Sloppy Seconds: The Tucker Max Leftovers (54 page)

It was at that point I started to cry.

You have to remember, in a matter of eight seconds, I went from drunk, erotic fantasies of me doing naughty things with an anonymous hot girl, to having my head driven into a marble floor and the shit kicked out of me in front of hundreds of people. For no reason I could discern. So I start bawling. Crying like Jimmy Swaggart. It was a complete joke.

The only thing I can think of, being drunk and not yet 21, is that I had a bottle of half-full Ron Llave rum in my backpack (don’t ask me what I was going to do with it). So I start yelling, “It’s just rum!! It’s just rum!! For the love of God, why are you doing this??” I was scared shitless, bleeding, in serious pain, with no idea what the fuck was going on.

Ignoring my lamentations, and without saying a word, the cops tossed me into a holding cell somewhere deep inside the airport and far away from passengers who could hear my screams. They put me into what amounted to a broom closet with bars, and told me to shut up. Of course, that advice didn’t work. The adrenaline had at this point kicked my drunkenness, and I was pissed.

Why the fuck was this happening? I was screaming like a banshee until one of the cops finally told me why I had been detained—I HAD A PISTOL IN MY BACKPACK! Ohhhhhhhh, riiiiggghttt, the pistol. WTF?!?! Who did he think I was, Terry Cummings?! Then it hit me. Had I not been bleeding and in a jail, I would have laughed. Here’s the deal:

Two months earlier, I was helping a friend of mine clean out his basement, and we found a starter pistol. It looked, felt, and weighed the same as any other .38, except that it only shot blanks. He gave it to me, and I stuck in one of the numerous mini-compartments on my backpack, and never thought about it again.

As I am contemplating the delicious ironies of life, they bring in my luggage and begin to go through it, unpacking and hurling everything I brought until it’s all strewn about the floor of this quasi-holding pen.

So I begin to cry. Again. A few minutes later I stop. I start to yell. Then I get angry. Then I cry again. Then I beg them to use their brains. Then I cry again.

At this point, they begin to put things together. I am a white, 18-year-old college student, with nothing except a starter pistol in his backpack, who has broken down in tears multiple times since he was apprehended. Does this sound like a standard terrorist profile to you?

They interviewed me three times in the next four hours, each time asking me the most moronic questions imaginable.

“Are you a terrorist?”

“Who else were you working for?”

“Are any of your relatives Arab?”

I’m serious. About noon, after I had spent much of the previous four hours crying, yelling, sobbing, and even fainting once (I maintain it was from low blood sugar), they realized what had happened. So they told me I could go.

Of course, this was before I saw that all my clothes were still on the floor, and I was the one who got to pick them up, and repack them. And the kicker: as I left the room, one of the cops HANDED ME THE STARTER PISTOL!

Cop “Here, we can’t keep this; you take it.”

So I had to go pack it in a separate box and check it through to my final destination. They wouldn’t even let me throw it away.

Unbelievable.

I’ve gathered from people well-versed in airport security since that time, that these “police” violated several FAA rules when they let me go. Supposedly, I am required to be booked and arraigned, etc., etc. You have to remember, this was LONG before 9/11. Had this happened post-9/11, no doubt I’d still be in jail. That time, I think maybe my tears got the best of procedure in this case.

Whatever the case, I ended up just barely making my 2pm flight.

MY REAL LIFE LAW SCHOOL APPLICATION ESSAY

Occurred, March 1997

I submitted the essay below as my personal statement in all my law school applications. Verbatim, exactly as you read it on this page. In fact, it’s this essay that the admissions committee at Duke Law School read, and then decided it made sense to give me an academic scholarship to their institution:

“I’ll never forget the day I decided that I wanted to go to law school.

It was a bitterly cold March day in Chicago, the kind that freezes the mucous all the way up in your sinus cavity. It was finals week, and myself and three friends were studying in the University of Chicago D’Angelo Law library. We would often go there to study because the tunnel connecting the two buildings would allow us to avoid going out in the cold. I was a freshman at the time, and was nearing the end of my first college semester. Calling that semester ‘eventful’ would be like saying Bob Marley is into marijuana.

