by Mike Stangle
The first inaugural goofball weekend was actually completely unplanned. Dave visited while I was living out my white-guy college fantasy on Nantucket. Do you guys know how magical a place Nantucket is? It isn’t just the WASPy fantasy land for rich folks that its reputation suggests. Sure, there are rich white folks there, but there are rich white folks pretty much everywhere these days, except Compton. Located thirty miles due south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Nantucket is a quaint island first populated by the Wampanoag people. Its native inhabitants, the Wampanoags, lived undisturbed until as late as 1641, when white guys came in and fucked shit up. Also, in the 1970s, Nantucket (along with neighboring babe island Martha’s Vineyard) unsuccessfully attempted to secede from the commonwealth of Massachusetts. So you know they’re badass.
Ever since, it’s been a haven for white collars and high brows. Nantucket itself is an incredible place. Beaches and views and wildlife and foliage and sunsets and pretty girls and all that shit. The problem is that all that stuff is pretty much too awesome. People want it. And then people start to pay money for it. Then more money! The first time I ever went there, everyone was named Griff McKallister or Caulfield Waylensby. Those names spit on a name like Mike Stangle. I actually tried to shine one guy’s shoes, totally out of instinct. What the hell was that about? Those guys weren’t around the weekend in question, though. It was just me, Dave, Frank the Bulldog, our buddy Steveo, and a shitload of mushrooms. Oh, and Dave’s jam box! That thing is clutch.
Steve had never eaten mushrooms before and was scared shitless of them. Months earlier in New York, we got Steve to agree to try them if he ever fell under what he considered to be unlikely circumstances. Oh sure, guys, I’ll take mushrooms—If I’m ever with you and Mike on a deserted island and we somehow find mushrooms, that’s when I’ll eat them. But you BOTH have to be there. Oh yeah, and Frank has to be there. And it has to be August. And we can’t plan it.
Well, wouldn’t ya know it, I was living on an island in August. Dave had planned a trip out to visit and naturally brought Frank the Bulldog with him, because Frank loves white girls and islands. Oh, what’s that, Steve? You have a wedding to go to on Cape Cod and you’ve got a few days to kill, because you want to avoid your future in-laws as much as possible? No problem, hop on the ferry, pal.
When this scenario started to play out, Dave and I were immediately on the same page before either of us had said a word. All he did was look at me in a very specific way, and I promptly pulled out the mushrooms that a stranger had handed to me a few nights prior. Sounds legit, right? It was a Tuesday. I worked the day shift while Steve and Dave spent the day with Frank on the beach. Dave and I had this whole secret plan that involved mushroom-and-peanut-butter sandwiches. Steve loves PB sandwiches; he can’t resist them! We figured it’d be the path of least resistance. We also have him on video agreeing to the “ridiculous” terms of his mushroom proposal, which Dave had cued up in case he put up any sort of fight. The guys spent the entire day at the beach, and Dave didn’t even so much as hint anything to Steve. That’s self-discipline if I’ve ever heard of it. Nice work, Dave. I finished my day shift around four, walked out of my restaurant, and immediately hopped into my old Wrangler that Dave was driving. It was so smooth, he didn’t even stop—I just hopped right in while he was rolling along the cobblestones. We were in for a good one.
About fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the scene of the crime. A remote beach we could drive out on, far enough away from anyone who might mess with us. Steve had consumed a fair amount of day beers and was too happy riding around on a beach in an old Jeep to ask any questions. We parked and Dave started blasting Alice Cooper’s “Feeding Time” and was just staring at Steve like a lunatic. I whipped out the sandwiches, handed them around, and filled Steve in. It was like he knew exactly what was going on and didn’t give a shit. He didn’t miss a beat. Took one peek at the contents of the sandwich, gave us the ole “here goes nothin’,” and bit in.
