Nihilist interview-J

all my favorite musicians were alcoholics all my favorite writers were heroin addicts um all my favorite characters were villains so naturally i would grow to be a villain jay where are you from originally where'd you grow up um i'm mainly from chicago i grew up there for most of my life i spent about 31 years there apart i grew up right around pilsen and then i lived in bucktown wicker park uh i lived in the burbs for just a little bit uh my mom and my sister live out in the burbs now uh and i like it out there holy uh i'm 46. yeah you're a little younger than me but you we grew up in the same same world same city uh tell me about uh your family growing up you had both your parents uh until i was 12 i had both parents and uh until i was 12 i had uh what i guess would be considered a model childhood i i'm not from a broken home or anything uh they're middle class uh nice people very step freddy i had a gi joe flag not a lot of people could say that um but i uh [Music] so i kind of take the blame for it i guess i've i've never felt part of anything um even in what you people would consider an unbroken very nice home um i didn't have a connection to anyone uh i it was all kind of like i was a i was raised kind of like a pet everything was reward based like you do one thing you get a reward you get a treat uh don't uh don't act up um and then after um my old man left when i was 12 during the divorce i kind of had to become an adult right away uh so i at no point in time did i ever really feel like i was a kid which is probably why i am such a ch man-child i uh i don't like to work i can't keep a job because i don't handle authority very well um but i i test well and i get hired easily because i have a i look good on paper um i i answer questions correctly i could be who the person i'm talking to wants me to be you're intelligent yeah uh like i was you know double promoted i uh always honor role student uh won awards for writing won awards for math and uh was in advanced science placements uh like one of the things i'd have to do for fun as a kid with my old man is we'd play science games or a tribute pursuit like i when i was nine i knew pie to like 30 places uh and whenever i would do something intelligent um my peers like the kids that i was in school with uh i moved around a lot so i didn't i uh in kindergarten i uh was primed to be valedictorian if we never moved i was going to be captain of the football team straight a student um i like i was going to be the you know the frank zappa song bobby brown the american dream date raping cheerleaders you know all american hot dog boy and then we moved a lot and every time we moved i would reinvent myself a little bit to try and change to to fit into some kind of category uh and would it never happened um for one the harder you try to fit in to a category the more obvious it is that you don't belong there and uh in third grade and sixth grade we moved both time those are those are elemental times where in third grade it's right when kids are deciding they could pick on each other uh where they start singling out differences uh noticing that we're not all the same and in sixth grade it's uh we're everyone's starting to be an adult and the competition grows and if you're taught harshly to live the golden rule that was another thing and uh my when my parents worked when i was you know three to five before school started i was in a religious uh catholic nur uh day care facility christian not catholic but whatever i'm not uber religious now so it doesn't matter what it was then um but all these things led to uh treat people the way you want to be treated but if you do that you're kind of a pushover and all it did for me eventually was making me mean where the smarter i got the further into this i got the more comp competitive i got the meaner i got um and then i grew angry and that will lead you to doing silly things like um and a lot of tv was involved people say don't blame the tv um to me was even more books uh i got into charles bukowski at 13 13 and a half the the commercial no one says they want to be a junkie when they grow up uh i'm gonna do that just to show them wrong and like all my favorite musicians were alcoholics all my favorite writers were heroin addicts all my favorite characters were villains so naturally i would grow to be a villain um and i did for a while and it was weird i lived a double life where i'd be drug dealing but in a shakespeare play i'd be i i toured the world during lights or building sets or acting or in a choir at one point and while i was singing in churches in europe i was smuggling heshish from country to country um and i lived in thailand for a few years and in thailand i worked at a club bar um where we claimed money uh so we could take you know stolen money out of rotation mix it up wash it up put it back out in the thing through different uh you know you blanking the word i blank a lot of words now um um exchange rates you exchange the money for different money and exchange it again and then uh you you blur the trail so far that no one knows where the money came from anymore um i used to collect on loans uh and i didn't collect unloans for the money as much as i uh i wanted to hurt the person who owed money um eventually because i got so mean uh it you look for a reason um and i was provided a reason and an opportunity to go and hurt people so i did uh and you you really if you get into it you can enjoy it it's a really fun thing um and from all that uh i i i if you haven't noticed i have a rather powerful voice um and i could sound very professional if i want to i was lent to other uh criminal activities i committed phone fraud after i worked telemarketing for a while i realized that that's