Katy had been having some problems in law school. She wasn’t real clear about all the specifics, but it had something to do with getting into a fight with her “chief social rival” at Stetson (her words), and this somehow led to Katy and her mom getting into a huge, knock-down drag out fight.
So instead of dealing with the stress from this in the normal way that a 22-year-old girl would—getting drunk and filling her empty soul with anonymous dick—Katy decided to put some flour in an envelope, seal it up, and mailed it to both her mom and her “rival.”
Predictably, this did not go over well. Police got involved, Katy was quickly discovered as the culprit, the Stetson administration freaked out, and Katy got into some serious trouble. I’m still not sure how she didn’t go to jail—she was very unclear on the details, saying she got out of most of the trouble by claiming it was just a joke and that her mom and the other girl didn’t want to press charges. I know that her mom is VERY well connected politically in the state, and that may have had something to do with it. I still don’t even know if I believe this story but the way she told it was very convincing, and the fact is, she didn’t go back for her second year of law school at Stetson.*
*[SIDENOTE 1: This event Katy told me about was before 9/11. Remember after 9/11, when envelopes with anthrax started showing up in federal buildings and other places, and postal workers and old people died? And how one of the places that anthrax laced envelopes showed up was at the offices of the National Enquirer, which are located in Boca Raton, Florida? Weird. This coincidence has pretty much freaked me the fuck out ever since. And Katy is lucky she pulled that stunt before 9/11, or she’d still be in jail.]
*[SIDENOTE 2: Several years ago, I got an email that was supposedly from the “chief social rival” that described the anthrax incident—except she said Katy slipped the envelope under her door—basically confirming Katy’s story to me. Granted, I have no way of verifying who the email was from or if the person was telling the truth, but I tend to believe it for this reason: I got that email when the original version of this story was up on my website … which had NO mention of the fake anthrax incident.]
But here’s the thing: Whether she’s lying or telling the truth almost doesn’t matter—this bitch is fucking nuts either way. If she’s telling the truth, that means she thought it would be a good idea to make someone think they had been exposed to a fatal chemical warfare agent. And if she was lying, it means she was trying to get some sort of reaction out of me by claiming she’d faked domestic terrorism.
I mean—which one is worse? I can’t decide; it’s like trying to decide what I want to eat at Arby’s. But either way, the bitch is fucking nuts, and I kinda freaked out. I wasn’t sure what to do at that point. I wasn’t sure she wasn’t totally psycho, but then again, she looked really good in tennis skirts, and would come fuck me whenever I wanted.
The perfect situation came up later that week: a manager at Max’s Grille called in sick, and I had to work his shift, so I invited MissVermont and two of my female friends to dinner that night. I spent most of the dinner working, but they all sat together and had a great time, with me coming over to the table at various times to inject the special Tucker magic that always makes social situations so much more fun and interesting.
After MissVermont got a little drunk—I guess she actually finished her second drink this time—she decided to be naughty. She comes over to where I’m standing, pulls me off the floor, into the men’s bathroom and into a stall, where she proceeds to pull down my pants and start sucking my dick.
As much as I was trying to ignore it, there seemed to be an increase in traffic in the bathroom. Whatever, I’m getting blown by MissVermont in the bathroom; everyone else can wait to take a dump. She finished up and we happily go back to our various places in the restaurant. [On a side note: I got in A LOT of trouble for that. A couple of the waiters told the general manager, who told my dad, and well, though my dad thought it was funny, he still got mad at me.]
Even though she was probably not going to last a long time with me anyway, that night ended up sealing MissVermont’s doom. While giving me head in the bathroom earned her some cool points, she lost them all and then some during the conversation she had with my two married female friends:
MissVermont “I hope I look like you when I’m your age.”
MissVermont was 23. My two friends were 25 and 27, respectively, and both were—and still are—MUCH hotter than Katy. Beyond that, I might be a lot of things, but loyal is possibly the biggest one. These two women are two of my best friends in the world, and to piss them off is the quickest way to get on my bad side. My friend’s quote summed it all up, “Who the fuck does she think she is? And HELLO—she’s not looking great herself. I guess pageants make your face a little leathery.” Her reaction after I told her about the anthrax thing? “Oh my god, Tucker, she is a complete disaster in every way. You can’t see her. You can’t even fuck her anymore. What if she goes psycho on you?”
Considering what she’d already done, it was impossible even for me to argue with that logic. I will fuck nutjobs sometimes—I am a man after all—but even I have my limit. I started ignoring MissVermont more and more, started regularly fucking another girl, and was preparing to go to a wedding in Las Vegas, which made it easier to cut MissVermont out of my life. After a few days of this, I thought she had finally gotten the picture and moved on with her life too. At least I hoped she had moved on.
