Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 2:17 pm
by Brad
The Austin Road Trip
by Tucker Max
Intro: The Steak & Shake Bond
Early during my third year of law school I was sitting in the library with my crew of friends, skipping class and trading stories about our summers. At first, I was the center of attention having just come off the summer of The Tucker Max Charity Auction Debacle, but PWJ quickly trumped me.
He told us a story about a gentlemens' club he frequented in Dallas; a place far different than the common strip club, "The first time I got a lap dance there, I was kinda reticent about touching her, but the stripper grabbed my hands and put them on her tits. During the second dance, she turned around and basically dry humped me for the entire song. I didn't get a third dance, but if I did I could have all but have had sex with the girl. She was SMOKING HOT and wasn't even close to being the best one there. And the very best part: $5 cover charge and $2 bottles and wells."
After initially calling bullshit, PWJ finally convinced us that this Lost City of Cibola did exist. We were greatly excited. JonBenet summed it up, "And I used to think there was a bright line between a gentleman's club and a brothel. Now you're telling me it's just gray..."
This place was called Baby Dolls, and going there became our Holy Grail. We immediately planned a trip to Dallas. At the outset, all ten of us were in. But as the departure date loomed closer, some of the group started taking dives.
-GoldenBoy bailed because he had just returned from a week long trip to Russia and didn’t want to be apart from his fiancée for so much time. I won't say anything bad about this, because he married her, and I really like her, so I guess this turned out to be a good decision. If you’re into the “responsibility” thing.
-Hate decided to go on an interview. Unlike me, he was upset about not having a job.
-Brownhole is basically a pussy and a sycophant and was afraid that being arrested with us would ruin his political career. None of us are sure how he even got in the group.
-Credit was dating a girl who SlingBlade once referred to as “The most evil demon-slut in the long history of female chicanery and deception.” Credit is a spineless coward and wanted to keep dating her, so he begged off the trip.
-JoJo made the same decision he makes whenever he sees a bunch of crazy white boys run off to get in trouble--he went the opposite way (see e.g., The Night We Almost Died and The TuckerFest Disaster [coming soon])
-JonBenet had the most ridiculous excuse. Instead of going on the trip, he flew to Boston with his girlfriend, a friend of Credit's demon-slut, to look at apartments. TO LOOK AT APARTMENTS--not withstanding the fact that he wasn’t moving there FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR. There is a reason he is now an outsider.
That left only four travelers:
-PWJ had lots of important legal things to do. Luckily he follows his penis around like a divining rod, so he promptly cleared his schedule.
-SlingBlade's busy schedule included drinking alone in the dark and jacking off to his Star Trek Limited Edition Seven of Nine poster. He was solidly in.
-El Bingeroso had already planned a trip to visit a friend in Austin so he combined his trip with ours, and then got his fiancée some sort of shiny trinket to distract her from his new plans.
-I was able to squeeze the trip in between outings to Chapel Hill involving sex and drinking, interspersed with some drinking and sex.
On a crisp Thursday night in early October, SlingBlade, PWJ, El Bingeroso and I began our journey to Dallas. We would soon become known to the State of Texas by our historical names: Pestilence, Plague, Hunger, and Death.
Our first stop was a Steak & Shake somewhere outside of Charlotte, where we bonded with each other by recounting tales of our fucked up youths. I recalled a childhood colored by parental instability, multiple divorces, re-marriages (seven between my two biological parents), step-parents, constant relocation and emotional pain. No one cared about my problems, because they had already read about my father's most recent divorce in Time magazine, and didn't need any more details to know I was fucked up.
PWJ told us of an awkward youth being the son of an Army Colonel, where his Styx jean jacket and obsession with all things vehicular could not make the Kansas yokels overlook his abnormally misshapen egghead and triple digit IQ. Popular, he was not, but since none of us are his normal dim-witted naïve teenage girl prey, we didn't care. While his age (3 years older than us) gave him a wisdom and maturity that none of us yet possessed, under this composed and compassionate exterior, PWJ could be the biggest snake of the group. The fact that he grew up smart but a social outsider, forced him to learn game the hard way and also planted a devious retributive mean streak. Even though he is more often than not the voice of reason to the group, he is also the one who will manipulate an 18 year old into sex with lies and deception.
SlingBlade regaled us with tales of his emotionally distant, risk-averse and over-protective parents, who split time yelling at him and cloistering him in his room. His was a youth spent with action figures as his friends and a Nintendo as his baby-sitter. He also told us perhaps the most defining story of his life: He and his high school girlfriend, the love of his life, went to different undergrads. He spent the first semester of college passing up on sex with every girl who approached him (and there were many) because he was naïve and in love and didn't want to cheat on his girlfriend. She did not possess the same integrity, so she cheated on him. A lot. And didn't tell him until he went down to visit her and noticed that guys kept coming by her room, asking what she was up to later that night. SlingBlade does not deal well with emotional pain and as such he is now bitter because he imputes her cuckoldry on all women.
But it was El Bingeroso who stole the show. He grew up in a very small town in Nebraska, with about 700 people, one Dairy Queen and one gas station. He remembered his father making his brother and him run timed 100-meter races against each other. At age 6. When he got to elementary school he was fat and would constantly eat paste, so the teachers just assumed he was retarded and put him in the Special Ed class. He was in the Special Education program until age 8 when they finally gave him an IQ test, realized he was a genius, and moved him to the gifted class. He was actually upset about leaving the sped class, because he liked the coloring and frequent snack times. He also told us about the time he and his brother, then aged 9 and 11, watched from the locked car while their dad beat up a mugger, nearly killing him by repeatedly smashing his head into the hood and fender, spraying blood all over the car [I have subsequently met El Bingeroso’s father, and believe me—he is not a man to cross. I have a healthy and robust fear of him].
But what really distinguished him from the rest of us was that he was truly in love and actually had a stable life. Even though he was a partier like the rest of us, he loved his fiancée, was totally committed to her, and was very excited that he had finally convinced her to wear a French maid outfit to the Duke Law Halloween party.
Day One: Baby Dolls
We arrived in Dallas on Friday afternoon. After a quick nap, we went to an early dinner at some Mexican place in Deep Ellum and then across the street to a roadhouse-type bar designed for yuppies. Both Pabst and Guinness on tap. Metrosexuals dressed in brown Lycra as far as the eye could see. I immediately hated everyone.
We get two pitchers and decide to play table shuffleboard. Barely into our first pitcher, I notice two girls checking us out. A hot blonde [Blonde] and a decent red-head [Redhead]. They stare at us for about ten minutes. I want to have sex with the blonde, so I start things off:
“You gonna come talk to us or just stand there and stare?”
They accept my invitation. I stare at the tits on the blonde. They are nearly flawless, and quite seductively exposed. The girl knows what she’s doing. Despite my nearly forensic examination (she doesn’t notice--I am a pro at this), I keep the conversation moving along nicely until dumbass El Bingeroso decides to fuck everything up:
Blonde "So, what brings you guys to Dallas?”
El Bingeroso "We came to go to a strip club.” El Bingeroso is engaged and a cock-blocking jerk. Thanks asshole, I didn’t want to fuck her or anything.
Redhead [kinda pulling me aside as El Bingeroso keeps talking to Blonde] “Did you really come to Dallas to go to a strip club?”
