Actually, that reminds me: I’ve asked the publisher to let me include an appendix at the back of the book where I’ll have a little diagram of all the tattoos on my body and explain the significance of each one. I’m kind of sick of all these articles online that I’ve seen that try to catalog them, because like, first of all, they always miss a few, and second, like, they come up with all these totally insane, absolutely ridiculous explanations for what they represent, and so I’d rather just give you the official tally. Obviously, it’ll only be valid up to the date of publication, since I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be getting fresh ink up until the day I die, but maybe if they print a second edition of the book, I’ll update it. Who knows?

But yo! My first tattoo was with Mandy. We went and got them together. We were like, walking around on the beach one day in Santa Monica, and we had some popcorn or whatever—you know, we bought it from one of the vendors on the pier—and this bird just swooped down and jacked the popcorn right out of my hand. Mandy and I were laughing about it, and we were like: Yo, that was crazy! What kind of bird was that? And we asked this old, like, surfer dude on the beach, like: Hey, do you know what these birds are around here? And we like, pointed at one, and he was like: Seriously? And we were like: Yeah, what are these called? And he was like: That’s a seagull, man. What the fuck? And Mandy and I immediately started cracking up because we had obviously seen them in movies and like, seen drawings of them when we were in kindergarten and seen them around L.A., but neither of us had actually ever put the pieces together and been like: oh, that’s what a seagull looks like.

And this was right after we had lost our virginities to each other, so we just felt like it was the two of us forever. You know how that feels? When it’s first love? You’re just like: Whoa, okay, this is obviously the only person I’m ever gonna be with. Like, obviously, I can’t ever feel this way about someone else. And so later that night, we passed by a tattoo parlor, and we were just like: Absolutely. Let’s do it.

You’re supposed to have, like, a written permission slip from your mom or whatever when you’re that young, but the guys at the tattoo parlor had seen us both on TV, and so they thought it would be tight to give us both our first ink. And so we each got a little seagull right above our hearts. Just a simple little guy. It’s a really sweet first tattoo when I think about it. I’m glad it wasn’t something stupid like her name or a rose or whatever. It’s just this little seagull. I love that thing. Every time I look at it in the mirror after I get out of the shower, I think of Mandy. It’s crazy how in love we were then.