Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (18 page)

As long as we're putting it all out there—here are several things I'm well aware are wrong with me.

A major flaw keeping me from being 100 percent likable by women is that I full-on don't recycle. I just haven't embraced it. I won't go more than 1 percent out of my way to participate in what I realize is an incredibly important group effort toward our children's future. It isn't that I'm ignorant or don't get why we're doing it. No, I know, I just don't do it. It's a total scumbag move, and I get it. Yet if I need to discard a giant plastic bottle and there isn't an already extremely organized recycling effort all clearly marked for me . . . that fucker is going straight into the trash. You know what makes it ironic? I worked on the back of a recycling truck for six fucking summers. I literally recycled for a living day in and day out, every single day for six summers in a row. As soon as I got home? Chug a Diet Coke and toss it in with the trash, feeling no shame.

Women don't like that I'm not very emotional. I personally disagree with this assertion, because I've cried several times in recent memory—most recently while watching
The Lion King
. Still, at this point, it's my vote versus every woman I've ever been involved with. I'm greatly outnumbered, so logic tells me I should concede the point and admit a couple of my emotional switches are janky. I like to think of myself more as emotionally grounded rather than emotionally absent. And sure, maybe I'm a little selfish when it comes to emotional stuff, too. For instance, if someone I know is going to die, I'd prefer they do it right after New Year's Day. January and February are great months to grieve. I basically have no plans then. Don't die on me in June, when things are about to heat up socially. I can't grieve through Memorial Day weekend; be reasonable.

But my worst flaw is that I farted on a baby once. Guilty as charged, folks. Don't get all high and mighty, like who is this pig who farts on babies? It can happen to anyone. Tornados can happen to anyone, too, and no one gets mad at them (besides Hellen Hunt in
Twister
), because they are a part of nature, just like a mid-commute fart. Tornados take babies sometimes. This wasn't nearly as bad, so let's be thankful the baby remained unharmed, physically. I was walking to work from the Upper East Side to Midtown. I never wanted to live on the Upper East Side, but I had to temporarily move there after Big Sex dumped me. The walk is 1.3 miles and takes about twenty-two minutes. On the day in question, I had a really nice suit-tie combo on, my headphones were in, and my “spring into 2013” mix was peaking. I was in the homestretch, coming down Third Avenue, when I ran into your classic New York City commuter pickle. After commuting to and from work by foot for five-plus years, I understand what NASCAR is like. If you see your hole, you better
hit it
. There is nothing worse than getting caught behind a slow commuter, or even worse—a couple of fat tourists. There are no fat people living in Manhattan. That's a fact. People vary in size, but no one is actually fat. If you see fat people in front of you, you're stuck behind tourists. That's the pedestrian equivalent of being stuck behind a school bus.

Back to the scene. In front of me was a lady pushing a baby in a stroller at a respectable pace. She was moving at a decent clip, but I was late and needed to make a pass. There was someone coming the other way, but I still had a small window to make my move. It was so small, in fact, that it required me to turn my hips sideways while still facing forward, a little maneuver I like to call the “Stangle Shuffle.” All the men in my family know it well; it's learned early in the world of giants. It consists of a forward-moving walk with the hips and torso rotating from side to side in order to squeeze through tight spaces. When you get really good at it, you can do it with a beer in each hand. At that point, you've learned to communicate with unique system of head nods. It is most often executed at large crowd events such as concerts, house parties, and Tea Party rallies. In this particular case, on the sidewalk of Third Avenue, I executed the perfect Stangle Shuffle to gain a better position on the sidewalk. As my hips were turned right and I was in midstride, mid-pass, I did something else that all Stangle men learn at an early age—I let out a duck fart. A rip-roaring duck fart, guys. It went directly onto the baby I was passing. My immediate thought was that baby was going to start crying. I farted on my little cousin once, years ago when he was six. He cried pretty hard. He was such a little pussy. I can't remember when I was six, but I'd like to think that I would have found that funny. It's not like I gave him a facial; that would have been way more fucked-up. The baby seemed okay, though. I guess you can't really judge when you shit yourself four times a day with butt mud. The mom, though? She wasn't as forgiving. We had ourselves a long conversation about it.