Tucker “No, no. We had a week off from law school, so we came to visit some friends, hang out, that sort of thing. El Bingeroso just wants to go to a strip club he heard about.”
Redhead “Do you like strip clubs? Those places are gross.”
Tucker “Yeah, they are kinda gross. But my friends really want to go, so what can I do? I don’t know anyone in Dallas. Besides, I like naked breasts.”
Redhead “You can stay here…hang out with me.”
Tucker “Yeah, maybe.” I could also watch reruns of Alf on Telemundo. That sounds like just as much fun.
El Bingeroso tugs on me, “Dude, you might want to get in on this.” [He turns back to the blonde] “So, you think you want to come to Baby Dolls with us?”
Blonde “I’ll come to the strip club with you guys; I want to see some big titties.”
Tucker “Have you ever been to Baby Dolls before?”
Blonde “Yeah, I auditioned there once.”
DING DING DING DING!!! JACKPOT!!! Call the pit boss, we have a big winner!
El Bing “Do you like girls?”
Blonde “Of course.”
Excellent. All we need is 70’s music to start playing and we’ve got a porno in the making.
I glance at the other end of the table. It’s our turn, but El Bingeroso and I haven’t thrown the pucks for ten minutes. SlingBlade is glaring at me with his standard half-bored, half-disdainful, “Another whore?” expression that he always gives me when I start talking to random girls. I motion for him to come down to our end of the table…and then I see PWJ.
Great Holy Jesus--it looks like he fell into Kentucky Fried Movie. He is talking to a woman with a leopard cowboy hat on over platinum bouffant hair. Her make-up looks like it was applied with a shotgun. She has on tight orange hot-pants, which she obviously brought from her last job at Hooters. Around her waist is a belt, and there appears to be a toy gun holstered to it. She was probably very attractive in 1986. Now, she’s in the death throes of a losing battle against time and fashion irrelevance.
Tucker “Dude, what is PWJ talking to?”
SlingBlade “I don’t know…some whore. She squirted him with her water gun, and off he went. She has big tits…Cupid has spoken.”
Fifteen more minutes of bullshitting, and the Blonde is sealed up. She is into the Baby Dolls excursion, and the inevitable girl-on-girl action. Unfortunately, her caveat is that she wants Redhead to come with us, who is not at all enthused at the prospect of going to “one of those places.”
I am presented with a logistical nightmare: I want to fuck Blonde, who is throwing her cooch at El Bingeroso. The only way she is going to Baby Dolls is if Redhead comes. Redhead is in love with me, but does not want to come to Baby Dolls. El Bingeroso is drunk and no help. So what do I do?
Here is where taking econ classes about game theory at the University of Chicago helps out with real-life game. This is a classic example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma; if I keep paying attention to the Blonde and try to capture my small chance to fuck her, I will probably fail and then I get no pussy, and the group gets no lesbian action at the strip club, because neither will come with us. Everyone loses. But, if I take one for the team, ignore the Blonde and instead seal up the Redhead, I can get both to come with us to Baby Dolls. This means that I probably won’t fuck the Blonde, which decreases my personal happiness, but I will give the group the best chance to maximize the situation, by getting two girls to come to a strip club with us. See--even Tucker Max can be altruistic. If it suits him.
Tucker “Redhead, come on, let’s all go to the strip club. It’ll be a good time.”
Redhead “Don’t go to a strip club. You know those girls don’t care about you.”
SlingBlade “That’s not true. They sit on my lap and tell me they love me.” SlingBlade usually chooses the funny joke over the smart play. And this folks, is why he gets no pussy. Well…that, and he has no confidence in his game, thinks all women are cheating sluts, and is scared of emotional commitment.
Tucker “Thanks asshole. Why don’t you go watch Deep Space Nine and leave this to me. Dick.” I pull Redhead away from Captain No Pussy, “Come on sweetie. It’ll be fun. Your friend wants to go.”
Redhead “I don’t want to go to that place. It’s gross.”
Tucker “Yeah, I know. But I’ll be there, we can hang out together. We’ll let them,” motioning dismissively at my friends, “look at naked women, and you and I can just hang out. Together.” I actually reach out and put her hands in mine.
Redhead “Why don’t you just stay here. With me?”
Tucker “Yes, let’s stay together…at the club.”
Redhead “But I don’t want to go to a strip club.”
Tucker “But I want to go. With you…us…together.”
Redhead “I don’t like it there.”
Tucker “Have you ever been?”
Redhead “No…”
Tucker “Then how do you know you won’t like it?”
Redhead “I know what they’re like. They’re gross.”
Tucker “I tell you what: If you and Blonde come with us, I promise that you and I can sit in a corner somewhere and stare into each other’s eyes, completely ignoring everything around us. It’ll be romantic. We’ll be so busy staring into each other’s eyes we won’t even see what’s going on.”
Hearing these words, I nearly threw up in my own mouth. She paused and contemplated.
Redhead “No…I don’t want to go to a strip club. I just can’t.”
This is just fucking great. Even I have my limit, and that ‘staring into each others eyes’ bullshit was it. I gather the five of us around, minus PWJ still talking to the broke-down redneck Kim Cattrall, and offer an alternative:
Tucker “How about this: I stay here with Redhead, and you guys take Blonde to Baby Dolls? It’s like a trade.”
El Bingeroso and SlingBlade like this idea very much. Redhead loves the idea. Blondie doesn’t. She may be a drunk idiot, but she’s neither drunk enough nor idiotic enough to go to a strip club in the company of three complete male strangers without her friend.
There goes an hour of my life I’ll never get back. Whore.
SlingBlade and El Bingeroso tire of this, go fetch PWJ away from his water-pistol packing cow-whore, and start to leave. Redhead is trying to convince me to stay at the bar with her. She is almost pleading with me. Before I know it, my friends are already walking out the door.
I make my way to the door, Redhead still attached to my arm like a lamprey. I try to make a cost benefit analysis: Probable hook up and possible sexual activity with Redhead, or definite nakedness but little chance of a hook up at Baby Dolls. I need to pin Redhead down on our late-night activities.
Tucker “Are you going to hang out with me later tonight. I mean, are we going to hang out after we leave here, like at your place?” My tone of voice is not subtle.
Redhead “I don’t know if I can; I have to be up at 7am.”
Tucker “7am? For what?”
Redhead “A Young Life meeting.”
Tucker “I have to go catch up with my friends.”
I streak out of the bar before she can even change her facial expression. [Aside: Young Life is a fundamentalist Christian youth group that preaches all sorts of other ridiculous pabulum, like abstinence and whatnot. I got blue-balls so many times in middle and high school dealing with those girls--NEVER AGAIN.]
In the car on the way to Baby Dolls, PWJ explains:
Tucker “Dude, who the fuck was that woman you were talking to, and where did she get her uniform, at a Whores-R-Us closeout sale?
PWJ “I don’t know. She works there. She had a toy water pistol in her belt…is it wrong that that turned me on?”
SlingBlade “She WORKS there? I guess no one cares if she spends thirty minutes talking to you. Apparently her job is to degrade herself and chat up pasty thimble-headed geeks.”
PWJ “You don’t understand…that’s not the best part. I learned her philosophy of dating: ‘Don’t fish off the company pier, and don’t fuck your friends. I’ve tried both plenty of times and it never works’…OH YEAH…I nearly spat out my drink when she told me that she has cats rather than kids because, and I quote, ‘you don’t go to jail when you get your cats high.’”
