by Tucker Max
I went to Midland to visit my friend Doug. I had met Doug at a party in Austin. He came up to me, huge dip in his lip, oil-stained jeans tucked into his dirty cowboy boots, wide grin on his face and said, “HAY! Yur Tucker Max!” and handed me his business card. It said:
[his full name]
Oil Wells Dug
Also: Revolutions Started, Orgies Organized, Uprisings Quelled,
Tigers Tamed, Assassinations Plotted, Virgins Converted.
Also preach and lead singing for revival meetings.
I know, my first thought was the same as yours: This kid is a fucking tool. But in spite of the absurd business card, I ended up hanging out with him several times, and he turned out to be a pretty cool guy. When he invited me to hang out with him for a week and work with him in the West Texas oil fields that his family owned, I took the opportunity.
I landed at Midland airport and walked out of baggage claim to see Doug sitting in his massive truck, its engine making that obnoxious KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK diesel engine idling sound. I have to reach up for the door handle because the truck has huge 45 inch tires as well as lifted suspension, putting the baseplate at like four feet. I open the door to find the seat at eye level for me. He hands me a beer before I can even pull myself up into the truck.
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! WELCOME TO MIDLAND MOTHERFUCKER!!”
It is 3pm on Sunday, and he is at least six beers ahead of me. Scattered all over the floor are empty tins of Copenhagen, crushed up cans of Keystone Light, Chilean surplus 7.62 rounds and .45 magazines loaded with Mag-Safe hollow point rounds. On his gun rack—yes, his truck had a gun rack—is an M-14 assault rifle and between the console is a holstered H&K USP pistol. If you don’t know guns, let me explain it this way: With just the arsenal in his truck, Doug could go round for round with just about any cop in the country, SWAT included, and probably outgun many of them.
It’s a 20-minute drive to his place, and there is nothing resembling civilization on the road there. Every direction is flat, arid brushland scattered with mesquite “trees” (they look like bushes, but Doug insisted that they are trees) and the occasional tumbleweed blowing across the road. The only exception to this wasteland is the huge sign that reads:
“Welcome to Midland: Home of George and Laura Bush.”
Not even 20 minutes on the ground, and I begin to understand what General Sheridan meant when he said, “If I owned Hell and Texas, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
We get to Doug’s place and the first thing I see is a Colt .45 sitting on his kitchen counter, pointing right at me. I notice that the hammer is back, and upon closer inspection I realize that the pistol is FULLY LOADED WITH A ROUND CHAMBERED. I grew up around firearms and know how to use them, so I instinctually pick up the gun and make sure the safety is on—which much to my relief it is—then immediately clear the weapon.
Tucker “DUDE—why was there a round in the chamber with the hammer cocked?!?”
Doug “The safety works better that way.”
Tucker “Better than if there were NO BULLETS IN IT?”
Upstairs in my room, there is an H&K 91 assault rifle just laying out, also locked and loaded. There was enough ammunition scattered throughout the apartment to re-enact the Son Tay raid.
Tucker “Dude, why do you have so many guns?”
Doug “Well, just in case, you never know. Plus, we got some rowdy Mexican neighbors.”
Tucker “WHAT? Who do you live next to, Pancho Villa?”
He hands me a beer:
Doug “Start drinking motherfucker, there are some bitches coming over.”
Tucker “Do you think maybe we should unchamber the rounds from the rest of these firearms and safely store them before we get rip-roaring drunk with girls around?”
Doug “What for? The safeties are on all of them.”
Tucker “Are you kidding?”
Doug “What if we want to go shootin’ tonight?”
Tucker “Oh.My.God.”
I immediately called my friend PWJ and told him to tell everyone that I love them, because I wasn’t coming home alive. But I didn’t get to where I am by fretting about these things, so I just said, “Fuck it,” slammed a few beers and relaxed. After all, alcohol always makes everything better.
