#2 David Garrick- Music

Clown, Interrupted with KiKi Maroon

Hi! KiKi Maroon here. Second episode and were already jumping into my insecurities. Why? Well, I sat down with David Garrick. He’s a music journalist in Houston and hits 3-5 bars a night, promoting as many bands and events as possible. He quit drinking which makes that extra crazy. Mid-conversation he talks about first getting sober and realizing he didn’t know how to talk to girls anymore. Annnnd that’s were I’m at now. I stopped drinking while in a long term relationship. That shit’s over, so now, I’m in my 30’s and don’t know how to go on dates. I don’t know how to talk to men, I don’t know how to look at men, and dear god, I definitely don’t know how to have sex with men. (Which is way different than drunk me. By, like, a lot.)

I’ve narrowed it down to 2 possibilities:
Either my lady bits are broken or I actually have to like them now. And I don’t know how to do that!

Unfortunately, David selfishly did not have an answer for me. So you will most likely be hearing about this problem, a LOT more.
But do we talk about other stuff. David also totaled his car and got a divorce, but his story is WAY different than mine. He and I disagree on a bunch of stuff including friends quitting, tacos, and AA (he’s not a fan).

If you have any thoughts about what we talk about, hit me up on twitter. Here’s my talk with David Garrick.

• David Garrick on Twitter and Instagram
• David’s articles in the Houston Press
• The long tail
• The LAMDA Center Houston- LGBTQ Recovery
• Did Wilt Chamberlain Really Sleep With 20,000 Women?
• Wilt Chamberlain is not Winston Churchill
• National Geographic calls barbacoa “Head Tacos”

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The Clown, Interrupted theme song is graciously provided by The Last Domino. You can listen to or purchase the full song HERE.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

KiKi Maroon: Hi! KiKi Maroon here. Second episode, and we’re already jumping into my insecurities. Here’s why- I sat down with David Garrick. He’s a music journalist based in Houston, hitting three to five bars a night. He quit drinking, which makes that extra crazy. Mid-conversation, he talks about when he was first getting sober and realized he didn’t know how to talk to girls – and that’s where I’m at right now.

I stopped drinking while in a long-term relationship. That shit’s over, so now I’m in my thirties- and I don’t know how to go on dates! I don’t know how to talk to men. I don’t know how to look at men. And dear God, I definitely don’t know how to have sex with men.

Which is way different than drunk me. By, like, a lot. I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities:

either my lady bits are broken

or

I actually have to like them now. And I don’t know how to do that!

David, selfishly, did not have an answer to my problem, so you’ll most likely be hearing about this a lot more. David also totaled his car and got a divorce, but his story is waydifferent than mine.

He and I disagree on a bunch of stuff – mostly friends, quitting tacos, and A.A. He is not a fan. If you have any thoughts about what we talked about, hit me up on Twitter (@KiKiMaroon).

Here’s my talk with David Garrick.

[Theme song: “Last Call” provided by The Last Domino]

David Garrick: If you’re going to go to jail in Texas, you should go to Comal County.

KiKi Maroon: Oh yeah?

David Garrick: It’s inNew Braunfels (Central Texas). They have really great cake. And their jail is pretty new – I was basically the first person in one of the cells years ago. I got arrested for a warrant on a ticket I’d already paid in another state. I guess it hadn’t been taken out of the computer.

KiKi Maroon: Haha! But wait, they had cake in your jail?!

David Garrick: Well, they were like, “We just served dinner an hour ago, but you can eat too.” They had cake and everything.

KiKi Maroon: What the fuck?

David Garrick: In Bexar County in San Antonio, I got P.I.s (Public Intoxication citations). They put me in the women’s jail, because they built a women’s jail and then realized real quick, “Oh, we don’t have that many female criminals in this county.” So, the women are only on like two floors.

KiKi Maroon: Because I wasn’t there anymore!

David Garrick: Haha, yeah. And the rest of the people there aren’t there for violent crimes. And there, it’s like a Hilton.

KiKi Maroon: Shut up!

David Garrick: I swear to God.

KiKi Maroon: Have you ever been in a Hilton?

David Garrick: So there’s three rooms. There was an attached rec room where you can go out at any time of the day and play handball or shoot baskets. I’m not making this up.

KiKi Maroon: What?! Okay…

David Garrick: Then the bathrooms are private. There’s a wall so you can’t see the guy at the desk. It’s not like in Houston where there’s five pods and a dude in a little watchtower.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.

David Garrick: The sheriff is in the room with you at the women’s jail. But he’s in the room where the beds are. He sits at a desk and they have a TV at the front of the room where the sheriffs show bootleg movies, or TV shows, or whatever that they ripped off the web. The bathrooms are off in the corner. The showers and all of the toilets have little walls. There’s no doors, but there are walls there, so…

KiKi Maroon: So you had privacy?!

David Garrick: Yeah, and they’ll let you sleep all day in Bexar County. Whereas in Harris County, you have to get up at a certain time. You can sit on your bed, but you can’t actually sleep.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah. Well, I was in the fetal position on the floor in the corner, freezing. The restroom was a toilet in the middle of the room.

David Garrick: Right, the holding cell thing?

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.That thing. And there was zero cake. There was exactly zero cake. Haha.

David Garrick: Haha. It is a little bit different. They give you a bag with two pieces of bread, some bologna, some mustard, and then this little peanut butter cookie with peanut butter and jelly on it. Which, I don’t know if any of that is actually what it is. I don’t know.

KiKi Maroon: What was the P.I. in San Antonio on the River Walk?

David Garrick: No, no, no. I was walking home from a party. I asked the cop morning after I was arrested, “Hey, how did you know I was drunk?” He’s like, “Oh, you had an 18-pack of beer and the bottom fell out of it. All of the beers were rolling into the street and on all fours, you were scooping them up as cars were whizzing past you.”

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God.

David Garrick: I was like, “Oh, that sounds about right.”

KiKi Maroon: “I just didn’t want to litter.”

David Garrick: Yeah. I mean it wasn’t the first time I got popped for that. You know, it’s just one night in jail. But when it happened five or six times, it’s kind of like, “Maybe I have a problem.” But it still took another five years for me to stop.

KiKi Maroon: Okay. So you do all these music reviews and you wrote for “Houston Press” and “Free Press Houston”?

David Garrick: You kind of have to go further back a little bit. I worked for Summer Fest (Free Press Houston’s now-defunct music and arts festival) and I noticed that younger people don’t know – and this is every person when they’re young; I was this way when I was young – they just don’t have a scope of what had happened [musically] maybe 10 years before.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.

David Garrick: And so, it was just like, “You know, it’d be great if I could write about stuff and compare modern bands to past bands.”

KiKi Maroon:, “If you liked this band, you’ll love this band”?

David Garrick: Right. This band sounds like this, and they don’t know who this is, so they look it up. And through Summer Fest, I ended up talking to Omar’s wife (former owner of “Free Press Houston” and Summer Fest) said they were looking for somebody and I should apply. I did and I worked for them for about four years. Then last year, I left to go to “Houston Press,” because it’s a bigger audience, it’s a wider demographic. When you write about music, you can get stuck in a rut. And that’s what was happening at “Free Press,”.

KiKi Maroon: How are you stuck in a rut? I feel like you’re at five concerts a night?

David Garrick: Well yeah, but what I mean is, when you write in a certain style, but you want to change it up but you don’t feel like you can do it at a certain place. So an example would be- I got offered to interview Styx.

KiKi Maroon: Oh, I just saw Styx!

David Garrick: Yeah.

KiKi Maroon: Like a week ago.

David Garrick: It was for that concert.

KiKi Maroon: Oh, okay!

David Garrick: It didn’t happen because I was kind of a jerk. I was like, “I only want to do Tommy Shaw (frontman for Styx).”

KiKi Maroon: Hahaha! Tommy or nothing! Did you go to the concert?

David Garrick: No, I didn’t go. I have seen them.

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God, David, it was so good.

David Garrick: I just felt like because Tommy Shaw is from the South and he’s got a sense of humor, we could joke about whatever. But that opportunity wouldn’t have ever come at “Free Press,” because it’s not as big of a paper and it doesn’t have that demographic. These papers are all set up by demo. So I got hired at “Houston Press,” because I could bring a younger demographic to it, whereas the editor will know who Styx or The Cult or Dashboard Confessional are, but she doesn’t know who Snail Mail, Shame, or Phoebe Bridgers are.

