His pupils were dilated, fists clenched at his sides, and his nostrils were flared. He looked like Diego Sanchez right before a UFC fight.
Hate “I don’t think I could deal with it if someone crossed me right now.”
Tucker “OK, we don’t need to fight, we just have to find some food for El Bingeroso. See if we can order a pizza or something. I have to stay here and keep him upright.”
Hate looked around the club, saw a guy with a plate in front of him that still had food on it. He purposefully strode over.
Hate “EXCUSE ME SIR! ARE YOU DONE WITH YOUR FOOD?”
The guy just kinda stared at him. I think he was wondering if this was the busboy, and if so, why he was yelling at him.
Hate “GIVE UP THE FISH! MY DRUNK FRIEND WOULD LIKE TO EAT IT.”
If you’re not sure how to get kicked out of a strip club, taking a half-eaten plate of food from another customer will get it done.
We pile back on the drunk shuttle and ask the driver to stop somewhere for food. I guess in Charlotte the phrase “stop somewhere for food” means to pull into a truck stop with a Subway in it. I’m not even kidding. The best part: the Subway was not open. I would’ve gotten behind the counter and made my own sandwich, but they’d put all the food away. None of this stopped Hate from standing at the counter screaming for sandwiches until some poor old janitor making minimum wage had to explain to him what the “CLOSED” sign meant.
We stuffed a bunch of truck stop hotdogs that looked like wilted horse dicks into El Bingeroso’s mouth, and then went downtown to the club where we supposedly had reservations for a table or something. We get there, and of course none of us are on the list except GoldenBoy. He has some friends who are inside at our table, tells us he’ll be right back, and goes into the club. Given this set of facts, which one of these would you think was the case:
GoldenBoy was going to get his friends to get the rest of us in, or,
GoldenBoy decided, in the middle of a bachelor party that he’d organized for one of his best friends, to ditch everyone on the street out and just drink in the club without us.
I think any rational person would assume #1 is the most likely scenario. PWJ didn’t. He was convinced GoldenBoy had ditched us. He calls GoldenBoy approximately 35 times in the next four minutes.
Of course he doesn’t answer, because he’s busy and inside a loud club. Each unanswered call makes PWJ progressively angrier—and because he’s drunk and high on ephedrine, he deals with his anger by spiking his phone as hard as he can into the sidewalk outside. It shatters into ten pieces. Hate—who is also drunk and high on ephedrine—sees that and accuses PWJ of being on steroids.
Hate “I knew it! You’ve been getting too big lately! Roid rage! You’re on the juice!”
PWJ “What are you talking about? Fucking GoldenBoy screwed us!!”
Hate “Your lats are too fucking big, that’s another sign of juicing!”
PWJ “I rowed crew in college you idiot!”
Hate “Juicer!”
As they scream at each other like feral tomcats, I get fed up and take the other six of us into the bar across the street.
Finally something goes right: There’s a bachelorette party at this bar! The easiest way in with a group of girls anywhere is to have something in common with them, and there isn’t much more in common than being out to celebrate your friend’s last night of freedom. We immediately link up and go through all the introductions, and of course I pay zero attention to anyone’s name except the girl who really strikes my fancy.
Tucker “You’re the hot one, I’ll remember your name.”
HotOne “Oh will you?”
We do a few rounds of shots, the girls try to get the bachelor and bachelorette to make out (they won’t) and everyone is getting along great. I could tell SlingBlade actually was kinda sick, because he was even being nice to the girls. At some point, HotOne gives me a naughty look and does a “come hither” with her finger. I oblige, totally thinking she’s going to tell me to meet her in the bathroom to fuck. She leans in, pulls my ear to her mouth, gives me just the slightest hot breath to tickle me, and seductively whispers:
HotOne “What’s my name?”
FUUUUCK!!!! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!
You know what it’s like to “know” something, and then the second you are called out on it, you go completely blank? Yeah, that was me. I racked my brains. I’d said her name to myself earlier so I would remember it; unfortunately that was several drinks earlier. You could’ve offered me 2004 Google stock and I wouldn’t have remembered. This was my chance to lock her pussy up, and I was fucking blowing it like Michael J. Fox playing Operation.
So I played the only card I had: misdirection.
Tucker “Yeah right … what’s MY name?”
Saved! Her expression gave it away.
Tucker “You don’t know it!”
HotOne “Well you don’t know mine!”
Tucker “I know your name, but until you know my name, I’m not gonna say it. There are principles involved here.”
HotOne “You don’t know my name!”
Tucker “I don’t just give it away for free. You gotta earn it.”
For the next few hours, we fucked with each other:
HotOne “Do you even remember what I just said?”
Tucker “It doesn’t matter what you said. If it was important, a man would’ve said it.”
HotOne “Just shut up. Every time you talk, I like you less.”
Tucker “I’m sorry, did you say something? I just hear a faint buzzing noise coming from your area. Like a gnat that won’t leave.”
HotOne “If you talked less, it’d be better. Then I could imagine you have the kind of personality I like.”
