SlingBlade “We’re just full of alcohol and Mexican food. You could do that.”
Woman “Oh my! You are funny.”
As SlingBlade chatted her up, he surreptitiously fed her dog beer. When she discovered this, it did not please her.
Woman “WHAT ARE YOU DOING! Oh my goodness, Pookie, are you OK?”
SlingBlade “Your dog has a drinking problem, you might want to look into that. Take him to doggie AA or something.”
Woman “WHY DID YOU GIVE BEER TO MY DOG!”
SlingBlade “Your dog drank my beer. There is a difference.”
The bartender stepped in.
Bartender “You and your friends are cut off.”
SlingBlade “WHAT? I am 165 pounds of pure athleticism. I can recycle alcohol with impunity. Bring me more beer woman, and be quick about it.”
Bartender “Don’t make me call the police.”
That was pretty much it for us. Mermaid took us to some other bar that was located in an alley, and before any of us even knew what was happening, El Bingeroso was tossing trash cans around, knocking over dumpsters and kicking doors down. He was in full-on El Bingeroso Destroy Mode. He’s the type of drunk that makes you wonder why alcohol is classified as a depressant.
It was clear we had to get him off the street. While deciding what to do, we came across one of the numerous street musicians that swarm 6th Street. Some guy was playing “Friends in Low Places” on his guitar, and next thing we know, El Bingeroso has his arm around him, crooning at the top of his lungs:
El Bing “CAUUUUSE I GOT FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES, WHERE THE WHISKEY DROWNS AND THE BEER CHASES… MY BLUES AWAY… AND TUCKER IS GAY…”
The guitar guy stops playing, and tries to help El Bingeroso out:
Guy “Man, you need to put that beer down, there are open container laws in Texas.”
El Bing “YOU WANNA GO?”
Tucker “EL BINGEROSO, STOP IT—he’s trying to help you.”
El Bing “YOU WANNA FIGHT TOO? Come on jackass, gimme some more Garth before I kick your teeth in. I’LL DO IT!”
Guy “You need to get your friend away from me.”
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that said about me or my friends, I’d be driving a Bugatti.
While this went down, SlingBlade was making friends with one of the numerous homeless denizens of Austin. One beggar sparked this exchange:
Beggar “Hey man, do you like, have any change man?”
SlingBlade “Hahahhahahaha. He talks like you, El Bingeroso! I bet he was a promising law student once, before the huff-huff and all. Come here El Bingeroso, take a look into your future!”
Beggar “Do I get some change, man?”
SlingBlade “Tell you what—I will give you all my change if you give me that can of beer in your pocket.”
Beggar “But…it’s all I have. I live on the streets, man.”
SlingBlade “IT ACCEPTS THE DEAL OR IT DOESN’T GET MY CHANGE.”
Beggar “OK, man, OK. Here you go.”
SlingBlade “Very nice. I don’t have any change, but thanks for the beer.”
Beggar “But…but…man, that beer was all I had. I live on the streets, man.”
SlingBlade “And do you think that perhaps your poor negotiation skills had something to do with this? Hmmm?”
Beggar “No man, my ex-wife kicked me out man, I got nowhere to go.”
SlingBlade “You just said the magic words. Here’s your beer back.”
Beggar “How about some change?”
SlingBlade “Don’t push it. You’re lucky I haven’t knocked out your tooth.”
We decide to go to a strip club, The Yellow Rose. To this day, I still laugh recalling our thought process: El Bingeroso is too drunk and violent to walk around the streets, so let’s take him to a place with naked women and large angry bouncers! Sounds great! It’ll be all sunshine and kittens from there!
There are six of us, so we split into two cabs. Cab 1 is me, Mermaid and Dirty. Cab 2 is PWJ, SlingBlade and El Bingeroso. It’s only like ten minutes to the Rose, and Cab 1 arrives with no problem. The three of us go inside, and immediately Mermaid says to me, “We are in Gomorrah.”
