Daniel Sloss, Jigsaw (2018) — Full Transcript

“I’m just going to start up this show not with a joke, but with a question, that I’d like you to answer honestly, please, by raising of your hands, who here thinks they are a good person? That is terrifyingly low. That is low. Germany put up more arms than you did. Just so you’re aware of your current standing. I was in Berlin, and they were like, ‘We didn’t do it. I wasn’t there. I don’t give a shit.’ I’m not sure if I'm a good person. I’d like to be, but being a cunt is fun. Like, you ever met those fucking weirdos that are like, ‘Is there any better feeling than just doing a random act of kindness for a stranger and knowing that you’ve made their whole day?’ Yeah, giving them the wrong directions. A lot of people think I’m a good person. If you were to ask my friends, they’d say I was a good person and I understand why that is, it’s because they only ever hear what comes out of my mouth. They never hear what’s going on in my head, and those are two hugely different things, by the way. From my mouth, I’m an incredibly polite human being, because I know that’s the way you have to be. But sometimes, when I’m alone in my head, sometimes Hitler. Obviously not the same things Hitler hated. Just the same, you know, passion that he had. Say what you like about Hitler. Passionate man. About the wrong things. Yes, we can all agree, the wrong things, but passionate nonetheless, like a true artist. Some of the thoughts I have genuinely disturb me. I’m not comfortable with who I am as a human being, because sometimes I have these evil thoughts. I never acted them!

For me, I would argue that’s conscious goodness. I go against my natural instinct to be good. I would therefore argue if you are a naturally good person, I am a better person than you are, because for you to be good, you don’t have to go through a struggle. That’s just your default setting. I’ve got voices to compete with. I don’t trust people with not having an evil voice in their head. You can’t honestly tell me you see a kitten and no part of your brain goes, ‘Kick it.’ You never do, for the voice is always there very confidently going, ‘Bet you can get it over the fence.’ Like if I ever need to cheer myself up, like if I’m ever sad or on a bus, those things are very related. I just need to make myself smile. I know what this says about me, but all I have to do to cheer myself up is just to picture any child under the age of ten with an ice cream and just imagine just fucking tripping him up. I know, it’s awful. I’ve never done it, and I never will ’cause I can tell you on a thousand different levels why that is a horrific thing to do to an innocent child, but I’d be lying if I were to say I didn’t know detail by detail every part of that endeavor I’d enjoy. Like, it’s his birthday. He’s got a big badge on. It says ‘nine.’ He’s a got a balloon, a big stupid grin on his face, ’cause the world hasn’t fucked him yet. ’Cause it’s his birthday, his parents were like, ‘Go nuts!’ He did, the ice cream stacked up precariously high. There’s sauce. There’s sprinkles. There’s two flakes in there ’cause he’s a greedy little cunt. He’s just so excited, but the thing is he’s also a very good older brother, and recently his little sister had to come home from school because she wasn’t feeling well, and his first thought, when he sees all of this extra ice cream on his birthday, isn’t to have it all to himself, it’s to run home and share it with his baby sister. ’Cause he loves her. And while he’s running home, I just go, ‘Nah, come on!’ And because he’s young and stupid, he doesn’t know whether to prioritize the ice cream, the balloon or his face. And he fucks all three up in a spectacular fashion? Like, as a rational adult, you go drop the balloon. We can buy you a new one, use that one to break the fall, save the ice cream. He’s not dropping that balloon. He loves that balloon. He doesn’t know, that’s fucking magic to them. He's an idiot. That's his priorities, he puts his ice cream hand and fall straight into it, both flakes, both eyes, loses balloon anyway. Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho! Does it not just warm your cockles? All right, clearly some of you agree. Clearly the rest of you have children that you ‘love.’

Let’s see if we can take it a little bit darker. Let’s see if anyone can relate to this horrific thought. This thought normally occurs whenever you’re in a relationship, one in the past for you, hopefully. You know, one of those relationships where you kind of just fall out of love with the person. You don’t hate them. You don’t not like them. You just don’t love them anymore. That’s a really weird situation to be in, because it’s all on you. You don’t know if that’s gonna last forever, but also it never feels like that’s an excuse you could go to them with ‘cause you’d sound like a sociopath. We need to break up! Why? ‘Cause I’m fucking dead inside. But I thought you loved me. So did I! Turns out I don’t! What about, like, three weeks ago? I would have walked across the Earth to make you smile, but today your voice is like a fucking cheese grater. So Bye! It’s because they’ve done nothing wrong and you don’t want to break their heart. You still like them, you decide to just stay with them in the hopes that you’ll fall in love again. Spoiler alert! You won’t, it’s dead. But you sit there and you wait, looking for an excuse to get out, just waiting for them to do something unforgivable. So you can actually break up with them with a real excuse and leave with your head held high, but because unlike you, they’re not a piece of shit, they won’t do that. So you have to start lowering your standards for what unforgivable is. One week in and you’re like, ‘If they cheat on me, this is perfect. I can leave with my head held high, and I will not look like a dick.’ Nine weeks later, they’re faithful, and you’re like, ‘Man, if they buy orange juice with pulp in it, that is I can't live like that.’ All I’m asking is, if you’ve never been in a situation like that, in a relationship where you felt trapped, like, you couldn’t get out of it and it was just easier to stay in it. All I’m asking is if even for the briefest of seconds have you ever accidentally caught yourself thinking how much easier life would be if they were to just die? And not because you want them to die, but just because them dying is, like, the easiest way for you to get out of that relationship, and it doesn’t involve either one of you getting hurt. Emotionally. I’ve had that thought. I’m not proud of it. I’m not bragging about it, but I’m also not denying that it crossed my mind.