KiKi Maroon: I don’t know that either. I think I’m old now.

David Garrick: No, you’re not. Music is a thing where if you… So there’s a guy, I’m not going to say his name, but he was on the radio when I was in high school. He’s a really great resource and I’ve stayed friends with him for a long time. But if you ask him, “Well, when was the best music?” He’ll give you a timeframe and it just happens to be between his 18th and 25th year.

KiKi Maroon: I feel like that’s everybody though.

David Garrick: Everybody is that way.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.

David Garrick: People get to about 26, 27 years old and they’re like, “Well there’s no more good music,” or, “This all sounds the same.” And if you write about it, you have to open your ears really big. You look past the fact that it sounds like something that came out 10 or 20 years ago and you just judge it on its own merit.

KiKi Maroon: So I want to ask you something about that, because I always feel like, “Oh my God, there’s so much fucking music now, I can’t… it’s overwhelming.” Is that because of the internet and Spotify and all that? Or is it just that I’m old? Do kids also feel this way, like, “There’s so much music, I can’t keep up”? Tell me what the kids think.

David Garrick: Every now and again, a kid will say that they can’t keep up, but I think they just focus on what they focus on. A good example would be – so there’s a guy named Mike Watt, he was in Minutemen, a punk band in the eighties. Since then, he’s gone on to do a million things. He’s played with The Stooges; he’s on two Stooges records with Iggy Pop. But one time when I interviewed Mike Watt, I said, “Well, there’s so many fucking bands now.” He goes, “Well, in the thirties, there were three times as many bands!” Because there’s these musician registries. Now, I’m not going to say he’s wrong, because he’s fucking Mike Watt. He’s a legend and a really great dude. But I don’t know if that registry is counting studio musicians, or guys in a big band, but they weren’t touring individually. It feels like there’s more now… but it might be the same amount and we just know about more, because of all the internet stuff.

KiKi Maroon: I definitely feel like thata lot of the time.

David Garrick: I know some guys who book festivals. One said to me last year, “Well, there aren’t any real big bands anymore. Now, everybody’s a middle to low level band.” And there’s a reason for that. It’s because…

KiKi Maroon: What do they call that? “The Long Tail”? Do you know what I’m talking about?

David Garrick: No.

KiKi Maroon: Where the top tier is lower than it used to be, but then the bottom tier goes on forever. It’s a diagram where the bottom of the chart just goes on and on.

David Garrick: I know what you’re talking about. I know the reason there aren’t big bands is because all of that is essentially false. What record labels used to do is throw money at radio companies, give them money to play songs. Then they would run these giant ad campaigns and it would boost sales. And that model’s pretty much done, because there is no real radio anymore. There is radio, but it’s not the same. Things like podcasts and Spotify are the new radio. Now, people hire PR firms and there are some that are great and there are some that are terrible. There are some that are $10,000 a month and there are some that are $750 a month. So yeah, it feels like there’s way more music. I don’t think that’s an age thing; I think that’s real. Then there are people that come and go. I’ve written album reviews for people that broke up after the album came out and have never done anything since. Some of that is youth. Some of it is just being able to go to Guitar Center and for $1200, get a guitar, get an amp, get headphones, get the recording gear, then plug it into your computer and just record everything.

KiKi Maroon: Haha. Yeah, everybody is a recording studio. Like us, right now!

David Garrick: Yeah, exactly.

KiKi Maroon: Haha. I can’t complain about it.

David Garrick: But it’s not an age thing. I know how that feels.

KiKi Maroon: Do you though? Because you go to about five concerts a night! Even younger people don’t do that, I don’t think! I don’t know how you have the energy to do that.

David Garrick: Well, the not-drinking is a factor. It really is. I mean that sincerely. If somebody is like, “I don’t get how you don’t do this.” It’s like- I don’t have kids. I own my own other business and that kind of runs itself, so I don’t have to work hard. I don’t really do anything during the day. I just go out at night, and then I don’t even have to pay. So basically, getting in and out of your car is the biggest hassle.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah. But people are a hassle, David.

David Garrick: People are a hassle. But you focus on what you can focus on and that’s it.

KiKi Maroon: So, what made you stop drinking? Were you already a music journalist when you decided to quit?

David Garrick: I was working in radio. I hadn’t gone to the corporate side of things yet. I was “on-air talent”.

KiKi Maroon: You were a DJ?!

David Garrick: Yeah.

KiKi Maroon: I didn’t know that!

David Garrick: Yeah. It was short-lived though. I worked for a company that got bought by Clear Channel and they ended that. They had every right to, I was not good.

KiKi Maroon: Hahaha! I wish more of them knew that.

David Garrick: Well, I mean that whole world is hilarious. It’s little fish that hang around a big fish, and they eat whatever the big fish doesn’t eat. Radio is such a convoluted and, pardon my language, really ass-backwards model. I used to do this thing where I would say, “I’ll put my bonus on the line if this song isn’t a hit,” because I cared about music so much. And I got called into somebody’s office and they said, “What do you think we do here?” And I was like, “We play music and we have ads, and the ads pay for us to be able to play music.” And they were like, “We sell tamales and televisions.”

KiKi Maroon: Yeah. Ads.

David Garrick: “That’s it. Quit putting your bonus on the line.”

KiKi Maroon: “We are commercial vehicles.”

David Garrick: Yeah. And because the ads are so important to them, they don’t want to play new music. They want to play proven hits, because they don’t want people to turn the dial. Even though 22 fucking minutes’ worth of ads are enough reason to never turn on your fucking radio.

KiKi Maroon: Or 22 of the same song in an hour.

David Garrick: Right! Before I left I said, “Oh, I saw this thing in Europe…” It was Spotify, but I didn’t know what it was called. I was like, “these people were on their laptop and they could listen to anything they wanted!” They asked, “How much is it?” And I was like, “It’s free.”

KiKi Maroon: “Whaaaa? Laptop music?!?”

David Garrick: I remember they said, “That won’t work. The labels will never sign on for that.” And here we are today.

KiKi Maroon: Going back – so you were working at this place and you were not quite doing journalism yet. What happened?

David Garrick: I was married.

KiKi Maroon: Okay.

David Garrick: She was only 4 feet 10 inches tall. She was really small and I was scared to death of her. She told me if I didn’t quit drinking, she was going to leave. And then I wrecked my car.

KiKi Maroon: You did?

David Garrick: I went to high school with the cop, so I didn’t get a DWI.

KiKi Maroon: Wait, wait, wait! You wrecked your car and didn’t get a DWI?!

David Garrick: No.

KiKi Maroon: That is bullshit, David.

David Garrick: I know.

KiKi Maroon: I’m sorry, but as someone who…

David Garrick: I know.

KiKi Maroon: Goddamnit.

David Garrick: I’m not saying it’s fair, I’m just being sincere. That’s what happened.

KiKi Maroon: It cost me like $25,000.

David Garrick: Oh no, this still cost a lot of money, because I did wreck $140,000 Mercedes-Benz. I’m not demeaning it, because I should have gotten in trouble, and I didn’t. The cop was like, “You know, my sister died of alcoholism,” which I didn’t know. He said, “You need to get help. I’m going to make sure you get help.” In my head I thought, “Whatever. Just drop me off at my fucking house and I’ll never see your ass again.” And there he was, waking me up at five in the morning, like, “We’re going to rehab.”

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God.

David Garrick: I talked him out of rehab. I said, “I’ll just do A.A.” So, I quit drinking. It takes some people five or six times. I quit the first time. At first in my head, I was like, “I’ll do this just long enough to get everybody off my back and I’ll go back to it.” But my ex-wife, to her credit, was a whip-cracker; she was on me the whole time. In those first 90 days, we moved from Houston to San Antonio. I mean, just everything was stressful – new job, new title, more money, I had to find a place to live…

KiKi Maroon: And youcould not drink during all this.

David Garrick: I couldn’t drink. And I never say bad stuff about A.A., but the A.A. groups in San Antonio suck compared to Houston.

KiKi Maroon: Haha

David Garrick: In Houston, you’ve got something like 210 meetings a day. You’ve got like four or five in San Antonio. Keep in mind, this was 15 years ago. It’s probably way better now. But at the time… there’s this thing sometimes at Alcoholics Anonymous where you’ll tell a personal story and somebody is like, “Shut the fuck up. There’s no personal shit here.”

KiKi Maroon: Wait. What?! I’ve never heard that.

David Garrick: Yeah. The old-timers for sure.

