Hilarity Ensues

by Tucker Max

  There was one girl up for grabs, and from the jump PWJ was all over her. She was his perfect type of girl: big natural tits, very sweet demeanor, kinda rural but not stupid, etc. She had been Kristy’s sorority sister in college. Dirty kept talking her up, telling PWJ about how cool she was and that she had a twin, and that he should ask her about her twin. He harped on this over and over: Ask about her twin, her twin will only come out at night, her twin is the one PWJ really wants to hit on. I just assumed Dirty had a threesome with her and her twin, and that was his way of bragging to us—the dude is nicknamed Dirty after all.

  Not quite.

  After PWJ talks to her for about 30 minutes, he asks her about her twin. She says she doesn’t have one. He’s kinda confused but lets it go because they’re hitting it off. They keep talking and flirting, and then all of the sudden a random bridesmaid comes over and pulls PWJ aside. She talks to him for a minute, then takes the cute girl to the bathroom. PWJ storms over to the table.

  PWJ “Where is Dirty? That motherfucker!”

  Tucker “What? You looked like you were in.”

  PWJ “Well, apparently that girl is seriously schizophrenic and just got out of a mental institution, where she’s been for like A YEAR. Which coincidentally is the last time she’d had consensual sex. And she doesn’t have a twin at all—unless you count her other personality as a separate person. “

  I’ll admit, I laughed … but that was fucked up. I wouldn’t even have done that.

  I made friends with the cute bartender and she just let me fill up my own beer, so I ended up getting pretty bombed. Homer Simpson said alcohol was the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. That includes standards. The only single girl I could find at the wedding was this one girl who was, well, less than ideal. She was fun to talk to, though, so I bullshitted with her for most of the night. By the end, I was ready to go home with her. Some of my friends were not in agreement with my choice, especially SlingBlade, who was sober and annoyed with everything.

  Tucker “At the very least, she’s a butterface.”

  SlingBlade “She insults the term butterface. She’s a butternothing.”

  Tucker “She’s good enough for the dick.”

  SlingBlade “Your dick needs glasses.”

  Hate “Tucker, he’s right. She’s ugly.”

  Tucker “What time is it?”

  Hate “2am.”

  Tucker “Nobody is ugly at 2am.”

  SlingBlade “You’d think … but this one has an ugly that appears to be timeless.”

  Tucker “Does this girl have any discernible talent, except for the two hanging off her chest? No. Do I care? No.”

  SlingBlade “She looks like a pot roast.”

  Tucker “Whatever … I’ll take one for the team.”

  Hate “What team??”

  Tucker “Isn’t Credit trying to fuck her friend?”

  SlingBlade “Listen to what you’re saying.”

  Hate “This one put the ‘ugly’ in ‘ugly.’”

  Tucker “HEY! FUCK YOU BOTH! It’s my dick and I’ll put it wherever I want!”

  I woke up the next morning with one of those awful kicked-in-the-head hangovers you get from cheap light beer. I looked over at the “girl,” and thanked god she hadn’t rolled herself into a spooning position because when I took all of her in as a healthy, sober man who loved his life and his limbs, I finally understood where the term “coyote ugly” came from.

  GOLDENBOY’S WEDDING — OUTER BANKS, NC

  Occurred, July 2001

  You’ve already read this story—it’s the wedding I took MissVermont to in “The (almost banned, now complete) Miss Vermont Story.” So yeah, that wedding probably takes the cake for the craziest of the group.

  JONBENET’S (SORT OF) BACHELOR PARTY — TAMPA, FL

  Occurred, January 2002

  After a six-month period that saw graduation from law school, two bachelor parties, and two weddings, we settled into our real lives and our post-school jobs. And, to put it bluntly: real life sucked. One day, JonBenet sent this particularly depressing email to the group:

  I hate to whine, but it is the only thing I really excel at, so:

  Is anyone else still at the fucking office? I’m sitting here in the conference room trying to concentrate hard enough to overcome my involuntary muscle control so I can force my heart to stop beating. The world would be a better place if I did not wake up tomorrow. I demonstrated the slightest aptitude for mathematics at work and now I have been designated firm math guru and get the lamest assignments in the history of the legal profession. The best years of my life are way behind me. I could have gone to West Point and could be killing terrorists right now. Instead, I am basically gay.

  Of course we all tried to cheer him up. Not by talking about our emotions or trying to understand the real cause of our depression—be serious; that’s what women do. Women reinforce social bonds by complimenting each other (but not really meaning it), whereas we men socialize by insulting each other (but not really meaning it). So that’s what we did.

  Credit’s email:

  I’m not sure how long I’m going to last in the legal profession either. I just went through a week of training, which included the dreaded ‘Effective Public Speaking’ workshop. Interestingly enough, sweating profusely while muttering to yourself is not one of their classic styles of public speaking. My firm has now cut off all access to Espn.com for the foreseeable future. Tech support has told me to stop calling them trying to bypass the block of the site.