If you go out a lot, you know that you can never try too hard to make a party; you just have to kinda see where the night takes you. You do that enough, and every now and then you stumble into one of those absolutely perfect situations, where it seems like everything just falls into place. It was that kind of night at the Yellow Rose.
It was a Sunday night, so the place was not crowded, but for some reason there were lots of dancers on shift. We were dressed well, had lots of cash on us, and all three of us have good game, so before we realized it there were about five or six girls hanging out with us at our table.
Dirty assesses the situation, looks up at me, gives his devious smile and then pulls a classic Dirty maneuver. “Ladies, do you know who that guy is?” He points to me. “That is Tucker Max. He looks like a humble guy, but in reality he is one of the creators of, and the fourth largest stockholder in, Yahoo. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you ladies what Yahoo is, do I?” Of course, two of them did require explanation, but the other four knew what it was, and one said she owned stock in Yahoo.
Now, obviously this is not even remotely true. I was dirt poor and didn’t even own the car I drove. But Dirty went to the PT Barnum School of Marketing, and learned the most important lesson very well: The bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe it.
I pretended to be unassuming and nonchalant as he kept talking me up. All six couldn’t have been hooked more if we’d landed them with tackle and a line. The best part was the dancer who owned stock in Yahoo seemed to know a little bit about the stock market, and tested me by asking who the CEO was. I had worked for Fenwick & West that summer, and one of their main clients was Yahoo, so I knew quite a bit about them. The look on her face when I said, “Are you kidding? I helped hire Tim Koogle,” was fucking priceless. I thought she might go down on me right there at the table.
Playing the part, I ordered bottle service for the table, and before we knew it, there was free lap dances and gratuitous groping all around. It was great. One of the strippers had done some porn before, so I asked her about something I had always wondered about:
Tucker “I understand how female porn stars are selected, but if you are a guy, and you don’t have a huge cock or shoot eight-ropers, how do you get into the porn industry?”
Mermaid “Networking, dude, networking.”
Stripper “I don’t know. I just fucked whoever they told me to. It paid good.”
Tucker “Well isn’t that pleasant? I bet your parents are beaming with pride.”
We had all six convinced to come back to our hotel with us, when all of a sudden Mermaid looks up at us and goes, “Where the fuck is El Bingeroso?”
In our eagerness to exploit strippers, we had totally forgotten about the other three guys. I checked my phone—four missed calls, all from PWJ. I had wondered what was vibrating in my pocket.
Mermaid grabbed my phone and went outside to make some calls. He came back five minutes later with a look of complete exasperation on his face. “Dudes—El Bingeroso is in jail. We need to get out of here.”
Leaving the strippers and what should have been a night of carnal ecstasy that would have made Caligula blush, we return to Embassy Suites. PWJ fills us in on the story of Cab 2:
As soon as they got in the cab, PWJ and SlingBlade realized that El Bingeroso was in trouble. He was past the Violent Drunk Stage, and was now barreling towards the Comatose Drunk Stage. In order to keep him awake, they asked him questions.
PWJ “So, El Bingeroso, how did you meet Kristy [his fiancée]?” El Bingeroso “Dude, I met her in a bar, man. It was in college. I worked there.”
PWJ “Was she in a sorority?”
El Bingeroso “Yeah man, I met her in a bar.”
PWJ “I know this, you already told me that. What did you do on your first date? Someth
ing special?”
El Bingeroso “I met her in a bar, man. I met her in a bar.”
It went on like this until he basically collapsed in SlingBlade’s lap. About two minutes later, and only about three blocks from the strip club, El Bingeroso shoots upright and says, “We need to pull over!”
Assuming that he is going to throw up, the cab immediately pulls over into the parking lot of a convenience store. El Bingeroso gets out, stumbles around for a second, unzips his pants, drops them to his feet, and starts pissing. Right in the middle of the parking lot.
He is still weaving, and PWJ doesn’t want him to piss on his pants, so he gets behind El Bingeroso, wraps his arms around his chest, and holds him up while he pisses.