KiKi Maroon: I thought the whole point was to tell personal stories.

David Garrick: I got accused of this and I will gladly admit it – they thought I was telling stories for the laughs and I totally was.

KiKi Maroon: Haha. You were treating it like an open mic!

David Garrick: Yeah, treating it like an open mic. Like, “Hi, my name is David and I’m an alcoholic. So anybody here from Denver?” But because I chose to tell stories that were hilarious…

KiKi Maroon: So it wasn’t, “No personal stories.” It was, “No hamming it up.”

David Garrick: Well, no. Those old guys, what they mean is they want you to talk about your process. They don’t want to hear these stories. It was like, “Just come and talk about why you’re grateful to be sober and what you did to get sober.”

KiKi Maroon: “We are going to talk about the current, not the past.”

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: I have not experienced that, that is interesting.

David Garrick: But I went to A.A. for… I don’t know, probably 18 months straight. Every time I would be in the city, I’d go. I tried to start a group in year two in Austin. At that point, my ex and I had separated. We sold the house in San Antonio that we had built, and I moved to Austin because they broke my contract. All of that happened in about six months. It was insane.

KiKi Maroon: Did your sobriety have anything to do with the separation?

David Garrick: It totally did. Yeah.

KiKi Maroon: Wait, so she said, “You get sober or I will leave you.” And then once you were sober, she left? Or you were like, “Now that I’m sober, I don’t like you”?

David Garrick: She left. Look, I can bad-mouth her, and I kind of will to a degree, to explain what happened.

KiKi Maroon: Haha at least you’re honest.

David Garrick: But I will say this, all she really wanted me to do was grow up. I was 25 years old, making a quarter of a million dollars a year. Why the fuck did I need to grow up, you know?

KiKi Maroon: So she saw the no-drinking as a part of it, but it was a larger thing. Drinking was just a thing to point out?

David Garrick: Yeah. You should be careful what you wish for, because you don’t know what you’ll get. And in that instance, she got… Yes. I was drunk all the time. But I was also like, “What are you upset about? Here’s a credit card, go to Hermès and get anything you want. Here’s a credit card, go to Louis Vuitton and get anything you want.” I had Burberry dog bowls at my fucking house, you know. And Gucci dog toys.

KiKi Maroon: Jesus fucking Christ, David. I’m supposed to be making you relatable on this podcast. Haha!

David Garrick: Haha, I know. Well, this is also a long time ago. I made a lot more money back then, and we lived very well. We both had nice German cars. We had a beach house. We always lived in a nice place. We never made dinner, which is ironic, because we built a house with an oven that costs as much as a car and we never cooked, but whatever. So yeah, she went from me saying, “Here’s a check. Here’s a credit card” to being like, “How much does this cost?” Because when you’re sober, you know how much money is going out your door.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, you’re not in a haze.

David Garrick: Yeah. And you think, “Wait a minute, I make $18 grand a month and I’m left with like $1200, what the fuck is going on?…Oh, I’ve got a $900 car payment on a car that’s not mine, and an $1,100 car payment on my car.” And just dumb shit, because you’re a kid and you don’t know what you’re doing. I remember one time going into Louis Vuitton and saying,“Oh, I’ll get all the luggage”.

KiKi Maroon: Ha. God. These are not drunk problems that I had. But that’s why I like this, we get to see everybody’s drunk problems. Haha.

David Garrick: Sure. And so, she got somebody that was really more focused on day-to-day life.

KiKi Maroon: So it was just massive stress, all piled up at once?

David Garrick: Sure. I mean, I get it. I would’ve left me too. And there was more to it – there was infidelity on her part, but I didn’t find that out until later. She just wanted out, and I get it. I don’t fault her . I’ll be honest with you – she was the smart one, because I would have stuck it out another 10 years and been like, “Oh, we’ll fix it,” you know?

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, and then it’s unhappy, unhappy, unhappy…

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: …until you’re drinking again!

David Garrick: Yeah. So, she’s the one who got me to quit, because I was literallyscared of her, because she was such a taskmaster.

KiKi Maroon: Was shesober, or was she just not drinking as much?

David Garrick: No, she wasn’t like me. There are two types of people… there are people who can drink a glass of wine a day and not have it be a problem. I was always like, “Let’s get to the end of this bottle!” One of the guys that owns Poison Girl (Houston dive bar) used to work at Rudyard’s (Houston venue) and that’s where I drank all the time. And he was just like, “I don’t know if you’re an alcoholic or just really thirsty!” Because I would knock back a bottle pretty quick. When you have unlimited funds and an expense account, you can drink Johnnie Walker Blue Label whenever you want and you don’t think twice about it.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.

David Garrick: You’re just getting wasted all the time. And because the corporation is giving you this expense account, you’re enabled the whole time to keep it going. As long as your work doesn’t suffer, nobody gives a shit.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, I always think about that when I watch “Mad Men” or something like that, how they have the bar set up in the office. Previously, I was so jealous, like, “Man, that’d be so great.” And now, I’m like, “Oh no!”

David Garrick: All those old executives had wet bars in a closet or something like that. When you would go to the Clear Channel headquarters – I don’t know where the hell they are now, but it was in San Antonio when I worked for them – I remember all those guys had wet bars.

KiKi Maroon: Oh, I believe it.

David Garrick: It was very 1968. You’re just expecting some buxom, red-haired assistant to come in, “Anything you want, Mr. Garrick?”

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, it’s set up for that. There are so many industries set up for that though, because while I was not rich at all… I was very, very poor. I was a stripping clown.

David Garrick: I was upper middle class.

KiKi Maroon: Okay, well, I did not have the funds for drinks. However, being a performer meant having comp tabs everywhere you go. So usually, places that wouldn’t even pay would say, “Oh, but we’ll give you a bar tab.” I thought “Sure! That’s the same thing! I would have spent $100 on drinks anyway!” You see it as comparable, even though you’re not paying your rent. It’s very much enabled. So you don’t see it as being an issue.

David Garrick: No. Even now, everywhere I go, somebody asks, “Can I get you a drink?” I’ve made a lot of really bad decisions. I don’t even think I made the decision to quit. It probably took a year for it to actually be my decision. Because after my ex left, she was so mean. I remember thinking, “Well, she wants me to start drinking again. I’m going to show her!” You know?

KiKi Maroon: Hahaha. That’s the best kind of spite though.

David Garrick: Yeah.

KiKi Maroon: I know how that can be. I went through a breakup, and my ex was sober. I had so many people ask after we broke up, “So are you going to start drinking again now?” And I had to explain that it had nothing to do with him. It just so happened that he was sober. It made it easier to have someone to talk to, I will admit that. But I didn’t want my sobriety to be attached to him. And I actually got to this point where I didn’t want to talk to him and I started going to A.A. to disassociate my sobriety from him. I was so worried if we failed, which we did, I would then spiral. Just because, “Oh, well fuck you.”

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: And so we didn’t talk about it as much.

David Garrick: You know, I usually don’t talk bad about A.A., but I haven’t been in a while. I didn’t get my 15 year chip last year. Look, it did great for me. My younger brother quit drinking about eight years ago and it did great for him. But he hit me up early on and said, “These are the most fucking judgmental people I’ve ever met in my life.” And I said, “Oh, yeah. That’s how it is.”

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God! Either I have a different version of “judgmental” or I’m going to different meetings. It makes me sad that y’all had those experiences!

David Garrick: Well, when I was in Austin I thought, “I’m going to start a group for people I know that work in bars,” because some of them had like three or four DUIs. This was before they passed that three-strikes law in Texas (where an offender with three DUIs can face life in prison).

KiKi Maroon: Oh, yeah. I know plenty of bartenders with multiple DUIs.

David Garrick: And I was like, “We’ll do it in a bar!” So the way A.A. used to work, you had to get approval. So I came down to Houston and I said, “This is what I want to do.” And they said, “Absolutely not.”

KiKi Maroon: Because it would be in a bar.

David Garrick: Yeah. And I said, “We don’t have anywhere else to meet.” And they said, “Well, find a place.” And I was like, “Fuck all of you! There are people in this room who have fucking vehicular manslaughter charges and you’re going to judge me for fucking having a meeting at a bar. I’m trying to help people! Who gives a shit if we’re meeting at a porn theater?” It might be messy…

KiKi Maroon: Hahaha! I understand them not wanting to put their stamp of approval on what they sawas temptation.