Winter in Chicago is depressing. The sun disappears around mid-December, and doesn’t reappear until May. The average day is so cold and windy that Chilly Willy would get frostbite. On top of the great weather, I had nothing go right for me that quarter. My winter highlights included being blown down by wind several times (that season saw gusts up to 60mph); falling down in the bathroom and getting a concussion because someone had left the window open and water on the floor had conveniently turned to ice; getting my first collegiate C because I was literally snowed in my dorm one morning and got to the midterm late; and spraining my ankle so bad I couldn’t play basketball for two months.

Francis, Mark, Mohan and myself were sitting in the law library, trying to learn Cicero or whoever it was when all of the sudden, Francis looked up with a gleam in his eye that would have made Jack Nicholson proud, and said in his thick Wisconsin accent, “Hey guys…let’s get naked.”

It is probably not in my best interest to repeat verbatim my first response to that statement, but let’s just say I expressed confusion and indignation.

Francis explained, “No you idiot; let’s streak the law school.”

Streak the law school. That was an idea.

Before I knew it, my three friends and I were standing in the bathroom on the sixth floor, butt-naked, planning our strategy (although, due to the cold floor, we did all have our shoes on. That was quite a site; four guys, completely naked, except for their socks and sneakers). We were going to run down the stairs until we got to the second floor, which was the main student study room. That night there were probably up to two hundred students on the floor. Once there, we would circle the room once, and then take the main staircase down to the first floor, where we would sprint through the Green Lounge, into the tunnel that connected our dorm to the law library and back to our rooms.

It was a great plan. I was confident, naked, and ready to expose myself.

Yet, as I prepared to open the door of the bathroom and lay myself bare to everyone in the law school, I didn’t realize I had a fifth member of my group. An uninvited, unwelcome guest, who would follow me throughout my disrobed escapade. Murphy, of Murphy’s Law fame, was along for the ride, and would make himself known very soon.

I had been chosen to go first (I wonder why?). I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and heaved the bathroom door open to find Mr. Murphy waiting for me. There was, I’m not kidding, a group of female professors standing and chatting in the hallway. It was that exact moment when I realized that not only was I naked, but people were going to see me naked, and not just people, but older women. Had my friends not pushed me from behind, I probably would have just stood there for about a week. It didn’t help that one of the professors started giggling.

Once we were in the stairwell, things got better. You might be surprised what lengths people will go to get out of the way of naked college undergraduates. Someone would later describe it as, “like being in a Francis Bacon painting.” I’m still not exactly sure how to take that. Yet, once we hit the second floor, Murphy made his presence known, in an excruciatingly painful manner.

As I opened the door from the stairwell to the second floor, I ran full speed into a girl trying to come in the door that I was exiting. The next second and half are still somewhat fuzzy to me, but I remember her falling down, me falling on her, and her water-bottle somehow being shoved directly into my solar plexus.

That HURT.

Somehow I stumbled up, praying that she wouldn’t find out my name and charge me with sexual assault, and began sprinting around the room. I looked like Cramer on amphetamines. I had just had an Evian bottle rammed into one of my nerve centers, was disoriented, short of breath, and pulsing with adrenaline, not to mention naked, in front of a lot of people.

As we made it around the room, a surprisingly warm reaction followed. Whistles, clapping, laughter, cat calls, and cheers rang out. Someone actually even complimented our, uh…personages. My ex-girlfriend thinks they were being facetious.

With things now running somewhat smoothly, we exited the second floor, leaving the stressed-out law students with something to laugh about, and headed down the main stairway to the first floor. Coming down the stairs, the order had gotten mixed, and Mohan was now in front, with me second and the other two pulling up the, uh, rear. At the bottom of the main stairway, one can turn right to go out the front door, or turn left to go through the Green lounge and into the tunnel that leads to our dorm. Next to the front door sits the night security guard, who does nothing other than check bags and ID’s.

When we came within sight of the night security guard, I honestly thought he was going to combust. His eyes got the size of softballs and popped out of their sockets, every vein on his head bulged to the point of hemorrhage, he shot up out of his chair like a pound of C-4 was detonated beneath him, and screamed as if his toupee was ablaze. Mohan stalled at the bottom of the staircase, not understanding why he would be so upset. Running naked through the law school may not be administration endorsed, but it definitely is not a reason to risk aneurysm.