Now picture this scene in your mind: It’s Texas, midnight on a Sunday, and in the middle of a convenience store parking lot is a guy with his pants around his ankles, and another guy behind him with his arms wrapped around his chest. What would you think?
Me too. And that is exactly what the cop that drove by at that moment thought.
PWJ said all he heard was the screeching of tires before he looked up and saw a large Austin city police officer hop out of his car and yell (in a good-ol-boy Texan accent):
“WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE YEW TWO DOIN’?!?”
SlingBlade tried to get out of the cab to explain, but the cop put his hand on his gun and barked, “GET BACK IN THE CAB!” SlingBlade immediately complied, because this is what a childhood of risk aversion does to a man.
PWJ stepped in front of El Bingeroso. “Officer, I’m sorry, please let me explain. My friend got very drunk tonight, and we pulled over because we thought he was going to vomit, but he started to pee, so I got behind him to hold him up. He is very drunk, he just needs to go back to the hotel and lay down.”
The cop was the stereotypical idiot meathead Austin cop, “So you think you can just piss here, right on the road, right here in this parking lot? There’s a hospital two blocks away, we’re trying to keep this neighborhood pristine, and you’re over here pissing all over the place.”
PWJ is money under pressure, and for once being the son of a domineering military officer paid off—he stayed calm, and after about five minutes of very lucid, reasoned and submissive explanation, he reassured the cop that everything was OK and got the situation under control. It looked like he was going to get El Bingeroso off the hook.
Then a second cop car pulled up, and the second cop pulled El Bingeroso aside and talked to him separately. PWJ said he looked over about two minutes later, saw El Bingeroso gesticulating wildly and pointing in the cop’s face, heard him yell something about “Mr. Plastic Badge,” and then watched him get thrown on the hood of the cop car, handcuffed, and taken away, kicking the rear windows as it pulled off. This is when the phone calls started.
Now back to the hotel room. We decide to send PWJ and Mermaid to bail out El Bingeroso, and the rest of us go to sleep. It’s about 3am at this point. I wake up at 8am, and PWJ, Mermaid and El Bingeroso still aren’t in. I realize that my phone was turned off, so I turn it on, and see that I have three new messages. I listen to them, break down laughing, and wake up everyone else to listen to them also. Here they are, copied absolutely fucking verbatim off my voicemail:
Message #1, 1:32am: “Jackass, I am in jail…um, I am in, uh, jail dude. I am in Austin County Jail. Umm…you need to call me man. You need to fucking come bail me out. I’m in jail dude, it’s not cool.”
Message #2, 2:44am: “Hey dude man, I’m in jail. This is El Bingeroso. You need to come get me. Uhhh… PWJ called…it’s not cool man. Come get me.”
Message #3, 7:48am: “Tucker, this is El Bingeroso man. I’m at the police headquarters in Austin. And I just got out of jail. I don’t know who posted bond, but you know, whatever. Like, uhhh, I’m looking for a ride, so hopefully I’ll run into you guys, and uhh, get a ride. If I don’t, have a good time in Dallas.”
As El Bingeroso was making that last call, PWJ and Mermaid were waiting for him outside on the steps of the Austin County courthouse. He was finally released a few hours later:
El Bingeroso “PWJ, let me ask you one question: What did I do to get thrown in jail?”
They bring El Bingeroso to the hotel, and he is in bad shape. He looks like a Johnny Cash song. In addition to his rank smell and disgusting clothes, he has a huge shiner above his right eye.
Mermaid “El Bingeroso, dude, what’s wrong with your eye? Did the cop hit you?”
El Bingeroso “Probably.”
Mermaid “Why did he hit you?”
El Bingeroso “I said horrible things about his grandma in Spanish…apparently he spoke it.”
Mermaid “What was going on? How did it happen?”
El Bingeroso “I was in a cell with all these Mexican guys, and you know, I was pissed, so I was organizing a prison riot with the pendejos, when all of the sudden the door opened and WHACK. It is not fun waking up on the floor of the drunk tank, covered in vomit and piss.”
Mermaid “Are you OK?”
El Bingeroso “Yeah, I guess… Guys, seriously, how did I end up in jail?”
We recounted the entire night to him. He lost memory somewhere around the sixth tequila shot. After we finished telling him the story, he was quiet for second, then looked at us with the most pitiful expression I have ever seen on his face,
“Dude… I am not a good drunk.”
Day Four: The Trip Home
This was not the end of El Bingeroso’s problems. He made the catastrophic mistake of calling his fiancée while in the drunk tank, waking her up at 3am, and then calling her parents. Let me reiterate: HE CALLED HER PARENTS FROM JAIL. He was in quite the shit storm of trouble with her, plus he had a drunk and disorderly charge to deal with, so he had to stay in Austin a few more days.
The other three of us decided to head back to Dallas, and then Durham. I believe I put it as such, “We might as well go back to Dallas; there is nothing left to do in Austin. What else could we do that would top the last two nights? Burn down the city? Kill the governor?”
As I am checking out of the Embassy Suites, the manager comes out of the office and asks to speak to me. “Mr. Max, were you the one who had, ahem, ‘an accident,’ in the lobby two nights ago?” I told her it was me indeed, and that I was sorry, that I was not accustomed to the effects of the drink, and I would seek help as soon as I returned to Durham. She did not smile. “I have to inform you that you will no longer be able to stay at this, or any other Embassy Suites, ever again.”
What?
“Sir, we have a national ‘Do Not Accommodate’ database that your name has been added to. After your incident, we would prefer you not stay at any of our hotels again.”
I was permanently banned from ALL Embassy Suites. Forever.
Well… I guess sometimes actions do have consequences.
When we got to Dallas, we checked back into the same Radisson, and slept until dinnertime, then went out in Deep Ellum.
Fast forward to the next morning. I had been up all night drinking and fornicating with some girl when I walk into the hotel room at 8am and find vomit all over the floor. Apparently the Reuben sandwich SlingBlade ordered last night at the bar wasn’t the best of ideas. He was in full-on SlingBlade time-to-go-to-the-ER mode. The kid has the constitution of a six-year-old lupus victim, and after four nights of raucous drinking and corporeal abuse, his frail Bubble-Boy immune system had shutdown.
He crawled into the backseat of his eggplant purple Saturn, curled up into the fetal position and let out moans every few minutes, as PWJ and I drove back to Durham. We were somewhere in Arkansas when SlingBlade shot up and started hitting the back of my seat. I freaked out, swerved all over the road, but before I could get to the shoulder I heard it come loose,
“BLAAAAHHHHHH.”
SlingBlade opened the door, leaned halfway out and just let loose, vomiting all over his own car. He eventually got out of the car and started vomiting again in the grass.
After a good solid five minute puke session, he crawled back in the car and we took off. Not even a minute later, he starts slapping at his legs and yelling in pain. The idiot stepped in a red ant nest while vomiting, then tracked a bunch of them into the car. Before we knew it, all three of us where swatting angry red ants off of us. We had to pull off at the next exit.
SlingBlade found himself at some redneck roadside gas station in Arkansas, cleaning vomit and red ants out of his car…using newspaper, because this gas station didn’t have a vacuum.
He nearly lost it, “This is pretty much the worst day of my life, and I have only been awake for three hours. I refuse to believe this is happening.”
The rest of the trip was rather uneventful; while PWJ and I discussed all order of semantics and philosophy and other nerd topics, SlingBlade slept and moaned and cried. Somewhere around Chattanooga, he woke up, scribbled something on a scrap of paper, handed it to us, and passed back out. It read:
“Please kill me.”
The Epilogue
Texas hasn’t been the same since that October. Unfortunately, the Baby Dolls that I wrote about no longer exists. Dallas zoning laws have changed the club, and though it still stands, it’s no longer the bastion of debauchery it once was.