David Garrick: Sure. But here’s how I’ve always looked at that – if you’re that tempted, you’re going to do it anyway. Because here’s the reality – people can say, “Well, do you go down the beer aisle?” Yeah, and I don’t get beer. I have to pee and the bathroom’s down that hall.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.

David Garrick: But then you can’t walk down the baking aisle. It’s a known thing in the grocery industry that homeless people will steal extract. And the cheaper the extract, the more alcohol it has in it.

KiKi Maroon: The vanilla extract?

David Garrick: Yeah. So like Adams (well-known brand of extracts and spices) has a smaller amount, but when you get down to a brand you’ve never heard of, it’s like 85% alcohol, if not 90%. And you just chug it real fast and it’ll get you loaded really quick.

KiKi Maroon: I actually heard a news story about this woman who got arrested because there was some cop off a rural road somewhere who kept finding tiny vanilla extract bottles littered across the road. They realized she was drinking and driving, just tossing them out the window.

David Garrick: There’s this thing when you quit – it’s a mindset. I’ve looked at it like, “If I do this, I’ll die.” You have to get rid of a lot of your friends and you have to kind of rebuild your life. And I know that it’s got to be hard for you. It would be hard for me now, because I’ve built a different network. It would be harder, I think, to quit now.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, that’s what I was terrified of. I wanted to quit for a longtime before I did, but I had this fear that I was going to have to get rid of all my friends, change my whole life, do all these different things. And I didn’t! I will say, I did have some friends change, but it wasn’t about the drinking. My roommates still party, I’ll tell you that! And I still go out – I do all these shows, you know. I’m usually the designated driver honestly, so I’m fine with that. I will say, the friends that I did shift from, it wasn’t like, “they’re drinking, I don’t want to be around them.” It was like “Oh, I didn’t realize I don’t like you.”

David Garrick: Yeah, really that’s true. It was five years before I went into a bar.

KiKi Maroon: Really?

David Garrick: Actually, that’s not true. There were a couple of times we would do radio remote broadcastings where we would be giving away a motorcycle or something stupid.

KiKi Maroon: I went out more than ever, because I was so scared of changing. I was like, “Look at me provethat I’m the same!” I went to bars that I didn’t even want to go to.

David Garrick: It’s different for everybody. There were times where we’d be at a bar, but a bar in San Antonio ain’t the same as a bar in Houston. San Antonio is… I’m going to talk some mad shit. But San Antonio is a city where it sucks to be single and not have a kid because everybody you meet has a kid. Back then, like 2001 or 2002, nobody really checked IDs (at bars). You’d meet girls that were like 15! You’d be like, “Ohh, you have a kid?” So in your head, you think, “Cool. So she’s at least eighteen.” “What do you got going on Monday?” she’d say, “I got class.” And you’re like, “Oh, what are you taking in college?” She’d respond, “Oh, I’m not in college, yet.” And you’re like, “Oh my God, what the hell am I doing here?!”

KiKi Maroon: I’m from San Antonio originally. The teen pregnancy rate was number one in the country…

David Garrick: Ridiculous.

KiKi Maroon: We had daycares – not only in our high school, but in our middle school.

David Garrick: Wow. I didn’t know that.

KiKi Maroon: Yes, we had daycare.I knew a girl in eighth grade that had twins. And people were excitedfor her!

David Garrick: Oh no, I could see that…

KiKi Maroon: It was, “Oh my God, you’re going to have your little girls!” That’s where I came from…

David Garrick: It’s a completely different culture there.

KiKi Maroon: It really is.

David Garrick: And there’s a lot of things about San Antonio that are great.

KiKi Maroon: My parents are there, so I still visit often and I do think that there has been a culture shift. I think for a long time, it was just accepted like, “Oh, that’s how you grow up. You have kids when you’re young,” and all that stuff. But there are enough people now trying to, I guess, break the cycle. But it’s going to take a while.

David Garrick: That’s true. There’s plenty of things, especially music wise. Music is a good way to look at it. I think Austin is probably a year behind New York and LA. Houston is five years behind; San Antonio is 10; Rio Grande Valley (South Texas) is 15 or 20.

KiKi Maroon: San Antonio is super metal though.

David Garrick: Oh yeah, it is. We used to say, “Metal or Morrissey”

KiKi Maroon: Hahaha!

David Garrick: Someone like King Diamond (gothic heavy metal band) played some giant arena and Paul McCartney actually played in a smaller capacity place.

KiKi Maroon: I believe that. I didn’t know that Depeche Mode’s songs were from the eighties. I thought they were super current because they were always playing them on the radio.

David Garrick: Radio down there is interesting. Now that promoters are focusing on there rather than Austin, it seems to have gotten better. But back to the thing – It’s different for everybody. When I went to the bar, and it had been five years, I remember that the first thing I noticed was that no one’s life had changed. Everybody was sitting in the same spot. I remember this guy asking like, “Hey, where were you last weekend?”

KiKi Maroon: Shut up!

David Garrick: And I was like, “I hadn’t been in here in a while.” He’s like, “No, I saw you last weekend.” It’s like, “No dude, I hadn’t been here in five years, man.” And that’s what it is.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah. But time kind of stops when you do the same thing every day. I think it’s one of the unexpected consequences… or what’s the word for “good consequence”? Hahaha. One of the unexpected effects of not drinking – I do so much more! Like, “Oh, I want to learn how to fly a plane” or “I’m going to go to Mexico” or whatever. Because previously, I felt very busy. But it’s because, like you said – every day I was going to go to a bar.

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: I was drinking, just get shit-faced, throwing glasses, causing chaos, to have “fun” every single day. So when that was no longer an option… I’m still a really antsy person. I want to do shit and I have a lot of energy.

David Garrick: I agree.

KiKi Maroon: And so at first, I had a little bit of a depression where I was like, “I’m boring. I don’t know what to do with my life.” And then I realized like, “Oh, there’s so much shit I can do!” I have that energy, and it’s forced me – if I’m bored, just going and having a drink is not an option – I’m going to have to find some fucking shit to do.

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: And it’s been awesome! I met a girl who pilots planes! I didn’t know there was a school for that.

David Garrick: Oh, wow, I didn’t either.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, right outside of Houston. But you can go and it’s… I mean, it costs money, but probably no more than my bar tab! Haha.

David Garrick: Right. That’s true.

KiKi Maroon: And so I was like, “Maybe I’ll learn how to fly a fucking plane!” I didn’t realize that was going to be a thing. I just thought, “Ok, I won’t be hungover. I won’t be sick. And I won’t sleep with people I don’t like.”

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: But a bunch of other great stuff happened too!

David Garrick: There are little things they tell you in A.A. and one of them is, “Every time I drink, I didn’t go to jail. But every time I’d been to jail, I’d been drinking.”

KiKi Maroon: Well, it’s true for me.

David Garrick: I don’t even think about drinking anymore. In fact, I’ll be honest with you, my sobriety date passed and somebody said, “Hey, how long have you been not drinking?” I was like, “Oh, 2 days ago, it had been 15 years.”

KiKi Maroon: I’m the same way. I don’t keep track.

David Garrick: I don’t keep track. I don’t go to A.A. anymore, nothing against it. When I wanted to start that group, they didn’t want me to do it, and I was like, “I’m not coming back ‘til somebody dies.” And then a really sweet old lady that went there passed away and I had to go to her damn funeral. That sucked.

KiKi Maroon: Jesus Christ, David. I didn’t go to A.A. for the first year and a half, maybe two years. Because I was like, “I don’t need it.” My therapist suggested it and I was like, “You don’t know!” But she knew. And now I really like it. Yes, sometimes it’s really sad. But it’s the same reason I wanted to do this podcast – I like hearing people’s stories.

David Garrick: Sure.

KiKi Maroon: “Oh, okay. I’m not alone.” That’s really what it comes down to.

David Garrick: I will say this, I have three friends that wanted to get sober, so I have been to A.A. a couple of times. But when they ask, “Do you want to be my sponsor?” I say, “I’m not the guy, man.” Because I won’t keep up. My sponsor, Dennis, he’s such a sweet guy. He’s such a sweet man. He lost track of me and then he saw me doing a consulting gig for Greenpeace. I was teaching these kids how to give this pitch and he said, “Oh my God. I thought you’d gone back to drinking.” And I was like, “No dude, I don’t go to meetings really anymore.”

