Assholes Finish First (2 page)

But Campout isn’t just about basketball tickets. With almost 2000 students representing nearly every program and department at the University in attendance, this is also
the premier graduate and professional student social event of the year.
Campout is an excellent opportunity to bond with your students in your own program and make friends in other programs.”

The bolding is theirs, not mine. Not only do they want grad students to spend their limited free time toiling in a parking lot, they are condescending about it. Either that, or they’re just fucking retarded—do they really think that being stuck in a parking lot with 2,000 nerds is
“the premier graduate and professional student social event of the year”
? Not going to a bar or to a party with your friends, or, God fucking forbid, ACTUALLY GOING TO THE GAMES. Nope, to them, the coolest thing a grad student can do is to root around in filth.

I want tickets, so I have to go. OK, fine. But if those Duke basketball tools are going to make me sleep outside for two nights, I’m going to make them pay. And not just by getting drunk and fucking their ugly girlfriends.

It took me a few days, but I finally figured out how to completely ruin the event for everyone who sucks, while concurrently making it awesome for me and my friends. About two weeks before the grad student campout was to start, I was in the law library, intently focusing on my computer screen when my buddy Hate walked up.

Hate “What are you up to?”

Tucker “Ordering something online.”

Hate “What, a Russian mail-order bride?”

Tucker “Better. A bullhorn.”

Hate “What for?”

Tucker “For Campout. Look at this one, dude: It has a one-mile range! And a 110-decibel siren! It’s made for police use!”

Hate [
ten-second blank stare
] “Jesus have mercy on our souls.”

I paid extra for 2nd day delivery. When the day of arrival came, I was so excited I stayed home from class. Waiting for the delivery guy felt like Christmas, except without the part where your parents drink all the present money and wrap up things from your room as your gifts. Credit and Hate stayed home that day too, not because they were excited about the bullhorn, but because they are dicks. They wanted to taunt me until it arrived, knowing the anticipation was slowly killing me. (That, and none of us ever went to class anyway because law school is ridiculously easy.)

Credit “Max, I haven’t seen you this excited since Brad Pitt took his shirt off in
Fight Club
.”

Tucker “Credit, you’re Jewish, your best friend is black, and your girlfriend is a cheating whore. Even if I
were
gay, I’d still have it better than you.”

When the FedEx truck finally showed up, I sprinted to the front desk. I scribbled my signature, ran back to my room, tore open the package, loaded the batteries I already purchased, then cautiously put the bullhorn up to my lips and whispered:

“Hello.”

My voice boomed out of the bullhorn so crisp and loud it shocked me. I felt a strange new power surge through me. It was like I drank from the Holy Grail. I took a deep breath and bellowed:

“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! CREDIT, I AM THE GREATEST MAN ALIVE!! HATE, I’M FUCKING INVINCIBLE!”

I ran out of my room into the living room. Hate was jolted forward in his recliner, white-knuckling the armrests with a look on his face like he’d just seen the devil. Credit had the same exasperated expression he got when he learned the student parking lot was a full mile away from the law school building.

Tucker “Holy shit! The volume’s only at 6! It goes up to 10!”

Credit “Everyone is going to hate us.”

Hate “Max, you aren’t really taking that thing to Campout are you?”

Tucker [
into the bullhorn
]
“We are friends and roommates, and yet… I feel like you don’t know me at all.”

I turned it down to 2—loud but still a manageable indoor volume—and spoke to everyone exclusively through the bullhorn for the next week. It became a part of me, a natural extension of my arm. I put it down only to shower and masturbate.

You know how when you pine after something really badly, like a cool toy or a new car or whatever, once you get it, it’s never as good as you imagined it would be? This was the opposite. This was so much better than I could’ve ever dreamed. No possession of mine, before or since, has ever completed me the way that bullhorn did; it embodied all of the characteristics that I consider most essential to myself… and amplified them.

Arguing:
I was pretty good at debating with people before, but now, I had a permanent trump card. How can you win an argument against someone who is louder than a chain saw? Even if you’re completely right, you’re wrong, because I have the bullhorn.