  My response:

  You aren’t the only one seriously depressed. I never realized how much I liked school, and how incredibly different it is from the real world, until I actually got fully into the real world. For example, in academia, being mean, rude, and crass to people has no consequences, except that people you don’t even like anyway talk shit about you. Whatever, fuck’em if they can’t take a joke. In real life, being mean, rude, and crass to people has VERY REAL consequences, like having employees quit because you constantly berate them.

  An example of my day:

  9:00am: Wake up. Bitch about having to get up early. Throw water on my body. Put on whatever clothes smell least offensive.

  9:06: Call a random employee at home. Tell them they suck and are close to being fired. Hang up on them as they attempt to respond. Feel immediately better.

  9:15: Walk down to the restaurant and try to pretend I am interested, and not just biding my time until I either feel the sweet release of death or become a star for some unknown reason.

  9:18: Grab a random employee, and tell them that this could be their last day if they don’t quit stealing. Ignore their lamentations to the contrary.

  9:24: Call one of our liquor or food vendors. Tell them their products aren’t fit for consumption by starving jackals. Tell them I don’t ever want to see them in my establishment again unless they drop prices 2% across the board.

  Of course, SlingBlade came over the top and trumped us all with the best email:

  All of these problems are well and good, but we already knew JonBenet was a whiny little girl. I think we should be more concerned with the new Supreme Court ruling that states aren’t allowed to execute retards. This baffles me. And how does this happen? I can’t imagine the retard lobby is too effective. How does their legal memo read:

  Section 1: Kiling us am bad, it hurts … no likey it. Bunnies are pritty. Lissen too me, i have a daploma.

  Section 2: Oh dear, I just pooed myself. I was going to fire off a legal missive of fearful import, but now my oversized pants are choked with poo. Please no die.

  Staring reality in the face, we did the only thing a group of immature mid-twenty-something guys could do besides mock each other over email—we planned to get together and drink. El Bingeroso lived in Tampa at the time, and he informed us of a yearly party in Tampa called “Gasparilla,” which is basically Tampa’s version of Mardi Gras. We were all solidly in.

  Two weeks be
fore we were supposed to go to Gasparilla, out of nowhere, JonBenet tells us he got engaged to the girl he was dating. We all congratulated him and decided that now the party would double as a bachelor party.

  Then, at 9pm on the Monday before we were all supposed to leave, we got this email from JonBenet:

  I was in this morning at 7:00am doing meaningless shit after missing a 12-hour drinking/Madden session with my friends. Nobody at my firm likes me. I do not have time to support my alcohol problem. My fiancée gives shitty head and talks way too much. My favorite strip club just promulgated a rule forbidding all “contact” with the entertainers. I am sure my car has a flat tire. I have to cancel my Gasparilla tickets to sit on conference calls where everyone seems to understand what the fuck is going on except me. My law firm is a dirty sweatshop and I was clearly tricked by the summer program. I haven’t had anal in five years. I’m losing my sex drive. And I’m done.

  I want to die,

  JonBenet

  PS—Honest to God, she unilaterally purchased and hung curtains in my living room last week. Son of a … what have I done?

  And with that, JonBenet bailed on the weekend that was supposed to be about both our depression and his engagement. I think there is a joke to make there, but thinking about it makes me too sad to try. Oh well. It’s not like we can’t get drunk and act like assholes without him.

  We all get in late on Friday, so we just relax that night. I get my ass up early the next morning, ready to drink, and wake up everyone who was staying with us at El Bingeroso’s house.

  Tucker “Let’s go, motherfuckers. Time to crack the first one. These beers aren’t going to throw themselves up.”

  Kristy and her friends had set themselves up for the night at a really nice resort hotel, so they wouldn’t have to be around all the drunk idiots in Tampa for Gasparilla. Like her husband and his friends, namely me. She packed up and left about noon, but not before giving a stern lecture to El Bingeroso.

  Kristy “This isn’t going to be one of those nights, is it? Where you just drink a lot, and everyone laughs at you when you get into all kinds of trouble.”

  El Bingeroso “No, no. It’ll be fine.”

  Tucker “What? Getting in trouble is the whole point of drinking! Well, that and having anonymous sex with women.”

  El Bingeroso’s house was right on a main pedestrian street, and because it was a holiday, there were a ton of people walking by. We were grilling out and drinking on the front lawn all day, so of course we invited every female who was even mildly attractive to join us.

  All of this was amazing to one of El Bingeroso’s neighbors, this guy Dan, whose wife was friends with Kristy and was going with her. He was super nice, but kind of a nerd, and his wife definitely owned his balls. I don’t think he’d even heard of day drinking before, so when I handed him a beer as his wife drove off, he acted like a naughty kid getting chocolate behind his parents’ backs. When I started inviting girls walking by the house to drink with us, and some accepted and joined us, the dude thought I was some sort of mad genius. And when I started fucking with them, and they were clearly into it, the dude looked at me like I’d invented fire.

  I didn’t hear this, but later on that night he said to El Bingeroso:

  Dan “Hey El Bingeroso, I really like your friend Tucker, he’s really cool.” El Bingeroso “Wow … I’ve never heard that before. Normally, people say things like ‘what the fuck is wrong with your friend?’ or, ‘Your friend slept with my wife,’ but never, ‘Your friend is really cool.’”

