I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

  A few weeks after we were on 6th Street, Cheers Shot Bar caught fire from Flaming Dr Peppers, and though it was fine, the drink was banned after that in Austin. You can still get them at some bars, but officially they are illegal.

  And much to my dismay, I have heard that The Shocker is now banned in Texas.

  As far as I know, I am still banned from all Embassy Suites. I had forgotten about this until about two years later when I tried to register at an Embassy Suites in Atlanta. Lo and behold, my name was still in the database and “Tucker Max” was not allowed to register as a guest. A small price to pay for what is probably the funniest story of my life.

  For the four Duke Law School friends who went on the trip, things were also never the same.

  For El Bingeroso, it marked the last true balls-out drink-and-destroy weekend he had as a (nearly) single man. After waking up in the Austin City Jail covered in piss and vomit with a huge black eye, he really had to check himself, realize that he is engaged and in love and needs to stop acting like Colin Farrell. He married Kristy that next summer. He still drinks, sometimes to excess, but the El Bingeroso we saw that night is dead. He wasn’t even like that during his bachelor party when we hired a bunch of strippers and a midget.

  The reforms that El Bingeroso implemented began at the Duke Law Halloween Party. Before he left for the road trip, he had convinced Kristy to wear a French maid outfit to the party. He even bought it a month ahead of time, he was so excited. Kristy was predictably unhappy about El Bingeroso’s antics in Austin, and as his first public act of contrition, he wore her French maid outfit to the Halloween party, while she wore an orange prison jumpsuit. Quite the couple they were…and still are.

  For SlingBlade and PWJ, pretty much nothing changed because they never grow as people. SlingBlade is still bitter, utterly lonely, risk-averse and continues to have issues with women. PWJ is still a bad person who is unable to resist any girl with big tits.

  Much to our amusement, his dealings with The Manatee did not end that night. She never told PWJ her name or address, yet she knew his name, found out his address, and a few weeks later sent him a thank-you note, with no return address, along with a check for her share of the cab fare from 6th Street to her apartment. The check was for $3.64. It was a Muppet Show check.

  In true Chinese Zen flow of life style, from the ashes of El Bingeroso rose the phoenix that you know as Tucker Max. I’d done plenty of crazy and out of control shit in my life, but that was the first weekend I consciously took a voice recorder out with me, and that was the first weekend I ever really understood how truly insane and funny my life is. I returned to Durham with 10 pages of quotes and thought to myself, “This would make a great movie.” It was the flap of the butterfly wings at the exact right place at the exact right time that eventually led to Hurricane Max. I didn’t realize it then, and I fought it for another three years, but after that weekend my life arc was irreversibly redirected away from law and towards writing.

  MY KEY WEST TRIP

  Occurred—July 2001

  Written—February 2005

  When I lived in Boca Raton, I was seeing a girl who had more money than she knew what to do with. Daddy was a big real estate developer in South Florida and loved his little girl, and Tucker loved his little girl’s fake tits and black AMEX. [Note for the poor people: a black Centurion American Express card is reserved for those who spend more than $150,000 a year on other AMEX cards.]

  One day I told her that I had never been to Key West. The next day we were on a chartered jet from West Palm Beach to Key West and had a limo meet us at the airport and take us to a really nice hotel on Duval Street. The plane, the limo and the hotel room all had bars in them, so by the time we got settled in our room around 11pm, we were pretty tanked. I can get used to this.

  Now, even though Daddy’sGirl had lots of money, sadly she couldn’t seem to afford any brains. She was 18 and had left Florida State two months into her freshman year because it was too difficult. Seriously—that’s not “too difficult” as a euphemism for “sucked 100 dicks in a month.” She was literally just too stupid for Florida State. TOO STUPID FOR “FREE SHOE UNIVERSITY!” If this seems hard to believe, it’s because you don’t know any Florida girls. After a year there, you stop being shocked by these things.

  Daddy’sGirl wanted to go to some bars, but she neglected to bring her fake ID…or even realize that she NEEDED A FAKE ID TO GET INTO A BAR.

  Tucker “How do you get into bars?”

  Daddy’sGirl “I don’t know. In Palm Beach they just let us in. Everyone knows my daddy. Or we drink at The Breakers or one of the other country clubs. No one has ever asked me for an ID.”

  Tucker “Did it occur to you that we aren’t in Palm Beach anymore?”

  Daddy’sGirl “But I thought EVERYBODY knew my daddy!”

  Tucker [blank stare]

  Daddy’sGirl “This is so unfair!”

  Tucker “It’s a good thing you are rich, otherwise you’d have already have been spit out the bottom of the porn industry.”

  Daddy’sGirl “What? I told you that I don’t like porn. It’s gross.”

  I just walked off.

  We get back to the hotel and decide to order champagne and strawberries and go down to the hot tub. Cliché, I know, but look at the girl I was working with. You can’t make Chardonnay out of shit.

  I know that Cristal gets all the press because rappers have discovered it, but let me tell you something: Cristal is overrated and rappers are stupid. If I want to sling dope or steal a car, I am going straight to DMX to get advice, but for insanely expensive limited edition vintage alcohols, I think I’ll get my counsel elsewhere, thank you.