Having evil thoughts doesn’t make you evil, acting on them does. I don’t trust people that deny adamantly, like, ‘No! No, I’ve never thought that. Of course I’ve never thought that.’ Really? You’ve been in love forever? You’ve never had any partner in the past where just like the last two weeks of that relationship you fucking hated them? You just got to the point you’re just at home and they phone you, ‘cause they’re stupid. And you don’t want to answer the phone ‘cause that would involve talking to them, so you’re just waiting until they hang up so you can get back on Tinder. And you don’t want to answer the phone, but the only reason you do is because that same evil voice in the back of your head is telling you that what this phone call actually means is that somebody, somewhere has just found a phone on a body. You’ve got to hide the disappointment in your voice when they answer. ‘Hello. Aww, baby, it’s you. How are you? What are you up to? Oh, you’re driving? No, I’ll stay on the line. What’s up? What’s happening?’

Did anyone see my show last year, by any chance? That’s not a great return ratio, but thank you nonetheless. For those of you who didn’t see the show, I spoke about death a fair bit. For the first time on stage, I spoke about my sister Josie. Josie had cerebral palsy, and she died when she was seven years old. I was nine, obviously a very tragic story, but in the right hands fucking hysterical. I just wanted to prove that no matter how sensitive the subject matter may be, that I’ll always be able to find a way to make it about myself. The show was called ‘Dark’ and that was meant to be semi-ironic, and it’s because I genuinely don’t consider my sense of humor to be dark. Now that’s not my way of saying it isn’t. I’ve had enough emails to know that it is. I just mean that in my spectrum of my sense of humor that I do in real life, you’re very much getting the vanilla shit right now. I have always had this sense of humor. I thought it was normal because it’s my parents’ sense of humor. I was raised with it. It wasn’t until I then went out into the real world with it that I find out that my parents are fucked up people. My parents will say the most horrific things at the most inappropriate times. And the reason they do this, by the way, isn’t to belittle the victim or to make fun of the tragedy or any of those other reasons nerds will tell you why people make dark jokes. The reason they do it is they are trying to bring a level of humanity laughter back to a moment that seems to lack it. Tragedy. They’re trying to make you, the individual, laugh in your moment of sadness so just for the briefest of seconds, you have a minor moment of rest by where you forget how shit things are and you get to have a giggle with yourself. But what that does manifest itself as is they say fucked up things.

Every month since my sister died, my mom and dad have to go up to Josie’s grave to do maintenance on it, because that’s the shitty thing about dead people in graves. It’s a very one-sided relationship. They’re very needy, the dead. And they rarely give back unless you’re delusional or religious. I could have just said religious. Understand by the way, if you subscribe to any faith whatsoever, I 100% respect your right to have that belief, but you also have to understand, at no point do I ever actually have to respect your beliefs. It’s stupid, and you’re wrong. But I do respect your right to be wrong in public. See if I give a fuck. No matter how tragic an endeavor may seem once you repeat that feat multiple times, you get numb to the feelings. That’s how human emotions work. There’s nothing wrong with it. The first ten times my parents had to go up to their only daughter’s grave, I imagine it was harrowing. The 97th time, essentially just gardening. And because they didn’t want to feel sad every single time they did it, what they did was, when they go up there, they make little jokes just to each other, just to make each other laugh in their moments of sadness. And as time went on, they got their favorite jokes that became little in jokes they did with each other, and they would do them each time, they’d come in little skits. Eventually, they were just two psychopaths laughing beside a grave, but they’re happy. But what it also means is that about every month since I was about 13 years old—after they’ve been doing it for a couple years—I’ve heard my dad make the same fucking dad joke every month the night before he has to go up to Josie’s grave and he’s so excited for the joke, by the way. I cannot stress how happy he is about doing the joke. Because it’s a dad joke, and he knows it ruins all of our days. He lives for this moment. And I know when it’s coming, he’s not subtle. Of course he’s not subtle. He makes the same face every dad has ever made since the dawn of time right when they’re about to do the joke. He just sat at the dinner table, and he’s got that smug top lip, just quivering while he waits for the lull in conversations, so he can really take a run up to the setup, just like: ‘So tomorrow’s the big day. We’ve got to go and deflower your sister.’ ‘No, Dad. I don’t want any dessert. You can have it all.’ I’m just looking at my mom waiting for her to divorce him. And she just joins in with like, ‘Her bush is getting out of control this month. Neighbors are starting to complain.’