Tucker “At least I’m good looking. I’m going to have to fuck you from behind and push your face in the pillow, so I can pretend you’re a girl I’m attracted to.”
HotOne “Your friends say you’re a dog. Does that mean if I throw a stick, you’ll leave?”
Tucker “It’s a good thing for you I blacked out an hour ago and won’t remember any of the stupid jokes coming out of your mouth.”
HotOne “I’ll tell you one thing that won’t be coming out of my mouth: Your penis.”
Tucker “Oh I know. You’re too much of a princess to suck a good dick.”
HotOne “I am so good at that!”
If you know ANYTHING about women, you know HotOne and I were destined to fuck. You don’t spend that much time pushing buttons, flirting with limits and testing boundaries without knowing that you’re about to blow a penis-sized hole through all of them.
The sex was really intense. You know when you have an angry, chemical attraction to someone and you want to pound the shit out of them? That’s what we had. We let everything go and fucked like the plane was going down.
At one point, I had her legs over my shoulders jack-hammering her like I was setting a bridge pylon. She had her hands dug into my ass cheeks, pulling me towards her. I came. HARD. So hard that I grunted my orgasm out and shot a snot booger onto her cheek. She didn’t notice, as she was just as enraptured as me. I quickly wiped it off her face … and spread it on her sheets, which she also didn’t notice. Then we passed out.
Flawless victory!
The next morning we fucked again and she got in the shower. This was my chance to win the “what’s my name” battle. I looked everywhere for something with her name on it: her purse for a driver’s license, her coffee table for mail or magazines. I couldn’t find anything. Then it hit me:
Caller ID!
This was 2000, when people still had landlines, so I called a friend’s home phone from her home phone:
Tucker “Dude, what name is on the caller ID?”
She came up behind me and put her arms around me, right as he read off the caller ID:
HotOne “You figure my name out yet?”
Tucker “Is it ‘Blocked Caller’?”
GOLDENBOY’S BACHELOR
PARTY — LAS VEGAS, NV
Occurred, March 2001
GoldenBoy only got one bachelor party, so the party combined his frat brothers from UVa with his law school friends from Duke. The best man (his older, married brother) organized it, and decided that we should do GoldenBoy’s bachelor party in Las Vegas. OK, I guess. Then he decided we should all stay at the Hard Rock. Fuck.
The Hard Rock had JUST been featured in Playboy; every idiot douche and corn-fed Big 12 meathead on earth was now going there. And of course, since we were going on our spring break, which fell in the middle of March, that meant it fell perfectly on the beginning of March Madness, when about 2 million men—and zero women—descend on Vegas.
In summary: The bachelor party will be 25 guys, in a hotel full of guys, in a city full of guys. This is another example of why you don’t let married guys organize bachelor parties.
I showed up at the Hard Rock early in the day, and honestly wondered if I wasn’t in a gay club. It was fucking AWFUL. The ratio was at least 80/20, guys to girls. It was worse than a strip club on Saturday night with a Baptist convention in town. And the pool!! Greased-up guidos everywhere, and the only girls around were working—and I’m not just talking about the cocktail waitresses. Super.
In the face of the obvious disaster that this weekend would be, I did the only thing that made sense: I started drinking heavily and gambling recklessly.
Three hours later, I’m up $400 and have put away about ten vodka Red Bulls, and I think I’m fucking king of the casino. I see four guys covered in UVa gear walking through the casino, clearly some of GoldenBoy’s frat brothers from college, so I go up and introduce myself. They have no fucking idea what I’m talking about.
Tucker “So you aren’t friends with GoldenBoy?”
Guy “I have never heard that name before.”
Tucker “What do you mean you aren’t friends with GoldenBoy? Why the fuck would you be wearing so much goddamn UVa stuff at the Hard Rock if you aren’t here for his bachelor party?”
I was genuinely mad at them for not knowing him. I was that drunk.
Everyone eventually came in, and both groups linked up for a late dinner. We hadn’t really discussed plans for once we got to Vegas, so other than the actual bachelor party itself on Saturday night, there was no itinerary. It became clear that the majority of GoldenBoy’s friends were in Vegas to do two things: snort a shitload of coke, and cheat on their girlfriends/wives by fucking a bunch of prostitutes.
This was the weekend I came to explicitly understand something that I’d always felt, but never internalized: Not all guys who “party” are the same. There are basically two types of cool party guys:
“Beer and girls”: Beer and girls guys are about fun. To them, partying is about spending time with their friends, meeting new people, getting drunk, acting stupid and laughing at the ridiculous shit they do. Partying is about fun and the enjoyment of life, and there’s always a happiness and joy to what they do—I mean, if you aren’t enjoying your life, what’s the fucking point, right? These are the types of guys who do something productive with their lives, who build stuff or make stuff or create things. Examples of “beer and girls” guys are me, Charles Barkley, Dean Martin, Ferris Bueller, Van Wilder, Adam Carolla, etc.