KiKi Maroon: You should have said, “I did go back to drinking. Thanks, Dennis. Thanks.” Hahah. I asked a friend to be my sponsor the first time I tried to quit – I tried so many times before I actually did. I called him crying after a really bad night. I slept with a Magic: The Gathering player, but a bunch of other stuff happened too. I called him the next day crying and was like, “I can’t do this anymore.” And he was sober, so I asked, “Can you help me?” He said, “Wait, do you want me to be your sponsor?” I was like, “Well, we don’t have to use that word! Let’s say… I just really need accountability, if you could help me with that.” He got so excited – “I’m going to be your sponsor!” I said, “Okay, okay.” and started texting him that evening because I had a show. Like, “I’m really worried. It’s going to be my first time not drinking…” Fucking silence. I sent him a text, like maybe an hour later, “Hey, I’m just really concerned because I know everyone’s going to ask me to do shots” Silence! Nothing! And I was like – “Fuck it. I guess it’s time to drink.” I got very drunk and I was angry at him the next day. But it’s not his fault. I know that. Now.

David Garrick: Right. The place I always take people is the LAMBDA Center (LGBTQ 12 Step Recovery Clubhouse), which is here in Houston. The reason I say to go to that one is, if you can get through one of those meetings without a) crying or b) thinking you deserve the right to drink… There’s people at Lambda that for whatever reason are dying, they may have cancer, they might have complications of AIDS, it’s a lot of things. You go there and somebody is saying, “The doctor says I have six days to live and I’m still sober.” And it’s like, “Okay, you win, you’re way better than me.” I mean, that kind of shit is just mind-blowing.

KiKi Maroon: Shocks your system.

David Garrick: Yeah. I don’t ever think about drinking again, but when people say they want to quit, I’m kind of a dick about it. I’m like, “Oh, are you willing to give up your friends?” and stuff like that. And they’re like, “What do you mean?” And I’m like, “Because you…”

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God, we go about this so completely opposite!

David Garrick: But..it’s a shitty thing that guys tell you early on in A.A. I used to hear these old guys be like, “Well, you got to pick the winners and losers. Some people are going to get it and some people aren’t.” Now, I don’t take that view. But you do have to give a little tough love to people and go, “Are you ready? You’re going to change; you have to change things in your life.” And I’m just being honest. You’re going to have to change some stuff. You can’t go and hang out in a bar.

KiKi Maroon: I mean yes, you have to change stuff, but I think you’re trying to scare them away from it versus I’m trying to be like, “It’s okay. It’s actually easier than you think.” That’s what I focus on.

David Garrick: That’s why I tell people, “I’m not the guy to be your sponsor,” because I’m not. But see, you’re different from me. You could go to the bar; I couldn’t. I didn’t want to go because I didn’t trust myself. I had this friend who was sober, at the time when I quit, for about ten years. And he was like, “you can’t go to the bar.” I was like, “But you work in a bar.” He said, “Yeah, it had been about five years.” So that was in my head. And then I asked another friend, Jason, who was in a band here in Houston, “Hey man, when did you start going back to the bars?” He said it had been about five years.

KiKi Maroon: Really?

David Garrick: I was like, “I guess that’s how it is.”

KiKi Maroon: I am just so spiteful and angry. Like, “You’re not going to tell me what to do.” But to be fair, it was a mindfuck for a long time. It took me a while just to be a normal person.

David Garrick: Yeah, I didn’t want to go through that. I mean, there were a lot of hurdles that are not actual hard hurdles. It was not like, “I couldn’t afford to eat,” or anything like that. But I remember going out, trying to talk to women and realizing, “I suck at this.”

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God, I can talk about that all fucking day!

David Garrick: Like, just so bad.

KiKi Maroon: I’m still in that! Okay, great! This is what we’re getting to! Sorry. I’m very excited right now, because you’ve been sober for so much longer than me. I am still learning how to do this. I got sober while in a long term relationship, and am now not in said relationship.

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: I don’t know how sober people meet people. My previous experience was: get fucked up, sleep with someone and never see them again, or see them for like five years afterwards. That is how I datedpeople. Now I’m like, “Oh, where do people meet? How do I talk to them? How do I deal with this?”

David Garrick: It’s… there’s this… so…

KiKi Maroon: Tell me, David. I’m lonely. Ha!

David Garrick: I hate saying this, and this makes me sound like an asshole – I haven’t dated anybody that’s sober.

KiKi Maroon: Well that’s fine! They don’t have to be sober! I just don’t know where to meet them.

David Garrick: I mean, just kind of go through your normal life, is how I look at it. There is no meeting spot, but if you go to A.A., you’re not supposed to touch anybody in A.A. for like, three years. I don’t know if they still push that, but that’s the way it used to be.

KiKi Maroon: I don’t care if they are. I don’t need them to be sober. I’m just saying – if me getting fucked up at a bar is not an option, I don’t know how to converse with people.

David Garrick: So this becomes a thing. About a year ago, I was at a bar here in town and I complimented a girl with an old traditional line like, “I like your shoes,” or whatever the fuck. And this girl said, “Oh, what are you drinking?” And I said, “Topo Chico. Do you want something to drink?” She was like, “Are you trying to get me drunk?” And then I just turned it real fast, “Yeah, the last thing I want to do is fuck a drunk chick.”

KiKi Maroon: Hahaha! And that worked for you, David?

David Garrick: No. Haha. Women don’t want to go near you if you say, “I don’t drink.” Because they feel like you have an unfair advantage over them. And I’m kind of like, “Do you not know how the world works?” I mean, if a guy sees you’re drinking, he’ll just drink less.

KiKi Maroon: It’s not just women; I’m telling you, guys have flipped out about me not drinking.

David Garrick: Oh, I’m sure.

KiKi Maroon: They think that I’m trying to fuck with them, or I guess they’re worried that I’m going to remember shit. Which I will – I’m not going to lie. I do remember things that you don’t. But they get very weird about it and I don’t know how to deal with that.

David Garrick: I think you just meet who you meet and you gauge them. I met this girl, she’s very sweet. She drinks, she smokes weed. I don’t care, whatever, because I know at this point in my life, it’s not going to affect me. But I was like, “Oh, I don’t go to that place because the people that run it are scumbags,” and I gave her all these examples. She’s like, “Oh, well, I’m going to go to that show.” And I was like, “Wow, really? I expected more out of you.”

KiKi Maroon: So judgy!

David Garrick: But it was just like, “Oh, man, this person seems really great.” Then you find out that they’ll throw all their scruples out for a fucking band? I’m like, “Go see them anywhere else. They’re playing in Austin two nights from now. I’ll pay for your gas, just don’t go to this place.”

KiKi Maroon: But that doesn’t sound like it had anything to do with sobriety. Haha. That’s just you dating.

David Garrick: No, no, but what I’m saying is, there is no… it’s been hard to date.

KiKi Maroon: Because you’re aware of all those things now.

David Garrick: Yeah, because that’s the one thing that you immediately realize is, you don’t really want to talk to drunk people. Or your friends get drunk and you notice how annoying drunk people are.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, I will agree with that, sometimes. I’m good at first. I’m just not good when they get blackout drunk. They get really loud.

David Garrick: Right. I would assume with guys, it would be a nightmare because you’re still kind of waiting for them to… perform to some degree.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, I’ve had sober sex – maybe I shouldn’t talk about that… Let’s just say sober sex with a very drunk person is not fun. I’m not going to pretend that it is.

David Garrick: I’ve done that before, too. When I first stopped drinking and I was single, it had happened in San Antonio and I was just like, “Yeah, this can never happen again.”

KiKi Maroon: I don’t care if you’re drunk. But yeah, if they’re really drunk, it’s like, “I’m not okay with this. It feels weird.”

David Garrick: And then once you’re far removed from it, you don’t even remember. And then, God, it’ll be five years down the road and you’ll be like, “Oh shit, was I this terrible at this?”

KiKi Maroon: I think I just need to walk around coffee shops and keep dropping things. I don’t know, this is all new to me.

David Garrick: Haha. I don’t know, because there is no answer. I don’t have an answer for you.

KiKi Maroon: Goddamnit, David, this podcast is over!

David Garrick: Haha! I’m sorry!

KiKi Maroon: This is a long, long set-up for me to figure out how to date people.

David Garrick: I legitimately don’t know. Like, I mean, I kind of feel like this – you’re attractive. I would assume if you approach some dude in a restaurant, you’re good. Unless he’s got a wife or something, you know?

KiKi Maroon: I think I don’t know how to do that sober.

