Over the course of four seasons on Vanderpump Rules, Jax Taylor has done the following, on camera:

Been reprimanded for poorly mixing a jalapeño margarita. Acquired, by my count, four really beautiful girlfriends, and been caught cheating on them all. Fought shirtless in a Las Vegas parking lot. Fought, with shirt, in a lounge in Hollywood. Taken a shit. Cried after being caught stealing a pair of sunglasses.

All of these actions would have cemented his place in reality television history. But with any luck, he’ll be remembered for a single line, one of the greatest ever spoken on the small screen:

“If I was sorry for it, I would’ve done it one time. I did it twice.”

Jax was raised in suburban Detroit, amidst the thick hedges and wood-paneled conservatism that surrounds the city’s industrial grit. His father was a good man, successful but stern, very conventional. Jax, who was then a boy called Jason, didn’t fit that mold. He liked to have fun; he didn’t like direction. He went to Michigan State because that’s what you did if you didn’t get into Michigan or get a job straight away with the Big Three. He was too wild to last there. He dropped out and went to community college, didn’t last there either. He joined the Navy because he had nothing else, trained at a base in Virginia, and was eventually stationed in Kosovo during one of those periods when you don’t think of our forces having much to do overseas. He doesn’t really like to say much about it, only that it happened.

Three years later, he was a civilian again, back in Michigan. Adrift, living at home, fucking around. He was walking through K-Mart with his mom when a woman approached and said he should model for the weekend coupon catalogues. At first, he didn’t like this. Where he came from, there were no gay people—well, you know, it seemed like it anyways—and he didn’t want to be a guy that put on makeup and posed for photos. But he eventually went through with it and made 600 bucks, and then he did it again. Then someone a little more important saw one of his pictures and it became a job. He went to Chicago and, boom—he was booking gigs for Target, Kohl’s, Old Navy. All of the sudden he was flying to Milan. Then Paris, then Australia, then Miami.

Then, finally, Los Angeles.