basically a scam with a business license so i just committed the same scam without a business license on burner phones uh taking credit cards through uh different services and ditching it all and from telemarketing i ended up being a pimp for a few years um a girl asked me to drive her once and gave me some money uh and then before i knew it i had three girls living in a loft with me um and it was almost like i i was a pimp but i worked for them um where who got the money they kept it but they provided me with everything i wanted um because that i guess that's how i kept everyone in line and kept them loving me is i'm like i'm gonna be here for you i'm your guy don't give me your money but you were supposed to keep the money but you're to take care of me that see that in a way if i have everything i want what does it matter who has the money like they felt very good about themselves they always came back to me and i got everything i wanted i mean i had them loving me they're never mad at me i had it i was eating i was drinking i'd place uh if if i'm being taken care of i don't who cares what money is i don't money doesn't mean much to me like i said i hurt people for almost nothing because i wanted to uh what i'd get into is the the act i enjoyed doing what i was doing i sti i still would um and then i guess that brings me around to uh the what i'm really into now um is robo-tripping and i got the idea from kurt vonnegut uh welcome to the monkey house where people who are intelligent or advanced or athletic were handicapped so that everyone was the same henry i believe his name was he was weighted down because he was athletic and he they put sonic noise and headphones so he couldn't keep a straight thought um which is why when i talk i'm going to ramble and i'm going to hop back and forth to different things um i decided you know like i did i was happy doing these things but i wasn't happy in general and i still didn't feel i belonged anywhere um so i robo tripping is when you you uh so i started robo-tripping and that's when you dumb yourself you make you make yourself stupid um there's a lot of ways to do it i i use cough syrup if you have a drowsy cough syrup like a a nyquil i i call it the uh what's the normal jingle the uh this sneezing yankee stuffy had fever so you can rest music i call it uh the coping hating clear my head forever so i can rest medicine and if you just take it by the bottle full and then um you have like a shot of whiskey or so to make sure the ethanol doesn't poison your insides you you stay in a kind of euphoric clouded state where um maybe maybe it's like the narcolepsy where you're never really there but you're never not like i'm well aware that i'm here and i'm talking to you but um like you can hear that i can't always think of the next sentence even though i have the word i don't have it uh and and it keeps me happy uh so i'm always kind of smiling because of it uh and it's uh it even kills me um where like i i write for a an internet show and i'm a comedian so i i still write a lot um but i don't care anymore and uh the release of that stress makes me very happy um i can't keep a normal job still but i never could anyway and again i just i can't deal with authority and now that i'm old i certainly can't i can't have some 23 year old tell me to you know make sure you offer extra ranch with the fingers today i got a job at a boba tea place i almost beat the guy up what do you think the core of your your dark take on the world is is from uh again i just think it's in my dark the reason it all goes back i never felt i don't feel i belong here um uh most people who grew up the way i did for the first 12 years would be happy um i wasn't very happy ever uh like when i think back in my childhood i remember like few moments like uh riding a roller coaster with my old man i was very happy one time uh when my mom would pick me up from school uh i just kind of remember riding in the car and feeling like little bitty moments where like you you know that you can feel better than you do and then it's immediately gone um where when i looked around either people were better at faking it than i am uh or i was too sensitive as a person i i never felt like a constant uh this is what i should be doing or this is where i belong i just um i i've i always felt a little outside and a little lost are you an outcast i'm very much are you a misfit um when i think of misfit i think of the rudolph cartoon with the dentist elf um [Laughter] so sure i'm a train with square wheels yeah you're definitely a nihilist right yeah um they call me the nihilist because uh and a lot of people don't understand what that means either nihilist is just a like a hardcore way to say hypocrite it's like the belief in nothing not i don't believe in anything i believe in nothing there's a difference there in the way you word it but like if you're in a situation and you see somebody who just innocently got themselves into a jam you know it's got it's it's it's uh 10 degrees outside blizzard they got two flat tires because they hit a bunch of nails on the road they're in a jam it's dark there's probably nothing open are you going to help them out are you just going to [ __ ] that loser it would depend on the person in my attitude at the time for example i was at a bar just a couple weeks ago and uh there's a lady in there who was obviously lying to everyone she said she got her wallet stolen her phone died and she had nowhere to go and it was raining and i knew that she was homeless and she had nowhere to go and it was really cold and really rainy uh so i just let it crash on my floor for a couple days um because at the time i was feeling like i needed to save the underdog you know i needed to take care of those