We decide that we are starting to like Texas. Baby Dolls does nothing to derail our crazy train.
Baby Dolls should be the model from which all strip clubs are cast. The neon glow from its trim-molding and signage can be seen from miles away. A huge pink one-story stand-alone building rising out of a sea of asphalt with pictures of nearly naked girls on the 4-story billboard looming over it from the parking lot. The entrance is two huge wooden doors adorned with brass fixtures and two NFL linebacker-sized bouncers. It is covered by a pink awning that extends up the walk about ten feet. The huge oval main stage is flanked by an enfilade of four smaller side stages, each with a brass pole reaching from floor to ceiling. Mirrors cover every wall and extend to every ceiling. Two full bars, and two beer bars are staffed by a phalanx of female bartenders and cocktail waitresses. And MOST importantly: it's all nude. No pasties. No g-strings. No crotch tape. Nothing between you and the naked, nubile flesh of attractive women…except dollar bills. The girls were hot beyond hot. Dozens of incredibly beautiful and sexy women, each giving smiles that convey the sincerity of a single mother with rent due.
At age 24, this was my Elysium.
Two dancers come over almost immediately after we sit down. The hot one is at least 5’10”, blonde bobbed hair, smooth, almost creamy skin, and gorgeous fake breasts. Perfectly round and sitting high on her chest. She sits on PWJ’s lap.
Stripper “So what do you do?”
PWJ “I’m a law student.”
Stripper “Wow. . .so do you go to SMU?”
PWJ “Not exactly . . .I go to Duke.”
She gives him a blank stare. A few seconds later, one can almost see the flicker of candle-light in the thought bubble above her head.
Stripper “You mean Duke, Duke?”
PWJ pauses and chuckles, “Yeah, Duke, Duke.”
She gives him a doubtful face, “Oh, like I’ve never heard this one before. Let me guess, you went to Harvard for college.”
PWJ “Well, no, not exactly . . .”
PWJ went to Princeton for undergrad. I stop paying attention because as much as I love beauty, I hate stupidity, and seeing the two combined pisses me off. Plus, I need to start drinking and her nipples aren’t spouting vodka.
I find a cocktail waitress and begin drinking. Combatively. I’ve driven 16 hours for the specified purpose of going to this strip club, and I’ll be damned if I get here and nothing happens. To help achieve this end--getting drunk and making something happen--I make friends with our cocktail waitress, Liz. Gentle readers, let me explain something to you:
It is an almost universal rule of gentlemen’s clubs that the cocktail waitresses are more fun to talk to, and more apt to fuck customers, than the strippers. They are not as pressed for time, so they will banter more. The limp-dicks that overtip the strippers usually don’t tip the cocktail waitresses at all, so attention to a cocktail waitress will get you much further than attention to a stripper. Plus, they tend not to be high or drunk on duty, whereas strippers are almost always in some altered state, so conversation with them can actually accomplish something. The funniest thing is that they always think they are better than the strippers; in their mind there is a bright line separating them from the women who actually take their clothes off, thus it is usually much easier to get a cocktail waitress to go home with you. Strippers are jaded, abused, used-up; they hate men, and usually for good reason. The cocktail waitresses are far less defensive. They are so used to being ignored or looked through, that when you do pay attention to them, they respond to it. Some innocuous flirting and a good first tip to Liz gets my friends and me a constant, uninterrupted stream of drinks and a flirtatious hottie hanging around us. Read and learn fellas. Back to the action:
SlingBlade gets one of the hottest girls in the club to give him a dance. Before she takes his money, she tries to talk to him, and actually seems genuinely interested, not just stripper interested. This probably has something to do with the happy confluence of his sarcastic, standoffish sense of humor and the inability of her step-father to show her any affection growing up. So what does SlingBlade do? Does he flirt with her? Does he at least try to exploit this situation? Of course not. He places his finger on her lips, patiently explains that he, “would rather mainline Drano” than listen to her for another second, and commands, “Less talkie, more boobie.” The kid has problems.
Apparently, something about PWJ just says “sucker,” because another stripper comes up and puts her hands over PWJ’s eyes, coyly whispering something erotic in his ear. She is UGLY. Her face looks like it lost a frantic battle with a Garden Claw. The woman is literally missing some teeth. I can’t tell for sure, but I think she has a tattoo tear on her left eye. I motion to him by making a cutting gesture across my throat and yelling,
“Dude--she is unattractive. Bottom of the barrel. Needs to put her clothes on and learn how to type. Don’t do it! YOU’RE A YOUNG MAN!”
He doesn’t get my warnings in time. She sits on his lap. PWJ tells her he doesn’t want a dance, but she says it’s okay, and remains on his lap talking to him. I wonder, out loud for everyone to hear, if the zoo knows they are missing their three-toed sloth. She is not pleased. Fuck her, it’s not my fault she looks like Adrian Brody with saggy tits.
PWJ ignores me and continues engaging her in conversation. When I hear her say, “Yeah, I had two hearts tattooed on my hips, but then I got pregnant and carried my son on my left side. Now this one looks like a tomato,” I get up. I’d rather fellate a hot curling iron than listen to another minute of her whore-ramble.
I saunter around flirting with waitresses and bartenders and strippers, double-fisting vodka and sodas…and then it happens: I see El Bingeroso’s future wife. It’s not actually her; THAT would be a story, but she looks exactly like El Bingeroso’s fiancée. It’s spooky. I immediately walk over to where she is and stand there, waiting for her to finish the dance she’s giving to some random guy. He’s less than pleased. Whatever buddy, you’re wearing a Detroit Red Wings jersey to a strip club, you obviously suck.
I give her enough to pay for two dances for El Bingeroso, and then an additional ten dollars. I tell her that she has to tell him her name is “Kristy” [his fiancée’s name], and to answer to nothing else. I point him out, and she walks over, and introduces herself.
“Hi, I’m Kristy. Dinner is on the stove, baby.”
After what seems like only ten minutes, I glance over, and she’s just sitting there talking to him. Fine, maybe she’s just warming him up. A few more minutes, same scene. I’ll be damned if El Bingeroso doesn’t get my money’s worth. He’s the type that would pay her more not to dance, thinking it would violate his relationship or some such bullshit. I walk over and interrupt El Bingeroso in the middle of a story I had heard the day before,
El Bingeroso “Yeah, I was fat when I was a kid. You know how kids jeans at K-Mart came in three different sizes, Small, Medium, and ‘Husky’? I had to buy Husky.”
Tucker “El Bingeroso, what the fuck? Is stripper-fiancée going to dance for you?”
El Bingeroso looks confused. “What are you talking about? Dude, she already did both dances, she’s just hanging out now.”
Maybe I’m drunker than I realize.
I find Liz and ask her how many drinks I’ve had. She looks at me with the same look El Bingeroso gave me, “Tucker sweetie, what are you saying? I can’t understand you.”
I guess I am fucked up.
I try to stagger back to my seat when a very hot, voluptuous stripper grabs me by the belt loops and pulls me towards her. She has a skin tight tiger-stripe body suit that is virtually painted on her. To say that her breasts were spilling out would be to imply that this outfit covered them at some point. Her J-Lo booty smiles at me, and I smile back. It takes me a few seconds to find her eyes. The gobs of silver glitter eye shadow smeared on her face make it difficult to locate them quickly. She says something to me, but I don’t understand it. I pretend to listen for about 3 minutes, then I interrupt her:
“If I were dating you, I’d never leave the house. I’d never even leave your general vaginal area. Unless it were to come on your face.”
