Reflecting on last year, I have to say that it was a big deal for me to stay up and count down the moments until “6 am Christmas morning...” I had waited a year to be able to actually sing that. I was with Evan, Rudy – my friend, the magician – and I was with Twiggy. There were a few other assholes that managed to squeeze themselves in the room, but I kicked them out. They didn’t have the right to be in the same room when our experience took place. It wasn’t our first moment of reuniting, but it was the first time we actually got to talk.

Right before we left for the very last leg of the tour, I was staying at The Roosevelt Hotel. It’s very famous for being haunted. I’m not sure how I feel about ghosts. I know I have said in the past, “Honey I’m going to haunt your vagina with my dick ghost.” I know that I’ve had experiences with Ouija boards, but my cats were barking this time. Cats don’t normally bark, but they were barking at the ceiling and at strange noises. Ironically, I had a portrait of Bowie that Mick Rock took hanging above my bed and across the room there was a photograph of Sid Barret. I was in the room and we were getting ready to leave the country. I had to meet up with my friend Jonathan Shaw who has written a few books now. He was one of the most famous tattoo artists. He is responsible for the “Winona Forever” – Johnny Depp, and the Captain Jack Sparrow stuff. He’ll be tattooing me tomorrow for my birthday as a gift. I’m getting “Together as one against all others” tattooed across my lower back – but I digress…

I went downstairs to meet Jonathan Shaw. Bowie is one of my idols, of course; Sid Barret happens to be one of Twiggy’s biggest inspirations. That all being said with the ghosts and strangeness and not seeing each other for this past year. I sit down and the first person that walks into the room was Twiggy. It was really strange – a complete coincidence out of nowhere. I would never go to this bar that’s in this hotel unless I was staying at the hotel – although I normally don’t go out anyway.

So we sat down and I noticed he looked a little bit sad. We were both almost in tears seeing each other again. We’re like twin brothers in some strange ways, although I prefer not to be blamed for certain aspects of his facial features. He wouldn’t want to get blamed for not having as big of a penis as he does, although mine has preserved its integrity, we’ll just say. In our five minute conversation, he had told me he had gone through a really hard relationship breakup very similar to mine. I could see it in his face – he’s like my little brother, so I knew. We exchanged phone numbers and it wasn’t one of those, “Yeah, I’ll call you”—like when John 5 always calls me – and I’ll get back to that later…

I went back upstairs and told Evan. I didn’t know how to feel about it right away. I was happy, but didn’t know what to do. The conversation didn’t go any further than, “Hey, when you get back into town in six weeks, we should hang out. Let’s get together.” I asked him, “How was it with my old pal Trent?” I think he best described it as “A vacuum of happiness.” I guess he found out he wasn’t in the band anymore when he read it in the press. He did have a strange comment for me “Never in your craziest days of ever doing anything” – and I’ve never been an extreme dick in any way to Twiggy because I’ve never needed to. We never had a falling out or anything like that. I’ve had a reputation of not being the most polite gentleman in the past – that’s putting it lightly. “Never in your worst days could you have made my life as uncomfortable and miserable as it was this last year.” The good news is it’s over.

We joked a little bit. I said, “You know what I’m sick and tired of? I’ve been on tour for a year. I’ll get a hangover, I go to complete extremes. I outdo the Shop Boys that mention me in their song Party Like a Rockstar. I go beyond that on a daily basis and every day I wake up and say, ‘God damn it. Why can’t I die?’” Being immortal sucks, unless you’ve got a beautiful girlfriend.

I got an email from Twiggy while I was off in some foreign land – New Zealand, I think. It was a picture of a dick. I’m very accustomed to him doing that. He likes to show me his dick. I felt like the bit of life that seemed to have been beaten out of him or whatever reasons in the past year. The twinkle in his eye was represented by the twinkle on his dick in the picture. It made me smile and I decided to call him. “We should get together and play some songs.” I said, “Yeah, I want to make a new record. I don’t want any rules, I just want to have some fun. Something new, something different.” I didn’t really relate that to Tim, because he plays guitar and I assumed that would be something that would be treading on what he felt was his territory. In the ironic sense, obviously, he replaced Twiggy. There’s some awkwardness there – although I can’t speak for either of them.

I just mentioned that I saw him. I could tell by the look on his face that it wasn’t going to be something he was going to like. I was just excited that I saw my best friend in the world. All of my best memories are always associated with him. Every story I’ve ever told – when I tell Evan stories about all of the terrible things that I’ve done and how she has the strange ability to care for me and think that those are redeeming qualities. It reminds me that they are. Anybody can be good. Why can’t it be me.

It just made me happy. It wasn’t about the music, it was about friendship. We e-mailed back and forth every now and then. I started to pick up a few very enjoyable bonding habits with most of the band. Rob Holliday is able to go head to head with me when it comes to going for broke with alcohol or whatever substance it might be – except Viagra. I won’t take that. Rob likes to take that when he’s alone and go into truck stops and buy porno magazines.” – but I’m digressing on that.

Chris Vrenna is like my other little brother, although he’s older than me. One of my hobbies is to see how banged up he feels in the morning after I have my way with him. He just looks so fragile and destroyed. I feel like I need to buy him some sort of vitamins or something. One night I was up and I was actually beating Chris senseless with a potted plant. I made him drink the plant water on a dare.

Ginger just picked up a new hobby of drinking. It’s always fun to see somebody experience that for the first time, especially when they’re insane. That’s why I like Ginger. We’ve got all three of us, and we’re having a wild time. We decided to call Twiggy up and we’re like “Hey man, get back in the fuckin’ band.” He said, “I’ll do it, man, but we have to take it to the next level.” I’m like, “Well, do you think I would call you if I didn’t know that?” Then we started deciding, what is the next level? Cutting our faces off? Extreme teenage sleepover? Crotchless wheel chairs? I don’t know what the next level is, but depravity and offensiveness is definitely going to be our post-it note of things to do on this tour.

I came home and we saw each other. It was Christmas, 6am. Things couldn’t be more fateful. All the stars were aligned one hundred percent. We just knew it had to happen. I know that there wouldn’t be a real positive combination between Twiggy and Tim. I respect Tim and I love the work we did together. I just want the next part of this tour to be positive and almost in a selfless sense for Twiggy to see how much he probably looked a year ago and to know that I wish I had my best friend here a year ago. I think it took him having me in his life is exactly what we both need. We looked at each other and said, “Shit is going to hit the fans. People are going to go insane. They’re not going to believe it.” I would have never thought it would happen, either. I can’t wait to finish the tour and start writing songs. We started writing songs last night. We knew right away that we were back in business; the old ways.

There’s going to be a lot of Smells Like Children added to the set. The two of us are nothing but trouble. Ive always loved Rob as a guitar player as well as a bass player because he, as a bass player, was the closest thing to a rock star that I could have to Twiggy. Now there will be two nightmares on either side of me. I can guarantee there is going to be a lot of things that we’ve never done – like switching. Sometimes we’ll play different instruments.