Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (5 page)

On the way home, we walked by our buddy Jay's apartment. He had a second-floor apartment that sat above a storefront with a fire escape hanging right over the street. One of our female companions happened to be a Division 1 cheerleader and all-around badass. Dave and I promptly convinced her to let us boost her up to the fire escape, so that she could break in and scare our friend Jay. We really wanted to see how Jay would react to a sultry five-foot blond cat burglar breaking into his place. Would he attack her? Would he run? Would he get a little boner? Time would tell. Dave and I warmed up thoroughly, in preparation of collectively lifting ninety-five pounds over our heads. Her friend prepared to film the whole thing for a Vine post later on. These girls were typical college. We had learned earlier that they were going through a phase where they thought it was
hilarious
to talk in Australian accents all the time. The novelty wore off quickly, but it did make her commentary on the resulting video pretty incredible. Anthony had followed us home in a classic fifth-wheel move, and he was unsuccessful in talking us out of boosting her up. She was wearing a short skirt and Dave was staring straight up it. But I wasn't, just so you guys know. She used our boost to do a triple-cork front flip up onto the fire escape, piece of cake! After a quick bow to the crowd that had formed on the street around us, she walked over to the window to pop on in. It was locked. Shit. The jig was up!

The small crowd let out a disappointed sigh and started to dissipate. The only thing left to do was for Alex to gracefully hang off the ledge and fall delicately into our capable, waiting arms. It would've been a lot less expensive if that had been the way things went down. Dave and I stood with arms linked in textbook base-cheerleader form, waiting to catch Alex. This girl is a collegiate athlete and gets thrown in the air and spins all over the place, too. This was not her first rodeo. She's cheerleading at football games on fucking Saturday nights, not basketball games on Tuesdays.

Anthony took a few steps back. Dave and I waited for our gal to do the hang down and drop, but instead she leapt like a deranged lunatic. She flew fifteen feet and completely overshot our waiting arms. Calamity ensued, and there were legs and pea coats everywhere, as Alex landed in the capable but unsuspecting arms of Anthony. Unfortunately, Anthony was
not
ready for the combination of Alex and fifteen feet of downward acceleration. Based on a slow-motion playback of the video, we can see that Anthony was absolutely crushed. He probably could have pressed charges. Alex, on the other hand, promptly stood up and walked off unharmed. We picked Anthony up and dusted him off, but he wobbled violently and crashed to the ground. Suddenly an (actual) Australian off-duty nurse came running over.
Den't git up, ya need to ring an ambo to the doc shop stat, love!
she shouted. Dave was so happy a
real
Australian had appeared that he just started screaming at our girls,
THAT'S HOW AN AUSTRALIAN SOUNDS. THAT'S HOW YOU SHOULD SOUND IF YOURE GOING TO DO AN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT THE ENTIRE FUCKING NIGHT!

Two hours later, we found ourselves in some midtown hospital. Anthony was sharing a room with a really upbeat gunshot victim. He was such a good sport and was very talkative, relative to the number of bullets in his body. Anthony wasn't going anywhere for a while, so Dave, the girls, and I left him and his new buddy to get some rest.

Dave tried the bulldog-apartment line again and our cheerleaders obliged immediately. This seemed strange. Ordinarily, we would expect these girls to be running away from us as fast as possible. Then it hit me. These girls had nowhere to stay. They were gambling on this date more than we were! These girls were worried about securing the basics: they were after food and shelter and we were their providers. At some point on the walk home, I pulled Dave aside and explained my theory to him. We were responsible for these gals! We got them home safe and tucked them into Dave's bed and retired ourselves to the floor fort, where we woke up to some nice insect bites. The next morning, we bought them breakfast and went back to the hospital. Alex had ruptured Anthony's patellar tendon. One major surgery and eight months of recovery later, he was good as new.

(Dave)

So much of where Mike and I come from is our old man. I like him a lot. I admire him very much. I respect the hell out of him. I don't want to be like him, though. No way. I want to have the good and righteous qualities he does, but I don't want to be
like
him. That would require me to change my entire personality, and I've been working on my personality for years.

