SlingBlade cocked his head and raised his eyebrows at the parrot, chuckled as if to an inside joke, nodded, and said:
SlingBlade “I know Mr. Peepers, I wish Lincoln hadn’t signed that document either.”
SlingBlade is, on a normal day, the funniest person I know. But with Mr. Peepers as his friend and comedic foil, he was in a zone like I’d never seen before. Mr. Peepers was the alter ego he’d always wanted and the friend that would always have his back. SlingBlade authentically bonded with this plastic bird in a way that he never has with another human. Mr. Peepers became a way for SlingBlade to emote, a mouthpiece for the hurt, angry little boy inside of him to lash out at a world that had been so cruel.
I followed him throughout the night, as he took his new prop on a self-esteem-robbing adventure through the people at the party. It was amazing. At the time, I wasn’t writing full-time but I was keeping a quote list of funny things said by my friends and me. The next day on the plane, I wrote down as many of his jokes as I could remember, and I probably forgot at least half. And those were just the ones I heard. Some of the best examples:
—He walked up to a group of girls, looked them all up and down, and started walking away:
SlingBlade “You’re right Mr. Peepers, there aren’t any good-looking girls at this party.”
—One girl was kinda cute, but boring, so we found a way to make her interesting:
SlingBlade “Wait, what’s that? Yes, I agree Mr. Peepers, you’d never know she’s had three abortions unless her friend told us.”
CuteBoringGirl “What?!?”
Tucker “How many abortions have you had for real?”
CuteBoringGirl “None!”
Tucker “OK, how many babies have you had and then thrown in the Dumpster?”
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers calls them ‘prom babies.’ ”
CuteBoringGirl “I have NEVER had an abortion or a child.”
Tucker “Are you at least pro-abortion?”
CuteBoringGirl “It’s called pro-choice, and yes, I am.”
Tucker “Too bad your mother didn’t share your politics.”
CuteBoringGirl “WHAT!?!”
PWJ “Tucker, be nice. What if her mom is dead?”
Credit “What if she died during an abortion procedure?”
Tucker “AHAHHHAAAHHAHAHAHHHHAHA—THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! THE JOKE WOULD BE TEN TIMES FUNNIER!”
—We were talking to some girls, and one of them was not very bright:
Girl “Who is this Mr. Peepers you keep talking about?”
SlingBlade “How dare you! He is my best friend.” [He affectionately pets Mr. Peepers on the head.]
Girl “What are you supposed to be, like a pirate or something?”
SlingBlade “I know Mr. Peepers, some people don’t get the genius of our costume. Yes, the world needs hotel maids and massage therapists too.”
Girl “What IS your costume? You’re just talking to a fake parrot! This is stupid!”
SlingBlade “I agree with you Mr. Peepers, she needs to be turned upside down and have her vagina filled with concrete.”
—I had been talking to a girl I thought was kinda cute, but SlingBlade was not having it:
SlingBlade “Yes Mr. Peepers, if she were a dog, she’d have been put to sleep a long time ago.”
Tucker “Shut up dude, she’s not that bad.”
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers thinks that if you painted her black and white and took her to the beach, the seals would run for cover.”
Tucker “She’s not even fat!”
SlingBlade “I guess it’s true, Mr. Peepers: There is always someone as drunk and horny as you are ugly.”
—Girl in an argument with SlingBlade:
Girl “I like your friend Credit. He’s cute too.”
SlingBlade “Good call Mr. Peepers. If Beaker from the Muppets was Jewish and terrified of public speaking, he would be Credit.”
Girl “I don’t know what you’re talking about, he’s better looking than you. You aren’t even wearing nice clothes. Where did you get your clothes, from a homeless person?”
SlingBlade “I’ve bought some of my favorite outfits off of hoboes.”
Girl “And what is with the parrot?”
SlingBlade “I know why God gave women mouths Mr. Peepers, but I am not sure about why they got vocal cords.”
At some point, Jojo came over to us with two bottles in his hand and the type of devious look that makes you understand why old white people cross the street when they see a young black man coming toward them.
Jojo “Gentlemen. Thug Passion is going to make an appearance at this party.”