I enjoyed talking about Josie on stage last year for several reasons. One, it was hilarious. I’m a genius. Two, it was very therapeutic in a way to talk about a tragedy that I suffered when I was young, but then sort of rationalize it more as an adult in a very one-sided narcissistic group therapy type situation. Very cathartic, but that’s the thing. I can do a new show ever year, that’s my rule to myself. I have to do a new show every year, I get people to return to the shows. I want to make sure you see new stuff and I obviously want the material to be different because I don’t want to have to flog a dead sister. Welcome to my favorite joke of the show. I want this year’s show to be better than last year’s show. Of course I do, like, you always want the new thing you create to be better than the old version of it. Parents, you’ll understand that logic. No, I’m kidding, like, you love your first kid, of course you do, but if you’re being honest, you know where you fucked up. We’ll just have another one, we’ll hit this one less. We’ll hit him more, we don’t know where the problems lie. Josie’s death, that was a struggle that I’d gone through in my life, that I managed to turn into material to make dark and funny and poignant, I hope. But I’ve done it now. And if I’m being honest with you, I don’t really have any other struggles. I really don’t, I’m a white, heterosexual middle-class, marginally successful, extremely well-hung man. Where are my struggles? I’ve not even been molested. Oh, I was dealt a cruel hand.

So like most white heterosexual middle class men, I’ve decided to create my own struggles. That’s what we do. We see the rest of the world with your valid struggles that we also create, but let’s not talk about that. I’ve gone for the classics, alcoholism and drug addiction, the cool ones. Now you can say drugs aren’t cool, but I’ve never seen a Mormon doing them. And I really I never thought I’d drink or do drugs, I really didn’t. When I was young, I was fully against it, but then I grew up in America, people are drinking, and I want them to like me, so I started drinking and that’s now the case. I drink like a goddamn fucking champion. Same thing happened with drugs. I used to hate the idea of drugs. I really did and then I got into comedy. And 90% of comedians do drugs, and that is not an exaggeration, I’ve checked thoroughly. Right, 90% of comedians do drugs. No, Daniel, surely that can’t be true, surely not him. Yes, him, absolute coke fiend. No, Daniel, not her, she’s a mother. Yes, a terrible one.

Let’s follow the train of logic, shall we? I didn’t like alcohol. I met people to drink alcohol. Now, I drink alcohol. I didn’t like drugs. I met people that took drugs. Now I take drugs. I’ve met loads of vegans. Nah. And that’s why I love vegans, because vegans are proving that peer pressure does not work. What a fucking myth. Not drinking when your friends are drinking, oh, that’s tough. Say no to a joint when all of your friends are high, it’s never been done before. But eating steak at a table full of vegans. I didn’t know it could taste better. I am such an insensitive selfish motherfucker. If I’m at dinner with any of my vegan friends, I will order the bloodiest thing on the menu, and then spend the next three minutes giving it a backstory. That’s mine. Yeah, thank you very much. Her name was Lucky. She was seven years old. She had a little black splotch in the back of her head. It was in the shape of a love heart. That’s where we put the drill through. Didn’t even finish her on the first one, it must have missed, ‘cause it took six or seven until she finally stopped mooing. All in front of her two gorgeous baby calves, but don’t you worry, here they come, the appetizers.

If you’re a vegan and it’s personal to you, this joke’s not aimed at you. Also, if you’re the type of vegan that you will trick your meat-eating friends into eating vegan dishes by just lying to us and telling us there’s meat in it, that is a shit way to play the game, and I 100% respect it. It’s a real it’s a real dick move, and I love it, right? If you’re those types of vegan, this joke is not aimed at you in any way. Enjoy the rest of the show. You’re a better person than I am. Who this joke is specifically aimed at is the fucking Facebook vegans. If you are a Facebook vegan, right, look into my fucking eyes, wherever you are. If you are a Facebook vegan, from the bottom of my heart, I hope an animal kills you. I will not be happy until you and your kind die of irony. And not even a meat-eating animal. I don’t think that’s funny enough. I want you to go on safari. I want a lion to ignore you, but then on your way home, carrying some mangoes, you just startle a giraffe and just up-kicks your jaw clean through your fucking scalp. Facebook vegans, you gotta start taking responsibility for your actions, because you are the reason idiots like me think we hate all vegans. We don’t, we just hate you. But you’re bringing the rest of your people down with your attitude. Facebook vegans are to veganism what Isis are to Islam. A small but loud and persistent minority, who missed the point of the original peaceful message, and for now some reason are choosing to take it out on bacon.

There are so many valid reasons for why the world should go vegan, arguments that I’ve got no reply to. The amount of landmass that it takes to raise cattle is astronomical, right? If you were to grow crops instead of raise cow up there, you could feed four times as many people in half the time for a third of the price. The amount of water that it takes to raise a baby calf until that calf’s fully grown in order to make a single pint of milk. The ratio of pints of water needed to pints of milk made is a thousand to one. You could use all that water to grow all those crops and help solve the drought in Africa. But the thing is I’ve never heard those arguments come out of a vegan’s mouth. I had to Google those for this joke.

The only argument I have ever consistently heard come out of vegans’ mouth is your weakest one and it’s this one: ‘You wouldn’t You wouldn’t You wouldn’t eat meat if you had to kill it yourself. You wouldn’t eat meat if you had to kill it yourself.’ ‘I wouldn’t wear clothes if I had to make them myself. What does my laziness have to do with any of this? You think I’d smoke weed if I had to grow it myself? No! Some kids in Colombia are doing it, and I’m sure they’re being paid fairly.’ ‘You wouldn’t eat meat if you had to kill it yourself.’ ‘You don’t know me. I’d kill you to eat this in peace.’ And this hate concerns me, it does, I’m terrified of it. ‘Cause one, I’m wrong. Two, not only am I wrong. I know I’m wrong, yet it’s still my opinion. That’s fucked. That’s an awful way to live your life. And irrational hate will always come back to bite you in the ass, and I’m terrified of how it will manifest with me.