that were also not part of anything however there's a character uh holly they call him hollywood ambassadors and he was a a rather famous one um who i i didn't care for much uh in passing and he died and they found him in a trash can and i thought that was hilarious and that could also be because he died just a few weeks after a friend of mine who was also a hollywood boulevard worker and she didn't get any kind of notice no one mentioned her she was a great beautiful person uh again maybe and maybe that's one of the things sometimes with those kind of people i do feel like i belong because they don't belong anywhere either right well you went before we started this talk you and i were comparing our take on a certain uh interview that i did on my channel and we uh compared our reaction you've only watched the first two yeah and my take on this young lady was i'm an optimist so i believe all kind of good things are possible and you watched them and said what i watched the the first one and immediately thought she was a liar um because maybe we smell our own a little bit yeah i didn't see that i just i watched it i'm like there even and i i eventually got played for a sucker oh yeah i was like even in that mo because a lot of people who don't like what they do who feel separated they'll they could convince themselves what they're saying is true in the minute like i i need help my parents didn't hold me enough and what i do now is it's a shame and i'm embarrassed of it i need and they can even get themselves to cry and they did they need but with that particular because there are a few interviews where i see someone who's do who believes it while they're talking to you who aren't they're not going to change but that even that one i'm like while they're talking to him like this is rhetoric this is not real this is someone who is uh who's learned to put a show on uh or who knows what you want them to say on camera it's a form of a hustle um it's not even a hustle it's just it's a survival skill it's a molded technique yeah it's a this is what people say in this position and they say it um like i said i i enjoy being the bad guy if i stopped uh dumbing myself down i'd go right back to being a bad guy um there and there's certain times like because i laugh a lot i like i enjoy humor there's a time in chicago a lot of people didn't know that i had kind of a double life and i was at a bar and i was making fun of some people i was in a bad mood and a couple other regulars who uh i wouldn't consider friends but we knew each other and they thought i was just the funny comedian who sometimes gets drunk and talks game and i was making fun of a guy who wanted to fight me and i was getting you know finishing my picture let's go outside and it was squashed and everyone went away and i was told how lucky i was that this big guy walked away because he's a bad man and at the time i had a gun tucked in my pants like you're not worse so are you generally happy are you a happy person i'm generally laughing i'm i don't know if that doesn't mean you're happy no but it means i i i see the humor in things now like and i'd i'd rather laugh like even when i was a fighter like my natural instinct when you hit me is to laugh which throws people off so uh i'm i'm not angry and i'm laughing so to me that's if that's as good as it gets for me that's where i get to yeah it doesn't seem yeah doesn't seem bad from the outside world it looks like i'm having a lot of fun yeah what are you proudest of in your life um i'm an eight-time published playwright it's great uh i won fringe festival awards yeah so you don't do that kind of stuff if you're too too deep in your darkness and depression and all that anger a lot of writing comes from anger i i don't think i was ever depressed in fact um that's one of the big things i don't believe in chemical depression like people say they have i've got depression so i can't do things i actually don't believe that's a thing because most of the people i know who say they're depressed have a reason and if you have a reason it's not a disease like if you're a kid who uh couch trips and doesn't shower uh and you you know you have the not on purpose dreadlocks and you're drunk from the second you wake up and you're high and you know meth all day and you can't get a job and you don't have an apartment and you're depressed you should be you're a failure failure is depressing um if you you're uh you're coming out of sex work and you work as a real estate secretary now and you don't like it because you don't make the same money and people don't talk to you as nice and you you can't afford all the the little luxuries you used to have and you're you're sad you should be that's failure failure's depressing if you're happy and uh you feel like you're supposed to be where you are at that time and you're singing along to journey on the music in the middle of vons and you look over at the tangerines and you're like these look like tasty tangerines and if i had a gun in my pocket i would just blow my head off right now that's a different thing that i believe people can be suicidal by nature and there's something triggering that it's character flaw i don't like calling it depression though because that's misleading and everyone has it's like the same thing is when people said um uh washing your hands uh what do you call that uh um we got flipped the light switch ocd uh obsessive compulsive disorder that came to light and people understood they're like i wash my hands like 10 times a day i've got the ocd because no no you don't like because it's there are people who like if they step on a crack they have to kneel and pray for five minutes that is oc like because you want to feel special doesn't mean you are special