[Note: I came to learn during my visit that everyone in Midland is armed, and that they have a very different notion of gun safety than the rest of the world. Basically, if the gun is not going off at that exact moment, then it is safe. Even the women ride around with loaded firearms in their cars. I consider myself a minor gun enthusiast, but Midland is ridiculous.]
The girls arrive, and I can immediately tell that they are all teenagers. How do I know this without asking? Well, the game of quarters they started playing was the first indication. The conversation about the newest Lizzie Maguire movie was probably the second. And this conversation sealed it for me:
Tucker “What are you drinking?”
Jenny “Chilled wine.”
Tucker “You have ice cubes in it? No way. You’re kidding right?”
Jenny “I like it that way. It’s how we serve it.”
Tucker [jokingly] “What are you, a stripper?”
Jenny “No, I only work in a strip club. I don’t strip.”
Tucker “AHHAHHAHHAAH—YOU ACTUALLY DO WORK IN A STRIP CLUB!! Yeah, there is a bright line distinction between the strippers and the waitresses.”
Jenny “IT IS DIFFERENT!”
Tucker “Let me guess—that is white zin. And you are probably mad because Doug doesn’t have any straws.”
Jenny “Excuse me jerk; it is CHABLIS.” [to her credit, she pronounced it correctly]
Tucker “My mistake. I apologize, you are obviously very cultured. You only partake of the finest of the boxed wines.”
Jenny “It didn’t come in a box! It came in a jug!”
Tucker “Oh right…make sure to say hi to Carlo Rossi for me next time you refill.”
Doug comes out of the bathroom and joins the conversation.
Tucker “Dude—who is this girl?” [pointing to Jenny] “Don’t you know me well enough yet not to bring girls like this around?”
Doug “What? She is hot.”
Tucker “Yes, she is hot. But she is painfully dumb and desperately needs braces.”
Jenny “Excuse me, I’ve had braces.”
Tucker “Then why do your teeth look like you’ve been chewing on rocks?”
Jenny “Because I lost my retainer.”
Tucker “Left it on the dashboard of a truck, right? Don’t you hate it when that happens?”
I almost felt bad after this exchange. Fucking with 18-year-old girls is like kicking cripples; it’s just too easy. Of course, the other two girls with her thought this was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. One is cute and skinny with no tits, and one is cute and kinda fat with huge tits. You want to guess which one threw herself at me? Whatever; just give me another beer. I’ve fucked worse.
As the night moves on, I continue to abuse the dumb one for the entertainment of everyone else. If that girl didn’t hate herself before that night, she did after it. The two girls that thought I was funny invited me to go drinking with them at some friend’s house. Jenny—the dumb, hot, crooked-toothed stripper—doesn’t want to hang out with me, and asks Doug to take her to a bar. He kinda looks at me surprised for a second, and then realizes the lesson I just taught him: there is more than one way to be a good wingman. You’re welcome, Doug.
Now, I assumed that when they said “a friend’s house,” these two girls knew where the house was. And what happens when you rely on the cognitive skills of 18-year-old females? You get lost. After two hours of riding around back country roads, we come to the sign:
“Pavement Ends.”
Skinny Girl “Emma, do you know where we are?”
Emma “No.”
Skinny Girl “Tucker, do you know where we are?”
Tucker “Is this a fucking joke? I LIVE IN CHIC
AGO!”
We eventually find our way to someone’s house who has beer. It rained the night before, and I am drunk and bored, so I throw Emma into this huge mud puddle. She doesn’t take that shit, and flings a handful of mud at me. We wrestle and before I know it we are both covered in West Texas filth.
Still dirty, we drive back to Doug’s place and get in the shower to wash it off…and then we start hooking up in the shower…and it moves to the bed… I put my hand down her panties, and feel something gritty. I pull up and find a handful of mud. We get back in the shower, this time with all our clothes off…and we start hooking up again…and move to the bed again…and I start to fuck her…grit again. In her pussy. No matter how much we tried to clean it off, it just would not all come out.
I might as well have been fucking a dirt pile. Welcome to sex in Texas.
Doug woke me up early the next morning, because I was going to go work with him in the oil fields. He knocks on my door, opens it and sees Emma in my bed.
