by Tucker Max
Tucker “Does anyone want to have their ass sprayed with bear mace?”
Shockingly, no one responded. This is Alaska; the unofficial state motto is, “someone here is ready to do anything for money”:
Tucker “OK, for $100. Who will do it for $100?”
No one.
Tucker “Fine, $200. Who will take bear spray in the ass for $200?”
No takers.
Tucker “Jesus Fucking Christ, $200 is what America paid for Alaska! Someone here HAS to be willing to get bear spray in their ass for that price.”
Finally, some random guy agreed.
Guy “$200 cash?”
I show him the money.
Guy “OK, I’ll do it. I’m in the Army, I breathe CS gas all the time. How much worse can this be?”
Everyone cheers and gets ready to watch. Then I think about something I had not considered.
Tucker “OK … does anyone have any bear mace?”
Like an idiot, I’d left that part out of my calculations. Thankfully, we were in a place where bear attacks actually happen, and someone produced a canister of bear mace.
Tucker “We have the bear mace! Everyone, to the deck!!!”
Bear mace is just a very strong form of the same pepper spray you can buy for your key chain. But it’s called “bear mace” for a reason: It is strong enough to stop a bear. Keep that in mind as I describe this next scene to you.
I don’t know how many followed me outside, but there had to have been at least 150 people packed onto the deck. I pulled the dude aside and explained the rules to him. Completely arbitrary rules that I made up on the spot.
Tucker “OK, here’s what you have to do: drop your pants and bend over. I’ll spray the bear mace on your asshole, you get the money, and you’re golden. Sound good?”
Guy “I have to drop my pants?”
Tucker “Of course, dumbass. I’m not spraying your clothes for $200. I can do that for free. The bear mace has to go onto your bare asshole.”
He agrees. Right there, in 10-degree weather, this guy completely drops his pants, bends over right in front of me and spreads his ass cheeks. [This is the part of the story where I don’t make a gay joke, and you make all the obvious ones for me. Well, I have two things to say: 1. Who do you think you are?, and 2. What gives you the right?]
I bend down and get about two feet from his butt—close enough to smell his poorly-wiped ass—all but stick the bear mace nozzle into his bunghole, and let loose. The guy took about a half-second of spray, then jumped in the air and turned around to face me. Since I am an asshole, I did the only thing that made sense: I kept hosing him down. In his crotch. And his chest. And face. Until the canister was empty. And then for some reason, I threw it over the fence, like I was trying to dispose of the evidence of a crime or something (and yes, there is video of this as well: www.tuckermax.com/mace).
Predictably, as soon as the bear mace hit the air, it cleared the area. The entire deck went from packed to empty in less than five seconds. Instead of running like everyone else, I did the smart thing, and immediately rubbed my itching eyes—with the very hand I used to spray the bear mace. Awesome. Great job, you fucking moron.
The next 30 minutes is something of a blur, probably because I couldn’t see out of my swollen, capsaicin-filled eyes. Bunny said that I looked like I had the worst case of conjunctivitis ever, so she took me to the bathroom to wash out my eyes with clean water. At the time, I remember thinking, “Damn, if rubbing my eye with my finger did that, I wonder how fucked up the other guy is?”
I found out immediately:
The bar bathroom was small. It had two sinks, a mirror, one toilet and one long piss trough. There was a mop sink in the floor behind the door, with a nozzle about waist high. In the mop sink, completely and utterly naked, stood the bear mace guy with his entire penis and ballsack jammed up against the nozzle, sloshing arctic cold Alaskan water all over the bathroom, like when you put your thumb over a hose and crank the spigot wide open. I wasn’t sure what to say, then I remembered something.
Tucker “You forgot your $200.”