and why would you want to feel special because you have a disease like i don't want to feel like i don't belong anywhere and i don't want to feel like i'm like when i'm off of uh when i'm straight i feel like uh i used to i thought i had a friend once in high school because our saying was i hate myself but i'm better than everyone else and i believe that still uh she didn't and we're not friends anymore was just a lost little girl who wanted friends but i still believe that when uh when i am not cloudy i i don't know i haven't met anyone that i feel can that i can't outwit that i can't take advan like uh take advantage of if i wanted but i i just i get bored and then i get angry um and i forget where i was going i just i remember are you angry a lot of the time uh when i'm straight all the time i'm always angry yeah see i'm i think there's a lot of underlying anger with a lot of us me included and some of us can channel it into something positive i try to do that i usually i i recognize that all right i'm angry at something and i try to channel channel that into doing something creative and if i don't do that then i just get depressed yeah very quickly i i don't get to the depressed part i like i generally don't feel low um like the other day it sounds like it sounds like you're very creative yeah i'm i'm right whatever right being a comedian there's no way to be a comedian comet yeah um well that's uh stage time spotlight is just another drug yeah it's it's all for gluttony like um it it like if i another uh piece of literature i compare myself to i'm very much fourth house three musketeers uh i i just want um so yeah when i when i have a drink i'm gonna have 50 drinks um if it's wing night i'm gonna just go through it uh like i i do all things do early like when i found out about this um i was so go watch one and so i watched 50 of them [Music] what's your biggest addiction um life i um because i don't see myself in anything i just want to consume um so whatever is in front of me at the moment is my biggest addition yeah but that doesn't necessarily have to be something destructive no and in auto it's not always something destructive it's not a lot of my ideas if i if i start writing maybe i'll write 100 pages maybe two like and that's constructive and but that's my drug of choice at the moment is writing um i i mean i guess there's always a most destructive addiction and for me that would probably be alcohol um because yeah i don't need it i don't take it uh but if i start i'm not gonna stop until i pass out it's just uh you know once it hits your lips it's so good um way in my twenties was probably sex uh i was prettier then i have a good voice i have good eyes uh i could talk my way into a lot um just yeah i just i uh shopping if i you know if i there's so many different forms start collecting something i want all of them you know i just uh yeah i'm a i'm an ultimate consumer i just i want things if uh if it's something i find i like um because again if i get all of them maybe that's what i needed you know like i don't there is something missing and it's been missing forever um i've i i don't really feel like i uh i think most of us will go to our graves yeah never getting what we're missing maybe um and again the more the more i've started talking to other people the more i and that's okay can sense i can uh not a like a kindred connection but now i've put myself in circles where everyone's kind of lost um if i worked in the corporate world it'd be a different kind of loss i mean i guess uh although i'm a a total consumer i still don't feel that as greed because i feel like there's a an end point when i drink i'm gonna drink till i pass out when i collect i'm to collect till i have them all uh et cetera when i when i'm uh tripping i'm gonna trip till i feel good when i was pimping i i'm gonna just have what i need um or what i want even it is beyond needing uh because i but when i feel agreed i feel like there's a there's not an end to that um and if i thought there wasn't an end to it i i don't know what i would do because you can't complete a task that has no ending and that uh while i could fathom it it doesn't it doesn't bring you any kind of uh solace like i want to know that eventually there's a goal uh and i think that i guess is what a lot of people feel is there's no goal and so why do you know so [ __ ] it have you been in love before um i've thought i've been in love before but then like my mind will play tricks uh where i'll talk myself into thinking that wasn't real or um they they were out to get me um there's a i mean there's there's only three i could name them the three people too uh and if something didn't happen to end it it was my like the the first person i actually and i still believe i love this person um they committed suicide while i was away one weekend so i got to deal with that and that was wonderful um because i came back and they weren't answering i'm like why are they mad at me and then i discovered uh the body um and then of course i got questioned like did i do it and luckily i wasn't even in the state that weekend so no i didn't do it but thank you for asking like the one person that i thought was with me the one like that i shared a lot with that i i finally thought i had a connection to like is in pieces on her couch and you're gonna ask me did i do it um so that that's kind of hard um the the last one uh read something about me and started thinking i was a bad person um which it kind of was but also you didn't have to read that like everything was fine you didn't have to know that and everyone's got secrets that's not grounds for rejecting you yeah i mean plenty of plenty of women find guys in prison yeah or or it could have been but maybe you should