Thug Passion is made from cognac and Alizé. Jojo introduced the drink to our group years ago (shocking, I know, the drink with two types of cognac in it is a favorite of the black friend). Thug Passion is the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency drink we bring out when it’s time to kill what little inhibitions we have left and do really stupid shit. It is Special Olympics in a bottle.
Thug Passion had a different effect on each of us. For me, it just created an amplified me—I’m already pure id anyway. For PWJ, it turned the nice guy of the group into a predatory sex lion; dude was ruthlessly hitting on every girl at the party, using his sister to introduce him, then playing the “brother of my friend must be a nice guy” game. Jojo pulled his hoodie tighter around his head and became even more shady looking, if that’s possible. Hate got more aggressive and angrier. Credit eventually just sunk into a puddle of pitiful, drooling on himself and counting down the minutes until he started puking.
Strangely enough, it made SlingBlade open to female companionship. Thirty minutes after we did our Thug Passion shots, I found SlingBlade talking to a girl. You can usually tell by his body language how it’s going: If his arms are crossed or he’s turned slightly away from the girl, it’s going badly. If he’s looking at her, with his head to the side, he doesn’t think she’s a whore yet, and with this girl, his head was cocked like a confused dog.
SlingBlade “Tucker, have you met Joanne?”
Joanne “My name is Jolene.”
SlingBlade looked over and raised his eyebrows to the inanimate bird, nodded knowingly, and looked back at Jolene with bemused condescension:
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers seems to think that your name isn’t very important.”
She thought he and Mr. Peepers were hilarious, which was awesome. But it was obvious that this was a Thug Passion casualty. Granted, she did have a really good body, but her face had so many craters it looked like the moon. But SlingBlade seemed into her as much as she was into him, so I kept my mouth shut.
Tucker “That cheerleader costume is good. Where’d you get it?”
SlingBlade “Oh, we already went over this quite extensively. It’s not a costume. She was a college cheerleader, and this was her uniform.”
Tucker “You wore your college cheerleading outfit? To a Halloween party?”
Jolene “I couldn’t think of anything else to come as!”
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers, you shouldn’t call her that. The politically correct term is ‘developmentally disabled.’ ”
Jolene “Mr. Peepers!”
Tucker “Well, can you at least do some cheers for us?”
Right in the middle of the party, she started doing all kinds of cheers, jumping up and down, and then did a fucking backflip! It was awesome.
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers and I are impressed with your flexibility.”
Tucker “Can you put it to use, though?”
Jolene “I don’t know, I guess I can.”
Tucker “What’s your favorite sex position?”
Jolene “I like pretty much all of them.”
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers wants to know if ‘dead girl’ is an actual position or just a medical diagnosis?”
Jolene “Mr. Peepers, that’s terrible!”
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers likes dead girls the best because they don’t say ‘no.’”
&nb
sp; Jolene “That’s awful!”
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers has a dark past. He doesn’t like talking about his conviction.”
Jolene “Mr. Peepers went to jail? For what?”
SlingBlade “Wait—what’s that Mr. Peepers? Oh, I see. Mr. Peepers says she’s a lying tramp, that he didn’t rape her, he beat her until she consented, so technically, that should have only been assault.”
Jolene “Oh my God!”
SlingBlade “I don’t think Mr. Peepers understands the legal principle of duress.”
Jolene “Mr. Peepers seems very bitter.”
SlingBlade “Yes. I think perhaps Mr. Peepers didn’t make optimal use of the rehabilitation aspect of his time in the clink.”
Jolene “Forgiveness is the first step to acceptance, Mr. Peepers, and acceptance is how you heal.”
I don’t think she was kidding when she said that. I think she was trying to give actual advice to a plastic bird.
I saw this HOT girl standing next to PWJ, dressed as a slutty Indian. I have no idea what she was doing at this party, as the invite clearly stated the girls were supposed to wear as much fat and ugly as they could find. Since she was dressed as an Indian, I figured alcohol was the perfect in:
Tucker “Have some firewater, Chief Buffalo Fucker. Then we’ll sign a lopsided treaty that I’ll reneg on, so I can steal your lands and ship you off to Oklahoma.”
