by Mike Stangle
The Gag Is Up!
(Dave)
I’ve got no problem with the vegetarians. I’ve got no problem with the vegans. As a person who generally abuses my body like a stepchild, I admire people who monitor what they put in their bodies. All of you health nuts will eventually have the best breast milk; kudos. I’m basically the opposite, though. I put nearly everything imaginable in my body, take note of which of those things gives me pleasure, then load up those things as much as possible. I have zero discipline whatsoever. How do you vegetarians do it? How many slaughterhouse videos and crushes on your bearded Anthropology 101 professor did it take to say you’ll never eat any sort of meat again? Do what you’ve got to do, you hot little hippie—it sort of turns me on. Hippies are more liberal under the sheets, and they love getting high. That’s right in my wheelhouse! Just put a little bit of effort into shaving some parts of your body once in a while, and you and I will be cooking with Crisco.
What I do have a problem with is when you hippie vegetarians decide that following your own dietary no-nos isn’t enough, and now everyone else must go along with them. That’s where I draw the line. Every red-blooded American deserves three things in this world:
1. A fair election
2. Getting out of one DUI scot-free
3. A goddamn hamburger without a side of someone else’s unsolicited progressive views
I went to high school with this gal who was a die-hard vegetarian. If vegetarianism were Christianity, this girl would have been an apostle. Her name was Moonbeans. Moonbeans was a great girl—funny, smart, and cute. Great butt, too. At one point, she developed a really intense crush on me that took our friendship somewhere weird. I remember on Christmas Eve my senior year of high school she sent me a text message (which cost me twenty-five cents at the time; so selfish) alerting me to a letter she left in my mailbox. I opened the mailbox to find an envelope stuffed full of paper. She had written me a seventeen-page letter. Front and back. Handwritten. I knew it meant a lot to her, and she must have poured her seventeen-year-old heart into it. Poor thing. I also remember that later on that night, I was drunkenly reading it aloud to a rowdy dinner table crowd of aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. Halfway through, I was completely exhausted from laughing. I was doing this really funny impression of her while reading it; the table was eating it up. Still, that letter had some heart. I think she might have dotted every i and j with a heart. The meat of the message focused on her belief that we were destined to be together.
I knew all too well I wanted nothing to do with Moonbeans on a romantic level. It was just bad chemistry. I didn’t help the situation by occasionally getting horizontal with her when we’d both had a few too many Zimas. It was high school, people, things got weird. It made it harder to get the point across that she and I were way too different. If we were at a barbecue, we’d always have to have a separate grill for whatever piece of weird tofu she brought for herself, and somehow I was always the one getting an earful about it. She gave me so much shit about it throughout high school that it made me start to resent all vegetarians. I think I ate more meat because of it, just to spite her. In the earlier years, I would try to trick her into eating meat by concealing it in mashed potatoes. I made up erroneous facts about the mental health effects of not eating meat. I remember telling her that women who don’t get nutrients from animal protein tend to develop hair around their nipples. As a side note, this is how I was first able to get her to show me her tits (so on point). They were fantastic, by the way.
Sometimes we’d make flirtatious bets revolving around a “meat-in-your-mouth” sort of theme. Those were fun. Our senior year of high school, our group of friends went to Pizza Hut Buffet for lunch once a week. For those of you who don’t know what Pizza Hut Buffet is, its Pizza Hut plus Buffet. Arguably my three favorite words all rolled up into one incredible experience: PHB. Five dollars got you unlimited ’za, bread sticks, and salad. BOOM! At one point, they even served draft beer. It didn’t last long, though. It was too good to last long. I think God must have just noticed how great a deal it was and felt He needed to avoid a massive population spike around the Albany, New York, Pizza Hut branch, so He had them tone it down. Mysterious ways, I get it.
There at PHB, Moonbeans and I were sitting at the opposite ends of a long table with several of our friends between us. Looking back on high school Dave, I was probably wearing a button-down that was way too big on me and some nice boot-cut jeans, comfort waist. Are there any pants in the world more tailor-made for a PHB sesh than wide leg, comfort waist jeans, you guys? I was betting Moonbeans that I could throw a piece of sausage off my pizza (fifth slice not counting dessert pizza, which was also a thing) and into her open mouth from where I was sitting. She was about fifteen feet away. The terms were that if I made the sausage throw into her mouth on my first shot, she had to chew and swallow it. After I convinced her I had such little chance at hitting the shot that the risk was worth the entertainment value, she agreed. She didn’t think about how big beer pong was back then, and how the same basic motion of throwing a sausage chunk into a mouth had been practiced, by me, for ten thousand hours around beer pong tables every Friday and Saturday night.