We're different. John Stangle boasts a puritan work ethic, whereas I regularly introduce myself as “Snake” to parents I meet for the first time. My dad and I love each other. We always have. He is a great dad and a great man. He makes my mom happy, he fixes stuff, and he drinks Busch heavies. What's not to like? We haven't always liked each other, though. Some parents don't like their kids during the teenage years. Is this surprising to anyone? Teenagers are fucking shitheads. They think they know everything. I thought I knew everything. My dad actually
did
know everything, and he didn't like that I was sure I did, too, despite the fact that I was obviously a fucking idiot.

These days, we're a-okay. I'm thirty now! I have a job, I'm no longer a financial burden on him, and I haven't gotten any chicks pregnant. (Just need to confirm this one—does the publisher provide fact checkers?) If my relationship with my dad were a credit score, I'd be in the 700s. I attribute a lot of that to his attitude shift once all the kids were out of college. If I had three male shithead kids and one female diva kid to put through grade school, high school, and college. I'd be a hard-ass too! Tough luck, old man. You shouldn't have been humping mom so much back in the eighties. You signed up for this.

Since we've all become young adults, he has mellowed in a noticeable way. Things that used to set him off now just escape his body through a shoulder shrug. His skin is thicker than leather. He is now a wise old sage, relaxed and comfortable in his life, and a great time to hang around with. Most people think of their “prime” as occurring somewhere in their twenties, physically speaking, or their thirties, forties, and fifties, professionally speaking. Papa Stangle waited to peak until after he knew his entire flock would make it into the real world alive and in at least decent condition. By 2008, the Stangle kids had shown enough promise for my father to take a breath, have a drink, and actually go at it with his wife for the first time since Bush #1 was in office. “Nineteen nineties Dad” was the absolute polar opposite of “Golden Age” Dad. Nineteen nineties JT Hard-ass stood over us on Saturday afternoons as he took the role of Chore Czar while we scrubbed the
shit
out of our bathroom floors. Golden Age Dad hangs out in the hot tub he built (literally), a cigar in his mouth and chuckling at the off-color stories his kids tell him. Before, when going out at night, I'd regularly hear a solemn “Behave” as I would run past his chair with booze hidden in my back pocket. Nowadays, Golden Age Dad tells me to “wrap it up.” Talk about progress! (Also, ew Dad. No!)

But before that progress? He didn't always like me.

Have you guys ever seen that horror movie called
The Purge
? Me neither. No way. No fucking way. I was too scared. I
hate
scary movies, and it's not because I'm a wimp. I
am
a wimp, but that's not why. Spiders scare me, just like anyone else. I'll admit that. Fuck spiders. Heights? You heard it here first. I'm six feet four and afraid of heights. But being wimpy isn't why I hate scary movies. It's because I'm a fucking human. Why would I see a scary movie and
choose
to be terrified for two hours of my life? Who volunteers for that? What is the matter with you all? Fuck that. Isn't watching a scary movie just the emotional version of cutting yourself? And you think
I'm
the sicko?

I do know what
The Purge
is about, though. The idea is pretty wild. In a futuristic society, once a year for twenty-four hours, any and all crime is legalized. There are no laws whatsoever. The premise is that human beings are evil and will commit crimes and do bad deeds, because it's inherently in their nature.
The Purge
is their opportunity to get it out of their systems. Three hundred sixty-four perfectly peaceful days are worth one bad day. I actually like the idea. I think I'd just take a bunch of fun hallucinogenic drugs and reenact that scene from the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton, where the Joker and his beret-wearing goons break in and gas the entire museum, blast a boom box over their shoulders with Prince playing, and spray-paint priceless artifacts. I could do that for Purge Day
Every. Fucking. Year.

So why am I talking about
The Purge
so much? Because long before the movie came out, my old man and I were basically maintaining our shred of a functional family relationship by getting our deep-seated issues out of our systems in an annual father-son,
Purge
-like battle. One fight a year, so the other 364 days would be peaceful.

SPOILER ALERT: Since starting this tradition I am 0-13. Zero wins, thirteen losses. We don't even need to do it anymore to get along; it's just that I can't go out without at least one victory. Every year that goes by, he gets older. He is sixty-two now! He is old as
shit
. I'm not retiring. Not now. He has plantar fasciitis, for Christ's sake! I'm due, God damn it.

