and patted him down. Goffeney, out of immediate danger, confronted the police officer and asked why he’d been stopped for no apparent reason.

“They never did tell me,” he says.

Most recently, Goffeney was pulled over for failing to stop at a stop sign. “I was scolding my sixteen year-old daughter about stuff and blew right through it,” he explains.

A few weeks ago, he attended traffic school and attracted the attention of the instructor and classmates. “I’m not sure Max [the instructor] knew how to deal with me,” Goffeney says with a laugh. “This guy with no arms sitting in traffic school.”

“So I just started talking smack.”

After the instructor cracked a few well-worn jokes and asked for students to introduce themselves, Goffeney got up and said, “My name’s Mark. I’m a full-time dad, a professional musician, and I also run a comedy school for struggling comedians. I left my card out front.”

He points out that he doesn’t see himself as special or particularly different. Other people do, though, and Goffeney says that they are often in for quite a surprise.

Several years ago, he and his then-wife had been constantly arguing one day, and as they stood silently in line at the super market, an elderly woman noticed the two of them were together and tapped his wife on the shoulder.

“Isn’t he just a miracle!” she said glowingly.

“Ma’am, he’s an asshole,” his wife replied.

Goffeney gives his wife all the credit for spreading, however brusquely, the awareness that a handicapped person should be treated no differently from the rest of society.

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