have thought about it like um because i i still hear how like there's a she still thinks about you or she hates you because of this or this i'm like that was a that was a choice someone else made man that's uh i had nothing to do with uh well i guess i did because i i don't even know if i did the things she heard about i it just it's so long ago now but uh we were together for a long time and uh it was one of the few times i felt like i was part of a community because she had a lot of friends i had no friends so now i had a lot of friends and when that ended i had no friend i actually i still had two friends because they would call me up to tell me how much they hated her complaining and uh now my oldest friend uh is one of her friends that called me up because she hated her whining and it just became like we hey now we've known each other for 20 years um and then one in the middle was my fault um that's kind of a funny story um it was and oddly it was the girl i'm most connected to mentally uh we had a very similar dark sense of humor uh she was studying be a psychiat psychologist and i had considered going into medicine when i was first in college and and going into a psychiatry focus and i decided the best thing i could do in that field is not pursue it because i would want to [ __ ] with certain people like there's no i know me and then later i found out that all people who study psychiatry kind of feel that way so maybe it would have been a really good one uh it's too late now because i mean i guess i could go back and start over again but i'm almost 50. i don't want to i don't even know if about the few credits i had in medicine even still count um but we were going to a party one day she told me to keep one dude away from her because he's always making lewd comments or advance he's uh kind of being a dick when he's drunk and one time he drove her home from a party and then pretended he was too drunk to drive the rest of the way home and tried to stay with her and all this stuff so i'm mad already uh we get to the party and he makes a comment at me i make a comment back the waitress is slow with the food so i just start pounding drinks um and before i know it i'm like you know what i'm just gonna hit this guy get it over with and i walked up and i turned somebody and i put him through a table and i looked up and the guy meant hits over there that's a bad mistake yeah to make it even worse the guy put through a table had to drive me home so we weren't on talking terms after that i think she tried to get back with me about a month later because the the coffee shop where we had our first date closed and she called me up to tell me that and capricious youth i went i was only there once and hung up the phone and so those three are gone um i had a really abusive x after them and i haven't really dated since then i've just kind of uh i hang out with prostitutes and porn stars uh for one i've got a i got a cane so i've got a degenerative bone and nerve disease so uh i'm more interested in hanging out and laughing and chatting and drinking and partying than i am in uh sex anymore and so if you're a prostitute or a porn star you get better than i'm gonna offer you on a you know for work so i no longer have uh like the jealousy thing about dating someone who's sleeping with other people um i'd like you know a little now and again but my my libido is kind of gone because of the drugs i'm on and my leg hurts if we get into funky positions so uh like i i was getting into it once and i went to put my leg up on the bed you know put your leg up so you could drive home uh and i herniated my abdomen because i i can't lift my leg so the energy it took to pick that leg up hurt so bad that i tore something here and i bit a little part of my tongue off [Laughter] but that night i set out to ruin sex for someone and i did so so what what regrets do you have um i wouldn't say have any the the only sort of regret i have is the medical school one um and i've had that since i turned 40 where i thought if i would have stayed on the beaten path gone to med school and the uh interned and psych i'd be in private practice now paying off all that debt and instead i'm a comedian with a couple movies under my belt who can't afford a studio apartment and drinks cough syrup to stay stupid what would you say is the most important lesson you've learned in your life uh the most important lesson in life i guess is to uh know that it's it's ending uh you don't get to fix mistakes which is why i don't regret them because they all lead to place you don't get to try again so if there's something you want to do now do that thing uh what's the worst that's going to happen it'll kill you it's going to happen anyway all right jay thank you so much for sharing your story no problem super interesting thank you you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

Views: 1,035,855

Keywords: soft white underbelly, swu

Id: 4whoJFInlns

Length: 39min 16sec (2356 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 28 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Tyko_3]

What was the point of this interview? More than half hour dedicated to this one random edgelord?

[u/Danny_Mc_71]

The other interviews on that channel are good. I don't see why anyone would give a fuck about this "villain's" story though.

[u/Ucscprickler]

I can't lie, I find the interview with this guy on the same channel fascinating.

https://youtu.be/trNpXHAsQtU

[u/throwoda]

Didn’t watch the whole thing but not that bad. Him interviewing pimps is the best though he should just stick to that

[u/BeingNiceHelps]

No you don’t understand, ALL of his favorite writers were heroin addicts. EVERY single one. It just, like, happened like that oh my god help me