I am usually pretty good in awkward situations. Some would say awkward is my natural medium. One time, I went on a first date, and it went really well. I brought the girl back to my apartment and she absolutely fell in love with my dog, Frank. We took him for a quick walk around the block, so he could do his thing before I made my move. He got outside and immediately took a huge dump. In that huge dump was a used condom he had found in my trash and decided to eat the night before. Try explaining
that
one.

Some of my most awkward moments happen when I'm by myself. It's why I don't think I could ever get married. If anyone was around me when some of this stuff happens to me, I'd be toast. Recently, I had just bought some new clothes, and I was in my fudgies (underwear), trying them on in front of the mirror at my apartment. I put this one new shirt on and looked at my reflection and confidently said out loud, “Fuck yeah, I look hot.” Then, when I turned to take it off and fold it, I let out a rip-roaring fart and just completely sharted. You know you sharted before you even feel it, because of the distinct sound it makes. I didn't feel so hot anymore. It was time to enter cleanup phase. I looked like Danny DeVito as the Penguin, walking across my apartment to the bathroom. Twenty minutes before all of this happened, I had hung up a few semi-wrinkled garments in the bathroom, cranked the shower as hot as it would go to get a good steam going, and shut the door (a great move when you're in a pinch, by the way). So when I opened the door, I could barely let the steam escape before plunging down on the john. It was a jungle, my friends.

Freshly sharted, I took an explosive shit in a very moist sauna. I'm dripping head to toe in sweat, possibly suffering the effects of dehydration. I actually had been avoiding looking to my right, where the TP is kept, because there could be a chance we were out of TP and at that point, well, I might lose it. It comes in threes! I very much need to get into the shower, face opposite the showerhead, and do my best Vince Wilfork three-point stance for the next few hours. Good night!

(Dave)

If our dad ever reads this book (which he won't), this may be the only chapter he enjoys. Our dad doesn't read books like this. He reads books about Abe Lincoln or books by Bill O'Reilly. He recently read a book
about
Abe Lincoln
by
Bill O'Reilly. That's a fact. Should someone slip an Abe Lincoln book cover over this book to trick him, and should he open to this very chapter, he may actually read it. For some reason, of everything to pick from, our dad finds this story to be his favorite. It involves several elements that old men love: bar fights, midgets, and humiliated sons. Since the title gives away the ending, I'm not spoiling anything by saying that our old man was laughing about this incident before I even had the ice pack on my wiener. You'd think a guy with a mule for a dick would feel some sympathy for me. Nope.

In 2008 I was young, fresh out of college, ambitious, and full of wonder. I was carrying around a
bachelor's
degree, dick swinging, just tickling the world to get it laughing before I was ready to finger it. I was studying to take the LSAT and working several part-time jobs. At first, I was the manager at Gilgo Beach in Long Island.
¹
That job was sick, but it wasn't ideal for studying. When I wasn't ogling one of the high school girls who worked for me (relax, I was twenty-three . . . ish), I was getting high behind a lifeguard stand. Keep in mind lifeguard stands are not enclosed structures that provide privacy from those you don't wish to see you get high. They are a couple of two-by-fours, with a bench at the top. It didn't even make sense! I needed my days to study and my nights to make enough money, so I ended up getting a job as a doorman at a club called the Nutty Irishman in nearby Bay Shore, Long Island. This place was an absolute disaster. To every chin-strap-wearing, flat-brim-hat-sporting, old-Acura-with-tinted-windows-driving Long Island dickhead, this was his mecca. It was also the bar closest to where the Fire Island ferry lets off. With the last ferry leaving Fire Island at 1 a.m., we became the spillover for Pauly D and the gang to come drink Heinekens. I'm six four, at the time probably weighed about 230 pounds, and I was
by far
the smallest bouncer at the bar. These guys were washed-up football players, prison yard guards, gym coaches, and prison yard gym coaches. They were monsters. One of the guys actually told me a story about how he killed someone in Queens once. Because of my whiteness and relatively pussy persona compared to the other bouncers, I acquired the nickname “Little Dave.” When it came time to get rough, I was always given mop-up duty. When two meatheads wanted to charge each other like rhinos, it was the real bouncers who would do suplexes and sleeper holds. While they were laying down T-bones and full nelsons, I would hold back their girlfriends. I became the butt of just about every joke. I loved it, though. These giant knuckleheads embraced me for being so little. That was a first.