Doug “Shit. Get that land beast out of my house.”
Tucker “I hope you have an elephant gun ready. You’ll only get one, maybe two shots before she tramples us.”
Aside from the random hookups with little girls, the really funny thing about Texas are the people you meet. These are not normal people. I can’t call them redneck, because that word implies a sub-standard level of intelligence and sophistication, and that isn’t really fair to these people, some of whom are very smart. I grew up in a pretty rural part of Kentucky, and those people are rednecks, but the Texans I met weren’t like that. Perhaps I should just refer to them as “country.” If you ever grew up or spent time in a Southern state, you know the difference between country and redneck. These are some of the people I met in Midland:
The Sheriff of Midland lives in Doug’s apartment complex. When he gets drunk, which is pretty much every day, he sits in his car and tries to pull people over for DUI. In the parking lot of the same complex he lives in. He doesn’t even bother going out into actual streets.
When they are bored, Emma’s friends will do what is called “spot-lighting.” West Texas is basically all brushland that is overrun with jackrabbits, so hunting them is legal year-round. To hunt them, you go out at night in the fields with your truck and shine your spotlight around until you catch one. When the light hits them they look right into it and freeze, thus making easy targets.
But because it is so easy, just shooting them isn’t enough for some of these people. One guy told me a story about how he got bored with shooting them with a rifle, so he started using a bow and arrow. That got boring, so he would run them over with his truck. That was simple, so he started getting out of his truck and beating them to death with a tire iron. When that got too easy, he chased them and stomped their heads. When that lost its luster, he threw his tool box at them. Then he took the 50 or so rabbits he’d killed and laid them out in his ex-girlfriend’s yard, spelling the word “Ho.”
One of Doug’s friends got kicked out of his house at 18 because he was a total fuck-up and his parents couldn’t deal with him anymore. This kid is either too poor or too stupid to get a normal apartment, so he instead moved into a storage unit. He sleeps in an empty, gutted Bronco, and uses hundreds of boxes of Keystone Light as insulation. You don’t believe me? Look at the picture:
Watching Texans work is funny.
These people are funny, but they’ve got nothing on Doug’s coworker, Wayne. Wayne works with Doug in the West Texas oil fields, and we spent a few days with him on the rigs. The first time I met Wayne, he drove up in his truck when we were doing something manual:
Wayne “You two look like monkeys fuckin’ a football.”
Doug “Fuck you, redneck.”
Wayne “Proud of it, you knob-slobber. Want some beer?”
Doug “Yeah, gimme one.”
Tucker “Should we drink when we work?”
Wayne “Sheeet. Son, this tha country, this ain’t no got-damn New Yourk City or no fuckin’ She-Ka-Go. In the country, it ain’t called ‘drankin a beer,’ it’s called ‘improvin’ yer work.’”
Tucker “Well…”
Wayne “Come on. It’s rodeo cool.”
Tucker “Well, OK, if it’s cold I guess…”
I take a sip and immediately spit it out.
Tucker “DUDE—THIS BEER IS HOT!”
Wayne “Whudda fuck duhya thank ‘rodeo cool’ meens?”
Watching Doug work from the cool shade of the truck is even funnier.
We went to lunch with Wayne. He took out his tooth to eat—one single tooth—and regaled us for hours with some of the funniest stories I’d ever heard.
Wayne on occupational hazards: “Yeah, them oil rigs ain’t to be trifled wit. One time we was changing the heads on a pump and the fucker blew. Throwed me bouta hundred yards and killed two other guys workin’ with me. That was some shit. I had to take a whole week off work.”
Wayne on drinking: “I knew I should slow down my drankin when I was going through half a fifth a day, just on the drive home. Now I just drank a few beers on the ride and save the hard stuff for when I git home.”
