I broke up with a girl who I had been seeing for eight years.
I was 32 years old at the time.
Now, when you're 32 years old
and you've been dating someone for eight years,
you don't want to just start dating again.
But that being said, I would now like to tell you guys
the story of the first date I went on
with someone new after that breakup.
I met a girl. I thought she was really cool.
She was 24 years old.
That's how old I was the last time I went on a first date.
I asked her out, she said yes, I was excited.
She was not as excited.
I learned this when she did
not attend the date.
She stood me up.
That was an early indicator
that her enthusiasm did not match mine.
But she texted me.
She was like, "That was really messed up.
"I'm sorry about that. Can we hang out anyway?
Let's just hang out late at night? Is that cool?"
And I was like, "All right."
Back in the game. Let's do this.
So at that point I was, like, trying to figure out
what can I do with her late at night?
Now, keep in mind,
she did not live in New York City.
She was staying there for the whole summer.
So I wanted to do something with her
to kind of show off my town, you know?
Like, do something really New Yorky with her.
So I was like, "Okay, I'll take her to Chinatown."
They have all these 24-hour restaurants.
And I really like Chinatown.
If you're ever in New York, I recommend a visit.
To me, it feels like one of the only places
that Rudy Giuliani just forgot to clean up.
He just never got to it.
Like, you could be stabbed for no reason in Chinatown.
Easily, and I think that's pretty cool.
And I think that's a cool place for a first date.
I think that's cool.
So I picked her up in my car.
I drove her down to Chinatown.
We went to one of these restaurants.
We were sitting in a booth.
And I thought it was going well.
I didn't know that I was nervous.
And then she kind of looked at me funny.
And I looked down and realized that I was actually so nervous
that my arm was doing this.
Like, I was so nervous, I had dinosaur arm.
It was like I had the most sudden onset case
of multiple sclerosis in human history.
From there, it was all downhill.
The worst it got conversationally
was she said to me,
"When you were my age..."
(crowd groans)
"...was Google even a thing?"
(crowd laughing)
And that hurt.
Particularly because her instinct was correct.
When I was 24, Google wasn't really a thing.
Like, it was around, but we still used Yahoo! more often.
We used Ask Jeeves a lot.
We even still used Dogpile.
Dogpile was the search engine
that searched all the other search engines
'cause they were all so bad
that if you searched them all at once,
maybe you'd get the answer you were looking for.
I sense that some of you
remember it, most of you don't.
She had never heard about it.
I talked about Dogpile for 20 minutes.
On a first date, I just rambled about a search engine.
It was bad.
So when things were over,
I was driving her home.
And I just felt bad.
I felt bad about myself.
I felt bad that I put her through that.
And we pulled up in front of the building where she was staying,
and I turned to her.
And she turned to me.
And she just leaned over and started making out with me.
First date, right out of the gate.
(cheering) Thank you.
Yeah.
And I was psyched!
I thought that was cool. I was enjoying it.
But I won't lie.
I was also terrified.
And I know that's not a manly thing to admit.
But I was. I was like, "Who...?
This is not the mouth I kiss. What's going on?"
You know what I mean? Like, I was, I was scared.
And it got even scarier when she stopped and she goes,
"Hey, do you want to come upstairs?"
And I was like, "Okay, let's do it.
Let's do it, okay." So we go into the lobby,
and she pushes the button for the elevator.
But before the elevator gets there, she goes,
"The friend I'm staying with,
"it's a one-bedroom apartment.
"And she's home.
"We can't fool around in her living room.
She'll hear us, it'll be really uncomfortable."
And I went, "Okay, do... Well,
did you have a plan?"
And she goes, "I was thinking
we could fool around on the roof."
No, I don't do that.
I don't fool around on roofs.
I'm not into public displays of affection.
I haven't been since I was 17 years old
and an Essex County, New Jersey police officer caught me
performing cunnilingus on my high school girlfriend
in the backseat of my mom's Saturn in the parking lot
of the South Mountain Ice Skating Rink.
Ever since then,
I keep it behind closed doors, man.
I keep my business behind closed doors.
But in the spirit of saying yes to things,
I was like, "Great, let's go to the roof."
So we took the elevator
to the top floor.
And then we had to take a staircase
to actually get on the roof.
But here's a weird side note.
When I was up that staircase,
I looked and realized there was a secret floor.
There was this hallway and I looked down it.
And there was only one door on that whole floor.
And I realized somebody had the entire top floor
of this building in the West Village.
And she says to me, "Do you know
who lives in that apartment?"
And I said, "How would I know that?"
And she says, "Do you know
who the character actor Alan Rickman is?"
And I was like, "Yeah, I know Rickman!
"Rickman rules, man! He was the Sheriff of Nottingham
"in
"He played Snape in the
"And to every dude,
He was Hans Gruber."