The day came for my Vegas trip, and as I left my apartment to go to the airport, I saw something under my windshield. At first, I thought it was a leaflet for a local band or church, but as I approached the car, I realized it was MUCH too big for that. I unfolded it, saw what it was, and almost shit a brick:
Yes, that is a gun target. A gun target that she shot up, and then placed on the windshield of my car. WHAT THE FUCK??
Oh, but it gets better. I turned it over to find this message:
The pictures she drew around the text are really quite amazing, especially once you know the backstory with each. It’s like a collage of all the high points of our relationship, as seen through MissVermont’s eyes:
This I guess is her telling me where I’m going that weekend. Thanks, because my destination wasn’t on my ticket or anything.
This is a bottle of beer. Presumably because she drank a lot with me. I’m not at all sure why she decided to put the “XXX” on the side. That’s usually reserved for either designating porn or whiskey. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and just chalk that up to inexperience with the drink.
This is her way, I guess, of alluding to how and where we met.
This is a specific reference to drink #5 on the Max’s Grille Specialty Drink Menu, that at the time was called a “Sex in the Park.”
This is a reference to the Outer Banks, the location of the wedding she went to with me.
This is of course a drawing of the cosmo that she spilled at that wedding.
This is where she drew her face onto the head of a little chicken. I guess because at the time, I sometimes referred to women as “chicks.”
This is a bucket of coal. This is probably a reference to a time when she did something stupid—I cannot remember what it was specifically was, she did so many stupid things—and I said, “You are dumber than a coal bucket.” At least, I think that’s what she’s referring to. It might also be a reference to what she thought she was getting from Santa that year because, of course, she still believed in him.
This is a reference to the “book” I wrote called The Definitive Book of Pick-Up Lines. I put “book” in quotes because it was just a self-published thing I put together for my law school friends, with all the ridiculous lines we compiled hitting on girls in law school.
And then of course, there is what she actually wrote. You can see it in the picture, but I’ll transcribe it too, in case you can’t read her pre-pubescent, multi-colored writing:
Thank you very much for taking me to shoot a gun! I
had a mind-blowing experience! I hope you have a safe trip and have a really fun time at the wedding! I’m sure it won’t be quite as eventful as the last one … (or at least you hope not!)
It is too bad that things are not better between us. Things were so perfect the first 29 days. Now all we do is fight and are mean to each other. You taught me so much and you have made me a much happier and more productive person! My gossip is a lot more juicer because of you!
I wish we were better together, so I guess it’s goodbye. I don’t want to make you mad anymore.
Katy
As I stood at my car reading this, my first thought was “29 days? Who counts the exact number of days you see someone?” Then I realized I was reading this on a shot-up gun target that had been placed on my car, and thought, “Oh Jesus … What have I done?”
Not only did I teach her how to shoot a gun, I once had a conversation with this girl after watching a war movie about why the ambushes in the movie were technically incorrect and how to set up a good, L-shaped ambush (by setting-up overlapping fields of fire and stuff like that), AND I described to her, in accurate detail, the basics of how sniping in a urban environment differed from wooded environments, another area that the movie was weak on.
I drove to the airport looking over my shoulder the whole way like a mafia snitch, fully expecting a hail of gunfire to break out at any moment. I must have circled the parking lot at the Fort Lauderdale airport ten times trying to see if anyone was following me.
After I returned to Florida, and a week went by free of any sniper attempts, I let my guard down. It was then that I answered my phone without checking the caller ID, and lo and behold, it was Miss AK-47. She was just as happy and bubbly as ever, and asked me a question:
MissVermont “Hey Tucker! I was calling because I wanted to talk to you about something. You know so much about women and relationships and stuff like that, and I’ve learned so much from talking to you … I was wondering if you could give me advice on how we could get back together.”
I swear to God she asked me this. I was flabbergasted.
Tucker “You want advice? Go find a really good psychoanalyst, and get help, because you are fucked up.”
She hung up. I would not hear from her for almost two years. But once she came back on my radar, it was with the type of vengeance that can only come from a cunty stage mom from hell, and I would get to know, firsthand, the woman responsible for the creation of this shitstorm of a girl.
PART 3: THE LAWSUIT
Occurred, May 2003
I read a news report
Some lawyer in Florida wanna take us to court
Somebody tell that country ass hick
To go suck a dead man’s dick
—Geto Boys, “We Can’t Be Stopped”
I didn’t think about MissVermont again until sometime around January of 2003, when I mentioned something about her on my messageboard. My website had been up for about four months at that point, and I had a small but dedicated readership (for the people who read AFF—this is right about the time the TuckerFest party was being planned), so when PWJ, Jojo, and SlingBlade began regaling my fans with their favorite MissVermont anecdotes, everyone asked for the full story.
I resisted at first, until I saw on her website that she was going to do an MTV episode of “MADE”, where she would be the pageant coach to a tomboy girl and enter her in a pageant. After seeing that she was still making herself out to be a sober, abstinent pageant girl, I decided to write up my version of our time together.
