The worst my behavior got was, I took a bag of white powder,
and I walked up to a guy whose shirt said "security" on it.
And I went, "Hey." And he went, "What?"
And I went... (blabbering)
And then I ran away.
And at that point,
at that point, my friend Matt grabbed me, he's like,
"Dude, you need to chill out."
And what you should know is my friend Matt
is a recovering heroin addict.
This means that within a few hours,
I went from being completely straight edge for a half decade
to having a heroin addict tell me to chill.
And I said to him, "You're right, I'm out of control.
I'll just use the bathroom and calm down."
And that's when I went
and ate half a gram of Molly by myself
in a Porta Potti.
There's a sentence I wish wasn't on the résumé.
Once ate half a gram of Molly by himself
in a Porta Potti.
All told, I stayed up
for 36 hours
doing Molly. I went on this really big bender.
And in the middle of it, one of my friends turns to me
and he goes, "Hey, man,
"that girl you're always hanging around with,
you think you guys are ever gonna get together?"
And I said, "Oh, actually
"that's my girlfriend.
"And we've been dating for eight years.
"And the reason you don't know that
"is we're not affectionate with each other at all.
"And the reason for that is at the end of the day
"what we are is best friends.
"And I think we both have this romantic notion
"that it would be wonderful to marry your best friend.
"And I bet it would be wonderful, but you don't have
"to marry your best friend.
"And we're not going to marry each other.
"And I think we're both just a little too scared
and a little too sad to admit that and move on."
And then I paused, and I looked at him and said,
"Well,
I can't unsay that."
So I went back to New York City,
I broke up with a girl who I'd been dating for eight years.
I had a roommate I lived with for almost ten years?
Just moved out one day.
Just left. My whole foundation was just gone.
It was out the door. I started staying up all night.
I started partying all over New York City.
I started sleeping with tons of girls.
Trust me, I don't get how I pulled it off either.
I guess looking like a member of Weezer
goes further in New York than any of us knew.
And I make jokes about it, I do. I make jokes about it now.
But it was kind of a scary time in my life.
I was really living in ill-advised fashion.
And it got scary. I was having panic attacks.
It was really scary at points.
So I kept trying to tell myself, like,
"Remember that this is good stuff ultimately.
"Like, I'm feeling a lot of positive momentum
"I haven't felt in a long time, like, these are good changes.
"I can't forget that. I need to do
something permanent so I never forget that."
So at the age of 32,
without thinking about it at all,
on a total whim, I wandered
into a Brooklyn tattoo parlor,
and had them tattoo on my right bicep
the words
"It takes strength to be gentle and kind."
(crowd claps, cheers)
Now, that's a song lyric.
Does anybody know who wrote that lyric?
The Smiths.
That's a Morrissey lyric
from when he was with the Smiths.
For anybody that doesn't remember,
Morrissey, the front man of the Smiths,
the British quartet,
kind of like fey, sad-sack icons.
I cannot be getting Morrissey lyrics tattooed
on my body at the age of 32.
That is not acceptable.
I'm not a sad 19-year-old college kid anymore.
I can't be getting Morrissey tattoos.
And I can feel this whole room saying to themselves,
"It's a cheesy tattoo, but it's not the worst one
I've ever heard of."
But what you don't know
is I already had the word
"Morrissey" on the same arm.
Unacceptable.
Unacceptable behavior.