I was like, "Rickman?
That rules!"
And then I was also like, that's really rad
because I know that Rickman's, like,
very successful, but I didn't know he was at the point
where he could just have his own top floor in the West Village
of Manhattan, like, that's cool.
Like, that's great that Rickman could get to those heights.
Like, it's really inspiring and, like...
uh, I'm on a Rickman tangent, I'm on Rickman tangent.
I'm gonna move on.
We made our way to the roof.
And the first thing I noticed
was that the building we were on
was significantly shorter
than all the buildings surrounding it.
So there were just windows looking down on us
from all sides.
So I'm making out with her
and I'm looking over her shoulder while I do it,
staring into these windows,
assuming I'm about to make direct eye contact
with a disapproving woman
who reminds me of my mother.
It's all I can think about.
But there's a part of me that's like,
"Well, this is semi-public.
At least it won't go too far."
Wrong. It went way too far.
Way too fast.
Her shirt came off.
My shirt was off. Her bra was off.
Next thing I know,
I'm half-naked with a 24-year-old stranger
on some weird roof, you know?
While we're making out, she goes,
"I think it would be a good idea
for you to go lean against that wall."
There was this wall
around the whole edge of the roof, you know?
And I go, "Why should I lean against the wall?"
And she goes,
"Well...
"I would-- I was thinking i-it would be a...
a good idea for me to..."
Like, I'm trying to figure out
how to say this for the censors.
Like, she was like,
"Uh, it would be a good idea for me to like..."
Like, with the, like, the mouth thing...
Like, does everybody...?
You're clear? You got it?
You know it... everybody?
Great.
She wanted to do the mouth thing, you know?
So, I was like, "Okay. Okay."
So I go and I lean against the wall,
and as I do, I am terrified to see
a New York City Police car come around the corner...
and stop directly underneath me.
And I'm like, "Oh, no...
"He sees me up here in the middle of the night
"on this roof--
"he thinks I'm about to kill myself.
"He thinks he's about to see
a body jump over this wall."
When really,
all he's about to see,
is the awkward head motion
of a 32-year-old man
getting a BJ in the summer heat.
Like, "That's it," he's just gonna see, like,
"Slower, a little-- not that slow,"
like, that's what he's gonna see,
you know?
That's what he's gonna see.
So now I've got this cop
giving me anxiety.
I've got these windows giving me anxiety.
And she walks over to me,
she starts undoing my belt,
and she asks me a question
I haven't heard in eight years.
She goes, "Are you clean?"
Now, I wasn't sure what she meant.
'Cause she could've meant, "Are you STD free?"
She could've meant, "Have you showered today?"
It's the middle of the summer, it could get swampy down there.
She could've been referring to a criminal record.
Who's to say?
So she asked me, "Are you clean?"
And my answer was,
"Yeah. Wait, what do you mean?"
Which is not the answer.
That is never the answer in that situation.
And here's the really messed up thing about that,
the answer to all the options was,
"Yes. I am clean."
I'm STD free, I had showered that day,
I don't have a criminal record.
I'm just so neurotic,
I needed to make sure I was answering
the intended question.
That's how
So she decides to continue...
uh... with the mouth thing anyway...
and I'm in my head, I'm like, "Why did I say that?
That's so humiliating." You know? And I'm also like,
"What is this cop doing?
"What are these windows doing?
What is this all about?"
You know? Like, everything's freaking me out,
giving me anxiety.
And I stop myself.
And in my head I was like,
"Gethard... if you can't enjoy this,
"what can you enjoy?
You got to just learn to relax, man."
So I told myself, "Just shut your eyes,
"take a deep breath...
"and when you open your eyes,
just enjoy yourself, you know?"
And I opened my eyes
and I looked straight ahead...
and I realized,
I was looking directly into a window
that looked into the staircase
we took to get up on this roof.
And it occurred to me
that if I was to get caught up here
in this situation...
it wasn't gonna be by any random person.
The only person
who was gonna look to his ceiling
and be like, "What's that noise?"
is noted character actor Alan Rickman.
Like, if a silhouette
walks past this window right now,
it won't be one
I don't recognize.
It'll be the distinctive, big nose,
half mullet of Snape.
That's... who will be walking by.
Like, if someone yells at me, I'm not gonna hear,
"Hey, what are you doing?" I'm gonna hear,
(British accent): "Are you getting your dick sucked on my roof?"
That's... what I'm gonna hear.
So now I'm freaking out about everything:
the window's freaking me out, the cop's freaking me out.
I'm like, "Why did I say that thing?"
Now, I've got, like, scenes from
You know what I mean? And it
and I
maybe some of you guys are piecing together
what I'm indicating happened.
For anybody who hasn't connected the dots yet,
I'll just put it like this.
The best part of losing your erection...
while a woman's in the middle of that act...
is no part.