I pulled up, took aim, and let one fly. This is where you assume I hit it, nothing but tongue. Game over. No re-rack needed. Nope—not the case, my friends. IT HIT THE CORNER OF HER MOUTH and fell to the table. Total. Fucking. Heartbreaker. I’m sorry to let you down, gang. What’s more important, and the reason I’m taking you back to the PHB that night, is that moments after the commotion went down, as the bill was being paid and the chicks were playing on their Motorola Razr phones and picking out what mix CD they were going to listen to on the way home, I saw something very peculiar out of the corner of my eye. As no one was paying attention, I could have sworn I saw Moonbeans at the end of the table reach her little hand out, sneakily pick up the sausage chunk, and pop it right into her mouth. I exploded! I jumped up on my chair started exclaiming like Oral Roberts at a tent revival! I couldn’t believe what I saw! Moonbeans, the greatest vegetarian of all time, was a sham! Imagine seeing Gandhi sneak some naan during a hunger strike! Imagine Al Gore cranking his AC when he’s not even home! Imagine cats and dogs, living together! Of course, she denied it and everyone believed her; it was too big a story to expose without evidence. Plus, I was acting like a fucking lunatic. No one believed me, but now I knew the goddamn truth. You had us all fooled, Moonbeans.
Throughout our friendship, we made out a few times; we did some stuff that teenagers do. It was one of those “yeah, I gotta go” types of things where we knew we were playing with fire, but we gave in every once in a while. I didn’t need any more seventeen-page letters, and she wasn’t getting the message. I hated the idea of me letting it go too far, because I knew she was a great person and at the time had a real thing for me. Seventeen pages’ worth. It became increasingly difficult for me to hang around with her and not hook up with her. What’s worse, I was so obsessed with my conspiracy theory about her being a fake vegetarian that I couldn’t stop hanging out with her. Years later, when season one of Homeland came out, I thought Showtime might have been basing Carrie’s character on me. As I got deeper and deeper into my investigation, I found we were ending up under the sheets more and more. These drunken flings carried on for a few months, and I started to notice things about her. One time while camping out in the Adirondacks (as you do in upstate New York), we were making out against a tree in the middle of the afternoon. How cool does that sound? I noticed that her breath smelled like bacon. I thought it was my breath, because I had just housed a pound of it, but this was different. This was girl-bacon-breath, if that makes any sense? Another time on a ski trip, I was certain I tasted chili on her lips. We had a huge pot of it going at the house, and people were helping themselves all afternoon. The circumstantial evidence was piling up; my theory was starting to hold water. Soon after, I began openly accusing her of being a fake vegetarian. I had little to no support. After
all, I had been making things up about her hairy-nippled vegetarian lifestyle for years, to anyone who would listen. This boy had cried wolf one too many times. Without the smoking gun, no one believed me. It was entertaining and all, but we’re talking about the vegetarian Joan of Arc.
