Maybe I’m drunker than I realize.
I find Liz and ask her how many drinks I’ve had. She looks at me with the same look El Bingeroso gave me, “Tucker sweetie, what are you saying? I can’t understand you.”
I guess I am fucked up.
I try to stagger back to my seat when a very hot, voluptuous stripper grabs me by the belt loops and pulls me towards her. She has a skin tight tiger-stripe body suit that is virtually painted on her. To say that her breasts were spilling out would be to imply that this outfit covered them at some point. Her J-Lo booty smiles at me, and I smile back. It takes me a few seconds to find her eyes. I have to shade my eyes, because the gobs of silver glitter eye shadow smeared on her face are reflecting an inordinate amount of light. She says something to me, but I don’t understand it. I pretend to listen for about three minutes, then I interrupt her:
“If I were dating you, I’d never leave the house. I’d never even leave your general vaginal area. Unless it were to cum on your face.”
She thinks I am funny. She really wants to give me a dance. I tell her I am a starving lawyer, and can’t afford one. But there is something about her. Maybe it’s the lighting, maybe it’s her aggressive attitude, maybe it’s her ghetto booty, maybe it’s her 36 DD fake breasts pressing against me…maybe it’s the three margaritas, six beers and fifteen vodka clubs, but she just strikes me in that right way.
I guess she saw the acquiescence in my eyes, because without any further deliberation, at least that I can remember, she drags me back to a secluded booth in the rear of the club and starts dancing. By this time, I’m so drunk I even know I’m drunk.
Another great feature of Baby Dolls: The strippers encourage you to touch their boobies. I exploit this privilege ruthlessly. I grabbed both her beautifully fake breasts full-on. I was kneading her tits so hard all I needed was a little water and some active dry yeast, and I could have made bread. Toward the end of the dance, I was actually trying to pop the saline implants. Those things are pretty durable.
Finished, she snuggles herself up against me, breasts right under my chin.
Big Tits “Do you want to go somewhere…more private?”
Tucker “Yeah…sure…for what…?”
Big Tits “If we get a champagne room, we can do anything we want.”
Tucker “Anything?”
Big Tits “Anything.”
Tucker “OK.”
Big Tits “It’s 300 for the room, plus usually about 100 dollars more. Depending…but you’re cute.”
Tucker “So…400 total?”
Big Tits “Uh huh.”
I pause and contemplate. I can vaguely recall a moral dilemma I might have had with this situation milling somewhere around my frontal lobes…provided I were sober enough to recall what exactly the tenets of my ethical system were. Or even what an ethical system was.
This drunk, I could only consider price. Thank you, University of Chicago economics classes.
Tucker “I’ll give you 20 dollars.”
Big Tits [laughs] “No. It’s 400, baby.”
Tucker “Okay…22 dollars.”
Big Tits “Well, you’re cute and funny; I’ll do it for 350.”
Tucker “25.”
Big Tits “325?”
Tucker “No, just 25.”
Big Tits “I have to give the club 100 to get the room for an hour.”
Tucker “I can’t last an hour… I’ll give you 28.”
This went on for at least 10 more minutes before we finally settled on a price.
$55. For a half hour.
I could write a book on negotiation. And as drunk as I was, you can believe she earned her $5.
When I found my friends, two hours and $55 wisely spent dollars later, they were out in the parking lot eating sloppy joes they bought from a guy selling them out of the back of his Chevette. Needless to say, they were aghast. But in my vodka-addled brain, I had a defensible position:
“Dude, I had to. How could I pass up a bargain like that? IT’S A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE!”
Day Two: The Texas State Fair and the Embassy Suites Story
The next day we woke up scattered across our hotel room, still clothed and reeking of hairspray and bar smoke. We pack up and head to Austin. On the way there, we see a huge sign on the road:
“This way to the Texas State Fair!”
El Bingeroso nearly has a fucking aneurysm, “OH OH OH OH!!! WE HAVE TO GO, WE HAVE TO GO! Guys, The TEXAS-STATE-FAIR!!!”