“Coke and hookers”: Coke and hookers guys aren’t like that. They seem to be similar because they party as well, but in a very different way. There is no joy in their partying. It’s about excess, self-destruction and escape. Their partying is about fleeing from reality, drowning their self-loathing in serious substance abuse, and about hurting other people to express their inner rage. They’re the type of guys who go work for an investment bank or a corporate law firm and revel in the fact that they screw people for a living. But the reality is that they hate themselves and everything about their lives. The iconic coke and hookers guy is, of course, Charlie Sheen. Other examples would be Joe Francis, every trust fund brat in Hollywood, and pretty much any male character in a Bret Easton Ellis book.
These are obviously arbitrary categories, and just like any artificial category, it’s not always a bright line distinction—someone can do coke every now and then, but still be a “beer and girls” type. And someone can hate himself and be a piece of shit to everyone, and still never pay for sex. It’s less about the precise details of how you party, and more about why you party: are you engaging your life, or escaping from it? “Beer and girls” guys engage their lives because they enjoy them. “Coke and hookers” guys escape from their lives because they hate them. That’s the essential difference.
If you go out a lot, you understand exactly what I’m talking about. But I think a lot of people who don’t go out and have fun miss this basic, fundamental distinction; they just lump everyone together. Even calling someone a “frat” guy doesn’t really mean anything—I know tons of frat guys on both sides of the aisle, and the scene at our table that night was a great example.
The law school guys all wanted to go out, get drunk, talk to girls and have fun—what we always do. The UVa guys all wanted to score blow and fuck as many hookers as they could find—it was creepy. Like watching “To Catch A Predator” (except they wanted fucked out whores, not little girls).
We compromised by going our separate ways that night. Not surprisingly, BrownHole—the one “coke and hookers” guy who was somehow in our Duke Law group—went off with the guys who do things that people who hate their lives do, while GoldenBoy and his one other UVa frat brother went to a bar with us.
I’m not sure how, but someone knew of a cool, laid back bar in Vegas. It was in some random casino that was a little off the strip, but we had a fucking blast talking to all kinds of random girls. Some of the highlights:
This girl I met was nice but naive, and this was just too much for me:
Girl “I believe there is one person for everyone, and we are all just searching for that person.”
Tucker “Are you fucking kidding me? There are 6 billion people on earth. Even if you leave out all the Chinese, Indians, and Africans, you’re still looking at like 3 billion people. Subtract the women, and that’s 1.5 billion men to search through. Even if I am generous and take out all the old people and the kids and the retards and the people who don’t speak English, you are still looking at, like, 250 million men. And you are looking for ONE guy out of that whole pool? YOU’RE TOTALLY FUCKED. You’re never finding him. I hope you like cats.”
I ended up unintentionally cock-blocking PWJ with this one:
PWJ “So you are into astrology? Interesting. Can you guess my sign?”
CuteGirl “YEAH! Let me see, you are smart, confident but still sweet and compassionate … Aquarius?”
PWJ “Right! Wow, very good.” I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure PWJ is a different sign.
CuteGirl “I know, I have a gift.” [turns to me] “I bet I can figure out your sign!”
Tucker “Oh please do.”
PWJ “No, I don’t think that’s such—”
Tucker “So you think you can tell my birth month based on a few general characteristics? As if everyone born in the same month has the same personality?”
CuteGirl “Yeah! Let’s see … you are aggressive, funny, intellectual … Sagittarius?”
Tucker “Nope.”
CuteGirl “Leo.”
Tucker “Nope.”
CuteGirl “Taurus.”
Tucker “Nope.”
CuteGirl “Virgo?”
Tucker “There are only 12 of them, if you guess enough, you’ll eventually get it right.”
CuteGirl “Well, it’s not an exact science.”
Tucker “I can read minds too!”
CuteGirl “Right. OK, what am I thinking right now?”
Tucker “Hmmm … you’re thinking about tongue fucking my shitpipe.”
Typical SlingBlade:
Girl “So, do you have a girlfriend?”
SlingBlade “Well, sort of, but we’re not technically dating.”
> Girl “So you aren’t in love with her?”
SlingBlade “No. They say if you love someone, set them free, so I did. But that girl never came back, so I don’t love the girls tied up in my basement anymore, I just appreciate them.”
An enlightening exchange for PWJ:
Tucker “You know you want to hook up with me; just admit it.”
Girl “I don’t want to just have a one night stand with some random guy I met an hour ago.”
Tucker “I don’t consider them one night stands. They’re auditions for love.”
Girl “If you want to have sex with me, we have to already be in love.”
Tucker “No, that’s not how it works. You provide vaginal access, and in return, I model the awful treatment that your abusive childhood has caused you to interpret as love. That’s how it works with fucked up girls.”
Girl “I’m not fucked up!”
PWJ “THAT’S how you do it! Now it all makes total sense!”
Tucker “You haven’t figured out how that works yet?”
PWJ “Sorry, I wasn’t raised in an emotionally abusive household. My parents loved me.”
The night ended real late (because of gambling and drinking, not hooking up), so the next day was mainly spent watching basketball and recovering for that night, which was the official bachelor party night. After a relatively calm dinner, GoldenBoy’s frat brothers took us to a club before the strip club.