Before you get all John Kreese
¹
on me, laughing at my 0-13 record, you should know a little bit of background about my old man. John Thomas Stangle Jr. is the oldest of nine wild kids, a record-holding runner who could do a mile in under four minutes, who briefly played hoops at Syracuse, and who went on to be a three-time judo gold medalist in the Empire State Games. Again, that's judo (a hybrid of martial arts and dick-swinging swagger). He always used to quote his old sensei in this really unintentionally racist Oriental sort of accent,
“No much juuuudo, but you stwoooong rike bearcat!”

That old man is tough as nails. He's had a mustache for as long as I've known him. He actually had a full-on lumberjack beard through his late twenties. But when our older brother, Sean, threw up all over it when he was little, JT did some damage control with a first-generation Philips Norelco and came out with the mustache.

Shall I go on? I once saw him put a camel in a headlock, because he considers spitting rude. It's rumored he was mistaken for Tupac a week before Tupac's death and got shot up while running errands. Not only did he not succumb from his wounds, he also kept it a secret so the real hit on Tupac would go off unspoiled, all because he doesn't approve of rap. Okay, those last two are a stretch, but here's a nugget of truth: he once bit a dog in the leg because the dog bit him first. It happened when he was twenty-seven and in line at McDonald's. Apparently there was a dog in McDonald's? He never explains that part. What he will explain is how the “little squirt” of a dog bit him in the ankle, so he responded by dropping to his knees, grabbing the dog's hind leg, and biting it like a caveman. What makes this story even better? The dog belonged to the lady he was working for at the time. I think she was actually buying him lunch, because he was building her an in-ground swimming pool. He didn't even get fired. The dog got put in time-out, and JT went back to her house and built the shit out of that pool. It's unknown if the dog survived the leg bite.

•  •  •

When you're 0-13, you have to look at your record differently than you would if you had squeezed out one or two wins. If I were 2-11, I could go into every year's fight trying to remember what I did right for those two victories. I'd have something to work from. There are no two victories. There isn't even one. I'm not on the board. Instead, I look at my
near
victories versus my most humiliating defeats. This strategy has allowed me to compile a highlight reel. There are a few Purges I can vividly remember, because:

1.  I was not severely concussed afterward, and

2. For at least a slight moment during the bout,
I had a fucking chance to win.

These were the deadliest Purges.

Purge III—Pool-side Choke-Out.

I was in eighth grade for Purge III and really coming into my own shitheadedness. All my buddies were older guys. They were well past eighth grade, already causing a ruckus in high school, and I wanted a taste! I had access to new chicks, baggy jeans, Smash Mouth CDs, and a completely unjustified chip on my shoulder so big it cast a shadow over my head. My sister, Kristen, was already in high school. She was only a sophomore but dominated the Shaker High School swim scene, because she is basically part dolphin. JT loved watching her swim meets. I never understood the draw or why he made me watch every single one with him. Maybe he had a thing for one pieces? But I was there, bored within minutes and looking for a distraction. Not him, though. He would sit and watch every swim meet from start to finish. Kudos, Dad. We're wired quite differently, you and I. Toward the end of Kristen's swim season, I was getting tired of sitting around doing nothing while all of my buddies were running around doing something that was a combination of stupid, illegal, dangerous, and involving stolen lacrosse equipment. I had the itch. I was sniffing around for some excitement.

On the day of Purge III, JT and I were off to a bad start. He was pissed at me because he found three bags of empty Busch Light cans in our tree house in the yard and was unfairly pinning the blame squarely on me. His anger and my refusal to accept responsibility (coupled with my
horrible
poker face) were putting us at odds. What started at a whisper quickly escalated to a shouting match. And, after I ended one of my comebacks by addressing my dad as “pal,” it became a full-on pushing match. Don't ever call your dad “pal” in an argument. We were instantly wrestling outside my sister's high school swim meet. I don't remember much of it, because he choked me out right away. What a spectacle! We were two giant gladiators doing their worst to one another. An old-fashioned duel! Except most duels don't end with the loser waking up in the back of the winner's van as the winner is driving it home and laughing his ass off. He won by putting me in a sleeper hold. Do you know why they call it a sleeper hold? Because it puts you to fucking sleep. How did no one object to this? A dad chokes out his son, throws him over his shoulder, and walks out of a public high school in the middle of the afternoon . . . and no one says a thing? Times have certainly changed.