She thinks I am funny. She really wants to give me a dance. I tell her I am a starving lawyer, and can’t afford one. But there is something about her. Maybe it’s the lighting, maybe it’s her aggressive attitude, maybe it’s her ghetto booty, maybe it’s her 36 DD fake breasts pressing against me…maybe it’s the 3 margaritas, 6 beers and 15 vodka clubs, but she just strikes me in that right way.
I guess she saw the acquiescence in my eyes, because without any further deliberation, at least that I can remember, she drags me back to a secluded booth in the rear of the club and starts dancing. By this time, I’m so drunk I even know I’m drunk.
Another great feature of Baby Dolls: The strippers encourage you to touch their boobies. I exploit this privilege ruthlessly. I grabbed both her beautifully fake breasts full on. I was kneading her tits so hard all I needed was a little water and some active dry yeast and I could have made bread. Towards the end of the dance I was actually trying to pop the saline implants. Those things are pretty durable.
Finished, she snuggles herself up against me, breasts right under my chin,
Big Tits “Do you want to go somewhere…more private?”
Tucker “Yeah…sure…for what…?”
Big Tits “If we get a champagne room, we can do anything we want.”
Tucker “Anything?”
Big Tits “Anything.”
Tucker “OK.”
Big Tits “It’s 300 for the room, plus usually about 100 dollars more. Depending…but you’re cute.”
Tucker “So…400 total?”
Big Tits “Uh huh.”
I pause and contemplate. Somewhere milling around my frontal lobes I can vaguely recall a moral dilemma I might have with this situation…provided I were sober enough to recall what exactly the tenets of my ethical system were. Or even what an ethical system was.
This drunk, I could only consider price. Thank you University of Chicago economics classes.
Tucker “I’ll give you 20 dollars.”
Big Tits laughed. “No. It’s 400, baby.”
Tucker “Okay…22 dollars.”
Big Tits “Well, you’re cute and funny; I’ll do it for 350.”
Tucker “25.”
Big Tits “325?”
Tucker “No, just 25.”
Big Tits “I have to give the club 100 to get the room for an hour.”
Tucker “I can’t last an hour…I’ll give you 28.”
This went on for at least 10 more minutes before we finally settled on a price.
$55. For a half hour.
I could write a book on negotiation. And as drunk as I was, you can believe she earned her $5.
When I found my friends, two hours and $55 later, they were out in the parking lot eating sloppy joe’s they bought from a guy selling them out of the back of his Chevette. Needless to say, they were aghast. But in my vodka-addled brain, I had a defensible position:
“Dude, I had to. How could I pass up a bargain like that?”
Day Two: The Texas State Fair and The Embassy Suites Story
The next day we woke up scattered across our hotel room, still clothed and reeking of hairspray and bar smoke. We pack up and head to Austin. On the way there, we see a huge sign on the road:
“This way to the Texas State Fair!”
El Bingeroso nearly has a fucking aneurysm, “OH OH OH OH!!! WE HAVE TO GO, WE HAVE TO GO! Guys, The TEXAS-STATE-FAIR!!!”
It is the most insane morass of trucks and rednecks and cheap carnival trinkets I have ever seen. SlingBlade gets a funnel cake, I get a Slushee, PWJ falls in love with the “classic” (read: penis) cars, but it was El Bingeroso who really tapped into the essence of the Texas State Fair. He made friends with a fat, brown-toothed teenage redneck wearing a WWF Mankind t-shirt covered in mustard stains. The poor kid looked like he had the cultural I.Q. of someone who just staggered out of a sheep orgy. We see them standing over by some video game thing, and he waves us over.
El Bing “Guys, you see this thing? [pointing to the game] It is called ‘The Shocker.’ You hold these metal handles here, and it sends an ever increasing charge of electricity through you. As the wattage increases, so does your score, and if you can hold it all the way to the end, you win...something. And this guy, [Jethro], thinks he can do it.”
Tucker “What do you win?”
SlingBlade “A free electroshock treatment, apparently.”
PWJ “You can’t hold that for more than a few seconds.”
Jethro “Fuck dat; ike’an doit.”
El Bing “OK man, give it your best shot. Here, we’ll even put the money in.”
As PWJ put the dollar in the machine and the redneck rubbed his hands together and mentally prepared himself, I pulled El Bingeroso aside. He was giggling like a Japanese school girl in a Hello Kitty store.
Tucker “Dude, who is this kid? What the hell is going on?”
El Bing “I saw him staring at this thing and I bet him he couldn’t do it. He got all worked up. Dude—I’ve seen this thing knock out 250 pound guys before. They were outlawed in Nebraska! THIS IS AWESOME!”
The youthful redneck firmly planted his feet, rubbed his face, spit into his hands and then rubbed them together and then wiped them on his shirt. We started cheering him on,
Tucker “Eye of the tiger!”
PWJ “What does not kill you makes you stronger!”
SlingBlade “There is no spoon!”
El Bingeroso “YEAAAAHHHH!”
He muttered some inspirational phrases to himself, pressed the start button and grabbed the two metal handles. For the first few seconds he was fine…
Then his arms started shaking.
Then his shoulders.
Then his torso.
Then his head.
Then his mouth began frothing and spitting saliva everywhere.
Then this strange, guttural, animalistic groan emerged from him. Still gripping the handles, his whole body was in violent convulsions when an older woman pulled him off of the machine. He fell to the ground and she yelled at him,
“Jethro, git away from that’n thang. Thar makin funna YEW!”
I don’t know if I have ever laughed so hard in my life. I was laying on the hot asphalt of the Texas State Fair, curled up in a ball, tears streaming out of my face as I held my stomach muscles and convulsed in laughter. I was able to look up and see the confused, blank look on Jethro’s face as his mother led him off, wiping the spit off of his face, his arms still twitching slightly.
I really hope that God has the capacity for forgiveness that Christians claim, because I am going to test the absolute outer limits.
We get to Austin and check in at The Embassy Suites. After a nap, El Bingeroso calls his friends, and we all meet up at a place called Cheers Shot Bar on 6th street. It was me, PWJ, SlingBlade, El Bingeroso, and three of his college friends, “Thomas” (from the story The Night We Almost Died), “Dirty,” and “Mermaid.”
It was around 8pm when we rolled in there, and the bar was nearly empty. Not a problem, this crew can make it’s own party. Mermaid told the bartender, “Seven Flaming Dr. Peppers.”
At the time, I had no idea what a Flaming Dr. Pepper was. The bartender set up 7 pint glasses, each about half full with light beer, in a sort of pyramid formation on the bar. He filled 7 shot glasses about 90% full with Amaretto, then topped off each with Bacardi 151, and set them on the lips of the pint glasses. He then took a huge swig of Bacardi 151, put a lighter up to his face, and blew the alcohol in his mouth through the flame, sending a massive fireball over the shot glasses, each catching fire. While they were still on fire, he hit one of the shot glasses, starting a domino effect, each shot glass falling into a pint glass, putting out the flames and fizzing the beer up. We each grabbed a glass and chugged it, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t taste exactly like Dr. Pepper.