She looked at me like I asked her if she wanted to fuck on a blanket full of smallpox, and walked off.
Tucker “What the fuck? That may not have been the best Native American joke ever, but it was pretty funny.”
PWJ “No Tucker, it wasn’t. And she isn’t dressed as a slutty Indian. She actually IS an American Indian.”
Tucker “She’s actually wearing the crap from the set she’s claiming?”
PWJ “She’s not ‘claiming a set’ you idiot. She is dressed as a squaw from her tribe.”
Tucker “Wait a minute. THAT outfit is what the women in her tribe wore? What tribe is she from, Frederick’s of Hollywood?”
PWJ “Tucker, shut up dude. She is Native American, leave it alone.”
Tucker “You think if I tell her that I’m related to George Custer, she’ll forgive me? After all, the Indians killed him, so it’s equal. We can commiserate about our victimhood!”
PWJ “That is your worst idea in a long line of awful ideas. Don’t talk to her again.”
I tried my luck with another girl. She was a veterinary assistant.
Girl “I just love working with animals.”
Tucker “I love animals too. Except cats. Cats are evil.”
Girl “No they are not!”
Tucker “When I was a kid I used to go around the neighborhood collecting stray cats in a bag, then tie the bag up and toss it off the bridge. I stopped, though. Apparently, some people didn’t think this was funny. They started throwing around fancy words like ‘animal cruelty’ and ‘felony charges.’ Don’t you hate it when people don’t have a sense of humor?”
Her look of disgust told me that she didn’t have one either.
A few minutes after this, some dude dressed in a SpongeBob SquarePants outfit started yelling at me from across the party:
SpongeBob “Who the fuck do you think you are! I’ve seen you and your friends go around and insult every girl at the party!”
I honestly didn’t know what to do at first. I mean, how do you even react to an angry face sticking out of a cartoon character’s body? Then, as soon as people got between us, that’s when he got all tough and tried to come at me. When there was no one getting between us, he was content just to yell from across the room. There is nothing worse than a fake tough guy, and this just set me off.
Tucker “YOU FUCKING PUSSY! DON’T ACT LIKE A FUCKING TOUGH GUY BEHIND ALL THOSE GIRLS! COME OUT FRONT AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN, YOU FUCKING BITCH! COME OUT FRONT RIGHT NOW!”
I stormed out to the front yard, took off my shirt, and yelled at him to come out and fight me. For 15 minutes. Really, I stood outside, in the freezing cold, bare chested, for 15 minutes, screaming for SpongeBob SquarePants to come out and face me like a man.
Did I mention I was 26 years old at the time? Thug Passion is no joke.
Eventually, PWJ came outside and told me SpongeBob left by the back door. I got a drink and wandered around until I saw SlingBlade; he and Jolene were still deep in flirty conversation. SlingBlade leaned into Mr. Peepers, got a shocked look on his face, popped Mr. Peepers on his beak, and pointed at him as if he were a naughty dog that had piddled on the carpet.
SlingBlade “Mr. Peepers, don’t say that!”
Jolene “What did he say?!?”
SlingBlade “No, no, I can’t tell you. It’s terrible. He’s being cruel again.”
Jolene “Tell me! Tell me!”
SlingBlade “Well, how can I say this diplomatically? Mr. Peepers said he feels really smart around you.”
Jolene “Mr. Peepers, that’s mean!”
SlingBlade “You think that’s mean? See that girl over there? Mr. Peepers said she looks like she got hit with a bag of hot doorknobs.”
Jolene “Mr. Peepers! You can’t say things like that about people!”
SlingBlade “He seems to think that one over there got ambushed by a shit grenade.”
Jolene “Mr. Peepers! We need to have a serious talk about your attitude!”
As she said this, she actually faced Mr. Peepers and addressed him directly, pointing at him and gesticulating in his face. I couldn’t help myself:
Tucker “Are you actually talking to a plastic parrot?”
Jolene “Yes! NO! I DON’T KNOW! Come on Mr. Peepers, let’s go outside!”