All of this vegetarian conspiracy mumbo jumbo came to a head the summer after our senior year. It was your classic carefree high school get-together. It was a mix between Dazed and Confused and Wet Hot American Summer. We barbecued all day up at the lake, we drank a thousand Busch Lights, the best beer ever, and everyone was wearing bikinis. It was an old-school high school shindig. Moonbeans and I were even getting along pretty well. I cooked a ton of chorizo for the gang just to spite her, but made sure to keep it to just one half of the grill so she could fire up some strange roots or whatever the fuck. We drank, swam, and fooled around in a cabin. I dare you to name me a better scenario. Things got so high school in the top bunk after dinner one night. I think she was appreciative of me keeping the chorizo to the carnivore side of the grill earlier on, and she wanted to show some gratitude. Now, keep in mind we were in high school, so when she did go down on me, she had no idea what she was doing. Blowjobs were so funny then, everything was an experiment. It was like ordering ceviche at a restaurant—just completely different every time. Remember in Jurassic Park when that cowardly lawyer runs away from the kids and hides in the porta-john? Then the T. rex smashes that porta-john to smithereens, leaving the lawyer exposed with his pants down and the T. rex just chomps down on his entire torso and shakes it side to side? That’s what this girl did to my high school peener. Another night, again after too many Zimas, she started to really push the boundaries. I’d normally suspect she had possibly been watching some porn, but this was 2003, so that would have caused a busy signal for hours on AltaVista. I guess she must have just found some confidence with what she was doing. As she started pushing it more and more, I heard some uncomfortable noises coming from below the Mason-Dixon, almost like she was struggling. They continued to get more intense as the act progressed toward its final sequence. I didn’t know she was in over her head until it was too late. She got sick all over me. You can’t just completely ignore a gag reflex when you’ve been boozing, Moonbeans, and now we’ve just made a complete mess of me. Somehow, I think she was too drunk to be mortified. This gave me some relief, as I could now stop concentrating on consoling an embarrassed high school girl and instead focus on cleaning puke and semen off my favorite 30 percent of my body. I should mention that there was a house party going on outside the room. All of our friends, on whom I had been pushing the conspiracy theory, were outside.
I hurried into the bathroom to assess the damage. It was bad down there. I started with paper towels, which were immediately rendered useless. I moved on to real towels, but that was just mean to the towels. They’d never be the same. I decided that a shower was the only thing that could work. As I was undressing and separating my clothes and the towels into two piles (one free of puke and semen, the other covered in it), I noticed something. I noticed her puke, its color and its consistency. It had a yellowish hue with small chunks of brown and red. They stood out to me, I couldn’t figure out why. I hopped into the shower and started rinsing off. The mess came off my skin but the mental image of her barf could not escape my thoughts. Yellow, brown, red. Yellow, brown red. Goo. Chunks. Goo-chunks. What did she eat? What was in her stomach? A kaleidoscope of images from the day began rapid-firing in my head as the water rushed over me. Beer. Camp. Fire. Grill. Chorizo. Blowjob. Yellow. Brown. Red. Flashback of PHB in slow motion. Yellow. Brown. Red. All of a sudden a 10,000-watt idea lightbulb clicked on above my head. Those brown and red chunks were chorizo! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, everybody’s favorite pork sausage originating from the Iberian Peninsula and featured earlier on my grill was sitting in chunks, in a pile of vomit, on a towel on the sink! Unless a man’s penis is capable of digesting entire chunks of meat and ejaculating them (yet to confirm this), I had my evidence! She puked up some chorizo she must have snuck earlier on in the night. I knew it! THIS WAS MY MOMENT! I’m also just now realizing how appropriate it was that my penis served as my smoking gun. It was too perfect. I had to tell the world!
My first thought was that I wished I had yellow crime scene tape. I didn’t want any of the evidence disturbed; I couldn’t have anyone contaminating the chain of custody. I delicately folded the towel up and scurried out into the main party. By this time, Moonbeans had cleaned herself up and made a stealthy exit from the bedroom so as not to alert anyone that we were up to some funny business. Little did she know that her gag reflex was about to topple her entire hippie empire! I gathered everyone who would listen, and I resumed my role as prosecutor. I unfolded exhibit A and presented my case. I instantly became a courthouse sensation. I might have even developed a southern drawl? I drew in the audience with leading questions such as, What did we all eat for dinner tonight? into And what color would y’all describe that meat as? then combined it with a little And what types of people don’t eat meat? with a bit of And can anyone point to any known vegetarians in the room? The stage was set for a showdown! As I took out exhibit A and unfolded my precious evidence, I took a look around the room at all the faces waiting eagerly for the big reveal and what it would all mean. I saw her friends shaking their heads in a “no way” fashion. I saw my friends nodding with approval. As I continued to scan, I saw Moonbeans staring back at me completely defeated. It was the first time I had ever seen that look on her face. For as long as I had known her, she had been strong, proud, and full of conviction. Even if she was a fake, at least she picked something she wanted to believe in and fiercely spread the message, whether she could measure up to it or not. Never once during her grill-side flip-outs or twenty-minute lectures did she show even a fraction of the vulnerability she was showing before the big reveal.
