“Tucker,
As you might have already heard from Taylor, the injury on my foot was severe enough to result in a fracture-dislocation on my midfoot, requiring surgical repair. I had surgery on my foot on July 9th, and am instructed not engage in travel or flying for the next 8 weeks. This caused me to miss an important business meeting in Washington DC, and my wife and I had to cancel our European holiday.
Attached are the receipts from the charges in incurred when I went in for surgery at Texas Orthopedics. There were a few charges that preceeded [sic] these, like the boot and x-rays/CT scans, but this was by far the largest. In all fairness, it does take two to tango, so I am asking you to consider paying for half of the attached out-of-pocket expenses.
I look forward to hearing from you.
EuroTrash”
He even sent me the receipts, and the X-ray of the screw in his foot:
I almost fired off a quick email telling him to lick my ass, but thought better of it. Instead, I took a few days, contemplated the best approach, and then fired off this missive:
“EuroTrash,
This is a long email, so if you don’t want to read it, I understand. Here’s the executive summary:
I’m not paying for shit.
This is the overlong explanation of why. Excuse my lack of brevity, but I’m a writer by trade. You know how we are.
Are you really saying that I hit you so hard in the FACE, that I broke your FOOT!?! Dude, if you wanna suck my dick, just come out and say it. No reason to be coy.
I have no idea if the incident that we were involved in actually caused you to break your foot. You could easily have kicked your dog in frustration over getting embarrassed in front of your wife and friends, and broke your foot that way. But I assume you have some way of proving this, as you don’t seem to be foolish enough to just make something like this up. So let’s discuss the primary reason I’m not paying for anything:
What happened was—in both legal and moral terms—your fault. I am not sure how much you understand about the American legal system, so I’ll try to explain why. But please bear with me—even though I have a JD from a top American law school, I am no expert. I spent most of law school drinking and partying and not in class (which ironically is why I am now a rich and famous writer, funny how life works). But I was awake enough to absorb the legal concepts of “assault” and “proximate cause,” and I’ll be happy to explain them to you in the context of what happened between you and me:
Assault, generally speaking, occurs when one person commits, or threatens to commit, an act of violence against another. So when you decided to launch yourself off the boat at me and violently shove me, that was assault. From there, the events as I remember them were: me pushing you away from me, DipShit pushing me, me pushing DipShit away, you pushing me again, and then of course, me blasting you in the face.
That is not two people having a “tango.” That is you and DipShit committing assault, and me defending myself. One of the key things to remember is that I only threw one punch at you (actually you probably don’t remember that, as your brain was bouncing around your skull after the first punch and didn’t register anything for awhile, but you can ask anyone, they remember). Your multiple assaults on me threatened my safety, and my single right cross made you a non-threat, so I didn’t throw another punch. Had I continued to hit you as you staggered around the dock like a mortally wounded deer, any punches after the first would have been assault on my part. But I didn’t do that. I just went upstairs and finished my game of beer pong.
This brings us to “proximate cause.” It’s kinda intricate, so I’ll quote Wikipedia for the precise definition:
“In the law, a proximate cause is an event sufficiently related to a legally recognizable injury to be held not just the actual physical and temporal cause, but also the legal cause of a given injury. This actual cause is the first phase of proximate cause, and that means “but for” the action, the result would not have happened. To get to the level of proximate cause, our analysis must move one step higher. The act causing injury must have been the but-for cause plus the end result has to be fairly foreseeable to the actor at the time she acted. Proximate cause adds this element of reasonable foreseeability to the but-for test to determine whether it would be fair to hold an actor responsible for the full consequences of the resulting harm.”
Confusing I know, but what it basically means is that even though my fist slamming into your jaw was the “actual” cause of your broken foot, your assaults on me were the “proximate” cause. You pushing me twice was the triggering event for everything that happened afterwards, and what happened (me punching you in the mouth) was the predictable result of your actions (being a douchebag, pushing me, etc). In the plainest English possible, you are shit out of luck.
That covers the legal issues, which basically cover any sort of money issue. Yet, even if I were not legally obliged to pay you, if I felt morally responsible, I would still cough up the money.
But I don’t feel the least bit of compunction. You got what you deserved. I don’t know where you come from or what kind of life you’ve led, but where I come from, when you shove someone, that means you want to fight. I tried—very poorly, I admit—not to get into a physical altercation with anyone that night, and I take no pride in knocking out a clearly over-matched, lithe little European dude. I also genuinely regret the fact that it wasn’t DipShit I punched in face—as he had also assaulted me and more importantly, deserved to be hit much more than you did. But unfortunately, you were the one who pushed me twice. So you were the one who got his jaw jacked.
And you are going to have to be the one to pay for it. Physically and financially.
Regards,
Tucker Max”
Never got a response. I guess two ass whippings were enough.
MEET MY FRIEND HATE
Occurred, Various 1998–2011
Everyone thinks SlingBlade is my funniest friend, and that’s understandable: He’s a bottomless font of hilarious one-liners that just barely covers a reservoir of anger fueled by a lifetime of rejection in the face of a heartbreakingly childlike desire to be loved. I know—hilarious, right? Here’s the thing: when I was actually in law school SlingBlade wasn’t the guy who entertained me the most. That was my roommate, Hate.