He slowly turned around to face me. I’m not sure he really even recognized me. His eyes were so red, I would say he was crying, but that’s not accurate—it’s more like his soul was pouring out of his ocular sockets. There was so much snot coming out of his nose, it looked like brain matter. You ever see video of people who get pulled out of collapsed buildings after earthquakes? He looked like one of those people. He was in so much pain and agony that shock had overtaken his senses and his body had port-holed and shut down all but the most basic survival systems. He looked like a living war crime.
He slowly turned around and maneuvered his ass so the water nozzle basically wedged in his butt. I reached the wad of bills out to him. As the freezing cold water shot through his ass crack and sprayed over the bathroom counter, he pitifully reached his hand out and took the money. Realizing he didn’t have any pockets to stash his winnings, he just stared at me, then turned back around and put his balls back on the cold water.
I hope that this will be the only time in my life I gave a wad of cash to a naked man.
I took my iPhone out for a picture. Then I stopped. I just couldn’t. This dude was in so much pain, he wasn’t even human anymore. I had sprayed bear mace over every inch of his genitals—don’t you think I’d caused enough suffering? I didn’t ALSO need to get a picture of him to extend the suffering beyond that night and that bar. And yes, it is funny when I read that sentence out loud to myself.
After that, I somehow got roped into a conversation with a bunch of Alaskan natives. I said something about Eskimos or whatever, and then got a long elaborate lecture about all the different types of Alaskan natives. Apparently, there are big differences between Eskimos, Inlanders, Aleuts, etc.
Tucker “I don’t understand—firewater is still firewater, even if it’s cold. You’re telling me there are different types of mud people?”
They didn’t think this was as funny as I did. They kept trying to explain the differences to me, but it made no sense. Also, I was very drunk and didn’t give a shit.
I have to say one thing about Anchorage though: There were WAY more hot girls than I anticipated. Well, there were at that bar on that night anyway. I was super impressed. My penis counted at least five girls it wanted to see the inside of.
So what happens? OF COURSE, some girl outside my penis’s starting five ends up back in the limo with me. How? I don’t know. Apparently, she was an aggressive bitch to the other girls, and I didn’t notice. I blame alcohol. So does my penis. It refused to stay up with her when we tried to fuck in the limo. And then again when we got back to the hotel, though I’m not blaming alcohol for that one.
Girl “What’s wrong?”
Tucker “I don’t know.”
Girl “What the fuck? You can’t fuck me because you drank too much?”
Tucker “No, I don’t think it’s alcohol. I’ve drunk way more than this and still fucked without a problem; the only explanation is you. You’re just not attractive enough to get my drunk dick excited.”
I was kinda kidding, but not really. I planned to just go to sleep for a few hours, then wake up and fuck her later, no big deal. But she wouldn’t stop annoying me and complaining. I told her to shut up and go to sleep. She decided she didn’t want to. I laid her options out: comply or leave. She seemed to think there were other options for her, even though I distinctly listed only two. So I solved that problem: I took all of her shit and threw it out in the hallway. Clothes, purse, shoes, everything.
Tucker “You can be an annoying bitch if you want, but not around me.”
Nils, Bunny and Drew were walking down the hallway as this happened, and watched her pick up her stuff and run off.
Drew “At least he didn’t make her leave through the window. He’s growing up.”
Nils “Judging by her face, he should have.”
Bunny “NILS! BE NICE TO THE WHORES!�
�
I posted this Tweet, then went to bed:
For some ungodly reason, Bunny, Nils, and I got up early the next day for breakfast. The only two people awake were Fourtner and Andy Hillstrand, Johnathan’s brother and the other captain of the Time Bandit. Andy hadn’t been out with us the night before, so instead of being hung over, he was fresh as the morning dew. And even though I’d watched the show for six seasons and seen every episode and knew that Andy was a funny dude, I wasn’t prepared for exactly how fucking hilarious he was in person. We spent about 90 minutes listening to him tell some of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard. Highlights:
What it was like growing up with four brothers in Alaska:
“We weren’t poor, but this was Alaska, so there wasn’t much up there. All we had to play with was sand and rocks basically. So we’d put a bunch of sand and rocks into tube socks and hit each other with them. We called’em ‘Wammy socks’. Or, when those broke, we’d just have rock fights with trash can lids as shields.”