It is the most insane morass of trucks and rednecks and cheap carnival trinkets I have ever seen. SlingBlade gets a funnel cake, I get a slushee, PWJ falls in love with the “classic” (read: “penis”) cars, but it was El Bingeroso who really tapped into the essence of the Texas State Fair. He made friends with a fat, brown-toothed teenage redneck wearing a WWF Mankind t-shirt covered in mustard stains. The poor kid looked like he had the cultural I.Q. of someone who just staggered out of a sheep orgy. We see them standing over by some video game thing, and he waves us over.
El Bing “Guys, you see this thing? [pointing to the game] It is called ‘The Shocker.’ You hold these metal handles here, and it sends an ever increasing charge of electricity through you. As the wattage increases, so does your score, and if you can hold it all the way to the end, you win…something. And this guy, [Jethro], thinks he can do it.”
Tucker “What do you win?”
SlingBlade “A free electroshock treatment, apparently.”
PWJ “You can’t hold that for more than a few seconds.”
Jethro “Fuck dat; ike’an duit.”
El Bing “OK man, give it your best shot. Here, we’ll even put the money in.”
As PWJ put the dollar in the machine, and the redneck rubbed his hands together and mentally prepared himself, I pulled El Bingeroso aside. He was giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl in a Hello Kitty store.
Tucker “Dude, who is this kid? What the hell is going on?”
El Bing “I saw him staring at this thing, and I bet him he couldn’t do it. He got all worked up. Dude—I’ve seen this thing knock out 250 pound guys before. They were outlawed in the state of Nebraska! THIS IS AWESOME!”
The young redneck firmly planted his feet, rubbed his face, spit into his hands, rubbed them together and wiped them on his shirt. We started cheering him on:
El Bingeroso “YEAAAAHHHH!”
Tucker “Eye of the tiger!”
PWJ “What does not kill you makes you stronger!”
SlingBlade “There is no spoon!”
He muttered some inspirational phrases to himself, pressed the start button and grabbed the two metal handles. For the first few seconds he was fine…
Then his arms started shaking.
Then his shoulders.
Then his torso.
Then his head.
Then his mouth began frothing and spitting saliva everywhere.
Then this strange, guttural, animalistic groan emerged from him. Still gripping the handles, his whole body was in violent convulsions when an older woman pulled him off of the machine. He fell to the ground and she yelled at him,
“Jethro, git away from that’n thang. Thar makin funna YEW!”
I don’t know if I have ever laughed so hard in my life. I was laying on the hot asphalt of the Texas State Fair, curled up in a ball, tears streaming down my face as I held my stomach muscles and convulsed with laughter. I was able to look up and see the confused, blank look on Jethro’s face as his mother led him off, wiping the spit off of his face, his arms still twitching slightly.
I really hope that God has the capacity for forgiveness that Christians claim, because I am going to test the absolute outer limits.
We get to Austin and check in at the Embassy Suites. After a nap, El Bingeroso calls his friends, and we all meet up at a place called Cheers Shot Bar on 6th Street. It was me, PWJ, SlingBlade, El Bingeroso, and three of his college friends, “Thomas” (from the story “The Night We Almost Died”), “Dirty,”
and “Mermaid.”
It was around 8pm when we rolled in there, and the bar was nearly empty. Not a problem, this crew can make its own party. Mermaid told the bartender, “Seven Flaming Dr Peppers.”
At the time, I had no idea what a Flaming Dr Pepper was. The bartender set up seven pint glasses, each about half full with light beer, in a sort of pyramid formation on the bar. He filled seven shot glasses about 90% full with Amaretto, then topped off each with Bacardi 151, and set them on the lips of the pint glasses. He then took a huge swig of Bacardi 151, put a lighter up to his face, and blew the alcohol in his mouth through the flame, sending a massive fireball over the shot glasses, each catching fire. While they were still on fire, he hit one of the shot glasses, starting a domino effect, each shot glass falling into a pint glass, putting out the flames and fizzing the beer up. We each grabbed a glass and chugged it, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t taste exactly like Dr Pepper.