It was the coolest thing involving alcohol I had ever seen. Being OCD, I had to see it again. And again. And again. 6 rounds of Flaming Dr. Peppers later, I was fucked up, and we had nearly set the bar on fire.
People, heed my warning: That stuff is Special Olympics in a pint glass. You think they are harmless and not very strong, and the next thing you know it is an hour later and you are in the bathroom of the bar with your pants off, surrounded by five girls, giving your boxers to a bachlorette party because one of the girls is cute and told you that you had a nice butt. Be forewarned.
After that little fiasco, we head across the street to a dueling piano bar. We discover that one of the two piano players is blind. We are basically jackals who walk on two legs, so true to our nature, we focus on the weak one.
We must have given him about 20 notes with song titles on them. Finally, the blind piano player stopped his music and said, “HEY IDIOTS! Stop giving me written song suggestions. I AM BLIND! BLIND! I CAN’T READ THEM!”
One of the helpers came over and took the song suggestions over to the piano player who could see, and he broke out laughing so hard he couldn’t even keep playing. He kinda stopped the music and said into his mike,
“Well, I would love to play these songs, but unfortunately I don’t know any of them. Let’s see if you know them Phil. They are:
-Please Kill Yourself
-I hope you trip on your furniture and die, Ray Charles
-I’m gonna steal your wallet because you can’t see who I am
-Have you ever fucked a goat by accident?
-You are blind because you masturbated too much as a child
-I’m gonna set you on fire
-Come to the bathroom so I can fellate you
-I bet you fuck ugly girls because you can’t see their faces
-I pissed on your shoes when you were at the urinal
And so on, and so on. Phil, you know any of these? I’m stumped.”
It was awesome. The irony was that while most of the crowd was aghast, the blind guy was laughing his ass off right along with us. I guess crippled people can be useful sometimes.
After a few more beers we went on to another bar, and another bar, and another bar, ad infinitum. The night was very funny…for us…because we are not nice people. Here are some selections of our behavior at the various bars on 6th street that night:
-At one point, I went up to some deaf people who were signing to each other and began signing with them. I actually know ASL because I took sign language for my foreign language requirement at the University of Chicago, and as I was asking them where the hot sluts are, in sign language, PWJ comes up to me and says, “Tucker, I didn’t know you spoke deaf.”
-While traveling from one bar to the next, PWJ saw a low rider El Camino with hydraulics that was bouncing up and down on 6th street. He ran next to the car and started jumping up and down with the car and yells at the driver, “NICE CAR MAN!,” to which the driver, a male of obvious Hispanic descent, gives him a look of disgust and yells back, “Get away from my car, ese, or I’ll fucking bust a cap in you mane.”
-Of course, there were women. Countless women, thousands it seemed like, most of them were hot, and all of them drunk. Some of the interactions I caught on my voice recorder:
Tucker “Hey, what’s your name?”
Girl “My name is Pocahontas.”
Tucker “Right bitch, and my fucking name is John Smith.”
SlingBlade [In a bar whisper] “Tucker, that’s not good game.”
Tucker “Are you married?”
Girl “Yes.”
Tucker “How good is the marriage?”
Girl “Very good.”
Tucker “So there is no chance of us hooking up?”
Girl “No.”
Tucker “Well, do you have any hot friends who aren’t fucking prudes? Hey—where are you going? I was only kidding! I respect the sanctity of the monogamous relationship! WHORE!”
-PWJ made me be his wingman at one point, but the friend was a hideously ugly fat girl. I tried to end it quickly with this, “You don’t want to talk to me, I have festering sores on my scrotum.” She thought I was hilarious, so I had to bring out the heavy artillery, “So that spare tire you’re carrying, is it for a car or a truck?” I plead ignorance when PWJ asked me what happened, “I don’t know man, I was trying to help you out, she just wasn’t into me. What can I do, not all girls like me.”
-Dirty took a picture of me and another girl, and then said to her, “You can see these pictures of yourself on Poopsex.com.” She quickly scurried away.
-SlingBlade was his usual charming gin-drunk self. His lines that night ran the gamut from awful to patently offensive to nearly criminal. His standard pick-up line that night was--I swear to Christ--“Pursuant to Megan’s Law, I am obligated to tell you that I am a convicted sex offender. What’s your name?” After I made him stop talking about molesting children, he moved on to these gems, “Oh good, you smoke. When you’re done sucking down that death stick I want your advice on which brand of vodka to chase my Percocet with,” or this one, “Hi, can we just skip the pleasantries and go straight to the part where you call me Captain Kirk and give me a handjob in the backseat of my car?” Quite the wingman he was.
-This was personal favorite interaction of the night:
Tucker “Do you mind if I flirt with you for a while?”
Girl “Please zip up your pants first. Thank you.”
Tucker “Oh, sorry. So, what’s your name?”
Girl “[Blah, blah, blah….]”
Tucker “Do you have an underbite? Wait…COME BACK HERE, I THINK THAT’S SEXY!”
-SlingBlade somehow managed to get a hot girl interested in him that he didn’t think was a whore. Fascinated by this rare event, I talk to her and immediately discover the reason: The girl was not a day over 16. Well, maybe 17. He whispered to me, “This is what lawyers in Texas call, ‘the age of consent.’” There was only one barrier to SlingBlade sealing the deal--She didn’t believe that he went to Austin High with her. She asked him what the mascot was. He accused her of not knowing herself, and trying to steal that information from him. I came upon a plan that could solve this dilemma: I told him to whisper his answer to me, and then she can tell me what the mascot is, and I’ll tell her if he got it right. She agrees. He pretends to whisper something in my ear, and I tell her, “Unless the mascot is ‘I’m going to knock this girl unconscious and anally-fist her,’ he didn’t go to Austin High.” He still hasn’t forgiven me.
-PWJ and I were talking to some girls, and PWJ seemed to be doing well with the ring leader, when she saw through his bullshit,
Girl “Do you remember what my name is?”
PWJ “No.”
Girl “That’s attractive.”
PWJ [Turning to me] “Tucker, these girls are sleeping with us on the 7th of never. Time to move on.”
These fun little games were all well and good, but it was getting near closing time and we had no prospects, so Tucker had to get serious and do what Tucker does best: Pick up some women. By this time we had gotten separated, and it was only me, SlingBlade and PWJ. I found a group of three girls, bought all of us a round of shots, made a few jokes, and the crew was set. The way it worked out, I got the hot one, SlingBlade got the good-looking one, and PWJ got the fat one. I assigned the plump one to him because big tits are his kryptonite, and hers were individually each as large as his planet-sized cranium. When he gets a few beers in him, large breasts block out any other physical consideration: fatness, facial appearance, lack of personal hygiene, etc.
After a round or two, they agree to come with us to get some food at Kerbey Lane, a late night diner. As we walk to the car, we see about a dozen cops, some of them on horseback, chasing after some random drunk guy, beating him senseless with batons and what not. I laugh at this scene. The girls gasp in horror. SlingBlade offers to help the police beat him. What does PWJ do? He runs after the cops yelling--and I quoting him VERBATIM:
“I’M A LAWYER, AND I SWEAR TO GOD THAT I WILL FILE A SECTION 1983 SUIT VINDICATING THE 4TH AMENDMENT RIGHTS OF THAT MAN!!!”
Yeah, my friend is a closet dork. Except without the closet.