Humor:
Everything you say becomes one level more humorous through a bullhorn. Stupid becomes passable, passable becomes funny, funny becomes hysterical, and hysterical becomes Dave Chappelle doing Rick James. I think this is because a bullhorn makes you so loud that it puts you on an imaginary stage. Just being the center of attention primes people to think you’re funny—how else does Dane Cook get laughs?

Confidence:
I was not lacking in confidence beforehand, but add a bullhorn and I became superhuman. It was like having a gun, except better. Walking around with a bullhorn gives all the authority of a gun, without any of the toolishness or danger of it accidentally discharging in your sweatpants. People just assume you’re in charge and defer to you.

It was as if one internet purchase had suddenly made all things right in the world. Maybe the Duke nerds are right. Maybe this
will
be the premier social event of the year.

Campout started on Friday at 7pm, but me, SlingBlade, Credit, Hate, Jojo, and GoldenBoy got there about 5pm, so we could park our RV in a prime spot. As we pulled in and started to get situated—which for us entailed setting down the cooler and sitting around it drinking—I pondered my tactics:

Tucker
“Alright fellas, what should my bullhorn strategy be?”

Hate “Break it. Or set it on fire. Anything that will get that fucking thing out of your hand.”

GoldenBoy “Aren’t you just gonna get drunk, yell at people, and not worry about consequences? Do you know any other way to act?”

Tucker
“There is wisdom in your words.”

At 7pm they blew the whistles for the first check-in. The Head Campout Nerd was giving instructions with one of those tiny little megaphones you can buy at Home Depot. He saw me and came over all excited, like we were friends:

Nerd “You have a bullhorn! I have one too!”

I immediately saw this encounter for what it was: my first chance to assert dominance over Campout. In the most condescending tone possible I said:

Tucker
“Aren’t you the cutest! And look at the toy Santa brought you for Christmas! You must have been a good boy this year!”

The dude visibly deflated. Here he was, hoping for a Bullhorn Buddy, and instead he got, well… me:

Tucker
“What the fuck is that, a Speak & Spell or a See ’n Say? The frog says ‘Ribbit’!”

He was about to say something, but I put my bullhorn right in his face and hit the siren trigger:

EEEEEERRRRRRNNNNNN

Tucker
“Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, motherfucker. Take your Fisher-Price ‘My First Megaphone’ and get the fuck out of my face. This thing is made for riot control! I run Campout now, bitch!”

The dude sulked off like the old lion that gets his ass handed to him by the younger lion and won’t be seeing any more lion pussy. It was awesome. Only minutes into the start of Campout and I had savaged the only challenger to my authority!

Tucker
“To be the man, you gotta beat the man! And now I’m the man! WOOOOOOOOOOO!”

GoldenBoy “Rick Flair quotes? I know we’re in North Carolina, but come on.”

SlingBlade “Tucker is so proud of himself. He just bested a pimply, insecure 130-pound public policy student. Next up,
Romper Room Smackdown
.”

The testosterone rush of my victory—on top of the beer I’d already drunk—put me into what could be called an “aggressive” state. Conversely, I was surrounded by the type of passive, fearful people who’d chosen to stay in school to avoid the conflict and consequences of real life. This meant I had in front of me a weekend where I could say or do anything I wanted, without worrying about anyone being able to talk over me. This must be what narcissist heaven is like.

Beer in one hand and bullhorn in the other, I began my symphony of awesome, starting off by verbally assaulting random passersby:

[
to a dude in a
Star Wars
T-shirt
]
“Be honest, how many times have you jacked off to a picture of Princess Leia in her metal bikini?”

[
to a group of grad school students
]
“You look like the type of people who would criticize a misspelling in a suicide note.”

[
to this guy who had blond hair, was kinda fat, and wore thick glasses
]
“If this were Lord of the Flies, you’d be dead already.”

He foolishly turned to respond.

Tucker
“Silence! I’ve got the conch now, Piggy!”

EEEEEERRRRRRNNNNNN

[
to some random nerd
]
“How hard was it choosing between the midnight showing of
Rocky Horror Picture Show
and Campout?”