  I made the mistake of asking Daddy’sGirl what she wanted:

  Daddy’sGirl “Ohh—let’s get Cristal!”

  Tucker “What’s your favorite TV show?”

  Daddy’sGirl “I don’t know. I guess TRL. Or The Real World.”

  Tucker “Let’s leave the ordering to me.”

  The hotel had a great selection, so I got us a bottle of 90 Bollinger Grande Année. I think it was $450. It’s not every day I have access to an unlimited credit line.

  We head down to the hot tub, and it is a really nice set up. Half-hidden from the rest of the pool area by foliage, super-hot water with lots of shallow places to sit. It took a glass and a half of champagne for her to loosen up, but after that, it was easy. Top off, panties off…full-on sex in the hot tub, here we come.

  We finished up and put our robes on. As we walked back toward the lobby, I glanced up at the balcony overlooking the pool area and noticed this guy staring at us. He was zipping up his pants, breathing heavily and sweating. He muttered:

  “Thanks. You just saved me $9.95.”

  Daddy’sGirl looks up, and even though she is dumber than a burlap sack, she is not stupid enough to miss this. She immediately busts out in tears, “OH MY GOD!!! AHHHHHHH!!!,” and runs back into the hotel. I just start laughing.

  Tucker “No problem. We’ve all been there.”

  I don’t know why I said that. I have never in my life jacked off while watching other people fuck. Well, not in person. Of course I jack off to porn all the time, but come on, porn stars are only objects for our sexual gratification, not real people.

  Daddy’sGirl was so shook up and upset about this she took two Valium to sleep and made us leave at like 6am the next day, insisting that we go out the back door.

  Daddy’sGirl “WHAT IF WE SEE HIM AGAIN??!”

  Tucker “I don’t know. Charge him for the show this time.”

  When we got back to Palm Beach, she didn’t call me for like three days. I called her, and she was not happy to hear from me.

  Tucker “What is wrong with you?”

  Daddy’sGirl “Well, TUCKER, you gave me an STD!”

  Tucker “What? Which one?”

  Daddy’sGirl “A urinary tract infection! I can’t believe it!!”

  I couldn’t stop laughing. For l
ike two minutes, she was screaming at me on the phone as I teared up with laughter. I tried to make her understand that UTIs aren’t really STDs and that she got the UTI from the bacteria in the hot tub and not from me, but that concept was far too hard for her to wrap her head around. She hung up on me.

  In a fun turn of events, about four months later I got this voicemail from her:

  “Hey Tucker…uh, I am sorry… I guess you didn’t give me an STD. I had sex last week with my boyfriend in my parents’ hot tub, and the same thing happened…he got tested and didn’t have a UTI…so I guess you were right…anyway, I broke up with him before he found out and now he won’t call me anymore…what are you doing this weekend?”

  GIRL BEATS TUCKER AT HIS OWN GAME

  Occurred—October 2001

  Written—June 2004

  I met Rachel at some ill-conceived fundraiser for infant amputees with swollen spinal cords. It was thrown by the Junior League or an organization dedicated to finding rich husbands for vacuous single women. She was one of the organizers, very good-looking, and seemed normal, which is very significant in Florida. We talked about the wine, I pretended to listen to her, she loved that I came from a “prominent Florida family”—a quote that still sends me into fits of laughter—so we went on a date later that week.

  The first date she only reaffirmed my initial impression: not dumb, but not bright, not interesting, but not totally repellant. This girl was there as a human being, but that’s about it. There seemed to be nothing compelling about her aside from her looks. Despite this, and the fact that she refused to hook up, something about her kept me into the first date enough to go on a second. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, it was just a feeling that I got, but there was something there that I wanted to see more of. Besides, I hadn’t had sex in like a week and she was my best option, so I agreed to a second date.

  Date two started out boring as well, until I figured out why I had a subconscious interest despite Rachel’s inability to hold a conversation. I made a totally innocuous joke about having to pay more when you beat up Cuban hookers during sex, and the girl instantly went from polite-but-distant to clearly-into-me. The conversation turned to sex, and it was like a switch was thrown; everything about her lit up, she became totally engaged in the conversation and actually became slightly interesting. At one point, she got a Cheshire cat grin on her face, her eyes narrowed and she coyly asked me,

  Rachel “Are you naughty, Tucker Max?”

  Tucker “Who are you talking to? You can’t think up anything that I haven’t done already. Twice.”

  I didn’t know it then, but that exchange would soon have a place of honor in the Couldn’t-Have-Been-More-Wrong Hall of Fame.

  Remember when I said she seemed normal? Yeah… I was quickly disabused of that notion when we got back to my place and she took my hands, placed them around her neck and told me:

  “I want you to strangle me as you fuck me. Not too hard, don’t choke me and don’t leave bruises, but make sure I can feel it.”

  It was a bit awkward at first. Not really strangling her; there are plenty of girls I’ve wanted to choke to death, but more coordinating the act while also sexually penetrating her. It’s not easy to fuck with both your hands around a girl’s neck, especially if you’ve never done it before. You’re so accustomed to your hands being used for other things—balance, hair-pulling, using the remote—that it takes you awhile to get a rhythm going. But once I got acclimated, it was kinda fun, choking this girl as I fucked her.

