Assholes Finish First (10 page)

On our way to the party, I made him stop at a costume store. Ever been to a costume store at 7pm on a Halloween weekend night? It’s like the Superdome during Katrina. The store was packed with all the people who’d missed Halloween being on the calendar for a whole year. The employees, who are completely bored 364 days, were freaking out, and there was basically nothing left except the picked-over carcasses of the shittiest costumes.

We ended up with two options: a Batman costume—very sweet except that it was sized for a 10 year old—or a pirate costume that was nothing but a parrot, an eye patch, and poofy pants.

SlingBlade “So I can either be a pedophile or a gay animal trainer? How about neither, thanks.”

Then I had an inspired stroke of genius:

Tucker “Dude, just take the parrot. Put it on your shoulder and use it to talk shit to people all night. It can be like your version of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. I poop on your costume!”

He seemed to like the idea. Well, more like he was indifferent and just wanted to leave the store, so I bought the parrot and we went to eat. On the way to dinner, the tide started turning in SlingBlade’s favor.

SlingBlade was driving when, out of nowhere, a hot blond woman in a Mercedes accelerated past him and cut him off, then slowed down. She just brazenly pulled her car in front of his, forcing him to hit his brakes and swerve out of the way, and then had the temerity to continue on as if nothing happened. She didn’t give an apology wave or make even the slightest acknowledgment that she committed such a serious breach of highway etiquette. It was as if his existence was completely meaningless to her.

Oh boy. If you know anything about SlingBlade, you know he has a finely tuned sense of justice. One time in San Francisco he saw a cop run a red light for no reason, and tried to pull him over to make a citizen’s arrest. Dude takes the law seriously. Add to this the fact that he despises entitled, uppity-rich-girl types, then mix in his current state of depressed self-loathing, and you’ve got the recipe for emotional Semtex. This incident became the detonator.

He started flashing his high beams, honking, and finally, when she still refused to acknowledge him, stood on the accelerator of his beat-up eggplant purple 1993 Saturn. It took a few seconds, but eventually he got it up to 35 miles per hour and pulled up on her passenger side.

He was red-faced, veins bulging out of his neck, as he screamed curses at her and jabbed the driver-side window with his finger. She didn’t notice him at first, then glanced over, saw the commotion, and from inside the safety of her huge luxury sedan, she gave him that type of contemptuous sneer that only the landed, Southern socialite gentry can muster. It was a glare that said, “You are beneath me, how dare you waste my time.”

He got real quiet and, for a split second, I really thought he was going to swerve his car into hers. I started praying to every god I could think of (to hedge my bets) and braced for impact. But he had something even better in mind.

He hocked up the loudest loogie I’ve ever heard, rolled down his window, pulled slightly ahead, and spit it right at her car. It hit dead center on the passenger side of the windshield. I estimate it had the circumference of a golf ball. It immediately started spreading, like the concussion from a bomb blast. Being that it was allergy season in northern Virginia, SlingBlade’s hay fever had made it gooey and thick with just the right amount of greenish yellow tint. It looked like a pterodactyl took a dump on her windshield.

Mortified, she quickly hit her windshield wipers. Big mistake. Instead of wiping away the loogie, it smeared his phlegm across her windshield. Because she had one of those fancy Mercedes with the one big wiper blade, it turned SlingBlade’s spit mortar into a perfect arc of lung butter, and every trip the wiper made across the windshield spread it larger.

It was a beautiful, retributive rainbow of karmic justice.

We both exploded in laughter. I was tearing up and snorting, and SlingBlade almost had to pull over he was laughing so hard. This was probably the most he’d laughed since we graduated law school.

Instantly, he became a whole new person; it was like he had hope again. Yes, she would still be a spoiled, entitled bitch. Yes, she would just go to a car wash and have it cleaned by some underpaid migrant worker who she wouldn’t even tip, then return to her McMansion, standard-issue trust fund husband, and life of unearned privilege. And yes, SlingBlade would still be a depressed, underemployed lawyer living hand to mouth in a shithole with stains on his walls, driving a purple Saturn. But for one brief, fleeting moment, his world was just. Sometimes you have to take the little victories where you can get them, and on this day, SlingBlade got one.