It ended up working out well, because I convinced the girls that PWJ was a big time criminal defense lawyer, and we had gone to law school with him. I save my friends more than Goose Gossage.
Anyway, we get into the car, and on the way to Kerbey Lane I look in the rear view mirror and see PWJ doing his best to eat the face of the fat girl. Then I make the unfortunate mistake of looking down, and I see his hand in her crotch. When I say “in her crotch” I mean it. I couldn’t see anything below the elbow. It was almost enough to make me lose my appetite.
In spite of that scene, I am still starving when we get to the restaurant. I know the hot one is going to fuck me, so I want to hurry up and eat so I can get this pony in his stable. I take the hot girl by the hand and kinda pull her towards the entrance as I power walk there. She has her head turned and is yelling something back to one of her friends behind us as I walk by a light post, hear a dull thud, then a scream, “OW! MY FACE!”
I turn to see the hot girl crumpled in a ball on the ground, holding her face and moaning in agony. I accidentally walked her face-first right into a light pole. As her friends ran up to see if she was OK, I just stood there, watching my best shot of the night evaporate, said, “Well, I guess I’m not getting laid,” and walked into the restaurant.
I hope my daughters date guys like me.
After this, of course I’m the bad guy. All the girls at the table are scowling at me. SlingBlade is not happy either; apparently the girl he was assigned has had sex with another guy at some point in her life, so he thinks she is a shameless prostitute. He has issues with women. PWJ is drunker than all of us and happier than a pig in shit. I glance at SlingBlade. He and I have been going out together so long that we don’t even have to speak--he has found these girls to be wholly worthless and wants to leave now without even acknowledging them. I do too, but I have to make sure my other friend is taken care of,
Tucker “PWJ, I’m going to piss, you want to come with me?”
PWJ “No dude, I’m fine.”
I kick him several times very hard and in rapid succession until he gets the picture. Once in the bathroom, I lay it out for him,
Tucker “Dude, SlingBlade and I are leaving. You want to come with us or you want to fuck the girl you’re with?”
PWJ “I don’t know man; she’s kinda fat. What do you think I should do?”
PWJ is so drunk he is swaying and his eyes are crossed. Whatever I tell him to do, he’ll do…so of course I throw him under the bus. Literally:
Tucker “Dude--You should TOTALLY go home with her. She’s not that fat. She has huge tits. Shit--I’d fuck her.”
PWJ “Yeah she does have big tits, doesn’t she? I love big tits. OK, OK, I’m going with her. Thanks man…you’re a good friend.”
We go back out to the table, I sit down for about 30 seconds, catch SlingBlade’s eye, and we both simultaneously rise and head for the door. The hot girl says, “Where are you two going.” I call back to her, “The bathroom,” to which she yells out, as we leave the restaurant, “The bathroom is the opposite direction!”
I hadn’t realized how supremely shit-housed I was until we stumbled into our room at the Embassy Suites. You ever been so drunk you forgot that you have to shit until the last minute? Well I was at that stage. I nearly had my pants completely off when SlingBlade snaked past me and got into the toilet first. Fine, I go get out of my bar clothes and change into a t-shirt and pink Gap boxers to sleep in. I wait patiently for about three minutes, then I start pounding on the door, screaming at him that I am going to shit on his bed if he doesn’t get out of there.
A short time later he opens the door laughing his ass off, and says, “That was perhaps the most prodigious shit ever. I just put that toilet into therapy.”
I take a gander into the bathroom. It looks like Revelations. The toilet is overflowing, brown shit water is spilling out all over the bathroom floor, and the tank is making demonic gurgling noises.
THE MOTHERFUCKER CLOGGED UP A HOTEL TOILET!
Hotel toilets are industrial size; they are designed to be able to accommodate repeated elephant-sized shits, and their ram-jet engine flushes generate enough force to suck down a human infant, yet skinny ass 170-pound SlingBlade completely killed ours.
I nearly panic. I let loose a flurry of unintelligible curse words at SlingBlade, punctuated by a “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!,” and knock over the lamp in my dash out of the room. The turtle is sticking his head out, and he is coming whether I am on a toilet or not.
I figure that there must be a bathroom somewhere in the lobby, so I shoot down the hall and hop in the elevator. Once in the lobby I can’t seem to spot a bathroom anywhere. So, I head around the corner to the front desk, which doesn’t face the lobby. It’s about 4am, and no one is at the desk. I furiously hit the bell for at least a minute--CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG --until some poor lady comes out with sleep lines all over her face and tells me that the bathroom in the corner of the lobby.
It is hard to describe, so let me give you an aerial picture of what the lobby looks like:
I turn the corner from the front desk into the lobby and realize I don't know which side of the triangular lobby she is talking about. I don't have time to go back and ask her, and I see a white door at the end of the left-hand side, so I quickly waddle towards it. Why am I waddling? Because I have to physically hold my butt cheeks together to prevent myself from crapping all over my pink Gap boxers. I am literally pressing my ass cheeks together with my hands. One of the prouder moments of my life.
I nearly bust the door off it’s hinges as I plow through it. I hear a loud, “AYYYY!!,” that almost literally scares the shit out of me. I jump back to see that this is a janitor’s closet, complete with a small Mexican lady janitor. I momentarily contemplate taking a dump in the janitors bucket, but decide against that, mainly because of the presence of said female janitor.
I try to be as diplomatic as possible, considering that I am about to crap my pants:
Tucker “WHERE IS THE BATHROOM?”
Janitor “No, no se habla Ingles.”
Tucker “WHAT?!? Huh, uh…DONDE ESTA FUCKING BANO?”
Janitor “AYA, AYA!”
She points across the lobby. About 60 yards from where I am standing, at the complete other end of the lobby, there is a set of doors that have a large “Restroom” sign over them. Right where the front desk lady said it would be, except on the opposite side of the lobby.
I have about half a second to make a crucial decision: I can either sprint and hope I make it there before I shit in my boxers, or I can stick my thumb up into my ass and shuffle the 60 yards to lavatory freedom. The decision is simple: I break into a full-on dead-ass sprint.
I am a decent athlete, I played football, baseball and basketball in high school, and I stay in good shape. I have run from cops before, I have run from guard dogs, from a legitimate drive-by shooting once while in Kentucky, but I don’t think I have ever run that fast in my life. Nothing motivates like the prospect of being covered in human excrement.
Unfortunately, I was not fast enough. It went something like this:
-20 yards into the run I feel my boxers start to sag.
-30 yards into the run, about halfway, I feel my ass crack and legs get noticeably wet.
-40 yards into the run, my boxers have slid down to mid thigh. I am struggling to keep it together.
-50 yards into the run, I can feel wetness all over me and little specs of something hitting the back of my head and ears.
By the time I get to the bathroom door, the end of the 60 yards, I have completely lost it.
I am shitting myself. Full on crapping in my pink Gap boxers.
I step out of my boxers as I crash through the door. Shit is puddled in the seat. I blindly hurl them away from me, and nearly break the door to the first stall. I plop down on the seat and immediately slide off, because my ass is covered in slimy, runny feces. All the while, my butt hole is spouting forth waste. I finally get situated on the toilet and lose perhaps 20 pounds in the next 2 minutes.
During a short respite in my nearly superhuman flow of crap, I notice that the toilet is almost completely full of shit, so I flush. Predictably, the toilet overflows. Great. I move to the next stall, and continue my little adventure, except this time I courtesy flush every few seconds.