David Garrick: So, okay, this happened the other night – I got hit on and then a friend of mine was like, “That girl was hitting on you.” I was like, “Was she?” I guess that’s not where my head is anymore. Forever, it was. Forever. I mean, I wasn’t trying to be Wilt Chamberlain, but I was deliberately giving him a run for his money.

KiKi Maroon: Haha. I don’t know who Wilt Chamberlain is.

David Garrick: A basketball player. He slept with something like 5,000 women. Or 10,000. Something like that.

KiKi Maroon: Okay. I was thinking of, what’s-his-face that did all the wars?

David Garrick: I don’t know, like John Holmes – some porn star who slept with like 20,000 women. My numbers are not even close to that, but what I’m saying is that I was getting an HIV test every 60 days just in case, you know.

KiKi Maroon: Oh, Jesus. Okay.

David Garrick: Well, I mean, I do have a relative that passed away due to HIV. So that made it way more real. That was in the eighties but you’re still like, “Oh my God, I got to make sure I still wear a condom.” The interesting thing is, now, I meet women all the time and they’re like, “Wait, why are you going to wear a condom?” And in my head, I’m like, “This is over with. This is not going to work.”

KiKi Maroon: Oh! Eew! No! That is concerning.

David Garrick: Right. But I think it’s a new thing. I think people just…

KiKi Maroon: They forgot?!

David Garrick: They forgot that you can die. Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.

KiKi Maroon: Haha. I mean, but still – like herpes, maybe you don’t die, but you’re bumpy forever. No offense! I’m not herpes-shaming people. But you can try to not get an STD!

David Garrick: Without getting into the comedy community here in Houston and talking about herpes, I mean, we all know somebody that has herpes. You and I know somebody. We know multiple people that have it.

KiKi Maroon: No, I know that… But why would you put yourself in that position?

David Garrick: I don’t understand that either, but I’m just saying that it’s a thing and you’re like, “Whoa.”

KiKi Maroon: Okay, switch over – chlamydia, whatever the fuck.

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: All the things! There’s plenty of things to not get.

David Garrick: Yeah, no. It’s okay.

KiKi Maroon: The point of this podcast is supposed to be able to help people, and I might be making it sound scarier.

David Garrick: No, I think basically, you are going to… I have friends that have met in bookstores or been set up.

KiKi Maroon: To be fair, I understand that I have a unique situation. I think that other people meet each other at work, and jobs, and meetings, and things like that. I work for myself. I produce these shows and so everybody that I know, I hire.

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: And that’s not a situation I want to get into.

David Garrick: Or they work at the venue or they’re a liquor rep.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah… So I have a very small bubble. Even though I have a million acquaintances, it’s a very small bubble as far as work and stuff are concerned. So I think I don’t have those interactions with people. And then the rest of the time, I’m just working at home all day, every day.

David Garrick: Right. I agree with you a hundred percent. I just told this to a kid that shoots photos for me – he’s 18 – and I was just like, “Oh, you graduated already? Oh man, I meant to tell you that high school is like the greatest dating pool you’ll ever live in.” Maybe college – maybe college a little bit more, because you have a little more freedom. But I was like, “When you get out in the real world, it’s very difficult to meet people.”

KiKi Maroon: Yet again, we have opposite experiences, David.

David Garrick: No, no, in high school, I was a total dork.

KiKi Maroon: I had one boyfriend from eighth grade until I was 21.

David Garrick: Oh wow, I didn’t know that.

KiKi Maroon: Oh yeah. It was not a good relationship; it was actually quite abusive. But yay – not there anymore!

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: But I didn’t know any better. I didn’t have the traditional high school or college experience.

David Garrick: Okay, I got you.

KiKi Maroon: I went on my first date at like 25.

David Garrick: Wow.

KiKi Maroon: Because yeah, we broke up and then I was terrified of everybody for a long time, because, “You’re a stranger, why would I give you my number, crazy?!” I had a lot of walls up. I was about 25 before I went on a date. So I’ve had a very different experience.

David Garrick: You did learn how to meet people, but was it always that pattern of – get drunk and hook-up?

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.

David Garrick: Okay.

KiKi Maroon: Oh yeah, this is new. My ex and I broke up last fall. So it’s only been 10 months or so where I’m like, “Okay, how do I sober do this?” My entire adult experience, everything has been: we met at a bar and I was drunk. I know that’s not healthy; I’m not pretending it is. But that’s just the pattern that I have, so I don’t know how healthy people connect.

David Garrick: Here’s what I will say, and not to make a game of it, but my older brother was like the king. He was like David Lee Roth in 1975. He was the dude that could walk into any bar like, “I’m going to fuck your girlfriend.”

KiKi Maroon: I was like that, but a girl!

David Garrick: And that all comes to one thing. He told me when I was 17, “I’ll tell you what the secret is.” And then he said, “One word – confidence.”

KiKi Maroon: Yep, I used to do that.

David Garrick: So when you walk into a room, you should be like, “I’m here.” You know, not in an arrogant way, just kind of like, “I’m here, so shit can begin.”

KiKi Maroon: I used to walk into bars and just pick.

David Garrick: Yeah. So I think if you see someone that you think is attractive, you should walk up to him and say, “Hey, I liked that book too.” Or whatever the hell they’re holding.

KiKi Maroon: I don’t like books, David, let’s stop that. Hahaha.

David Garrick: I don’t really like books or read a lot either. But I’m saying, you’re in a restaurant, we’re standing at the counter, somebody orders a barbacoa taco and you literally say, “Hey, I was going to get barbacoa too!”

KiKi Maroon: I do love barbacoa! You know me now. Haha!

David Garrick: There used to be a place in the San Antonio on the River Walk, it was weird because it was just a cart and that guy had the best barbacoa ever.

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God. There was a place on the southwest side of San Antonio. That that’s what they were known for. They had like 20 different kinds of barbacoa. It was set up cafeteria-style, where it was just all of these pots of meat to choose from. If people don’t know, barbacoa is cow cheek meat.

David Garrick: Cheek meat. Carne de chichis.

KiKi Maroon: Haha. “Chichis?” Isn’t that tits?

David Garrick: What is “cheek” (in Spanish)? This guy told me once and I thought…

KiKi Maroon: That’s boobs!

David Garrick: Okay, well he said, “chichis.” So I was like, “Okay.” And I did live in Mexico City at one point.

KiKi Maroon: Have you been saying that forever?

David Garrick: No, I’ve always just said cheek meat.

KiKi Maroon: Okay, because you’d be calling it, “titty meat!”

David Garrick: But he might not have known the Spanish word for “cheek.”

KiKi Maroon: I think he was fucking with you, David.

David Garrick: He probably was. I was in Mexico; my father was saying, “It’s barbecue,” and I’m like, “No it’s not, goddammit, it’s face meat.” And he’s like, “How do you know?” “Because I’ve watched them carve it and cook it.”

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, it’s cheek meat, but there are a lot of different ways that they do filler. At this one place, they’ll have one where the filler is brisket, another is eyeballs, another is tongue. So you have all the different textures of barbacoa. Shit’s so fucking good.

David Garrick: It’s great. And it’s soft and it’s a little oily.

KiKi Maroon: Oh, if it’s good, it’s very oily. You should be able to see through that tortilla.

David Garrick: Yeah. Haha. So you said Southwest San Antonio… I’m a white guy, so we just didn’t go to that side of San Antonio because there’s a little bit of gang activity over there.

KiKi Maroon: Oh yeah, that’s where I grew up. It was in a trailer park on Southwest Loop 410.

David Garrick: You go over there for jail. That’s it. You don’t have any other reason.

KiKi Maroon: Or barbacoa.

David Garrick: By the way, in San Antonio – after I said how great their jail is – I will tell you this: and this is bullshit. I got picked up on a ticket that I’d already taken care of, again, and I was like, “Hey man, I need to call my attorney.” He shows up and he’s like, “Yo, he’s free to go.” But it took three hours to process me. They picked me up at four in the afternoon. It was like midnight when they cut me loose. They took the batteries out of my cell phone, because this was before smartphones. I had a Motorola Razr, or something like that. They took all my cash and gave me a check for my cash.

KiKi Maroon: What? How was that allowed?

David Garrick: They took my cigarettes, like fucking assholes. I just had a Zippo lighter and my house keys. So I walked home in a fucking pimp-as-shit Dolce & Gabbana suit with Italian loafers. And this is when I made a giant leap in life. I swear this is true. I see this homeless dude and he’s smoking. And I go, “Hey man, do you have a cigarette?” He holds up a soft pack and shakes it so one comes out and I go, “Are you going to be here tomorrow?” He says, “Where am I going to go?” I was like, “Okay.” I walked all the way home, from the jail to my house in Olmos Park (1 hour 20 minutes on foot). I got home and my wife was pissed. Whatever.