Still floating on the wings of SlingBlade’s moral victory, we met up with everyone else for dinner. It was a relatively uneventful meal, except when the manager came over and asked Hate if he could stop cursing so loudly, because the Mormon family behind us was complaining. Can’t blame the Mormon. If I had to wear “magical” underwear that covered my whole body and deal with four wives simultaneously henpecking the shit out of me while not sucking my dick, I guess I’d be high-strung too.

Costume-wise, we were not blowing the doors off. I was in scrubs I’d stolen from a nurse I hooked up with the week before, with some vague notion of being a doctor or orderly or something. Credit had a police outfit that was nothing more than a plastic badge and a cop hat. Hate was a rugby player. PWJ put on a skirt, painted half his face blue, and went as William Wallace. And Jojo just had on a gray hoodie that he pulled tight over his head, so that he looked like the Black Unabomber. And of course SlingBlade had his parrot.

Whatever. We don’t conquer people with fancy costumes or clever outfits. We do it by being better at the things that matter: drinking, fucking, and funny.

We arrived at PWJ’s sister’s house, frothing in our anticipation over the bevy of hot and nubile young ladies who were desperately eager for our attention, only to walk in and find… a fucking disaster. You should have seen this party. Seriously, it looked like Lane Bryant and Jenny Craig had a knife fight in there.

SlingBlade “PWJ, I have a theory about why your sister had no guys at her last party.”

Tucker “Who are these girls, the caterers?”

Jojo “Do the hot girls show up later?”

Credit “I think they ate the hot girls.”

Hate “Where’s the bar? This is the type of problem liquor was designed to solve.”

We immediately went to get drinks. There was NO LIQUOR, only a pony keg of cheap beer. For a party that was expecting seventy to a hundred people to show up.

Hate “Gentlemen, this is not good. This is NOT GOOD AT ALL.”

SlingBlade “This must have been what it was like on the Titanic, when they realized they didn’t have enough lifeboats for everyone.”

Our first group party since law school and we were presented with a Halloween party that had:

1. mostly fat girls

2. unattractive skinny girls

3. not enough alcohol to last an hour of purposeful drinking

No. NO. This would not stand. There are many different ways for a party to be epic, and even starting so far behind the 8-ball as this party had, it could be saved. We could make a great time anyway, but for that to happen, we needed to get rip-roaring drunk, and that necessitated LOTS of alcohol. So what the fuck would I do now?

I remember I am Tucker Max, and I am awesome, and regardless of what obstacles fate puts in my way, I can go through them over, them or around them to get my way. I WILL make this party great, one way or the other. It only takes me a second to come up with a plan.

Tucker “Jojo, PWJ—you two are making the most money. Come with me. Everyone else: we’ll be right back. Prepare the women for our triumphant return.”

The ABC store was ten minutes from closing when William Wallace, the Black Unabomber, and Gaylord Focker stormed in, grabbed a cart and started tossing bottles in. Everything that looked remotely potable, we bought.

Cashier “I ain’t never seen no one buy this much liquor at once. This gonna be one hell of a party, eh?”

Tucker “No, it’s mostly fat girls. Takes more to get ’em drunk. And even more than that to drink’em pretty.”

Since Virginia has government-controlled liquor stores, and because we bought an irrational amount of alcohol, the guy had to fill out this special slip for us so we could transport it. If we got pulled over without that slip, we could be arrested, even with all the bottles closed, because we were carrying THAT MUCH ALCOHOL.

I crashed through the front door, box of alcohol in one arm, the other hand brandishing the pink alcohol transportation slip like it was one of Willy Wonka’s Golden Tickets.

Tucker “Now THIS is how you throw a fucking party!”

We left an awful, dying party and returned from the liquor store as conquering heroes. Of course our triumphant return demanded that we do shots, and some of the girls were in fact eager to drink with the party champions. One was a tad overweight, wearing an all-white nurse outfit, and her friend was a butterface in some sort of Girl Scout costume.

Hate “Ladies, what are your costumes?”

SlingBlade “Let me guess. The Michelin Man and… a victim of child abuse?”

SluttyGirlScout “I’m a slutty Girl Scout.”

SluttyNurse “I’m a slutty nurse.”

SlingBlade “You look more like a slutty marshmallow.”