“My dad gave all of us Swiss Army knifes once. It was our prized possession. Then Neal and my other brother popped a bunch of his buoys with it, and he took each one from us, and broke the blades off, and gave it back. Ever seen a Swiss Army Knife without anything sharp on it? Pretty useless.”
“That’s actually how our boat got its name. Our dad used to say ‘I got these five retarded little midgets, I might as well just call the boat the Time Bandit.’ It’s based on that movie. And the fact that he thought my brothers and I were all retarded midgets.”
On his brother Neal Hillstrand, who is also on the show (but you don’t see as much of him as you do Andy and Johnathan):
“Neal’s nickname growing up was ‘Neal the eel’. It was because Mom would always find eels in his pockets when she’d wash his britches. She finally asked him why the hell he had eels in his pants—it was because he was eating them. He’d spend days away from home, just hanging out on the beach, cooking eels he’d catch.”
On his father’s parenting techniques:
“Our dad owned a few fishing boats and a cannery. He was tough on us too. He made us work on his boats pretty much from as early as I can remember. He laid it down for us, ‘You’re going to work, and if you don’t like it, go upstairs and suck on your mommy’s tit.’ I was like, ‘Dad, I’m six years old.’”
“Dad had a little anger problem too. He basically hired and fired pretty much everyone in Homer, Alaska several times, including us. One time Johnathan and I fucked up something real bad, and he got real pissed, ‘You’re fired, and you’re out of the family. Change your fucking name!!’ I had to move into an abandoned shed out back with Johnathan for six months. We had a fucking blast back there though.”
“We have the Time Bandit now, but he was such a fucker, we not only had to buy it from him at market price, he wanted to lend us the money but charge us more interest over what I could get a loan from the bank for. I told him to fuck off and took the loan from the bank.”
“Even though we bought the boat from him, he’d still get pissed at us every day, and still try to fire us, ‘I’m taking the boat back!’ I was like, ‘We bought it from you fucker, you can’t!’”
“Let’s see, what were some of his other words of wisdom? He used to say things like, ‘I gave you every means in life to kill yourselves and you’ve all failed.’ Or he would constantly tell us that ‘You’re all mistakes.’ He said he wanted daughters because they were cheaper to raise.”
On dealing with the Alaskan natives:
“The old time fisherman used to shoot every seal and sea lion they saw. Hated them, because they fucked with the lines. But we can’t really hunt most of these animals anymore; they’re protected now. But if you really want, you can probably get ahold of a dead seal or something, you just have to get it from a native. The natives, they can kill pretty much anything they want. They’ll trade you a seal pelt for a bottle of whiskey still to this day.”
“Yeah, some of the natives are kinda messed up. I’ve seen them rape their buddies. I’m not kidding. They’ll get that drunk. One time we were walking back from the bar in Homer, and we saw something moving under the dock. I thought it was a sea lion or something, and we got closer, turns out it was an Eskimo. He was kicking his buddy to see if he was awake, and he wasn’t, so then he just stuck his dick in his ass. He was raping his buddy, right there under the dock!!”
PART 3: THE TIME BANDIT
After breakfast, we got all packed up and went to the airport for our charter flight. Despite the gallons of poison I poured into my stomach the night before, I was feeling great. The rest of the crew, not so much. For example, Eddie was still so hung over, he puked in the parking lot:
Yes, that one picture is Eddie picking up the eggs that came out with his puke. Sophisticated, these crabbers.
One of the really cool things about flying a charter was that we didn’t have to go through security or any shit like that. As we sat in the plane and waited for everything to get loaded and the pilots to start it up, I noticed that the crew was visibly anxious and worried.
Tucker “What are you guys afraid of? It’s just a charter plane.”