Mohan and I turned to go into the Green lounge, found Mr. Murphy hanging out in there, and immediately realized why the security guard was so upset.

Of all the nights we could have picked to streak the law school, we had chosen a night that there was a reception for about a hundred people. We later found out that it was a cocktail party for assorted dignitaries from several different law schools, and was considered a very important function.

At this point, there was to be no turning back, literally. With the security guard and his arthritic knees chasing us through the thirty-yard long Green lounge, the four of us did our best head-down-in-a-dead-sprint to the door at the other end. By the time we made it to the doors, you could have heard a mouse fart in that room. EVERYONE had stopped what they were doing and watched this almost tragic comedy unfold. Four naked boys were running through the reception, with a decrepit guard limping after them as if they had stolen the Queen’s jewels.

Now, right now you might be asking, why would this possibly make someone want to go to law school? I was pretty sure I wanted to go to law school before that incident. Actually, I’m not really sure why that sealed it for me. My ex-girlfriend thinks that I just can’t wait to go back to a place where people would applaud me naked. In all probability, I just thought I could recycle this story to make some more law school people laugh, while at the same time helping my chances of admission to [insert law school here].”

SPECIAL BONUS

MORE SLINGBLADE STUFF

People are always pestering me for more SlingBlade material, so here are some emails he sent me reviewing movies he’d just seen.

THE HULK

TOO MUCH TALK MAKE SLINGBLADE ANGRY. SLINGBLADE SPOT PLOT HOLES LARGER THAN WHORES’ USED UP VAGINA. SLINGBLADE WANT TO SMASH PUNY HUMANS WHO MAKE HULK MOVIE. SLINGBLADE SEARCH TOOLBAR IN VAIN FOR EMOTICON CAPABLE OF CONVEYING SENSE OF HURT AND FURY PERVADING HIS SOUL AT LOSS OF $8. LAST TIME SLINGBLADE THIS MAD ABOUT $8 IT TURNED OUT STRIPPER HAD COCK AND BALLS. SLING- BLADE GOT OVER THAT ONE AND FORGAVE. SLINGBLADE DON’T THINK HE WILL GET OVER THIS ONE QUITE SO QUICKLY.

SLINGBLADE (THE ACTUAL MOVIE HE’S NICKNAMED AFTER)

This movie is about a funny-talking retard. If that isn’t a formula for Hollywood success I don’t know what is. I’d pay big $$ to see any of your A-list talent play a retard. Can you image a retarded Pacino delivering his ham-fisted retard dialogue while dressed in a ketchup stained smock: “HOOOOO-ahhhhhh, i just crapped myself. Its alllllllllllllllll sticky.” I get giddy just thinking about it.

What this movie does is take the retard genre to undreamt-of heights. This is the
Gone With the Wind
of the retard flick. And they did it by turning Billy Bob into some kind of retarded crime-fighting Superman. Genius. I don’t throw that term around lightly unless discussing myself. But this is sheer genius.

Billy Bob begins the film with an event that your average retard can relate to. He is released from prison despite the fact that he killed someone. Super. Score one more for the Supreme Court and their goddamn ridiculous ban on executing retards. I swear to God if we don’t start executing retards soon I’m going to take care of this problem myself. Anyway, this ex-felon retard continues on the tried and true retard path and befriends a young boy. But this is where it diverges from reality to fantasy. Instead of slaughtering the young boy and eating his gizzard like retards are supposed to do, he decides to protect the boy from his mother’s abusive boyfriend. And by protect, I mean kill. Yup, what we have here is a repeat felon. Who would have guessed? Not your pot-smoking hippie public defenders and their communist liberal friends in the judiciary. I think we’re supposed to feel bad for the retard. This, of course, wrongly assumes that retards can feel. A fact I disputed highly in my eighth grade science project entitled “Pain Responses of Retards Locked in My Basement and Tortured to Death: A Retrospective.”

I should also note that after watching this movie if you go to bars, talk like the retard, and say stuff like “rrmmmmhh, I reckon I want to touch your vaginer” it won’t get you laid. Of course, neither will showing off your Star Wars tattoo, so I’m pretty much out of ideas that don’t involve GHB.