What if one day, what if, God forbid, what if one day I have a vegan kid? I’m not going to love it. How could I? One day I have an 11-year-old son, right. He’s been struggling with sexuality for a while. He knows he’s gay and he knows there’s nothing wrong with it, but he’s also still in school, where people use homophobic slurs without realizing the damage that words can cause, but he wants to tell me, ‘cause I’m his dad. He loves me. He builds up his courage, and he comes into my study, and he’s like, ‘Dad. Dad. I’m gay.’ I’m like, ‘Buddy, buddy, Wolverine. Come here. Hey. Hey. Mom lost a bet, didn’t she? Yeah, she did. Yeah, she did. You’re small for an 11-year-old. You’ll be fine. Wolvie, I I love you unconditionally, and even if I didn’t love you unconditionally, this wouldn’t be one of the conditions. Like, I’m not going to pretend to know what you’re going through. I absolutely don’t. As you know, Dad-Dad loves puss-puss. But that’s fine. But there’s nothing wrong with you. Like, that’s the thing, there’s really no such thing as normal. Everyone on this planet is different in a thousand different ways, and there’s really no right or wrong way to be. Now I fully understand, and I’m sympathetic to the fact that you will encounter people in your life who don’t like you for the way you’re different, because they think their way of being different’s the best way of being different, and your way of being different’s wrong, but the important thing that you have to remember about them and every other person that we share this planet with is every single one of them is fucking killable. And if any of them fuck with you, I will gut their parents, okay? Stop crying, I didn’t raise a bitch. Now I love you so much, now go get some dick. Yeah.’ My 14-year-old son, he’s outside. He’s like, ‘Oh, Dad’s in a good mood. Can’t wait to tell him the news. Dad. I’m vegan.’ ‘Get the fuck out of this house. That is disgusting. That is unnatural. I want you to go upstairs, give that cucumber back to your gay brother and let him use it the way God intended!’

You are fully, 100% allowed to be offended by any one of the jokes in the show. That is your right. All I ask is that if you are offended by one joke, could you just have the common fucking decency to be offended by the rest of them? Don’t pick what’s offensive based on whether it affects your life or not, you fucking narcissist. But that’s how people get offended, isn’t it? I love that joke, that was hilarious, ‘cause I’ve never experienced that, but my uncle had that disease, so you’re a dick. Daniel, I love the fat jokes. I thought the fat jokes were hilarious because I’m not fat, so they were obviously fucking hysterical. And then you did that joke about being murdered, which I thought was amazing ‘cause I’ve never been murdered. Which is weird, ‘cause you’ve met me. I’m fucking unbearable. I’m very aware why people get offended by comedy. People take jokes literally. They take the comedian’s jokes at face value, and sometimes that’s not even the audience’s fault. Sometimes it’s down to the comedian. Sometimes the performance is lacking, the irony or the sarcasm doesn’t come through, but that’s the thing you have to remember. This is all a performance. It’s all a performance. I’m not like this in real life. I’d get the shit kicked out of me. And the whole time it was happening, I’d be like, ‘Yeah, this is fair.’ But that’s the thing about art. Art is subjective, and art is open to interpretation. But just because you interpret an artist’s art in one way does not necessarily mean that was the way they intended it to be interpreted. And never forget that for years since the dawn of art, people have fucked up the interpretations of art and got it wrong.

Back in the 1930’s, there was a very famous painter called Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock was fucking shit at art, right? Oh, couldn’t paint for shit. He was really bad at it, so he went to modern art, where that’s acceptable. He was one of those pricks, those knobs that just throw paint at a canvas, like, ‘This one’s called “Despair.”’ And then douchebags with neck beards and glasses with no lenses go, ‘No, I can see why.’ Jackson Pollock had this exhibition about 1935, can’t remember the date fully, but he had this big white canvas, right? And this was the whole bit, this was the main exhibit, he just got a big bucket of black paint, threw it at the canvas, smeared it around and then put in two little splashes of red paint. That was it. Then he fucked off. So they do this exhibition, there was an art critic there, which by the way lowest form of occupation that has ever existed. If all you’ve done in your life is get fired from McDonald’s for spitting on your first burger, congratulations. You have done more for society than someone whose job is, ‘Sometimes I like things and then write it down.’ So they asked this art critic, this waste of space. They go, ‘What do you think of this piece?’ And he goes, ‘Hmm, hmm. Interesting. I believe that this is a self-portrait of Jackson.’ All right, two points. One, he’s white. Two, fucking what, cunt? ‘Well, I believe the blank canvas initially represented the Earth, pre-humanity, vast, pure, clean, loads of potential, but the black paint itself, that represents humanity. Random, chaotic, often overlapping, no start or end in sight, just constantly moving, no idea where it’s gonna go and no idea whenever it’s gonna stop. All we can tell is that it’s constantly repeating its history and often over-riding it. And we can deduce that one day it will eventually consume all of the Earth. But the two red dots, these are Jackson. Small, insignificant, yet, they stand out against the rest of humanity.’ Now I know it’s wrong to judge people based off two sentences, but I am willing to bet my house. Vegan. Never been more certain of anything in my life.