Wayne on West Texas flora: “This one time I got throwed off a Bronc and landed in a mesquite bush. You know them mesquite thorns is long and thin as hell. Well, I stood up and brushed miself off, but I felt blood dripping down ma face. I wiped it off but I couldn’t find no cut, then ma son told me it was coming from ma eye, so I reached up and felt a lump under my eyelid. I pulled a three inch thorn out of my face. That fucker had gone in vertically and missed tha eyeball, but had gotten sunk deep behind the eye. I got lucky on that one. You can still see the scar—just look right her. What’s wrong wit you boy? Why you squirm’in’ like a ki-ote caught inna snare?”
Wayne on whiskey: “I don’t drink JD; it gives me gout.” [we crack up laughing] “Fuck y’all, you’ll be old soon.”
Wayne on West Texas fauna: “Don’t let no one tell you cows ain’t mean. Thems some fuckers. Another time I got throwed trying to break’a horse, and a cow done shit all over my head when I was laying on the ground. I got up and whupped his ass. Punched that fucker right’n his face. He didn’t shit on me no more after’at.”
Wayne on cunnilingus: “Just because it smells bad don’t mean it tastes bad. I ate out all kinds of pussies, and I liked ever one. ’Cept them Mexican hookers. You don’t go down on them, you’ll come up seeing stars and have a green tongue and shit. Other’n that though, I’d eat the hymen outta dead donkey. I love it!”
Here I am, in the West Texas oil fields, on the phone with my agent. Only Tucker Max.
The second day in the fields I had to get suntan lotion, because I wasn’t used to spending 10 hours a day in the sun. While we were at the store Wayne called Doug looking for him:
Wayne “Where the hell you faggots at?”
Doug “We had to get Tucker some suntan lotion.”
Wayne “SUNTAN LOTION? Well god damn! I been’ta two world’s fairs and a goat ropin’ contest, and I ain’t never seen no shit like this.”
After that, he called me the “World Champion Goat Roper” all week. I didn’t figure out what it meant for a few months. Think about what kind of person spends time holding goats down, and you’ll get it.
One night we were out drunk and called Wayne. Doug dialed his number, the phone answered, but it was a good minute before any voice came on. Even though I was standing next to Doug and not on the phone, I could hear the Hank Williams Jr. blaring on the stereo in the background.
Wayne “Whut’dda fuck dyew want?”
Doug “Hey Wayne, you want to come get some beers with us?”
Wayne “Who’s dis?”
Doug “It’s Doug and Tucker.”
Wayne “FUCK NO! I ain’t watchin you two faggots suck dick all night. I can turn on the cooking channel and see plenty of homos.”
Doug “Come on Wayne, we—”
Wayne [he yells away from the phone to his 12-year-old son] �
�HEY— YOU FUCKING DITCH MONKEY, GET ME ANOTHER BEER ’FORE I HIT’CHA WIT MY BOOT.”
Doug “Wayne?”
Wayne “Ain’t you got some goats to poke? Ah hell, where is my beer? YOU BETTER HURRY UP YOU LITTLE SHIT OR YOU’LL BE SLEEPIN ON THE PORCH WIT’DA DOGS.”
Wayne is awesome, but Doug has other country friends that may be even funnier. Doug is big into off-roading and rock crawling and similar redneck activities involving big tires and loud engines, so one day he took me to hang out with some other off-roading friends of his, Mike and Cliff. He said I would like them because “They call themselves a ‘drinking team with an off-roading problem.’”
We met Mike and Cliff at a maintenance shop that one of their friends owned. It looked just like the American Chopper shop, except the place was a mess. I kept expecting Paul Sr. to storm out of the office and start screaming at Paulie and Vinnie about the shop being dirty.
Mike was about 40, had an orange “Daytona Bike Week” hand band, a white goatee and was covered in axle grease or some other dirty mechanical fluid. Cliff was about 35, in a plaid lumberjack jacket, a gold rope chain, and I think had at least two dips in, if not more. They both looked like tow truck drivers (and I don’t mean that as an insult, it’s just the impression they gave off).
At first, we just sat around and drank beer and bullshitted. It took a while but once they realized that I wasn’t some city-boy prima donna who thought he was better’n them, they warmed up to me.