Was I assuming too much? Maybe. Was her vulnerability probably more rooted in how embarrassed she would be for people to find out that a babe like her was fooling around with a goof like me? Probably. But for that moment when our eyes met, I realized how far beyond me she was emotionally—how far I was from having any sort of cause even remotely as close to my heart as vegetarianism was to hers. Son of a bitch . . . I just couldn’t do it. What did I do instead? I had convened and primed a jury of my peers, and now I had no exit strategy! All eyes were on me. People were hungry and wanted to get to their hot plates. I started to sweat. I used an extended pause, but it only generated more anticipation. Finally, I threw in the figurative towel. I claimed that my entire case had been an elaborate hoax to distract everyone from the fact that she threw up on my penis mid-blow-Johnson. I chose a real truth over the real truth. Was Moonbeans embarrassed? Sure. Was her cover as a fake vegetarian blown? Nope, safe and sound.
Have I Mentioned Quack?
“Like a Duck”
(Dave)
I’ve got a friend named Quack. Quack is tough to describe. If I start with his personality, it will take away from how bizarre he looks physically. If I start by describing his taste in women, you’ll get violently ill before I get into how big a sweetheart he actually is. And if I start by describing how big a sweetheart he actually is, I’ll be telling a bald-faced lie.
His introduction is always strong and throws people off right away. Quack. Quack? Why the fuck is his name Quack? Yet that is possibly the only easy thing to understand about him. Quack’s full name is Ryan Grady Quackenbush. Aside from Mike and me, Quack is the only person whose true full name will appear unchanged in this book. It’d be borderline impossible to drag Quack’s reputation through the mud any more than he’s been doing since the day I met him. Ryan was a twelve-year-old fat kid, and Quack was his persona. “Hi,” he’d say with his tiny little hand reached out for a dead-fish handshake, “Quack. Like a duck.” He’d walk away before people knew what to think. That’s still his move to this day. He knows people need a moment to digest not only what they are hearing, but also what they ar
e seeing. Half the people who meet him for the first time probably aren’t listening to a word he is saying. Quack is arguably the most uniquely shaped individual this world has ever known. He is quite rotund, to be frank. His body is almost a perfect sphere, actually. Add to that, he only stands at exactly five feet tall “on the nose,” he’ll have you believe. But I’ve maintained for years that he is actually only four feet eleven. The Quackenbushes, as a family, aren’t the tallest bunch in the world. They’re all short. They breed down, too. Every new generation of Quackenbush children is like opening up another Russian nesting doll to find an even smaller one inside. Quack is the shortest of the bunch. He is the little nugget at the very center.
Quack, told ya.
Quack’s mother has become a world-class seamstress over the years, I’d imagine from having to always hem regular people clothes to fit her family of lawn gnomes. Seamstresses always have measuring tape around, so I stole a roll from his mom and carried it around with me for weeks waiting to plot my move. When we were seventeen, Quack exclusively drank Gatorade-and-vodka. It was the only thing he would ever drink. No beers, no cocktails, no literally-anything-we-could-get-our-hands-on-because-we-were-seventeen. Nothing but Gatorade-and-vodka. The sugar in this combination constantly left him with vicious hangovers. I jumped him and tried to measure him when he was in the midst of sweating his way through one of the worst of these hangovers. He was mowing grass in his backyard, and I was smoking grass in mine. Moments after I finished, my dad came home and made me help him give our racist German shepherd a bath in the backyard. As we chased her around, cornered her, and tied her to a tree for her wash-down, I noticed how helpless she was. She gave in and let it happen. This would be the blueprint for how I would finally prove Quack’s true height. Knowing it was Saturday morning and he would be mowing grass, it was the perfect opportunity. I didn’t even hesitate when I got to his place. I hopped his fence, ran up behind him, and literally kicked him as hard as I could in the back. That was about as far as I got. I had this whole grand plan and all these dog-washing tactics I was going to use. I couldn’t even pin him down! It was like wrestling the Kool-Aid man. I couldn’t get my arms around him! I was an in-shape seventeen-year-old lacrosse player, and I lost a wrestling match to a five-foot punk named after a buoyant waterfowl. From that day on, he was incontestably five feet tall.