THE BACKSTORY
The most important thing to understand about Hate—and I can’t emphasize this fact enough—is that he’s a legitimately good guy. He’s such a good guy, that to know him is to like him. Take law school for instance: if you ever meet anyone I went to law school with, and they tell you I wasn’t cool or hilarious in law school—they’re lying (probably because they’re jealous that my life is awesome and their lives suck). BUT, if they tell you that pretty much everyone at Duke besides my friends hated me—that IS the truth. Even though Hate bore the stain of living with me and being one of my best friends, he was still so popular that he got elected Social Chair during our 2L year anyway (which is basically just a popularity contest).
In most ways, Hate is everything you’d want in a son or a husband or a friend. He’s honest almost to the point of absurdity. He once returned $5 in extra change TO A WENDY’S, like some sort of modern-day Abe Lincoln. No shit, he got home, discovered the mistake, got back in the car and drove to the restaurant. FORTY MINUTES LATER! The Wendy’s people were so confused, they didn’t know what to do. They almost wouldn’t accept the money, like they were worried they were being set up or something. I don’t blame them—who does that?! Hate does.
His moral rectitude and conscientiousness doesn’t stop at shitty fast food, either. I’ve never seen a guy treat women better than he does. He is the complete opposite of me in every way—all about respect and chivalry and all that stupid shit to the point of almost being a doormat. This girl once told me, “When law school started, we all thought Hate was going to be the dick and you were going to be the nice guy. Then we got to know you guys more, and we realized it was the opposi
te.”
Of course, that begs the question: Why did everyone think Hate was going to be a dick?
If you didn’t know him, like these girls didn’t when we started law school, you’d say he looks pissed off all the time too. And you’d be right. He does look pissed off all the time, because deep down, he IS pissed off. Yes, SlingBlade is angry too, but he at least understands his issues and the fact that he is impotent to change them. The difference is that Hate used to be completely and totally unaware of his anger problem. Because he unconsciously holds his anger in, he was legitimately convinced that he was a chill, relaxed, normal guy. Don’t get me wrong, he was … sort of, but not really. If you know anyone who holds in negative emotions, you know that even if they can hold the rage down for awhile, it’s never a viable long-term solution. It’s GOING to come out.
Hate’s suppressed anger issues begin with his height. He’s short. Hate will tell you he’s 5’6”, but even Earl Boykins would be like, “C’mon, son.” He’s 5’4” on a good hair day. Making jokes about getting on rides at Six Flags and telling him to get on his tippy-toes because, “life happens up here” hits real close to home. He’s not soft, though. He is a strong, athletic guy, built like an iron bowling ball. Picture an Angry Bird, or Gimli from The Lord of The Rings. Now picture him on a stepstool, trying to reach a glass in the cupboard above the stove. That’s Hate.
Most short guys are defined by their height, and as a result, have a Napoleonic Complex. Because short kids usually had a rough go of things when they were young, they’re hypersensitive to disrespect or perceived slights in adulthood. Typically, they express their anger in an outwardly focused, confrontational manner and start fights with anyone over anything, because they are compensating for their smaller stature.
That isn’t Hate at all. He is the opposite of that. Hate was raised by good parents who taught him to follow the rules and always do the “right thing.” Like a good little boy, he listened to them. And it was the worst thing he could’ve done.
The rules your parents teach you to live by are very different than the rules the world actually runs by. Most of the conventional wisdom is not only wrong, it’s a lie told to us by people who want to control us. It doesn’t help us, it helps them. Pretty much everything we’re told as children (and adults, really) by the established power structures in our lives are made-up fairytales used to reinforce that control: Santa Claus (be good or no toys), the Easter Bunny (obey or no candy), the tooth fairy (give us your body or no money), fat-free frozen dinners, religion, and metering lights on the highway—the list goes on. It makes sense if you think about it; the only way you can truly control people is to lie to them.
Here’s the thing: learning that the world is not what you were taught is usually just part of becoming an adult. The people who blindly follow the rules are getting fucked, and the people who don’t can get away with theft and murder (and I mean this literally, e.g. Ray Lewis and Goldman Sachs). At some point, we all figure this out. Sometimes it’s explicit, other times it’s just a feeling in our gut.
How we react to this realization defines our lives. I reacted by accepting it as a reality, then getting pissed off and resolving, no matter what the consequences, never to be one of the sheep. SlingBlade cracks a bunch of jokes, then buries his depression in video games. Hate took the path most people take: He pretended this wasn’t the case. He wanted to believe in the inherent fairness and equality of the system. He wanted to believe everything his parents and teachers told him. He was sincerely good so Santa would bring him presents. He took his vitamins and said his prayers because Hulk Hogan told him to. He didn’t just buy into the bullshit; he went all-in. It was like he would tell himself, “No matter how bad things get, if I just keep doing the right things, being the good guy that I am supposed to be, then eventually things will work out.”