Since this isn’t a story about how goddamn fun mushrooms are, I’ll only spend a little bit of time on that. Do you guys know how goddamn fun mushrooms are? For five hours, there were three guys and one bulldog just laughing our asses off. Didn’t think dogs could laugh? On mushrooms, they sure can. For five hours, it felt like being seven years old again, but with less hand-eye coordination and more colors. The waves were enormous that day and at one point, we started playing this game that I was calling “Don’t Fight It.” This name made sense, because the point of the game was to just keep your head above water, let your body go completely limp, and let the waves do what nature intended: toss your ass around. This might sound dumb, and it definitely was. But we were tripping our titties off, so it automatically became hilarious. I have one vivid memory of being beached for a good ten minutes after a monster wave had taken me up onto the sand. I was busy not fighting it, and in that case it meant lying there on the beach till another big wave came in to take me back out to sea. Frank did not like this and was very concerned. He tried to fight 90 percent of the waves that came my way, but his anxiety could not be alleviated. I looked up to see Dave sitting crisscross-applesauce on the beach like a little kid, observing the whole thing. The scene in front of him had him laughing so hard that I watched him literally throw up from laughter. Luckily, the mushrooms had taken hold at that point, so the barfing didn’t end his trip.
It eventually got dark on the beach and a little too cold to stay out there. The issue here was that we were definitely still out of our minds and my Jeep wasn’t going to drive itself. Oh, wait, I’m on a beach, driving ten miles an hour, and there’s no one around that I could hurt? Here we go! I drove down the beach for a little bit to test my sobriety. Good enough. Dave then pointed out an off-road trail I’d never seen before, and we immediately followed it. Ever go off-roading on hallucinogens? It is wild. We didn’t go faster than three miles an hour, and we loved every second of it. Mud, fallen trees, puddles, small lakes—you name it, we were driving through it (very slowly). We eventually found our way out of the trail and onto the main road, but not before driving through what I remember to be an actual lake. The road we were let out onto was incredibly dark; no streetlights, just a narrow road on an island, pitch black. I took a left and started driving. After getting up to the speed limit, I let off the gas and something changed. Every single light on my truck immediately turned off. Oh come on! I looked over at the guys, but it was so dark I couldn’t even see them from two feet away. Everyone started freaking out. I immediately slowed down and we tried to figure it out. As I came to a stop, we all calmed down. Okay, let’s try this again. I accelerated and boom! Lights back on, we were in business. Dave gave me a that was weird type look, and we kept on driving. A minute later, it happened again. Steve started freaking out and throwing his empty daytime beer cans out the back of the truck like we were a sinking ship and he was bailing buckets of water. Not cool, Steve, this island has a really delicate eco-balance. After what I remember to be about twenty minutes of this scenario repeating itself, I had almost crashed more times than I will admit here. Why the fuck wouldn’t my lights work? If I had been sober or on pretty much any drug besides mushrooms, I probably would’ve put the pieces together. The exposed wiring on my old-ass Jeep clearly had clearly gotten wet from the lake we had driven through, and that was affecting my electric. Three idiots on mushrooms? We couldn’t even grasp the problem, let alone the solution.
Dumb luck connected a few integral synapses in my brain. When I accelerate . . . the lights turn on. What? Okay, don’t question it, just keep the goddamn lights on so we can get home. I was so excited that I couldn’t find any other way to explain my findings to the guys other than to scream out “SPEED! LIKE THE MOVIE!” They knew what I meant immediately. I was Keanu Reeves, Dave was Sandra Bullock, and Steveo was Jeff Daniels (he wishes), and I’m pretty sure Frank was playing the role of Dennis Hopper, evil genius. As far as I was concerned, if we slowed down, the car was going to explode. I drove the fina
l ten miles back to my place while doing my best to a) not hallucinate and b) keep accelerating. Do you know how hard it is to do both of those things simultaneously? To continuously accelerate while on mushrooms, driving a four-cylinder Jeep along windy island roads? It’s pretty tough. And that’s why this was the last time we messed with mushrooms.
Holly Humphrey Holy Hell!