Twenty minutes later, Jackson Pollock, the fucking artist, turns up ‘Mr. Pollack, thank you so much for this wonderful, wonderful exhibit. Just a quick question in regards to the main piece. Can we just ask you, what do the two red dots represent?’ And Jackson Pollock on record said ‘What? Ha! Huh. I must have splashed it when I was painting that one.’ Just because you can find meaning in the art, doesn’t necessarily mean that was the meaning the artist necessarily intended to be there. Take into consideration that you might just be a pretentious fucking cunt, okay? But I understand though when I say, like, life is meaningless. I do not mean that your life is meaningless. Your life can have a thousand different meanings or even just one. I’d recommend more than one in case you got it wrong. But to have this core value, this core belief, this core meaning to your life and have it forever is a stupid way to live and really challenging, especially if it’s a belief that you picked when you were young. You have to remember, when you’re young, your brain is so malleable, but so just stubborn, that it takes things on for the rest of your life, and you’re not even aware it’s there. It’s your subconscious, and I say this from experience.

When I was seven years old, my dad said something to me that to this day is the reason I will die alone. Very happily, I may add. But I was seven years old, I didn’t know what life was. I didn’t know what existence was, how the fuck would I know? So I thought I’d ask my dad ’cause he can fix a computer, so he must know. So I was like, ‘Dad, what do we all do? What’s the meaning of life? Why are we all here? What, what the fuck?’ And my dad loves his kids, so he wants to explain to his son in a way that he’ll understand, but unfortunately, his son’s a fuckhead. So he has to explain it in a way that a fuckhead will understand, and he accidentally did it perfectly, and it’s stuck with me since then. This is what he said, right? I’m seven years old. He goes, ‘All right, buddy. Just imagine that your life, my life. everyone else’s individual life. Imagine all of our lives are like our own individual jigsaw puzzles. As we’re going through life, we’re just slowly piecing it together, bit by bit, based on experiences and lessons that we’ve learned, until we get the best picture, but the thing is everyone has also lost the box for their jigsaw. So none of us know what the image we’re trying to make is, we’re just confidently fucking guessing. So the best way to do a jigsaw, when you don’t have the image to work off, is to start from the outside, the sides and the four corners. Family. Friends. Hobbies/Interests. Job. Now obviously, as you go through life, some of these bits are subject to change. Sometimes you’ll make new friends, and you’ll lose contact with old so you gotta move this corner around a bit. Sometimes you’ll get a job. That means you can’t have certain hobbies. You gotta decide then: Do I want more me time or do I want more work time? You gotta move the stuff around. Sometimes you’ll have a family member that dies, and they’ll leave a big hole in your life. In that moment you’ll have to find a way to fill that void, otherwise you’ll be incomplete forever.’ Now, that made perfect sense to me, because I was seven years old. I fucking loved jigsaws. So I was like, ‘All right, okay. So once you’ve got the stuff on the outside, what’s the main bit of the image? What we are all working towards?’ And he goes, ‘Well, that’s the partner piece. You and this perfect person who you’ve never met before to come out of nowhere, fit your life perfectly, complete you and make you whole for the first time in your life, much like your mother did for me.’ Seven. Seven years old. I wish he just said, ‘Ice cream!’ And we could have fucked off. And even though what he said sounds sweet and whatever, what it manifested in my seven-year-old brain was this, ‘If you are not with someone, you are broken. If you are not with someone, you are incomplete. If you are not with someone, you are not whole.’

And that’s not just something my dad made me feel, that’s something that we as a society have made every single child born in the last 40 years feel. Every Disney princess has a prince, every prince has a princess, every television show or movie always has a character in it that doesn’t want to be in a relationship. They’re happy with who they are. But then by the end of the series, guess what. They were wrong! They were wrong for wanting to be alone, what a fucking idiot. Everyone needs someone, yeah. They were just a toasty little marshmallow, weren’t they? It’s all to do with love. Divorce, an entirely common thing that there is nothing wrong with. When you’re growing up and your friends’ parents get divorced, you’re told to not talk about it or mention it to them because it’s taboo, and it is taboo is because every relationship on the outside is perfect, because none of us are willing to admit that none of us know what the fuck we’re doing. And when you raise children in that world, where everything points towards love and everything’s perfect on the outside, when you’ve raised them for 18 fucking years, when we become an adult for the first time in our late teens and our early 20s, we’re so terrified. We’re so trying to be an adult that some of us will take the wrong person, the wrong jigsaw piece and just fucking jam them into our jigsaws anyway, denying that they clearly don’t fit. Oh, we’ll move pieces out the way, I don’t need this hobby, I don’t need this opinion. Mom, who? The bitch with the tits? What’s she done for me recently? I’m gonna force this fucking person into our lives because we’d much rather have something than nothing. Then five years later, you’re stood looking at a jigsaw you don’t recognize, being like, ‘Ah! There’s a fucking cunt in the middle of this.’