It was the coolest thing involving alcohol I had ever seen. Being OCD, I had to see it again. And again. And again. Six rounds of Flaming Dr Peppers later, I was fucked up, and we had nearly set the bar on fire.
People, heed my warning: That stuff is Special Olympics in a pint glass. You think they are harmless and not very strong, and the next thing you know it is an hour later and you are in the bathroom of the bar with your pants off, surrounded by five girls, giving your boxers to a bachelorette party because one of the girls is cute and told you that you had a nice butt. Be forewarned.
After that little fiasco, we head across the street to a dueling piano bar. We discover that one of the two piano players is blind. We are basically jackals who walk on two legs, so true to our nature, we focus on the weak one.
We must have given him about 20 notes with song titles on them. Finally, the blind piano player stopped his music and said, “HEY IDIOTS! Stop giving me written song suggestions. I AM BLIND! BLIND! I CAN’T READ THEM!”
One of the helpers came over and took the song suggestions over to the piano player who could see, and he broke out laughing so hard he couldn’t even keep playing. He kinda stopped the music and said into his mike,
“Well, I would love to play these songs, but unfortunately I don’t know any of them. Let’s see if you know them Phil. They are:
Please kill yourself
Isn’t Ray Charles supposed to be black?
I’m gonna steal your wallet because you can’t see who I am
Have you ever fucked a goat by accident?
You are blind because you masturbated too much as a child
I’m gonna set your hair on fire
Come to the bathroom so I can fellate you
I bet you fuck ugly girls because you can’t see their faces
I pissed on your shoes when you were at the urinal
And so on. Phil, you know any of these? I’m stumped.”
It was awesome. The irony was that while most of the crowd was aghast, the blind guy was laughing his ass off right along with us. I guess crippled people can be useful sometimes.
After a few more beers, we went to another bar, and another bar, and another bar, ad infinitum. The night was very funny…for us…because we are not nice people. Here are some selections of our behavior at the various bars on 6th Street that night:
At one point, I went up to some deaf people who were signing to each other and began signing with them. I actually know ASL because I took sign language for my foreign language requirement at the University of Chicago, and as I was asking them where the hot sluts are, in sign language, PWJ comes up to me and says, “Tucker, I didn’t know you spoke deaf.”
While traveling from one bar to the next, PWJ saw a low-rider El Camino with hydraulics that was bouncing up and down on 6th Street. He ran next to the car and started jumping up and down with the car. He then yells at the driver, “NICE CAR MAN!” To which the driver, a male of obvious Hispanic descent, gives him a look of disgust and yells back, “Get away from my car, ese, or I’ll fucking bust a cap in you mane.”
Of course, there were women. Countless women, thousands it seemed like, most of them were hot, and all of them drunk. Some of the interactions I caught on my voice recorder:
Tucker “Hey, what’s your name?”
Girl “My name is Pocahontas.”
Tucker “Right bitch, and my fucking name is John Smith.”
SlingBlade [in a bar whisper] “Tucker, that’s not good game.”
Tucker “Are you married?”
Girl “Yes.”
Tucker “How good is the marriage?”
Girl “Very good.”
Tucker “So there is no chance of us hooking up?”
Girl “No.”
Tucker “Well, do you have any hot friends who aren’t fucking prudes? Hey—where are you going? I was only kidding! I respect the sanctity of the monogamous relationship! WHORE!”
PWJ made me be his wingman at one point, but the friend was a hideously ugly fat girl. I tried to end it quickly with this, “You don’t want to talk to me, I have festering sores on my scrotum.” She thought I was hilarious, so I had to bring out the heavy artillery. “So that spare tire you’re carrying, is it for a car or a truck?” I plead ignorance when PWJ asked me what happened. “I don’t know man, I was trying to help you out, she just wasn’t into me. What can I do, not all girls like me.”
Dirty took a picture of me and some girl, and then said to her, “You can see these pictures of yourself on Poopsex.com.” She quickly scurried away.
