I found a report card from my homeroom teacher in sixth grade. It was so piercing. The comment said, “Steve is so desperate for the approval and affection of his peers that everything he does to try to get that has the opposite effect.” It’s upsetting because I know that’s so true. I did so desperately want the affection and approval.

“There was this house party in the Hollywood Hills. Mike Tyson opened up the door. I said, ‘Hey, is it cool if I come in?’ And he said, ‘You got any coke?’ And I told him, ‘Yeah, dude, I got a bunch.’ And I did. I had like a whole eight ball in one pocket, half an eight ball in the other pocket. So we locked ourselves in this bathroom.”

Aren’t you still doing that to some extent, though? Acting out?

For sure. I think it’s a quest for validation. It doesn’t matter how you slice it. It’s still a super scary way to live. I have no doubt that when my happiness and my security is based on my value as a commodity in the world of entertainment, when my identity is tied up in the persona of Steve-O, it’s a depressing proposition to look at the rest of my life.

Then why do you keep doing this?

It’s such a simple answer. The reason I did it when I was a kid, the reason I do everything I do now, straight up, is I’m an attention whore. It’s that simple.

You are a man who must have some wild stories.

I have so many fucking crazy Mike Tyson stories, man.

Listening…

Oh, my God. I’ve done fucking cocaine with Mike Tyson, dude. We spent three hours locked in a bathroom together. There was this house party in the Hollywood Hills. And I remember I was distinctly not invited, but I showed up and rang the doorbell. Mike Tyson opened up the door. I said, “Hey, is it cool if I come in?” And he said, “You got any coke?” And I told him, “Yeah, dude, I got a bunch.” And I did. I had like a whole eight ball in one pocket, half an eight ball in the other pocket.

Wow.

Yeah, I was packing. So we locked ourselves in this bathroom. So there we are, and he asked me for a cigarette while I was chopping up a bunch of blow on the counter. He rolled it back and forth between his fingers and all the tobacco fell out, and he kept doing it until nothing was left except a tube of paper connected to the cylinder. And he turned it right side up and started scooping cocaine into it, like pure cocaine. Nothing but. And I’m fascinated. I’m thinking that can’t work. It boiled down to the most fucking gripping science-fair project ever. He filled it until it was fucking full as fuck. And he made it work, man. He sat there and smoked the whole deal.

What did you guys talk about?

At that time in my life, I would develop Tourette’s syndrome if I was fucked up enough, just blurting out inappropriate shit. So I said to him, my exact words, “You know, Mike, I don’t have a racist bone in my body, but I like to consider myself a n----r.” [laughs] I’ll never forget, he said, “You ask me, the definition of that word is anybody who uses it.” And I was like, “Damn! Iron Mike, deep as fuck!” And so we’re talking about the finer points of racism in America or whatever, just sort of philosophizing about how to make the world a better place, and it was just fucking incredible, man. The last thing he said to me was, “You know, Steve, everybody’s got you wrong. You’re actually really smart.” And the next time I spent real time with Mike Tyson, one-on-one conversing, was when we were locked up in the psychiatric ward together.

Wait. In the psych ward? What?

I was talking him into holding out his fist with his elbow locked and letting me run into it with my face to try to give myself a black eye. I was trying to talk him into filming that with me when we got out. But I couldn’t talk him into it. So then I got my nose broken on the set of Jackass 3D. I went to a nose doctor and was going to make the movie pay for it, but it had been two months, and the doctor said, “Your nose has already healed this way, and if you want me to fix it, I’m going to have to rebreak it with a chisel.” And I’m like, “Oh, never mind.”

Then came the Comedy Central Roast with Charlie Sheen, and we talked Mike into doing the thing and holding his fist out, and I dove into Mike Tyson’s fist and landed on it with nothing but my nose. Super broke my nose. Like, really crazy broke it. And then this guy comes out of the crowd, running up towards the stage at the end of the show, and he says, “Steve-O, your nose needs to be set right now. I’m a kung fu instructor, and I know what I’m doing.” So I let this kung fu asshole set my nose on the spot, and it just turned out that he did a fucking magnificent job. He basically fixed my nose perfect. Everything I was hoping to get that [doctor] dude to do, I got done by Mike Tyson and a fucking kung fu weirdo.