  I knew a girl in Tampa who was pretty hot and I’d always had a good time with, and since she lived close to El Bingeroso, I invited her to come over, bring some friends, and drink with us before going to the parade. Part of the reason I liked her was that I was living in Boca Raton at the time, and by that point I’d lost my perspective on what made a good woman. SlingBlade had not. Living in DC, he’d only gotten angrier about women.

  He immediately hated everything about her: her designer clothes, her uppity attitude, her wealthy pedigree, everything. Then I made the mistake of telling him that she was married to some guy who paid no attention to her, and would come to Boca to fuck me because they were going through their divorce. I was too drunk to really think about the result from setting his anger match to her emotional gasoline. It didn’t take long, about an hour, before she found me by the grill, distraught.

  UppityWhore “Um … your friend came over, then he said I was dirty and left. What’s wrong with him? Why would he say that?”

  Tucker “You must not know SlingBlade. That’s his way of saying he likes you.”

  UppityWhore “And he said my friend was fat!”

  Tucker “Maybe fat is a bit harsh … but she is definitely stumpy. She kinda looks like someone carved her out of a tree with a chainsaw.”

  UppityWhore “WHAT!”

  SlingBlade walks over, and she whirls on him in a rage.

  UppityWhore “Who do you think you are? You can’t judge me!”

  SlingBlade “Oh we’re well past that point. I’m just trying to decide what precisely to judge you for.”

  UppityWhore “How about if I started judging you? How would you like that?”

  SlingBlade “Hold on, let me get this straight—you’re married? Right now?”

  UppityWhore [pauses in frustration, because she knows he’s right] “Technically, but it’s more complicated than—”

  SlingBlade “And you’re sleeping with Tucker. Right?”

  She doesn’t respond, she just clenches her jaw. I’ll hit this softball if you don’t want to, honey.

  Tucker “I’d say that we’re horse-fucking, but close enough.”

  SlingBlade “Precisely. I feel very confident judging the fact that you are a cheating tramp.”

  UppityWhore “You don’t know all the facts! You’re just a … computer nerd in a Superman shirt!”

  SlingBlade “So says the slut who is cuckolding her husband.”

  UppityWhore “Tucker, your friend is an asshole and I hate him and want him to leave.”

  SlingBlade “Go throw rocks at school buses, you whore.”

  It still makes me laugh that this girl thought I would ditch one of my best friends for her. Be serious. I like pussy, but I’d sooner rub my penis on the hot grill than let this girl tell me what to do. She and her friends were unceremoniously sent packing.

  That meant it was time for us to go to the parade so I could find a different girl to horse-fuck. Because El Bingeroso told us that Gasparilla was a costume party, I brought a costume with me: the same scrubs I wore to the DC Halloween party. I decided to put them on.

  I have no idea why I wore them, let alone kept them on. I looked fucking ridiculous walking around in stolen nurse scrubs. I blame alcohol. In fact, I was the only one who even dressed up, unless you count the Superman shirt SlingBlade had on. Or the fact that Credit changed from his normal white wife-beater into his more formal maroon wifebeater.

  Gasparilla is held in Tampa’s bar district, a place called Ybor City. If you’ve never been it’s like a mini-Bourbon Street with less culture and more disgusting hookers. The parade starts at the beginning of Ybor City and winds around for like two miles as huge crowds stand on each side of the street.

  We’re walking to find a good spot, when I see a target I can’t pass up: A street preacher. Every time a bunch of people are gathered around to drink and have fun, you can usually expect some religious nutcase to want to ruin it for everyone. Gasparilla is no different. He was rambling about all kinds of lunacy about why we’re all bad for doing things that feel good:

  Tucker “Excuse me—how is it you know that all of this stuff you’re saying is true?”

  Zealot “I read it in the Bible. It’s all right here in the Bible,” he slaps the Bible he has in his hand.

  Tucker “But what’s wrong with just drinking and having fun?”

  Zealot “It ain’t in da Bible, and this book is our law. It’s our guide to
the world!”

  Tucker “Yeah, that makes sense. After all, I know that the Man with the Yellow Hat is friends with a mischievous little monkey, because it’s in Curious George.”

  The dude went eerily silent. Either he didn’t know who Curious George was, or he was just that taken aback. Then he started out real low, and began elevating his speech until he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Zealot “God will strike you down! Be a sinner if YOU WANT, THAT JUST MEANS MORE ROOM IN HEAVEN FOR ME!”

  Tucker “There is no God! We’re just soulless bags of meat, doomed to toil in misery!”

  I was so drunk, I was arguing religion with a street preacher. Welcome to Gasparilla.

  So many people come out to this thing that they set up bleachers on the sidewalk for everyone to watch the parade. We find a place to stand, and it starts out the way most parades start: with bands and other boring shit. To pass the time, Dan explains the history of Gasparilla to us along with its traditions and all the other Wikipedia shit I would probably care about if I were lame like him. At this point, I’m starting to get upset with the parade. Not enough attention is being paid to me. Then a float comes by, and the people on it are throwing beads into the crowd.