By the time I finish, I am physically exhausted, completely dehydrated, and my eyes are tearing up from shitting so hard. I laugh at the inadequacy of toilet paper to clean my body. I take my shirt off and see that the back of it is completely covered in little specks of shit that my heels kicked up from the diarrhea that ran down my legs as I ran. I throw the shirt in the trash, and then see the mirror. My pink Gap boxers are crumpled in a ball on the sink, with a thick black streak leading from the top of the mirror down to them. This is their final resting place.
Completely naked and covered in my own poop, I chuckle, because at this point if I don’t laugh I have to cry. As I open the bathroom door to the lobby, I think to myself, “Who else on earth could be having a worse night than me?”
My question is immediately answered.
I see a trail of shit, starting very wide at my feet, getting progressively smaller until it apexes at the chunky white shoes of none other than the small Mexican lady janitor.
Her eyes met mine. We may have been separated by numerous religious, language and socioeconomic barriers, but the "What the fuck just happened?" expression on her face crossed all boundaries.
Now really--picture this scene: I am butt-ass naked, crap plastered all over my ass, legs, back and head, standing about 20 yards away from a Mexican maid, with a trail of black liquid shit leading from her directly to me. What would you do? I wasn't sure. I don't think there is any defined etiquette for this situation.
I shrug my shoulders, say, "Uhh, sorry. I mean, uh--lo siento. Good night. Buenos noche--or whatever," and calmly walk to the elevator.
From the glass window in the elevator, I can see her sobbing. The rest of the lobby tells me why: Not only had my legs kicked shit up on the back of my ears and head, they had sprayed little specs of poop all over EVERYTHING. The couches, the walls, everywhere.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t sobbing. I believe “hysterical crying” would be a better descriptive term. Oh well, someone has to clean up my messes, and it sure as shit isn’t going to be me.
When I get back to the room, SlingBlade is already in bed. He rolls over, takes one look at me and, never one for sympathy, begins laughing uncontrollably. He literally has to stop laughing because he strains his abdominal muscle. It takes him five whole minutes before he can get the words out,
SlingBlade "Where--where the fuck are your pants?”
Tucker "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE. This is all your fault, Mr. Rhino Dump. If you hadn't had that miscarriage in our toilet I wouldn't be COVERED IN SHIT!"
He couldn"t stop laughing long enough to respond. I took what remained of my dignity and got in the shower. As I was cleaning the poop off my back, I could hear him yell out:
"This is clear proof that there is a God, and he is just!"
Day Three: The Yellow Rose and The Arrest
I awoke the next day to PWJ coming back into the room around 10am. I recounted my shit-in-the-lobby story, and after he collected himself, he told us about his night:
PWJ "Yeah, thanks a lot Tucker, you fucking asshole. I think I may have fucked a manatee with feet."
SlingBlade "Did she give a whale call when you were tubing her?"
PWJ "Fuck you.”
Tucker "So, did you actually fuck her?”
PWJ "Yeah.”
Tucker "I can’t wait until one day The Manatee shows up with fat genius children with thimble heads and claims they’re yours.”
SlingBlade "WAIT--You fucked her? What about her promise ring?”
PWJ "She had a promise ring?”
SlingBlade "What a whore.”
Of course, this sent us into eruptions of laughter. Apparently, the fat girl had told SlingBlade (but not PWJ) that she was nearly engaged to her boyfriend, who was out of town that weekend. It turns out SlingBlade is right for once: This one really is a cheating slut. PWJ went on,
PWJ "Now I know why she made me fuck her on the floor—so her roommates wouldn’t know she was cheating on her boyfriend, because her bed creaks.”
SlingBlade "I hate women.”
PWJ "You should have been there this morning when she dropped me off. She pulled up to the hotel and said, ‘Thanks. It was nice to meet you.’ I said, “Yes it was,” got out and came up here. That was it.”
Tucker "You mean you didn’t take her to breakfast?”
PWJ "Fuck you.”
I made SlingBlade call down to the front desk to get our toilet unclogged. About 30 minutes later, the door flung open and a 200lb female Pootie Tang started to scream at us:
Maid "Who kilt my toilet?”
SlingBlade "That was me. I’m sorry; I’ll have a written apology to you in the morning.”
Maid "Iz aight. At least it didn’ flood the seelin so’s da people down stairs’all ‘Why da hell shit comin' down from ma seelin’?’”
She quickly and efficiently went to work, every few minutes yelling something barely intelligible out of the bathroom, “DAMN BOY, what’chu been eatin’? You be needin some Mylanta. Hehehehe.”
We spent the day resting up, and eventually met up with the rest of the crew at Mermaid’s apartment. We pre-partied there for a few hours, and went back out in Austin, except this time we went out on 4th street, which is less of a college crowd and more of a young professional crowd. We started at a place called Lavaca Street because they had table shuffleboard, and El Bingeroso is addicted to that game.
Dirty and I spent the next 2 hours treating El Bingeroso and Mermaid like Haitian boat people at that game. This absolutely incensed him. He is very proud of his ability at table shuffleboard, so me beating him was beyond the pale for his ego.
He started drinking…but not happy drinking. It was like he was trying to douse his anger with alcohol. Every game we won would make him drink faster. After 2 hours of losing, he was fuming mad and very drunk. Being a good friend, I was a gracious winner:
Tucker "I thought you were good at this game? You are a failure. Dirty and I aren’t even trying anymore. Beating you is like teasing fat people; it’s just too easy. You aren’t even a man. Did Kristy forget to let you bring your sack with you on this trip?”
El Bing "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE. I’LL BEAT YOUR ASS.”
Tucker "You can’t even beat me at table shuffleboard. Do you have fucking palsy or something? Why can’t you throw the puck straight? I’m shit-faced and I’m better than you. You are fucked up…you can’t even out drink me.”
El Bing "WHAT? YOU ARE THE WORST DRINKER I HAVE EVER SEEN. YOU DRINK LIKE A FUCKING SEVEN YEAR OLD.” Then El Bingeroso made the bet that would forever change the course of our lives, “MOTHERFUCKER, I’LL OUT DRINK YOU THREE-TO-ONE. ANYTHING! YOU PICK IT, I’LL DO THREE FOR EVERY ONE YOU DO, YOU FUCKING KINDERGARTEN DRINKER!”
Oh boy...I'd done it now. I'd finally pushed El Bingeroso too far. Now it was time for one of us to die.
Almost immediately, Mermaid appeared with four shots of tequila. Mr. Tequila does not get along with Tucker. In fact, Mr. Tequila turns Tucker from normal-happy-drunk Tucker into violently-hurl-all-over-everything Tucker.
Tucker "I'd rather eat out a bull’s ass than take a shot of tequila.”
Mermaid [Sniff, sniff] “I smell a pussy.”
I throw my shot back, and barely keep myself from throwing up. Isn’t alcohol fun? This is one of the few times I can remember where someone successfully manipulated me into something.
El Bingeroso gets through the first three shots relatively easy. Mermaid shows up five minutes later with four more shots. El Bingeroso and I stare at each other. Even though we are holding it together, we both know that if we do these shots, it’s over. I know I’m going to vomit, and he knows he’s going to blackout and go into a drunken, violent rage. But come on, we’re 24 year old guys, do you really think either of us are going to back down?
