#43—Left side of my torso. This just says the name “KATE” and the date that Deez and I first played at Charizard. I kind of love that this is the only tattoo I’ve got with a girl’s name on it, because I didn’t even know this girl that well. Basically, I just got caught up in the sort of amazing vibe of that night, and I ended up hooking up with her in the green room right there at Charizard, and like, I remember her being the hottest girl I’ve ever seen. Like, legitimately, to this day, I still think about her. It was also the first time I had ever fucked without a condom, so the next day I was freaking out and calling up Deez and being like: YO, MAN, WHAT DO I DO?? And he was just laughing his ass off, like: Bro, chill out. I’ll have my doctor come over and test you. And anyway, I was fine, but I never heard from Kate again. I texted her a few times, but she just straight up never responded. And Deez and I were laughing about it a couple years ago when we were hanging out, and it was just like, the funniest thing in the world to us, because she legitimately ghosted me. Like, that doesn’t happen that often. LOL. And so a few days later, I went to the parlor and got her name tatted on my torso just as a way to commemorate that time, you know? Commemorate that moment in my life. I don’t know. I kind of imagine us running into each other one day and her seeing the tattoo somehow and me being like: Ummm, yeah, about that …

#18—Right butt cheek. This is one of the earlier tattoos I got. It’s just a treble clef and a bass clef. Pretty self-explanatory. I mean, I guess on the face of it, like, this is kind of a lame tattoo—like, this is kind of the lamest tattoo for a musician to have—but I think that’s maybe partly why I got it? Like, I don’t know, sometimes it just feels really freeing to like, lean into the person that a lot of people think I am—like, just get the tattoo that some creepy musician bro at a bar would get—because, like: If I put it on my body, then no one else can brand me with it, you know? Like, no one can be like: I bet he’s the kind of guy who’s got a treble clef on his ass, because then I can just be like: yeah, actually, I AM. Plus, like, all those things that we think of as lame, like, all those things we make fun of people for, are actually just very sincere, like, very beautiful things. Like, we’re actually just calling those things “lame” because we can feel that the person is being really embarrassingly honest about what they find beautiful or meaningful and it sort of makes us embarrassed to be confronted with it. But like, why are we embarrassed, you know? Is it because that person is stupid, or is it because we’re realizing how DEAD we are and how many bullshit defenses we’ve built up against simple, beautiful things? And like, why WOULDN’T I get a tattoo of a treble clef and a bass clef on my ass, you know? What could be more beautiful than the fact that we came up with a whole visual system for representing SOUNDS? I mean, seriously. I don’t know. That’s kind of incredible to me.