(Mike)
We Stangle boys have a thing for crazy women. Call it a trait, call it a type, call it whatever you want. Me? I call it a curse. It’s never brought us anything but trouble, really. We can’t help ourselves. All we’re ever left with is a more fucked-up psyche and maybe a few good stories, and those stories are heavily outweighed by the trouble. Why couldn’t we just like gals like our mom? I guess ’cause there’s only one out there. It seems that instead, we go for the direct opposite. Denise is levelheaded, grounded, calm, and stoic. You couldn’t describe any of our ex-girlfriends in any of those ways. I’d like to feel bad for myself here, but Dave has it worse than I do, and I have it bad. He is into big-leagues crazy. Dave set the bar. He won’t even look at a girl twice unless she has spent a minimum of six months in some sort of asylum. I myself like them a little more grounded. If Dave’s number-one fantasy crazy gal is chaining him to his bed, lighting his room on fire, then blowing him over the roar of the flames . . . my number-one fantasy crazy gal is doing the same, but maybe just using candles, you know? It still feels nice. You don’t always need arson, Dave. I will give him credit, though. Every once in a while, he somehow makes a case for the crazy gals being the most appealing. Sometimes, I dive right in.
One of those times I was living in Nantucket, working at a bar called the Gazebo.
The Gazebo is like the Ellis Island of Nantucket. Everyone must pass through it to gain access to a better life. Also, multiple people leave it with new last names. Unless you arrive to Nantucket via shipwreck, you have to pass through the Gazebo bar. It attracts anyone and everyone on the island. The crowds there get wild, too. We’ve got all types. The Gazebo sees high-class people, low-class people, drunks, drugs, cash, credit, black cards, blacks, blacks with black cards, whites with no cards, imitation black cards that aren’t black but still have that same badass metal credit card feel, foreign nationals, South Boston tough guys, tribal-tattooed New Jersey people (thanks, Hurricane Sandy), and a ton of babes! Some of the best people-watching on the planet takes place at the Gazebo. Those holding the black cards are a class among themselves: sailing people, yachting people, August-only people, trust fund babies, guys named Todd. These people might as well have come to Nantucket on the Mayflower. My personal favorite among the “black card” category were the trust fund gals. They typically came with highly volatile emotional issues and massive coke problems. I know, I know—on the surface, both are awesome. A fella who had been on Nantucket Island as long as I had knew the rules with this crowd: look, but don’t touch. When you go to the zoo, all the tigers look so beautiful and exotic, but that doesn’t mean you should hop the fence and start grabbing ass. Dave? He’d strap steaks to his grundle and dive in hoping to get mauled. Me? I try to keep it in the fairway.
Trust fund gals came and went, and I kept my distance as much as I could. Linsley Truesdale. Madeline Caufield. Paisley Cottonwood. Machaela Billowshire. Have you ever seen a better collection of white-girl names? I feel like if any black people read this book, they are probably laughing their asses off for the first and only time right now. Among these trust fund gals was their queen bee—Holly Humphrey. She was like the Beyoncé of fucked-up white girls. When she sang, everyone danced backup.
Holly Humphrey had been named as though her parents knew full well she would later have problems with booze, drugs, guys, intelligence, not squandering the family fortune, basic math, general survival, and all-around mental health and sanity. You name it—she wasn’t good at it. The only thing she could do well was be incredibly hot. Holly Humphrey was an absolute 10. She was one of those gals who are very tall and skinny, yet somehow have HUGE natural boobs. She was very fit, too. Her boobs and hair were probably the only soft parts of her body. How does God choose which women He is going to bless with such a seemingly unfair natural physical traits? No complaints, I just wish He would make some sort of social network for them, so I could always see what they are up to and where they are checking in.
Holly Humphrey was absolutely bonkers. There isn’t a combination of words in the English language to describe how truly crazy this chick is. Had Dave ever met Holly Humphrey, I am 100 percent confident they would have eloped within hours and the two of them wouldn’t have surfaced again for over a decade, until their underground lair was discovered deep inside a Thai jungle. The magnitude of her craziness had no boundaries. She was so crazy that you would question your own sanity when talking to her. You’d think, Wait, what is going on here? There is no way this is real. Have I lost my mind? It inspires some real Being John Malkovich–type shit.
I had seen her in the Gazebo multiple times throughout the summer. Before I had ever even met her, I was having a ball simply observing her. I saw the same routine every time she met someone new at my bar. Reading their faces as they reacted to the things she said was so entertaining. First, people were blown away by how attractive she is. Then, before they could get over her beauty, people became confused and disoriented with the things coming out of her mouth. It’s like there were four different completely insane people living inside her, and they were all vying for control. It was a goddamn mess.