The Nutty Irishman used to have live bands every Saturday. They stuck with mostly local groups, but once in a while they would have a band with some sort of gimmick: all-girl bands, cover bands, you know the drill. One night, they booked this band that was an all-midget KISS cover band. Fucking awesome. I would usually get to work early to help stock the bar. This allowed me an opportunity to steal a bottle of well liquor to bring out to the front door with me for the night. That night, I saw the midget KISS guys unloading and setting up. Full makeup, little tiny fellas. They went all-out. As the night started, I realized that this midget band had a
huge
midget following. Midgets from all over were turning up. Do you know how hard it is to keep it together when you have to ask hundreds of midgets for ID? They are so insulted. They kept looking at me like what, you think I chalked my midget ID? You think a fellow of-age midget passed his ID down to me? Check the height. It says four feet three. Fucking measure me, you punk! Also, I either had to say, “look up at me, please” or I would have to squat down to see their actual faces. This became extremely awkward, which I fully embraced. Oddly, they didn't find the humor in it.

As the night went on, I'd estimate we had about seventy-five midgets in this bar. We also had the usual crowd in there—the drunk idiots of Long Island. This was the ultimate recipe for a disaster. When midgets are in packs and drinking, they think they can fight regular people. This isn't the case. Every twenty or thirty minutes on my headset, I would hear about a small skirmish. I wanted to see one of my giant coworkers toss a midget out the door by his collar and the seat of his pants. It would have been too perfect. It never happened, though. Instead, we kept throwing out the full-size guys and leaving all the little guys inside. It was their night, after all. No reason to bring the fight to the street. At about 2 a.m., I got the order to close the front door. There was a full-blown brawl inside. I shut the door and headed in to see if I could help. It was mayhem. Imagine a swarm of midgets all working in a group to fight anyone who fucked with them. They were like a pack of hyenas jumping all over elephants, biting at their ankles.

In the history of Earth, there's been no manual written on how to handle this. I don't blame the midgets for being so fired up. These meatheads had been making fun of them all night. I had, too, but my jokes were cheeky and delightful. Theirs were mean and reflected their own insecurities. After a few minutes, I saw that there was a leader of the midgets who was clearly not backing down. He was fucking fearless; slippery, too. The bar was so crowded and he was so little, none of the giant bouncers could get ahold of him. He was just bobbing and weaving under skirts and around bar stools, causing trouble. Of course, Little Dave got assigned to him. The bouncer who killed a guy once, he told me to get the little guy the fuck out of here, so things would calm down. I felt like I was chasing around a squirrel that got in the house. He was scurrying everywhere. When I finally cornered him, I was exhausted. And confused. What, do I just pick him up like a kid? Hold him against my chest with my arm under his butt like a five-year-old? The only thing I could think to do was shoo him out. I began walking him toward the door with my hands and arms slightly out to my side, making a sweeping motion toward the exit. He was fairly cooperative as he walked backward, constantly looking around both sides of my hips, yelling at anyone who had something to say. My shoo method was working. As I walked forward and he walked backward, there was only about a foot between us. He recognized that he was on his way out, but he wanted to get in every word he could before we reached the door. When we were in the homestretch, someone did something that really, really didn't go over well: dumped a full pint of some sort of daiquiri directly on his oversized midget head.

He made a charge to get past me, and I reflected him back. I stood between him and the culprit. He tried again, and again I reflected him. Then that sneaky little fuck shrugged, rolled his eyes as if he were about to give up, then wound up and landed a haymaker directly on my junk. I dropped to my knees. I couldn't fucking believe it. He sprinted past me and dove into the crowd like Scrooge McDuck diving into his vault of gold coins. I didn't know what happened to him, and I didn't care. The entire bar was filled with brawling meatheads and midgets, and I was crawling on the ground, unable to grasp what had happened. Somehow, the fight died down and was wrangled under control within two minutes of all this happening. The band stopped playing, cops showed up, the dust was settling.