Maybe you do meet the perfect person. Maybe you meet them, you go out. They make you laugh. You make them laugh. They’ve got a stupid laugh, but you fucking love it. They like what you like. They like your idiosyncrasies. It’s great. It’s perfect. Oh, my God, they’ve completed you. For three months. Every relationship is perfect for three months. And here’s why. ’Cause after three months, that’s when you realize that nobody else is a jigsaw piece. Everyone else on this planet is as deep and as complex and individual as you are, which means they too have spent the last 20 or so years of their life working on their own jigsaw puzzle, in the same way that you’ve been working on yours. You can’t suddenly expect them to give up everything they’ve come to achieve to suddenly fit into yours in the same way that you’d be pissed off if they asked you to sacrifice everything you’ve done, suddenly come fit into theirs, but now, because you like each other and because you’re interested in each other, now you have to make a jigsaw together. And we all know how fucking annoying that is. But you do it ’cause you’re in love and you’re interested, and maybe for the first couple years, it’s great. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, you love this bit of me. I love this bit of you. Oh, my God, we got the same thing, yeah!’ But time does not equal success. You can spend five or more years with someone, and only then, after all the fun you had, be looking at the jigsaw and realize you’re both working towards very different images. Only then realize that you want different things. And in that moment, you have a very, very difficult question to ask yourself. One. Do I admit the last five years of my life have been a waste? Two. Do I waste the rest of my life? 55% of marriages end in divorce. 99% of relationships that start before you’re 30 end. If those were the stats for surgery, none of us would fucking risk it. But because it’s love and we’re stupid, we just lie on the operating table like, ‘Maybe this time I won’t die inside.’

My generation has become so obsessed with starting the rest of their lives that they’re willing to give up the one they are currently living. We have romanticized the idea of romance, and it is cancerous. People are more in love with the idea of love than the person they are with. I am very aware that this is not a particularly funny bit of the show. Every time I’ve done this routine, my agent is just like, ‘Can you drop the fucking sad bit?’ And my answer is ‘no’ for three reasons. One, my show. Fuck you. Two, I think it’s one of the very few smart routines I’ve done. Three, I know I’m right. I’ve had this analogy in my head since I was seven years old, but it’s always spoken to me because I’m perpetually single person, so before I did it on stage, I wanted to talk to my friends, the ones who are always in relationships to see if it resonated with them in the same way that it resonated with me. So I was like, ‘I’ve got this analogy. I learned it when I was young. It might just sound stupid. But does this make sense to you in the same way it does to me?’ Within five months, four of them had broken up with their partners. Yeah!

I am not saying it’s impossible to find love. All I’m saying is that statistically you have not. All I’m saying is if you’re finding it hard to laugh at this routine, it’s because deep down you don’t love the person you’re with. So either start laughing or enjoy the awkward car ride home. From the bottom of my heart, I believe that 80% of relationships in the world, and therefore this room, are horseshit. A bunch of people who never took time to learn how to be alone, therefore never learned how to love themselves, so you employed someone else to do it. Prove me wrong. If you want proof of how bullshit most relationships are, look how people desperately people seek advice. ‘What’s the secret to a happy relationship? What’s the secret to a long and successful relationship?’ Here it is, gather around, come on: ‘Fucking nothing.’ It should be as easy as breathing. You should be nothing without them and everything with them. If it gets difficult at any point, get out, ’cause there’s 7.5 billion people on the planet. You’ll find a new one.

That ‘compromise solves everything’ is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of in my entire life, ’cause I’ve done it. I’ve done it so many times, every time I’m in a relationship, of course I do it. Everyone in my family, extended family tree, met, married, had kids by the time they were 25. Zero divorces anywhere in my family tree. I’m 26. I’ve fucked more people than my entire family combined. It’s all good. I’m not proud of that. Hey. So whenever I’m in a relationship, I’m so desperate to emulate my elders to have this successful relationship, that I’ll do what they say. And I’ll compromise and then I change who I am. And then for some reason, I hate myself. Why do I have myself? ‘Cause I’m not me. I’m whoever this fucking person manufactured. I’m done with it. Now I’m of the opinion that if you do not love 100% of who I am, off you fucking fuck. All right? Thank you. That’s not arrogance. That’s not narcissism. That’s the way every single person in this room should feel about themselves because if you do not love 100% of who I am, you do not love me. You love an idea of me, which you have falsely fabricated in your head, and it’s not my fault if I do not live up to those expectations. You have to love the good with the shit, mainly because I’m 90% shit. You have to love 100% of me, because that’s what makes me, me. If you don’t love 100% of who I am, there’s 7. 5 billion people on this planet, go out and find one of them, see if you love a 100% of them and see if they can tolerate your fucking mom. Because I’ll love 100% of you, I will. Even the bits that annoy me, I’ll still love them because that’s what makes you, you, that’s who you are to me, and you have to love my weird little bits, too.