SlingBlade was his usual charming gin-drunk self. His lines that night ran the gamut from awful to patently offensive to nearly criminal. His standard pick-up line that night was—I swear to Christ—“Pursuant to Megan’s Law, I am obligated to tell you that I am a convicted sex offender. What’s your name?” After I made him stop talking about molesting children, he moved on to these gems, “Oh good, you smoke. When you’re done sucking down that death stick, I want your advice on which brand of vodka to chase my Percocet with.” Or this one: “Hi, can we just skip the pleasantries and go straight to the part where you call me Captain Kirk and give me a handjob in the backseat of my car?” Quite the wingman he was.
This was my personal favorite interaction of the night:
Tucker “Do you mind if I flirt with you for a while?”
Girl “Please zip up your pants first. Thank you.”
Tucker “Oh, sorry. So, what’s your name?”
Girl “[Blah, blah, blah….]”
Tucker “You have an underbite! Wait… COME BACK HERE, I THINK THAT’S SEXY!”
SlingBlade somehow managed to get a hot girl that he didn’t think was a whore interested in him. Fascinated by this rare event, I talk to her and immediately discover the reason: The girl was not a day over 16. Well, maybe 17. He whispered to me, “This is what lawyers in Texas call, ‘the age of consent.’” There was only one barrier to SlingBlade sealing the deal—she didn’t believe that he went to Austin High with her. She asked him what the mascot was. He accused her of not knowing herself, and trying to steal that information from him. I came upon a plan that could solve this dilemma: I told him to whisper his answer to me, and then she can tell me what the mascot is, and I’ll tell her if he got it right. She agrees. He pretends to whisper something in my ear, and I tell her, “Unless the mascot is ‘I’m going to knock this girl unconscious and anally-fist her,’ he didn’t go to Austin High.” He still hasn’t forgiven me.
PWJ and I were talking to some girls, and PWJ seemed to be doing well with the ringleader, when she saw through his bullshit,
Girl “Do you remember what my name is?”
PWJ “No.”
Girl “That’s attractive.”
PWJ [turning to me] “Tucker, these girls are sleeping with us on the 7th of never. Time to move on.”
These fun little games were all well and good, but it was getting near closing time, and we had no prospects, so Tucker had to get serious and do what Tucker does best: pick up some women. By this
time we had gotten separated, and it was only me, SlingBlade and PWJ. I found a group of three girls, bought all of us a round of shots, made a few jokes, and the crew was set. The way it worked out, I got the hot one, SlingBlade got the good-looking one, and PWJ got the fat one. I assigned the plump one to him because big tits are his kryptonite, and hers were each individually as large as his planet-sized cranium. When he gets a few beers in him, large breasts block out any other physical consideration: fatness, facial features, lack of personal hygiene, etc.
After a round or two, they agree to come with us to get some food at Kerbey Lane, a late-night diner. As we walk to the car, we see about a dozen cops, some of them on horseback, chasing after some random drunk guy, beating him senseless with batons and whatnot. I laugh at this scene. The girls gasp in horror. SlingBlade offers to help the police beat him. What does PWJ do? He runs after the cops yelling—and I am quoting him VERBATIM:
“I’M A LAWYER, AND I SWEAR TO GOD THAT I WILL FILE A SECTION 1983 SUIT VINDICATING THE 4TH AMENDMENT RIGHTS OF THAT MAN!!!”
Yeah, my friend is a closet dork. Except without the closet.
It ended up working out well, because I convinced the girls that PWJ was a big-time criminal defense lawyer, and we had gone to law school with him. I save my friends more than Goose Gossage.
Anyway, we get into the car, and on the way to Kerbey Lane I look in the rear view mirror and see PWJ doing his best to eat the face of the fat girl. Then I make the unfortunate mistake of looking down, and I see his hand in her crotch. When I say “in her crotch,” I mean it. I couldn’t see anything below the elbow. It was almost enough to make me lose my appetite.