The problem is, they never did. The older Hate got, the less things went his way. He kept doing the “right” thing, checking off all the boxes and doing everything you are “supposed” to do to be a success, and he kept getting fucked. All the while, the guy doing the wrong thing (me, for example) kept getting what he wanted. Sisyphus led a less futile existence than Hate: at least Sisyphus got in a workout. All Hate got was Bitterness and Resentment high-fiving each other over as they Eiffel Towered his exhausted psyche. THAT is why he was so mad deep down—because he believed in the system … and the system ran train on him.
Unfortunately, Hate was no Tyler Durden. He could never muster the courage to reject this plight and join any sort of symbolic Fight Club. Instead, he became Hate’s Raging Internalized Emotion. The harder he got fucked, the more energy he spent keeping it down. As anyone knows, you can’t hold the lid down on a pressure cooker forever. It’s eventually going to explode. By the middle of law school, he was so fucking pissed off at the world that any little thing, no matter how trivial, could trigger an explosion of anger.
Once our other roommate Credit and I figured this out—that Hate was a barely-contained ball of seething rage—we did what all twenty-something males would do to their good friend: we spent all of our free time figuring out ways to get the Hate Volcano to erupt for our amusement. The explosions were glorious in their magnitude and hilarity.
This story is about those explosions, and how Credit and I made them happen.
THE PIZZA INCIDENT
Generally, Hate is a non-violent person. He is polite and solicitous, and saves all his aggression for the rugby pitch—or whatever you call the field where they play that 19th-century game of hot-potato smear-the-queer. I don’t know how many actual fights Hate has gotten into in his life, but I’d be willing to bet 100% of them involved coming to the defense of other people. The first time I ever saw it happen, it seemed like a relatively minor incident. In retrospect, I should have seen it for what it was: a harbinger of how Hate’s anger would impact our lives for years to come.
We were all out one night in Durham, and we’d gotten good and drunk on cheap beer. When the bar closed, we decided to go across the street to get a slice. This pizza place was a replica of every late night pizza joint in America: long glass counter, petrified slices under warmer lamps, greasy garlic knots and vaguely Middle Eastern employees with hard-to-place accents.
Brownhole and I make some stupid smartass remarks—they weren’t funny enough that I even remember them—while Hate quietly examined each slice of pizza, looking for the perfect combination of freshness, cheesiness, and topping distribution. Even when he was drunk, Hate still cared about getting good value. Brownhole and I just paid and walked outside to talk to everyone else who was on the street.
We’re talking and eating, when I see one of the girls’ eyes go wide. She starts pointing into the pizza place and I turn to look. There, through the glass, I see a scene straight out of Do The Right Thing:
One of the guys working behind the counter is waving around a huge knife and trying to climb over the counter to get at Hate. The only thing stopping him is the other counter guy. Hate is screaming at the top of his lungs, also trying to get over the counter. The only thing stopping him is genetics—poor little guy.
It takes me a second to react because, seriously, WTF??? I was just in there 30 seconds ago, joking with everyone. Everyone was happy. Now some dude was trying to stab him??? Once it registers that this dude really is WAVING A KNIFE at my friend, I drop my slice and rush inside.
Hate “OH I’M THE ASSHOLE? I’M THE ASSHOLE!!! FUCK YOU, YOU’RE THE FUCKING ASSHOLE!”
PizzaGuy “YOU FUCK, I KILL YOU!! YOU WANT SLICE? I GIVE YOU SLICE! I SLICE YOUR FUCKING EAR OFF!!!!”
Brownhole and I pull him out of the restaurant not one second too soon—just as the guy with the knife got around his hairy, unibrowed co-worker and emerged from behind the counter. This was not a joke. This motherfucker had murder in his eyes.
It took a minute to settle everything down, and once we did, we got the hell out of there. The American Bar Association frowns on being involved in
involuntary manslaughter cases. Of course everyone was still kinda weirded out. The guys in the group didn’t really care, per se, but c’mon: How the fuck do you go from ordering pizza to a knife fight in under 30 seconds? This isn’t a Mexican bordertown.
The best part is, I’d been an asshole to the girls all night but by the time we got back to our place they’d completely forgotten about it because they were so upset with Hate. Never mind that for 99.9% of the night, he’d been this great guy buying them drinks and listening to their pointless whore prattle.
Girl “Hate, why were you acting like that?”
Tucker [just fucking with him] “I know, I really can’t believe you’d do that, Hate.”
Hate “IT WAS YOUR FAULT TUCKER!! That guy called you an asshole after you left—WHICH YOU WERE—and I was defending you!! That’s what caused the whole thing!”
To this day, I honestly have no fucking clue what I said that started this. Why the fuck would I remember a passing remark to some terrorist sleeper cell pizza guys? Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke, right?
Girl [sincere] “Hate, you shouldn’t blame other people for your outbursts.”
Tucker [still fucking with him] “Yeah, Hate. Violence and anger are so uncool.”
Hate “OH WHAT THE FUCK!!!”
THE ITALIAN RESTAURANT
This is probably not the best Hate story from law school, but it is my personal favorite: