Who Does Pete Wentz Think He Is?

There’s a lot going on in your self-portrait. What do those symbols represent?
The Rx above my head is for being a drugstore cowboy. I’m the kind of person who thinks he knows more than anybody about everything, so with medication, doctors will say one thing, and I’m like, Eh, I’ll just mix and match. It totally gets me in trouble. I just wake up and projectile vomit. The dollar sign is for the “emogul” perception of me. And the broken heart is for the whole Kurt Cobain, dude-is-perpetually-down impression people have of me.

Basically, you’re a drug-addled, depressive millionaire.
It’s a caricature. But there’s some truth in there.

Is that your dog in the picture?
Yes! Hemingway. He’s an English bulldog. I love him, but he pisses and craps wherever he wants — he totally runs the house. He’s on my schedule, too. We go to bed at 4 a.m. and wake up at noon.

Excuse us while we call the ASPCA.
Well, I heard from a dog trainer that when you have an abused dog they’ll hide when they go to the bathroom. He’ll go to the bathroom anywhere, so I think I have a pretty un-abused dog.

It’s 11 P.M. on a typical evening. what are you doing?
Usually 10 p.m. comes and I’m like, I’m not going out. Around 10:30 I start saying, Hmm, maybe I should go out. In L.A. you have to be out by 11 ’cause everything ends at 2. So I’ll convince myself to go out. I’ll hit one or two places where they’ll give me a free gaming system or something. I’ll hear, “Corporate sponsor blah blah blah is having a party, and if you show up, they’ll give you this.” The PlayStation 3 is totally worth 15 minutes of my time.

Jay-Z loves Fall Out Boy. What’s your best holy-shit-I’m-hanging-out-with-Jay-Z story?
We’ll go out and eat when he’s in L.A. It takes 20 minutes for the this-is-Jay-Z thing to wear off, then it’s just cool. It’s funny, he’ll ask me, “Who’s the biggest band in rock?” And I’ll say, “Green Day.” And he’s like, “Pfft! You gotta say yourself, man!”

What do people who don’t like you say about you?
Most of what I hear begins with anti-gay slurs, but online, you know, I get “He’s so fug.” I didn’t even get what that was for a bit! Even if you have thick skin, they always find that one thing. You know, I’ll be like, Everything’s fine — unless there’s naked pictures of me online. And then there they are!

is there any upside to having photos of your penis all over the Internet?
It’s liberating! I have no qualms about the gang showers that happen on arena tours, and at photo shoots I’ll just change in front of people, and, you know, when I meet girls, they already know what the machinery is like …

How would you describe your taste in sex?
I tend to be a bit prudish. I’m a make-out king — I’ll kiss anybody — but as far as going further than that, I wanna keep my number down. I don’t wanna tell my future wife, “Yeah, I’ve been with, like, 50 people.” But when I’m with somebody, the caveman in me wants it to be completely deviant. Like, “Oh, this isn’t supposed to go in there? Then that’s where it has to go.”

So, Make-out King, you’ve kissed boys?
I have. Anybody above the waist is totally fair game.

If we gave you a drug test right now, what would we find?
Well, I’m out of Ambien. But you’d find Lorazepam, which is basically Xanax; Flexeril, which is a muscle relaxant; Seroquel; and I think there would probably be Zoloft in there. I told you, I’m the drugstore cowboy.

When was the last time you hit someone?
My last real physical fight was with Patrick, our singer, on the road, years ago. I strangled him against our van. I had been up forever and was totally out of my head and he said something about me being crazy or something. I have a short fuse, but it doesn’t work out, ’cause I’m, like, four-foot-seven. Usually my fight stance is to run away and let my friends fight.

All right, tough guy. What’s the first line of your obituary going to say?
I think about this all the time. I’m death-obsessed. That’s why I die in our new video. I want my obituary to be like a glorified Royal Tenenbaums thing: pete wentz died valiantly saving thousands of lives. But I’m guessing it’s gonna be really short and end with, who cares?