Now, even though the story I ended up writing was true, it’s never that simple. I recognize that the way I see the events in my life is not always precisely the way other people see them. Every story has three truths—my truth, your truth, and the real truth—and I was not foolish enough to think I had a monopoly on all of them. So I emailed the original story to her before I posted it. She didn’t respond, so when I put my story up in early 2003, I posted this at the top of the page:
“And to Katy: Even though you haven’t responded to the email I sent you, I know you check this site every few weeks. You’re welcome to email me with corrections or additions to the story. If I got something wrong or left something out, please let me know and I’ll be happy to change it. In fact, if you want to write your own version of our relationship, I swear that I will post it, COMPLETELY UNABRIDGED, right next to mine. This is your opportunity to rebut anything I say here.”
Obviously part of my desire to do that was for entertainment purposes, but part of it was also because if I was gonna use her real name, she deserved a chance to respond with her version of the events, in her own words, in the same space I tell my story. That’s only fair.
I didn’t hear anything. Not even a simple, “Fuck off.” I assumed she either didn’t care or didn’t have anything to add.
Boy, was I wrong.
On May 4th, 2003, I got a frantic voicemail from my mother. She was yammering about some reporter calling her and saying my website had been banned or something like that, none of it made any sense. She left a name and number—some reporter from the Palm Beach Post—so I called. The reporter shocked me to the point that I needed her to repeat and explain what she said several times. I still didn’t believe it:
MissVermont’s lawyer had convinced a judge in Palm Beach County, Florida to issue an ex-parte temporary restraining order against me, forcing me to remove the MissVermont story from my site.
Why is this so shocking? It is what’s called a “prior restraint” order, and this was the first time in US LEGAL HISTORY one had been issued against a website. In fact, it was one of the only times it’d even been issued ever, in the long history of the American legal system. A “prior restraint” ruling is the highest level of speech restriction and is issued almost exclusively in cases of national security—for example, if someone wanted to publish the name of an undercover CIA operative in a foreign country. This judge was brazenly ignoring the First Amendment and 200+ years of US legal precedent. This was truly breathtaking.
But don’t take my word for it. Check out these selected excerpts from the longer New York Times article about the case [all bolding is mine]:
“… Until a Florida judge issued an unusual order last month, Mr. Max’s site also contained a long account of his relationship with Ms. Johnson, whom he portrayed, according to court papers, as vapid, promiscuous and an unlikely candidate for membership in the Sobriety Society.
The order, entered by Judge Diana Lewis of Circuit Court in West Palm Beach, forbids Mr. Max to write about Ms. Johnson. It has alarmed experts in First Amendment law, who say that such orders prohibiting future publication, prior restraints, are essentially unknown in American law. Moreover, they say, claims like Ms. Johnson’s, for invasion of privacy, have almost never been considered enough to justify prior restraints.
Ms. Johnson’s lawsuit also highlights some shifting legal distinctions in the Internet era, between private matters and public ones and between speech and property. Judge Lewis ruled on May 6, before Mr. Max was notified of the suit and without holding a hearing. She told Mr. Max that he could not use ‘Katy’ on his site. Nor could he use Ms. Johnson’s last name, full name or the words ‘Miss Vermont.’
The judge also prohibited Mr. Max from ‘disclosing any stories, facts or information, notwithstanding its truth, about any intimate or sexual acts engaged in by’ Ms. Johnson…”
“… This victory should send a clear message to all parasitic smut peddlers who live off the good names of others,” [Michael Santucci] said in the release, which also noted that Ms. Johnson ‘emphatically denies the story contained on Tucker Max’s Web site.’
Mr. Santucci did not respond to an e-mail message asking whether his issuing a news release was at odds with his request to seal the court file on privacy grounds…”
“… That the sites are also used to make money should make no difference in whether Mr. Max may be forbidden to write about Ms. Johnson, said Gregg D. Thomas, a
n expert in First Amendment law at Holland & Knight in Tampa, Fla. ‘This is clearly a suppression of free speech,’ Mr. Thomas said of Judge Lewis’s order.
Prior restraints based on invasion of privacy are unusual. ‘It has happened perishingly rarely,’ said Diane L. Zimmerman, a law professor at New York University and an expert in First Amendment and privacy law. ‘When it has happened it has generated enormous controversy…”
“… The prohibition on linking to Ms. Johnson’s site is ‘kooky,’ said Susan P. Crawford, who teaches Internet law at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University…”
Fucking crazy, isn’t it? It got even more ridiculous. Look at the press release her lawyer sent out just days later (again, all bolding mine—you can just read the bold parts and skip the rest if you want, it’s boring BS):
Former Miss Vermont, Katy Johnson, Breaks Silence On Injunction Against ‘Depraved Web Site’
BOCA RATON, Fla., June 5 /PRNewswire/ —
The former Miss Vermont and Miss Vermont USA, Katy Johnson, who won a preliminary injunction against a web site that demeans women and promotes character assassination, is speaking out.