Holly Humphrey set her eyes on me on the fifteenth of July, 2011. Nantucket Island was at its proverbial full mast. July is when things pick up in a big way on the island. If Nantucket was an eligible bachelor and was making love, and started in early May with some island foreplay, by mid-July, it was rock solid. I mean this island was fuckin’ HARD. Babes everywhere, guys wearing tank tops, vanity muscles, badass mopeds, expensive rebuilt retro European SUVs, yachts with celebrities and Mini Coopers on board, you get the idea.
So I’m doing my thing, just having a classic “beach kids” type of summer. I’m up to no good, staying up late, getting denied by pretty girls, developing unattractive tan lines, neglecting my physical fitness, and failing to save money. I was like John Cusack in the aptly named One Crazy Summer.
So, mid-July. I’m working a lunch shift at the Gazebo. Lunch shifts at the Gazebo are ideal, in that you’ve only got to work during the day, though they are tough, because 95 percent of the staff is still shitfaced for the start of them. If you could somehow film the staff on a busy day shift, then speed the whole thing up, you could sell it to Discovery Channel as a documentary on alcohol metabolism. At 10 a.m., starting time, all the squares arrive, because they didn’t go out the night before. Why are they even living on an island? Ten fifteen to ten thirty rolls around, the booze-smelling (chain smoking, dry-heaving, eyes-as-red-as-the-devil’s-dick) portion of the staff shows up. Somehow, the crew comes together and everybody makes a bunch of money. Four fifteen comes along, and I’m still in one piece. As I’m cleaning up behind the bar, I start thinking about which kid’s-menu items I’m going to demolish. I look up and oh, Holly. Coming by for a cocktail, as I’m finishing my shift. Coincidence? I’d only met her once before this, and she scares the shit out of me—so naturally I clock out, walk to the other side of the bar, and start drinking. Why would I move across the bar and start drinking with a crazy girl who frightens me? It all boils down to the one undeniable fact as old as time itself—men cannot resist beautiful women. Especially one who is into you! I am twenty-one, single, and come aaaahn, she is a babe! Can you blame me? My uncontrollable horniness combines with that weird, what-the-hell-is-happening sort of feeling, and I am all in.
Over the course of the next hour, I consume a healthy four to six bourbons, and Holly Humphrey is not far behind. The girl can drink! Keep in mind we’re drinking at the bar I work at, surrounded by my friends and roommates who are all working, and we’re being served by my oldest brother’s b
est friend, Alaska. Alaska is from Alaska. Alaska is a giant dickhead and loves fucking with me, especially when it comes to women. Especially when it comes to a crazy woman, and especially when he knows just how crazy she is, like this one. As Alaska is overserving us (at four thirty in the afternoon), a revolving crowd is gathering around the bar to listen in on the verbal insanity that is pouring out of Holly’s sexy little mouth.
Holly:
Alaska, what is your favorite gluten-free drink to make?
Alaska:
Bud Light.
Holly:
You don’t make that. Mixologists make that before they bottle it. And Bud Light is not gluten-free.
Alaska:
You’re absolutely right.
Holly:
But we could google what’s in a Bud Light and you could try to make your own version!? Then after, we could just take the gluten out??!
Alaska:
I’m going to go now.
Holly:
(To me) Is his shift over? He’s sweet. Want a Xanax?
Holly Humphrey has a flight to catch. A flight? Today? In an hour? This surprises me. I’m from upstate New York (so sick, you guys) and grew up post-9/11. If I have a flight to catch, I am at the airport with six forms of ID four fucking months before that flight, and I’m a white guy! My Arab friends basically have to say the pledge of allegiance just to get car service to take them to the airport. Holly Humphrey has a flight in an hour? I don’t get it. Does she have her own crop duster? I thought only farmers had those. I ask her about it, and she pulls this coupon book out of her Birkin bag. It is a complete booklet of airline vouchers. Fifty pages thick, and every single page the same exact thing. A free airline pass. Did you guys know these exist? Did you know they make airline tickets that you just hand to the attendant and then you get on the next flight? I didn’t. She has a book of those. Holly Humphrey has a flight to catch.