KiKi Maroon: Haha! That’s a sub-story.

David Garrick: I got up in the morning, got in the car, drove down to that homeless dude, and gave him $500 bucks.

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God.

David Garrick: Because he had nothing… He had nothing in the world except cigarettes.

KiKi Maroon: I’m surprised he even told you he had any, honestly. I’ve said “I’m all out” way more times than I can count.

David Garrick: He might have been loaded or something. I don’t know. He didn’t even look at me, he just held up the pack and shook it until one came out. I’ve always kind of referred back to that moment as a turning point where you go, “I’m just going to be good to everybody.”

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.

David Garrick: “If they suck, let them be the asshole,” you know? And yeah, I will say things sometimes and people are just like, “I can’t believe you said that.” But it all comes from the same place, which is – you’re responsible for your own life. Everything that happens, you’re responsible for. All the contacts I have are through very hard work and not sharing that contact list. You’re doing whatever you do and any success I’ve had is my responsibility. But life is like Vegas – nobody hears about the times you lost five grand. And that’s what my life is like. All my bad decisions are on me, literally. And I have no problem saying that. And that is a thing that sobriety gives you, is that you go, “Oh, it’s my fault if I get kicked out of a bar.”

KiKi Maroon: Dear God, yes. Yes. I definitely blamed everybody for everything until afterwards and realized, it’s on me – the wins and the losses.

David Garrick: Yeah.

KiKi Maroon: It’s all on me.

David Garrick: Yeah. And that means, if you’re a record producer and you make five fire albums, and then you drop a really terrible one, you have to take the credit for the bad one just as much as you do for the ones that sell millions of copies.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, absolutely.

David Garrick: It’s the same way with life. Not nowadays, but for a long time, people would say, “Oh well they’re drunk!” And now, that’s not really allowed as an excuse in today’s society. “No man, everything I did when I was drunk, it’s still me.” And I was a blackout drinker.

KiKi Maroon: Oh, me too!

David Garrick: I wouldn’t even remember stuff.

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God, me too. Yeah, that was definitely a big part of the problem. Well, it depended on what I drank, because with whiskey, two shots in and I would completely black out, but go on for hours and hours and hours and hours. With other alcohols, things would just kind of get hazy.

David Garrick: Yeah. So you’re luckier than me in a way, because you wanted to quit. I didn’t want to, I was like, “I’m fine and I’m good. I can pay all my bills.” It’s kind of like when I quit smoking cigarettes, somebody was like, “Why’d you smoke for so long?” I was like, “Well, it’s not like I couldn’t afford to do it.” You know?

KiKi Maroon: I actually smoked way more than ever when I quit drinking, because I was like, “Fuck it. I deserve it. I’m allowed one vice.” So I started chainsmoking.

David Garrick: That’s how I looked at it, too.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah. I actually kept saying that I was going to quit but I didn’t. I ended up getting a biopsy for an unrelated situation. I’m fine, thankfully. But when you’re freaking out for two weeks, thinking you have cancer, it’s a lot easier to just stop smoking.

David Garrick: Right? I quit refined sugar about three months ago. Because I look at it like, every year you get older, you have to give up something you love.

KiKi Maroon: Are you judging the pile of sugar next to me right now?

David Garrick: No, I am not. Everybody I knew thought I couldn’t do it. But everybody that I knew thought I couldn’t quit smoking either. I used to tell people that I could quit drinking. When I drank I would say, “I could quit this tomorrow.” Cigarettes, I couldn’t, because I liked smoking. But I was in my office and my left eye started to hurt. I asked my assistant, “Hey, what’s it mean when your eye hurts?” She’s said, “I don’t know, call your doctor.” So I called him and he goes, “You’re probably getting ready to have a stroke.” And I was like, “What?!” He said, “Well, you’ve been smoking since I’ve seen you, ten years.” I’d actually been smoking since I was 18. At this time, I’m 39. He said, “If you quit before your 40th birthday, your lungs will regenerate back to what they were before you smoked.” I don’t know if that’s true, but he also said, “You have high blood pressure and it’s weird because your diet is pretty solid. And you exercise, but you still smoke. If you quit smoking, you’ll be fine. I can’t say you’re going to have a stroke right now. Go to Walgreens and do the arm cuff thing and call me back with the numbers.” And I call him and he goes, “You’re not going to have one now, but you might have one in a week.”

KiKi Maroon: Sounds like maybe he was full of shit.

David Garrick: No, no, I think he was real.

KiKi Maroon: But he got you to quit, so good!

David Garrick: I looked it up later and realized that I had unbelievably, alarmingly high numbers for blood pressure. So I quit.

KiKi Maroon: This sounds questionable.

David Garrick: I quit! And it’s funny, he said, “As your doctor, I can’t tell you to go get a vape. But as somebody that knows you and somebody that tried the nicotine inhaler and the patch and the gum, I would say go get a vape.”

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of people quit with that.

David Garrick: So that’s what I did. I still vape, which is not the best idea, but whatever. He said, “I can’t tell you that vaping is healthy, but I know it’s healthier than smoking.” So I quit and it’s been about three and a half years. Every now and again, I’ll have a cigarette, but it’s so gross. In the middle of my first puff, I’m like, “Why did I think this is a good idea? This is so disgusting.”

And I don’t know about you – did you get to go back to your wrecked vehicle?

KiKi Maroon: Oh, no it was completely smashed. My boyfriend at the time, they let him go back because he was supposed to get some papers out of it. I didn’t get to go through that and see it, but I was told… I mean, I know it was totaled; it was upside down. So… here’s what happened – I drove it… Well what I was told happened is – I skidded into a ditch, freaked out, pushed the gas pedal instead of the brake, slammed on that, and then I hit some sort of pipe down there. So I flipped in the ditch so hard that I then flipped out of the ditch and landed back on the street.

David Garrick: Wow. I just hit city property, like a guardrail.

KiKi Maroon: Oh no, no no.

David Garrick: Underneath an overpass.

KiKi Maroon: I fucked up our neighbor’s yard.

David Garrick: I’ve never told anybody this, but… I didn’t cheat, but I went to a bar when my now ex-wife and I were having problems. I took my ring off and put it in my car’s ashtray. The reason I wrecked is because I was trying to get it out of the ashtray.

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God.

David Garrick: I looked up, hit this thing, and skidded. So I wrecked…

KiKi Maroon: That’s so much symbolism though, David.

David Garrick: I know. I wrecked a Mercedes S-Class. This car is designed that when you hit your brakes, the engine is supposed to go underneath the car. But I just ran into something. So when I went to go to my car two days later, it had been at a dealership, fucked up, airbags deployed. Actually, the side ones did, but the front one didn’t deploy for some reason. I remember the car smelled like alcohol. I hadn’t been drinking in the car but you sweat, and it gets in the leather and whatnot. And I could see the engine through the air conditioning vents.

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God.

David Garrick: So I’m insanely lucky. It does have a thing there to keep the engine from coming into the car, but still, I hit it really hard. I was probably driving 60 mph. I look back at a lot of things and go, “Okay, I didn’t go to jail” or “I didn’t die.” I think of all the dumb shit I did when I was drinking, like jumping off a bridge with a bungee cord, and the cord was longer than the bridge.

KiKi Maroon: What?!

David Garrick: Yeah, I just broke two fingers.

KiKi Maroon: Did you land on your two fingers, like a cartoon?

David Garrick: No, the water was deep, but I still hit bottom. I broke two – my pinky and my ring finger.

KiKi Maroon: Oh okay, it was over water!

David Garrick: Yeah. It wasn’t over concrete. Sorry…

KiKi Maroon: Hahaha I pictured you like a cartoon, stopping yourself with your fingers.

David Garrick: I jumped into water, but it was by a dam. You know, dams suck water out, so it’s almost like getting sucked into a turbine. I’ve jumped in all kinds of water shit – jumping into swells, jumping off mountains into the ocean…

KiKi Maroon: You don’t have a drinking problem; you have a water problem.

David Garrick: Yeah. Like being in Kauai, Hawaii, and jumping into this waterfall. These kids that lived there their whole lives were scared to jump into this waterfall and I just did it.

KiKi Maroon: Jesus Christ.

