(applause)
- When I was a kid, I wanted to get a Harley really bad.
I was about seven
and I saw these guys riding.
I was in my dad's car in the back and
these dudes were driving in his Harley's and
I remember looking at him and saying I want to do that, man
I want to be free like those guys.
And
I started doing
heroin a few years later
so I couldn't really get a bike.
I couldn't I couldn't get tooth paste and shit
let alone a $15,000 motorcycle.
When I was 18 my parents found me in the house,
overdosed
almost dead.
And they took me to a hospital
and then they took me to a detox and into a rehab.
When I was in rehab, I met Fran.
She was beautiful, beautiful girl.
The first time I saw her, I was just like, wow, amazed.
And we started becoming really close.
And we went through the rehab.
She had been there a long time before me
and she was finishing up and I was just starting out
and she finished the rehab and I was still in there.
And then I finished
and we started dating
and life was pretty good, you know.
It was hard to get off of heroin
but I was able to do it.
And I went to college.
I started in college and Franny and I were together
and dating and just having a good time.
And
one day
she had a really bad fever
and I took her to the hospital and
12 hours later they said that she had this
pneumocystic pneumonia
I don't know what it was and they said it was from
AIDS.
I didn't know what to do.
I loved her.
And I wanted to be with her
New York got her sick a lot.
She cough a lot and had bronchitis all the time.
So we moved to Florida.
Like when old people moved down there
we went down to retire.
I figured that we would
live as much as we could and and do everything we could.
And for some reason I just wanted to make her life
the greatest life.
And we got married and we were living in Florida
and I thought the warm air down there
would help her heal and feel better.
But it didn't.
She went into the hospital one night
the next morning the doctor told me
that she had pneumonia again
And that they couldn't really cure it.
And that she might have a few weeks to live.
That was the first time I was told that
and I was devastated and she was devastated.
They put her on a hospice.
Two weeks later, they sent her out of the hospice
because she started to get better.
She was like thrown out of hospice for not dying.
(crowd laughs)
And only she could pull that off.
She was a young Italian girl and she was
not interested in suffering and dying
like who is? But she was extra, not fucking into it.
(crowd laughs)
A few weeks later, she got sick again.
I took her back to the hospital.
They put her in, doctor told me the same thing.
She's got a few weeks and she's going to be gone.
So they put her back in hospice
A month and a half later,
they sent her home again.
And our families, my parents, her parents
were happy about it. Oh, she's going to be better.
But I knew how the story,
I know how the story's going to end and
a few weeks later, she ends up
back in the hospital.
And on a Thursday of that week
my motorcycle, my Harley Davidson was ready to be picked up,
So I went that Thursday to get the bike and
it was beautiful. She was in the hospital
and I got a call that she went back to hospice.
So the day I got the bike, she was back in hospice
So I drove the bike over to the hospice
and I didn't know what to do.
Do I even, should I show her the bike?
What the fuck do you do?
So I went in, I brought the bike out front and
I went into the room and I said, "Franny,
I want to show you something."
And I brought her outside and to showed her the bike.
she was mad.
She's like, what the fuck is that?
I brought it to her
'cause it was our dream together.
And she was still very important to me.
And I just thought that would make her happy but
it didn't, so
the social worker came over to me and said, "Mike
people
are never dying.
They live and then they die and dying is in a moment,
and she feels that you're treating her as if she's dying
and you don't need her anymore.
And you don't love her anymore.
And that wasn't the truth, you know?
And I didn't know how to tell her it.
I told her every day
We used to go out for dinners and stuff.
She wanted to go out. I would take her out.
She'd have her oxygen tank with her
and I'd take her to a restaurant and
I'd look around and there'd be
I'd see another couple with the husband and taking care
of the wife.
But they were 80, you know, we were 20.
So I went home and I didn't know what do, and
I came back to the hospice and I brought a few
of my work shirts with me because like,
she loved ironing for me.
She was here now she'd fucking yell.
(crowd laughs)
So I came back a couple hours later and
my shirts were all ironed and she was
walking around the hospice dusting.
Like she would clean the place up.
She was on a lot of Morphine and that
some of you that never did it, it's wonderful.
(crowd laughs)
And it makes you feel excited about things.
So, and then she saw me and she's like, where's the bike?
And everything I wanted her to feel
in the beginning, she felt,
Because I asked her to iron my clothes
And I said, it's outside. Let's go see
and I took her out and
She said, let me sit on it.
So I put her on it
And then she said, can you start it up?
And she's still alive.
So she's still a woman and this is not enough. I want that.
(crowd laughs)
So I start the bike up and it's rumbling,
it was a loud bike. It was gorgeous.
And then she's, well, just,
can you just take me for a little ride?
Like just around the parking lot here?
And I'm like, fuck
You think she's going to fall off the back
And I have to tell her family, yeah she almost died of AIDS,
(crowd laughs)
But then I killed her on my bike.
(crowd laughing)
I promised her that like that the rest of my life would be,
first of all, I was going to live for her,
Like, I mean really live
and I would always talk about her.
I don't want to be here telling this story.
I promised her would.
So
Now we're riding around the hospice,
And, and she got the Morphine pole next to her
And we're junkies
we were junkies, we were different.
We were fucking freaks.
We were people, people cross the street
when they saw me
and her, she was a prostitute.
She was a fucking drug addict.
I mean all the shit that,
you know what I'm talking about, some of ya
I can tell
(crowd laughs)
So this was amazing, you know?
So we're riding around this hospice with this
Morphine pole fucking changeling
and all the staff come out and they're watching us like,
you know, and they're cheering us on.
So all these gay dudes and people that cared
about people dying, you know?
(crowd laughs)
Yeah. None of my friends were there, you know,
Frankie and Vinny, they didn't show up.
(crowd laughs)
So they're all
and then I hear the pole fall
and I literally think she fell off the back.
She unhooked the Morphine bag,
which means I want to go out on the street a little bit.
So I take her out on the street a little bit.
And then she just put her arm around my belly
and started rubbing it
And she said,
"Can we go on the highway?"
And I thought of all that we've been through
and all this suffering.
And I said, "Yeah, we could do that."
So I was on, we got on I-95 and
I headed up to 80
And she was just screaming,
Happiness,
Morphine bag was
(crowd laughs)
And for 10 minutes,
that wind, like I always
imagined the wind on a bike making you feel free, you know?
It's so powerful.
For 10 minutes, we were,
we were normal.
And that wind just blew all of death off of us.
Here I am
in Aspen
I won a special in HBOS and money but
nothing I'll ever do will be
That grand.
Thank you.
(crowd applause)