Fourtner “Man, these things make me nervous. I don’t want to die in a plane.”
Tucker “Fuck that. Plane death is way better than dying by falling into the Bering Sea. If we smash into a mountain, that’s it, it’s over in a second. If you fall into the Bering Sea, you have two minutes to consider how stupid you are as you freeze to death.”
They weren’t convinced.
As we approached the island, we banked multiple times, then headed down through the clouds for what seemed like forever. Finally we broke through, 30 yards above the ocean, and about 100 yards from a huge mountain to our left. It seemed close enough to touch.
As we flew around the island to make our final approach, Bunny’s eyes were wide as saucers. I looked back at her, and she said in the most pitiful voice I’ve ever heard, “Where are we going to land? There’s nothing here!”
Fourtner had mentioned in an email earlier that the place we were flying, King Cove, was a pretty desolate place. But that doesn’t really do it justice. Here are some pictures:
We eventually did find the airport, and landed. On the GRAVEL runway. We came to a stop near the only thing at the airport, a parked truck all by itself. It was the one Fourtner asked the locals to bring out for us. Complete with keys in the ignition.
Tucker “They just left it there with the keys in the ignition?”
Fourtner “Yeah man. There’s nothing to worry about, you can’t steal it.
There’s five miles of road on this entire island.”
King Cove is where the Time Bandit is docked between fishing seasons. It’s extremely small. It was half dock, half town. As far as I could tell, pretty much all of the buildings in Cold Bay (the name of the town) were made of corrugated metal sheeting, including the grocery store. The store had a surprisingly wide variety of food considering it was on the ass end of the world. You had to pay dearly for it, however. For example, bags of Doritos were “on sale” for $3.50, marked down from $7 each. Apparently the threat of bears is very real in King Cove. In fact, a bear actually ATE someone in Cold Bay in the ‘90s. Like, ATE him, in broad daylight. It’s on Wikipedia, so it must be true.
Then we got our first glimpse of the Time Bandit. I’m not sure what I expected, but the boat itself is both smaller than I thought it would be, and much more imposing. It’s smaller because it’s only like 115 feet long, which isn’t that big for a commercial fishing vessel. But it’s more imposing because you see all the equipment up close, and you realize even more than before that it is no fucking joke. You touch the massively heavy crab pots, your foot slips on the deck—everything becomes real. This wasn’t a TV show anymore. This was real iron and steel, and it was slimy and wet and icy. In 30-foot seas and 50-mph winds, every single thing on the deck of this boat could kill me.
The inside was seriously
cramped. If you’ve seen the show, you know what the boat looks like, but man, it is really tiny on the inside, almost like a submarine. I mean, I was not prepared for the fact that basically, there isn’t enough room in the galley for everyone on the boat to be in there at once.
We all got onto the boat, stowed our stuff away, and then watched the crew get everything settled and situated for the 24-hour ride to Dutch Harbor. The guys were running up and down the mast, climbing over the pots, tying things down, checking the crane, all kinds of shit. I watched them and explored the boat and took everything in—the cabins, the galley, the engine room, the steam room, the storage tanks, etc.—I watched everyone get squared away, and I re-asked myself the same question that everyone asks when they watch the show:
“Could I do this job?”
Here I was, on the fucking boat, with the guys who actually do it, watching them go through everything—and I have to say, at that moment in time, I was starting to think that maybe the show overstated and overdramatized crab fishing. Maybe it wasn’t so hard. I mean, I still respect the hell out of these guys—but given some time to get used to things, I was pretty confident I could do it.
By the time we pulled off, Neal Hillstrand—the third Hillstrand brother on the boat who gets way less camera time than Johnathan or Andy because he curses so much, but is fucking hilarious as you’ll come to see—had cooked up a fantastic dinner. I was shocked that such a huge spread could come out of such a small kitchen, but man, it was not only abundant, but delicious too. I ate a bunch of food. Drew wasn’t eating as much.