Detroit

I don’t know if you ever saw on TMZ the big headline: “Dave Chappelle Drunk Onstage in Detroit.” Well, if you saw it, I wasn’t drunk. I had smoked some reefer… with some rappers. Yeah. I don’t know if you know anything about hanging out with rappers, but their weed is very strong, stronger than I what I was accustomed to. The article goes on to say I was booed offstage, which is also incorrect.

I was booed. I did not leave. It was a long bomb. It was a fucking nightmare. Two puffs of weed, that’s all it was. Two puffs. I never had that happen, where I take two puffs of weed, I looked at the guy next to me, I was like, “I’m gonna bomb, nigga. I can feel it.” And that guy called my name. “Dave Chappelle!” Niggas was like… Normally, when you do a comedy show– you guys don’t know what it looks like up here, but niggas be just looking up at you like… That’s how the show started.

Didn’t take long for their faces to switch up like, “What the fuck?” They started looking amongst themselves. So I knew I wasn’t doing good. I don’t remember what I was saying. It just took one person to break the ice. It was a black lady with a Ford Motor shirt on. Stood up suddenly. “Fuck you, Dave Chappelle!” I said, “Excuse me?” She said, “I worked all week for this shit, and this show sucks!” And in a weird act of racial harmony, a conservative white guy stood up and backed her up. “Yeah!” The whole crowd banded together and started chanting, “We want our money back! We want our money back!” I said, “Oh, shit.” I snapped out of it. “Good people of Detroit, hear me. Hear me now. You will never get your fucking money back.” Fuck that. I said, “I’m like Evel Knievel. I get paid for the attempt. I didn’t promise this shit would be good.” “Boo!” They said, “Fuck you!”

This went on for a long time. And then, after the show, I felt so bad, I took half of the money from the show– thousands of dollars– I said, “I’m gonna give this to charity.” You know what I did? I bought $25,000 worth of bubble gum and drove around Detroit and handed it out to the homeless so they could chew it and still be hungry. I was very mad at Detroit that night. Because not only did I bomb, I had to go back to the very same room the next night and do it all over again. Fucking nightmare.

That would be like if you were having sex with a woman and, for some reason– this would never happen– but for some reason, she had a mousetrap in her pussy. You get caught in the trap. And then you’ve got to fuck her again tomorrow night. I’d still do it, but I’d be careful the next time. The old mousetrap-in-the-pussy trick, eh? Fool me once. Yeah. Yeah, it was a tough time. And I wanted to give up sometimes. I almost did give up, but then, right before I gave up, I decided not to. But I made the call. They answered the phone. “Hello? Dancing with the Stars.” I said, “Not yet. Not yet.” Yeah. If you see me on that shit, it’s over. Trust me. My spirit is broken. If you see me waiting for them judges… getting critiqued on my cha-cha, fuck that.