David Garrick: That was all because I was drunk and fearless. Nowadays when I go to do something fearless… like a month ago, these kids were skating near my house and I was like, “I’m going to show them how to do this!” And right as I’m going to jump up, in my head I’m like, “What are you doing? You’ve got a mortgage.” I still did it. And I didn’t land it.

KiKi Maroon: But at least you thought about it.

David Garrick: Yeah, but it’s just like, you totally notice… The thing that I’ve noticed more than anything is- you notice what drunk people are like when you’re around them. Our industries, your industry and mine, are both the same. All fueled by alcohol.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, absolutely.

David Garrick: You go to a venue and there’s a placard with a beer name on it. Tours are sponsored by beer and liquor companies, and we can’t get anything done without these sponsors. And I’m not badmouthing them at all.

KiKi Maroon: No, absolutely not. I appreciate the sponsors that I’ve had so, so much. I couldn’t have taken my shows to the production level that they became without their help. But I will say – I’m getting into this place, and I can talk to you about this now – I am getting to this place where I am questioning that because this podcast is really important to me. I don’t know how many people are going to listen to it. I don’t know what it’s going to do.

David Garrick: Right.

KiKi Maroon: But it’s important to me because… when I quit drinking, I very rarely talked about it online because of the sponsorships. And because I was like, “I don’t want to be sober KiKi, I just want to be KiKi!” But whenever I would kind of… elude to it in a post or make a Tweet kind of, almost, saying something about my sobriety, I would get so many messages. People that either quit and were like, “Oh my God, I had no idea you were sober too!” or wanted to quit and were asking, “How did you do it? Do you have any advice?” And that just means a lot to me. I want to be able to help people and to share the stories. And so this is really important to me to do this. But at the same time, I do have that fear of like, “Okay, I should no longer accept liquor sponsors for the live shows…”

David Garrick: You don’t want to be part of the problem?

KiKi Maroon: Exactly. It’s very confusing.

David Garrick: I used to feel the same way. I’ve done events for Red Bull and I fucking hate that product. But I do like the blue one.

KiKi Maroon: Oh, the blueberry? Yeah, it’s good.

David Garrick: Yeah, I like that one. But yeah, they pay really well. I’m like, “Wait, I get paid this much and an airline round-trip? Oh, and you’re going to give me an iPad too? Fuck. Okay, I’ll go do that.”

KiKi Maroon: I want that!

David Garrick: There’s advertising everywhere. And at the end of the day, I don’t put this on any liquor company. I don’t put this on any bartender. I am the one that ordered the drink; they’re not putting it in my hand. And every liquor rep I’ve ever met was never like, “Oh, you’re sober? Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” They’re always like, “Oh, that’s cool.” And that was it.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, I agree.

David Garrick: They don’t see me as someone to push a product on because they know it’s useless, you know? And I don’t know if theythink this way, but I think they think of it like, “Okay, so we can be cool, but I’m not going to try to sell you on a new product because you’re useless. You’re not the person I’m trying to sell to. You’re not my demographic.”

KiKi Maroon: I just worry that it’s sending conflicting messages if I’m going to be like, “Oh there’s this podcast talking about sobriety.” And then it’s like, “So-and-so event, sponsored by vodka!!!”

David Garrick: I think your best bet would be to find someone that has a safe ride program through a liquor sponsor, like when Jack Daniels partnered with BeMyDD, a safe ride home app.

KiKi Maroon: Ohh! That’s interesting!

David Garrick: You could ask one of your liquor friends if they would sponsor a code through Lyft or something like that where you get a free ride. That would be awesome.

KiKi Maroon: I like that.

David Garrick: But no, I don’t think you’re… I mean, Marc Maron (sober comedian) has a podcast and he’s got everything from Stamps.com to Adam and Eve sex toys.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah.

David Garrick: There’s a theory in this country that pornography is horrible and it destroys lives. If you go to Missouri…

KiKi Maroon: I don’t go to Missouri anymore.

David Garrick: I know, yeah, well my ex-wife is from there.

KiKi Maroon: My ex-boyfriend is from there!

David Garrick: Yeah at Fort Leonard Wood, there’s a whole bunch of strip clubs and porn theaters. There are billboards like five miles outside of town that have little girls praying next to beds. And it says, “Don’t forget – porn destroys lives.”

KiKi Maroon: Oh my God!

David Garrick: I don’t think porn is bad. I think it’s healthy for people – whether you’re in a loveless marriage, or you have a wild imagination, or there’s stuff your spouse won’t let you do, or whatever it is – for them to get that out instead of it manifesting itself into something worse. So I think porn is great.

KiKi Maroon: Okay, so you want me to get porn money. Got it.

David Garrick: I’m just saying…

KiKi Maroon: I’ll put that in the show notes, “David says get the porno money.”

David Garrick: I mean, I would assume that it’s there. You know?

KiKi Maroon: I guess my mentality up until now has been- it’s okay, because at the end of the day, this money is going to pay for artists. I’m hiring independent contractors and I’m trying to help further a whole bunch of people’s careers. But I’m starting to wonder if that was a cop-out. That I was just saying that, but if it was going against what I believe. I don’t know, I’m still very confused.

David Garrick: This is one secret I will give you – let’s say you want to get Gatorade. But Gatorade doesn’t have to advertise. But PowerAde does. PowerAde would love to be Gatorade.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah. So, I should go after PowerAde.

David Garrick: It’s a lot easier to get money from number two or number three, than number one. And I don’t think you should be judged. I know you to be a good person.

KiKi Maroon: Thank you, I agree. Haha.

David Garrick: I would say most of the people I know in burlesque are good people.

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, you don’t know most of them. Hahaha. So, okay – final ask. I’m still working on this, so I don’t know if this is going to stay as the final ask for the whole podcast.

If you could snap your fingers and instantly, around the world, people instantly believed two things – what would they be? The only thing is, one has to be good for humanity, for the world, for everything. The other one has to be completely self-serving.

David Garrick: The one for the world would be to get rid of intolerance, across the board. And that’s everything. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia.

KiKi Maroon: Oh, I thought you were talking about poop.

David Garrick: No, no. That’s incontinence. Haha.

KiKi Maroon: Haha. Ah, damn it.

David Garrick: Who cares what people do? Who cares how they’re born, who cares who they love?

KiKi Maroon: I definitely feel like we’re moving that way though.

David Garrick: That’s what I don’t like. If I was asked, “Who do you hate?” I would be like, “I hate people that hate people.” You know?

KiKi Maroon: I like that. That’s a bumper sticker! “I hate people that hate people.”

David Garrick: It’s true. I’ve always felt like the reason some people hate other people is because they’ve never had them as neighbors. You know?

KiKi Maroon: Yeah, I think that’s going to be within our lifetime. I would like to believe.

David Garrick: I hope so. And then for the self-serving thing… it would probably be, you know… “That guy’s the best lover ever.” It would be something like that.

KiKi Maroon: There ya go! So if people want to follow you, find you, read your articles, where can they do that?

David Garrick: Read articles on HoustonPress.com, in the music section. Instagram is @DavidGarrickAwesome. I don’t know how to change the name. I know you can but I just don’t know how to do it. There was already a @DavidGarrick. Actually; the guy hit me up. He sent me a friend request but I’ve kind of gotten weird about friend requests lately. So I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know man…”

KiKi Maroon: Haha. “You sound kind of shady with that name.”

David Garrick: I don’t know. It was just weird. I remember one time, looking up my name and there was something like 27 in the world. And I was just kind of like, I should write down their info in case I walk my credit card bill one day. “It was them, they’re the one!”

KiKi Maroon: Haha. I am not endorsing that idea on this podcast!

David Garrick: No, that was like 10 years ago when I thought that.

KiKi Maroon: David, thank you so much for doing this.

David Garrick: Thanks for having me.

KiKi Maroon: I really, really appreciate it.

David Garrick: It was fun.

KiKi Maroon: Bye.

David Garrick: Bye.

[Theme song: “Last Call” provided by The Last Domino]

KiKi Maroon: I’m probably going to change that final question. I felt like I needed one to make all the episodes cohesive, but people get really weird about being selfish. I don’t know. Anyway, that was David Garrick! I hope you liked it. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, please subscribe and review it on iTunes, Android, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening to it. The reviews are how they know that it’s legit. And it helps get the show into more directories. That’s how you can help right now. Thank you so much for listening. I love you and I will be back next week.

[Theme song: “Last Call” provided by The Last Domino]