  The next date, we moved from my hands to my belt. Around her neck, pulling on it as I fucked her from behind. The best part was when she was putting the belt around her neck, and asked me,

  “Do you have a t-shirt or washcloth I can use? I need to put something soft between the belt and my neck or it’ll leave marks.”

  This girl was straight out of an HBO Real Sex episode (except not ugly). If it was sexual, she wanted it do it, and she wanted it to include pain and humiliation. Over the next three weeks, we ran the entire gamut of sexual deviance:

  First was erotic asphyxiation.

  Next we added dominance role-playing, name-calling, and brutally violent ass sex.

  Then we acted out her mock rape fantasies.

  Then it just avalanched from there…tossing my salad, comfy cuffs, kitchen utensils, whips, chains. Pain. Torture. Everything you can imagine and worse.

  Hmmm… I wonder if her daddy used to spank her when she was bad?

  At first, I kinda liked it. I got to beat her up during sex, call her whatever names I wanted, pull her hair, throw her around, fuck any hole I could get my dick in as hard as I wanted, and basically do anything I could think of whenever I felt like it; nothing was out of bounds. She was like my own personal sexual canvas to experiment on. Pain, torture and humiliation do not turn me on sexually, but I had never really done anything like this before, especially not to this extreme. The novelty was exciting.

  But every night some variation of this thought would go through my head, “Am I really doing this to her? Did I just stick a carrot in her ass as I fucked her doggy-style?” After about three weeks of this, every time pushing it further and further, I was at the point where I was doing shit to this girl that could have literally gotten me thrown in jail. I was thinking about filming her consenting to this stuff, Tupac-style, because when I dumped her I didn’t want the blood on my spatula to be used as evidence against me in a domestic assault case.

  The true irony was that in a way, these sorts of things were almost more debasing to me than to her. I pride myself on being so outlandish and outrageous that normal people don’t know how to deal with me—but this girl, without realizing what she was doing, was flipping it on me. She was beating me at my own game. No matter what I did, she wanted more. If I spanked her, she wanted to be spanked until her ass was raw. If I spanked her ass till my handprints were plastered on her glutes, she wanted to me to spank her till she bled. If I called her a “bitch” during sex, she wanted to be called a “whore.” If I called her a “whore,” she wanted to be called a “filthy cunt whore.” I’m literally a professional at humiliating and “debasing” people, but this girl was absorbing my entire repertoire and then coming back and asking for seconds.

  She was like Tyler Durden in Fight Club, in the scene where he lets the mobster beat him up after catching them using his bar basement for weekly fights. Tyler just lets the guy beat his ass. The mobster hits him and hits him—dropping fist after fist right on his face—but Tyler gets up, covered in blood, and laughs at him. That is so fucking demoralizing. When someone takes your absolute best shots and, instead of retaliating, simply gets back up and asks for more—what the fuck do you do then? That WAS my best shot!

  Even though this girl’s appetite for pain and degradation was outstripping my ability to hurt and humiliate her, I refused to let her beat me. It wasn’t even about the sex or the experimentation anymore (and it was never about the relationship, because aside from the freaky sex, this girl was basically worthless). No, for me it was about seeing whose limits we could reach first. I HAD to get her to blink. Tyler Durden isn’t having Fight Club in MY basement, goddamnit.

  I started browsing S&M websites, emailing my friends asking for suggestions and even consulting dominatrixes for ideas. I was about to run out of ideas, when one night it all came to a head.

  Like every other time she came over, Rachel showed up ready for abuse. I met her at the door, pulled her by the hair into my place (she loved that) and started forcing myself on her (another of her favorites; believe me, this is not my normal way of greeting people).

  As I was ripping her blouse off, I realized I had to drop the kids off at the pool. I was about to excuse myself to take a dump when it came to me—something that had to be too much for her.

  I took her by the hand into my bathroom, dropped my pants, sat on the toilet, pointed to my dick and looked up at her: “Start sucking.”

  Now, this has GOT to be the
limit. There is no way this girl is going to give me head while I drop a fucking deuce. No way. NO girl would do this. NO FUCKING WAY.

  What did she do? Say “no”? Leave in disgust? Storm out of my apartment in a rage? Nein, fraulein.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, she went right to work. Just when I thought I had won the race to the bottom with this girl, I was proven wrong. Again.

  How absurd is this? Picture yourself in this situation: Sitting on a toilet in a relatively small residential bathroom, pushing feces out of your ass, with a girl on her knees in front of you, still fresh from work in her nice business casual blouse and linen pantsuit, lips wrapped around your cock, working it like a runway. What would you do?

  I started pushing harder. I didn’t care if I popped a blood vessel in my head and died on the toilet from an aneurysm Elvis-style, I was determined to get her to quit. I thought to myself, “I bet this will be the only time in my life where I desperately wish for a disgusting flood of diarrhea.”

  The first turd (sadly, it was solid) plopped loudly into the toilet. No reaction. Nothing but continued enthusiasm for my cock.