SluttyMarshmallow “Hey!”

Tucker “That’s what I’ve never understood. Why do women go to Halloween as a slutty nurse or a slutty cat, or whatever? Just cut out the middleman and go as a slut. The slutty part is what’s key—no one gives a shit about the rest. You could be a slutty tree for all we care.”

SluttyGirlScout “You can’t go as just a plain slut, everyone will judge you!”

SlingBlade “Oh, I think you are well past the point of being judged.”

Hate “Don’t you understand Tucker? Halloween is the only day of the year a girl can dress like a slut and not be considered a slut.”

SluttyMarshmallow “I know, that’s true, it’s such a double standard, and it’s unfair!”

SluttyGirlScout “Seriously, if a guy fucks a different girl every week, he’s a legend. But if I fuck two guys in a month, I’m some slut.”

SlingBlade “Two guys a month is 24 guys a year. That’s zooming well past slutty and crashing straight into whoredom.”

Tucker “You fuck two new guys every month? Have you hit your quota this month? Because I’ll be drunk soon, and you’ll make a good backup plan.”

PWJ “Tucker, be nice. Look, the double standard makes perfect sense, you just have to see it in the proper perspective. My grandfather put it to me this way: If a key opens lots of locks, then it’s a master key. But if a lock is opened by lots of keys, then it’s a shitty lock.”

SluttyGirlScout “That’s actually really smart.”

Hate “I’ve always looked at it this way: Being a stud as a guy is hard. It’s not easy to sleep with a bunch of girls; you have to have game. There are not many fat, ugly, stupid studs. Being a slut is easy. There are plenty of fat, ugly, stupid sluts.”

SlingBlade [
points to the girls
] “Exhibits A and B.”

SluttyGirlScout “Don’t be a dick!”

I noticed that SluttyMarshmallow had a wandering eye. Target acquired.

Tucker “Why won’t you look at me?”

SluttyMarshmallow “I am.”

Tucker “No, with both eyes!”

SluttyMarshmallow “FUCK YOU!”

Tucker “Can you see around corners? Do they move independently? Show us!”

SluttyMarshmallow “SHUT UP!”

SlingBlade “Was it hard, growing up with one human parent and one chameleon parent? I bet you were teased mercilessly; interspecies kids always are. Children can be so cruel.”

They both stormed off.

Tucker “The buffet is the opposite way!”

SlingBlade “She already knows that, she never took her eye off it.”

This other girl was standing nearby, covered head to toe in sparkly gold paint. She made the unfortunate mistake of injecting herself into the conversation. I honestly don’t remember if she was mad at us or thought we were hilarious; when the jackals are in a frenzy, they snap indiscriminately.

SlingBlade “What are you supposed to be? The victim of a paint truck accident?”

Hate “A spray-can blew up on you?”

Tucker [
in a singing voice
] “Goldfinger, da-da-da, he’s the man, the man with the Midas touch…”

PaintGirl “I’M SUPPOSED TO BE THE STATUE OF LIBERTY! YOU KNOW WE WERE JUST ATTACKED BY TERRORISTS!”

SlingBlade “The real Statue of Liberty doesn’t look like C3PO.”

Tucker “Are you rooting for the terrorists?”

She stormed off just as PWJ’s sister came over.

PWJSister “Tucker, did you make that girl cry?”

Tucker “It’s her fault! She’s the one who hates America!”

Credit “She should consider herself lucky that he didn’t try to take her home.”

Hate “HAHAHAHA. Gentlemen, it begins.”

While we were out getting alcohol, SlingBlade had put on his “costume.” The attachment on the feet of the plastic parrot was useless in terms of keeping it on, so he duct-taped it to his shoulder. He was walking around the party with a plastic parrot duct-taped to his sweater. That was his entire costume.

SlingBlade “I shall name him Mr. Peepers.”

Credit “SlingBlade, that really is the worst costume ever.”

SlingBlade turned his head and leaned into the parrot, as if it were whispering in his ear. Then he nodded in agreement and said in the sort of baby voice I use to talk to my dog:

SlingBlade “No Mr. Peepers, unfortunately Hitler didn’t get them all.”

Jojo “Credit may be Jewish, but at least he spent more than $2 on his costume.”

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.