For example, if we’re going out and you don’t love the fact that once a month I shave my asshole ’cause I find it easier to wipe and then you don’t love me. I feel I’ve lost some of you. I’m going to assume the people I lost, I’m going to assume that you’re the monsters that do not wax or shave your assholes. If you do not wax or shave your asshole, sort your fucking life out immediately. And allow me to clarify, I don’t care where you have body hair. I really don’t. Have as much, have as little as you like. It’s your body, but be a decent human being, would you? it’s disgusting not to. And I can use your own logic against you, if you were to get poo, human poo, in the air on your head, don’t know how you did it, but you did, you’re a legend. Would your one and only reaction be to get a bit of toilet paper folded over and go? That’s clean forever. I don’t need to wash this. I don’t need to cut this out. I don’t need to burn this with a fucking lighter. Nah, the magical toilet paper got rid of all the stuff. No, you wouldn’t. How’s your ass any different? Shave your fucking assholes. Just do it. That was one of them farting. I can see a lot a downers, right. I’m not done with this bit, by the way, not even close. Because some of you won’t do it. Some of you will go home and be like, ‘He was wrong.’ I'm not fucking wrong, shave your ass. I swear Right. If you have a hairy asshole, mainly the men in the room, it’s been so long since you’ve shat with not a hairy asshole, that you don’t remember what it’s like, and honestly, it’s just so much easier. ‘Cause if you’ve shat with a hairy asshole, when you wipe, it’s kind of like trying to brush crunchy peanut butter out of a rug. Like, you can’t. Listen to the fucking truth. You’re getting some of it, but you’re just moving bulks of it around. You’re clumping bits of the rug together, this bit is always going to smell like peanut butter. But once you shaved the ‘Oh, my God!’ The first time I shaved my butthole, I went for a poo. Afterwards, when I wiped, I checked the toilet paper. It was so clean, I thought I’d missed. It saves time. It saves effort. It saves paper. Vegans, you should be on this.

My ex-girlfriend was without a doubt the single worst human being I’ve ever met in my life. Her hobbies were manipulation and general cunt-ering. Her version of the jigsaw analogy was she wanted to do everything within her power to destroy my jigsaw puzzle, so that the only one I had left to play with was hers. She was a vindictively intelligent woman and spiteful to the core. She created this perfect person. This act that she acted out in public who everyone fell in love with, my friends fell in love with, my family fell in love with, who I fell in love with. She was flawless, and then behind closed doors, she was entirely different because she knew I wouldn’t have an argument if I then went out into the real world. I’d be like, ‘She’s being a bitch.’ They’re like, ‘She’s fucking perfect. How are you ruining this, Daniel?’ She knew I wasn’t like this on stage. She knew how insecure I was. She would find my insecurities and then she would then use them against me to make me doubt myself. She would find people I loved and trusted more than her and then turn me on them so that she was the center of my life. She was jealous of the most insane things. She was jealous of my relationship with my father. I’ve not fucked my dad in years. And even then, that wasn’t love, that was just raw sexual chemistry. Jeez. My best friend in the whole wide world is a woman called Jean. We’ve been best friends for about eight or nine years. We’ve lived together for five. She’s like a sister to me, she really is. A lot of people don’t believe it’s platonic, but it is, the idea of each other naked makes us both very sad. But we love each other, we do, we’ve just been together through most things. Two months into my relationship with my ex-girlfriend, she was like, ‘Sometimes I feel like you love Jean more than me.’ And I was like, ‘Baby, no! All the time!’ Every hour of every day I love her more than I love you. Because she’s put the ground work in. You don’t get to suck a dick and go number one, you sociopath.’ Except I didn’t say that, did I? What I actually said was, ‘No, baby. You’re right. I’m sorry. If that’s how you feel, I’ll, I’ll talk to Jean less if that’s case, ‘cause I should be focusing on you. If you don’t want me talking to my dad as much, I’ll just talk to you. ‘Cause you’re right, it should be about you.’ And of course, everyone else, my family and society agreed. Sacrifice. If someone doesn’t love 100% of who you are, change who you are until they do. So I changed myself. My friends didn’t like me as much, because of course they fucking didn’t, but they wouldn’t interrupt and stop it, because I was happy on the outside, because I was keeping up the fucking illusion. And I was so sad. I was so miserable. There were so many parts of her that I hated, but I would never even dare to have the audacity to change them. In hindsight, I know what they are. She was vegan. Yeah, now the first 20 minutes of the show make sense, don’t they? Yeah! For the first time in my life, I was fucking sad. I remember just one day standing in the shower just being like, ‘Is this it?’ Like, ‘Is this my life? Am I vegan?’ That’s what I came up with a joke about patiently waiting for her to die. That’s how desperate I was. And she’s not gonna. She’s vegan. That cunt’s gonna live forever.

Then one day, I finally broke up with her. I finally snapped. I couldn’t do it. Oh, my God, the relief and the joy and the happiness felt on that day. I strongly recommend you break up with your partners right now just to feel even a bit of what I felt that day. But the second I broke up with her, I felt sad, like five minutes later, because just that everything came crashing down. Why am I happier when I’m alone? Why am I happier when I’m not with someone? Dad says the center of your jigsaw should be about this partner piece. Why am I happier when there’s not one there? That’s when I realized the bit my dad got wrong but right in his own adorable little way. He said the center of the jigsaw is about partner piece, and he’s right and wrong. It’s happiness, find something that makes you happy. Make it the center of your life. And then everything else will naturally fit in around it. Is just so happens that for my dad his happiness piece and his partner piece are the same piece. They’re my mother. My mom and dad have been married for about 30 years now and to this day, disgustingly in love with each other. Like, it’s really sickening. My dad is adorably smitten by my mom. Like, every morning he wakes up in bed, he rolls over and he looks at her, and he just can’t believe his luck. And she’s the same every morning. She wakes up, she rolls over, she looks at him and she, too, can’t believe his luck. He’s not perfect. He’s loud. He’s obnoxious, but he’s a good man with a massive cock. And she knows what she wants, good on her. You get that dick, Mom, you earned it. Yeah! Get it, son, yeah! But that’s the truth for some people and not for everyone.