[
to a chunky girl
]
“Have you been tested for hoof-and-mouth disease!”

Chunkygirl “What?”

SlingBlade, who at this point was warming up to the idea of the bullhorn, took it from me and piled on:

SlingBlade
“Tucker, you have it wrong. Clearly she has mad cow disease.”

Chunkygirl “Fuck you!”

Tucker
“You’re right! She’s frothing at the udder!”

Some European-looking dudes in Diadora shorts walked by.

Tucker
“Fact: Soccer is a game invented by European ladies to pass the time while their husbands cooked dinner. Go practice your throw-ins, you cheese-eating surrender monkey!”

GoldenBoy “You just seamlessly stole a
King of the Hill
quote and a
Simpsons
quote to form one insult. I’ve never been this impressed by plagiarism.”

Tucker
“I’m awesome even when I steal.”

Many beers later, I saw what looked like a hot girl far over on the other part of the parking lot.

Tucker “Man, look at her!”

Jojo and Credit looked over, and immediately started laughing at me. A lot.

Tucker “What? She’s hot!”

As she walked closer, it became very evident she… was a he.

Tucker “Come on, he has waif legs and those tight skinny jeans and long hair—how was I supposed to know it was a douche Marxist and not a girl?”

Credit “He has a beard, Tucker.”

Tucker “Does he? Shit, maybe I’m drunker than I thought I was.”

Jojo “Yeah, that’s it.”

Everyone had a great time laughing at my expense. To this day, Jojo brings this up approximately once a month. It happened TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO. He’s like a woman; he never forgets anything.

Tooling on idiots is fun, but I still have a penis, and it still demands its pounding of flesh, so we decided to see what good-looking—or at least willing—girls we could find at
“the premier graduate and professional student social event of the year.”

Dealing with grad school girls can be tricky. At Duke there were four distinct types: insecure, fearful types hiding from the real world; the super-serious ones so brainwashed by the unreality of academia they aren’t even human anymore; the ones just looking for their Mrs. degree; and the
sluts. Of all the types of women, I like sluts the best. Mainly because they are the most receptive to me putting my penis in their vagina.

A group of cute girls who looked like they might be game walked by.

Tucker
“Ladies, you can’t be the first, but you can be the next.”

They looked at me suspiciously, as they should. Most of the time I don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth, and sometimes, well… it’s dumb. I’ve found the best thing to do when you stumble is to pretend that nothing happened and just drive forward.

Tucker
“In addition to the bullhorn, we have beer! And we will share it with you!”

They laughed a little but didn’t come over. I decided to go for the high-risk play. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Tucker
“Look, here’s the deal: If you’re into immature, sexually compulsive men who drink too much and need to be the center of attention at all times, you are going to find me very attractive.”

SlingBlade [
grabbing the bullhorn
]
“Don’t talk to this man. He has herpes simplex A, B and C. This was a public service announcement brought to you by SlingBlade.”

Tucker
“IT’S IN REMISSION, ASSHOLE!”

The fact that this exchange not only made them laugh out loud, but also got them to come hang out with us, should be all the info you need to know which grad school group they fell into.

But there was a bonus: They were in nursing school. We hit the slut jackpot! Slutty nurses not only want to fuck you, they want to take care of you too. They do you, then they do your laundry. This’ll be better than Shark Week!

We talked for a while (without the bullhorn), when, just making conversation, I asked one girl about her favorite movie.

Girl “I love John Cusack, especially in my favorite movie,
Better Off Dead.
”

Tucker “Oh, no…”

SlingBlade “Did we ever establish why Lane Meyer couldn’t be bothered to pay the paperboy? Why he tortured him for the entire movie, without any reason?”

Girl “That was funny. ‘Gimme my two dollars!’ I liked that.”

SlingBlade “So you think that’s cool, to take goods and services from people and not compensate them? Two dollars is a meal! That’s two double cheeseburgers off the McDonald’s dollar menu, which can be the only source of protein for those of us whose parents abandon all financial responsibility for their children at age 18.”