She took SlingBlade by the hand and led him to the backyard. Later on that night, I went outside to get more beer, and on the swing set in the backyard, Jolene and SlingBlade were kissing. Mr. Peepers was still taped to SlingBlade’s shoulder, and because of the way they were sitting, Mr. Peepers was essentially a third party to the kiss. Possibly the weirdest threesome I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.
It was getting late and time to find some pussy. Well, unbeknownst to me, Hate had gone around the party and told EVERY SINGLE GIRL that I was a player. Two girls I had made inroads with earlier told me in subsequent conversations that they weren’t into me anymore because of this.
Girl “I was told you’re a player. You are. You’re too confident. I don’t want to talk to you, because I’ve been played many times.”
Tucker “No, no. I don’t want to play you. I just want to have sex with you and then not talk to you anymore after that. That’s not playing you; that’s being honest.”
For some inexplicable reason, this just made her madder.
Normally when people play the “stay away from him he’s bad news” game, that actually helps me—girls love the asshole, after all. But not the girls at this party. PWJ’s sister had indeed invited many females who were recent graduates of Southern schools. But here’s what she didn’t tell PWJ: They went to smaller Southern schools with evangelical leanings, like Furman. These aren’t the fun Southern Baptist “sinner on Saturday, saint on Sunday” types. These are the no-sex-before-marriage types. One girl told me that she couldn’t stay at the party because she had to go to church in the morning. I told her to go to the night service. She told me she goes to both.
How was everyone else doing? Let’s see.
Hate
Hate was his usual charming self. This exchange typifies his approach. He would storm up to a group of women much too aggressively, and introduce himself in his stadium voice:
Hate “LADIES! HAVE YOU TRIED ANY OF THE THUG PASSION??”
Girl [to Credit] “Your friend is scaring me.”
Credit “Yeah, he does that to all of us.”
Jojo
At some point, a young lady in an angel costume arrived at the party. About an hour and fifteen minutes after that, she disappeared into a bedroom with the Black Unabomber.
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br /> Jojo and FallenAngel did not emerge for quite some time. After about twenty minutes of this clandestine interaction, Credit, who drank one and a half Thug Passions and was in their grip, got wind of this and walked in on them four times in the next hour. (He did this not only because he was drunk but also because he and Jojo are ridiculously co-dependent. It’s awesomely hilarious.) Sometimes he knocked, sometimes he demanded they stop what they were doing, sometimes he brought Hate or me with him. Strangely, Jojo did not seem to lose his shit over this. That’s probably because his shit was at the bottom of a cognac bottle in the backyard, but whatever.
Anyway, Jojo found a way to lock the door, they commited their acts of miscegenation in private, and an hour later, they came downstairs. Being the good friends we are, we were cool about it:
Hate “THE FALLEN ANGEL ARISES!!!”
Tucker “THE SNEAKY BLACK GUY DOES IT AGAIN!”
Credit “YOU HAD SEX WITH HER!”
FallenAngel didn’t understand why we kept calling her that, so Jojo spent an hour on the stairs having a heart-to-heart with her about whatever it is drunk girls like to talk about. She thought he was a sweet guy who was listening intently to her but discovered otherwise when she looked over and found him leaning against the railing, asleep.
PWJ
PWJ was smitten with a girl in a white, dressy outfit:
PWJ “What are you supposed to be?”
WoodNymph “A goddess.”
PWJ “You should tell people you are a wood nymph. Did you ever read mythology? Mortals who hooked up with goddesses always came to rather unpleasant ends.”
WoodNymph “Well, we wouldn’t want that happening, would we?”
His sister had earlier made him promise not to go home with WoodNymph, and he had agreed. Well, WoodNymph convinced him to walk her to her car, parked on a major street. On the way there he remembered that he was a smart lawyer who could parse his logic and still get what he wanted. He had promised not to go home with WoodNymph. He said nothing about hooking up with her in her car.
He started kissing her neck, she gave him a lap dance, and things started going really well… until the passing cars started honking. That’s when she realized she was standing outside her car on a busy intersection with her shirt up to her chin, bra undone, with a guy’s hands down her pants, while she was reaching back around with his dick in her hand.
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