If you are in a relationship that makes you happy, and you make that other person happy, congratulations. Keep that up. That’s amazing. But to all the single people in the room, the perpetually single people, the people in relationships they would rather not be in, but it’s just too easy to stay in. I mean this. You have to learn to love yourself before you can allow someone else to do it as well. That’s it. There’s nothing wrong with being single. There’s nothing wrong with being alone. There’s nothing wrong with taking time for yourself to work out who you are before you go out there into the dating world, because how can you offer who you are if you don’t know who you are? There’s nothing wrong with being selfish for a bit because you’ve got the rest of your life to be selfless. If you only love yourself at 20%, that means somebody can come along and love you 30%. You’re like, ‘Wow, that’s so much.’ It’s literally less than half. Whereas if you love yourself 100%, a person that falls in love with you has to go above and beyond the call of duty to make you feel special. That’s something every one of us deserves, and that doesn’t mean you’re not happy. You can get your happiness from hundreds of different people and not even in a slutty way. Now don’t get me wrong, the slutty way is fucking fun. Right? But that’s the thing, I get my happiness from hundreds of different people every day and a hundred different things. Like, this is my job. I never in my wildest fucking dreams ever thought I would get to this stage of my fucking career. I was used to just telling fucking wank jokes in the bottom of pubs, right? I never thought I’d get to do this. Every single one of you, it adds a bit to the happiness. All my friends from all over the world adds a little bit, so instead of one main bit in the middle of the jigsaw, it loads little pieces. If one of them goes away, that’s a bit sad, but I can replace it. But I’m now terrified ‘cause at this point in my life, I can honestly say I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. My jigsaw is complete. That’s not good, ‘cause it’s not forever. I’m 26. I’ve peaked far too soon. The next couple shows after this are gonna be pretty fucking brutal. But I’m terrified having this perfect jigsaw at the moment because it’s gonna make me more selfish.

What if the perfect girl does walk by, and I’m just standing there going, ‘Don’t you fucking touch my jigsaw’? I’ll glue this down. I’ll varnish this. You’ll fucking see. Even if I were to get into a relationship, find that ‘perfect’ person I don’t know if I’d ever be happy or secure. Being with one person, trusting that person because as I know and as you know, it is impossible to tell whether the person you are with loves you from the bottom of their heart or whether they’re just patiently waiting for you to die. This is not the happiest setting to a show, but with this show, this very one, I’ve created true happiness. Because in August last year, I ended a 13-year marriage. Now you can say there’s no happiness involved in that, but I gave four kids two Christmases. I’m a fucking god! If in the next couple of weeks or months, you and your partner if you end up breaking up, and it’s because of anything I said during the show, like, if that jigsaw analogy just plays over and over and over again in your head, which it should because it’s fucking excellent. And the thing about doubt, doubt isn’t a flower; doubt’s a weed. I don’t need to water it. It’ll just slowly spread through your brain over the next couple months. One day your partner will be all nice. They’ll bring you breakfast in bed. And they’ll be like, ‘I got you some orange juice,’ and it’ll have pulp in it. And you’ll be like, ‘Fuck, Sloss was right.’ If you end up breaking up with your partner ‘cause of anything I said, for the love of God, please, please, please, tweet me. Because I’d love to know. Since August 2016, I’ve been doing this show. I’ve traveled around the world. I have been notified by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that I have successfully and officially ended 72 relationships. 144 lives saved. Where’s my Nobel Peace Prize? To any people watching at home, ‘cause that’s just been on a live tour. When this goes out live, I’m fucking saving this place. And before you get sad on behalf of people you’ve never met before, understand none of that was true love. I’m not here to break up true love. I never would want to, and I don’t think I possibly could. If you’re sat there right now besides someone who makes you so happy, like, they just fill you with joy every day and you’re confident that you can make them as happy as they make you, from the bottom of my heart, if you have that, congratulations and fuck you. All I’m saying is question fucking everything. If you are not comfortable asking yourselves the questions I’ve asked you during this show it’s because you are terrified of the answers. The worst thing you can do with your life is spend it with the wrong human being. There are 7.5 billion people on this planet, and you found your soul mate 20 miles from where you live. Seems like a bit of a cowinkydink to me. I understand there will be a lot of slightly older people in the audience listening to a 26-year-old talk about his opinions on love, relationships, whatnot, and you’re probably sat there going, ‘Daniel, you’re so young. You’re so naive, you are. You’re so cynical. I know that, darling, because I used to be like you. I used to believe the same things when I was your age. I totally did. I used to be like, “There’s no such thing as love,” and then I met this one. And we’ve been together ever since, and it has been a journey. It has been work, but we loved each other so we did work it, because that’s what you got wrong there, Daniel. It is about work. It is about crap, but it’s worth it in the end, because it’s us together now. We got these two beautiful children that have grown up, and they’re going through it, too. And I understand, Daniel. I know why you feel that way, but one day you will find it. You will find true love, and I can’t wait for you to get it for yourself.’ If that’s you, if that’s how you feel I hope you’re right. I really do. I want to be a husband. I want to be a dad more than anything in the world. Because I guess if you’re not right I guess if you’re wrong, the only other alternative is that when you were my age, you were so terrified of being alone that you forced yourself to love someone. I’ve been Daniel Sloss. Have a wonderful life.”—Daniel Sloss, Jigsaw (2018)