I do my shot first, because I figure that I have less to lose, as I am not engaged, nor do I even like myself very much. El Bingeroso does two of his shots. I run to the trash can and vomit my guts out.
Of course, El Bingeroso leads the rest of the bar in merciless taunts. I deserve it, as I have just vomited off of two tequila shots (and the 15 or so beers I already had in my stomach). My only solace came when I saw El Bingeroso do his third and final tequila shot. It was like watching one of those NFL’s Greatest Hits videos where they show the moment of impact in slow motion, and you can actually watch the receiver go from conscious to unconsciousness or see the quarterback’s leg go from straight to a right angle. I could see El Bingeroso go over the edge. His eyes started moving independently like a chameleon’s, his knees buckled, and he had to catch himself on the table. His fate was sealed. He quickly recovered and stood up straight again, but I’ve been drinking with him enough to know the result of that little sequence: He’s going to jail.
SlingBlade goes to the bar to get us a round of beers. While there, he starts up a conversation with an older lady who was sitting on a bar stool by herself with a poodle in her lap:
Woman "I wish I were young again, and full of piss and vinegar like you guys.”
SlingBlade "Mostly we’re just full of alcohol and Mexican food. You could do that.”
Woman "Oh my! You are funny.”
As SlingBlade chatted her up, he surreptitiously fed her dog beer. When she discovered this, it did not please her.
Woman "WHAT ARE YOU DOING! Oh my goodness, Pookie, are you OK?”
SlingBlade "Your dog has a drinking problem, you might want to look into that. Take him to doggie AA or something.”
Woman "WHY DID YOU GIVE BEER TO MY DOG!”
SlingBlade "Your dog drank my beer. There is a difference.”
The bartender stepped in.
Bartender "You and your friends are cut off.”
SlingBlade "WHAT? I am 175 pounds of pure athleticism. I can recycle alcohol with impunity. Bring me more beer woman, and be quick about it.”
Bartender "Don’t make me call the police.”
That was pretty much it for us. Mermaid took us to some other bar that was located in an alley, and before any of us even knew what was happening, El Bingeroso was tossing trash cans around the alley, knocking over dumpsters and kicking doors down. He was in full-on El Bingeroso Destroy Mode. He’s the type of drunk that makes you wonder why alcohol is classified as a depressant.
It was clear we had to get him off the street. While deciding what to do, we came across one of the numerous street musicians that swarm 6th street. Some guy was playing “Friends in Low Places” on his guitar, and next thing we know, El Bingeroso has his arm around him, crooning at the top of his lungs:
El Bing "CAUUUUSE I GOT FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES, WHERE THE WHISKEY DROWNS AND THE BEER CHASES…MY BLUES AWAY…AND TUCKER IS GAY…”
The guitar guy stops playing, and tries to help El Bingeroso out:
Guy "Man, you need to put that beer down, there are open container laws in Texas.”
El Bing "YOU WANNA GO?”
Tucker "EL BINGEROSO, STOP IT—he’s trying to help you.”
El Bing "YOU WANNA FIGHT TOO? Come on jackass, gimme some more Garth before I kick your teeth in. I'LL DO IT!”
Guy "You need to get your friend away from me.”
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that said about me or my friends, I could buy a Bugatti.
While this went down, SlingBlade was making friends with one of the numerous homeless denizens of Austin. One beggar sparked this exchange:
Beggar “Hey man, do you like, have any change man?”
SlingBlade “Hahahhahahaha. He talks like you, El Bingeroso! I bet he was a promising law student once, before the huff-huff and all. Come here El Bingeroso, take a look into your future!”
Beggar “Do I get some change, man?”
SlingBlade “Tell you what--I will give you all my change if you give me that can of beer in your pocket.”
Beggar “But--it’s all I have. I live on the streets, man.”
SlingBlade “IT ACCEPTS THE DEAL OR IT DOESN’T GET MY CHANGE.”
Beggar “OK, man, OK. Here you go.”
SlingBlade “Very nice. I don’t have any change, but thanks for the beer.”
Beggar “But…but…man, that beer was all I had. I live on the streets, man.”
SlingBlade “And do you think that perhaps your poor negotiation skills had something to do with this? Hmmm?”
Beggar “No man, my whore ex-wife kicked me out man, I got nowhere to go.”
SlingBlade “You said the magic words. Here’s your beer back.”
Beggar “How about some change?”
SlingBlade “Don’t push it. You’re lucky I haven’t knocked out your tooth.”
We decide to go to a strip club, The Yellow Rose. To this day, I still laugh recalling our thought process: El Bingeroso is too drunk and violent to walk around the streets, so let’s take him to a place with naked women and large angry bouncers! Sounds great! It’ll be all sunshine and kittens there!
There are six of us, so we split into two cabs. Cab 1 is me, Mermaid and Dirty. Cab 2 is PWJ, SlingBlade and El Bingeroso. It’s only like ten minutes to the Rose, and Cab 1 arrives with no problem. The three of us go inside, and immediately Mermaid says to me, “We are in Gomorrah.”
If you go out a lot, you know that you can never try too hard to make a party; you just have to kinda go out and see where the night takes you. You do that enough, and every now and then you stumble into one of those absolutely perfect situations, where it seems like everything just falls into place. It was that kind of night at the Yellow Rose.
It was a Sunday night, so the place was not crowded, but for some reason there were lots of dancers working that night. We were dressed well, had lots of cash on us, and all three of us have very good game, so before we realized it there were about 5 or 6 girls hanging with us at our table.
Dirty assesses the situation, looks up at me, gives a devious smile and then pulls a classic Dirty maneuver, “Ladies, do you know who that guy is?” He points to me. “That is Tucker Max. He looks like a humble guy, but in reality he is one of the creators of, and the third largest stock-holder in, Yahoo. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you ladies what Yahoo is, do I?” Of course, two of them did require explanation, but the other four knew what it was, and one even owned stock in Yahoo.
Now, obviously this is not even remotely true. I was dirt poor and didn’t even own the car I drove. But Dirty went to the PT Barnum School of Marketing, and learned the most important lesson very well: The bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe it.
I pretended to be unassuming and nonchalant as he kept talking me up. All six couldn’t have been hooked more if we’d landed them with tackle and a line. The best part was the dancer who owned stock in Yahoo seemed to know a little bit about the stock market, and tested me by asking who the CEO was. I had worked for Fenwick & West that summer, and one of their main clients was Yahoo, so I knew quite a bit about them. The look on her face when I said, “Are you kidding? I helped hire Tim Koogle,” was fucking priceless. I thought she might go down on me right there at the table.
Playing the part, I ordered bottle service for the table, and before we knew it, there was free lap dances and gratuitous groping all around. It was great. One of the strippers had done some porn before, so I asked her about something I had always wondered about:
Tucker "I understand how female porn stars are selected, but if you are a guy, and you don’t have a huge cock or can shoot 8-ropers, how do you get into the porn industry?”
Mermaid "Networking, dude, networking.”
Stripper "I don’t know. I just fucked whoever they told me to. It paid good.”
Tucker "Well isn’t that pleasant? I bet your parents are beaming with pride.”
We had all six convinced to come back to our hotel with us, when all of the sudden Mermaid looks up at us and goes, “Where the fuck is El Bingeroso?”
In our eagerness to exploit strippers, we had totally forgotten about the other th
