Hilarity Ensues

  SlingBlade “Blood in, blood out.”

  Tucker “GENETICS ARE NOT DESTINY!”

  [You have no idea how much I tried to leave my Quebec ancestry out of this little part of the story, but my friends would not have it. When PWJ read over the story, he said, “Dude I was on pain pills this whole trip because it was right after my surgery, so there is a lot of detail I can’t really remember, but THAT I remember very, very clearly.” Fuck him.]

  Right as we got there, the bachelor from another bachelor party was getting up on stage for his bachelor thing. At the beginning, it looked pretty normal, the strippers bringing him on stage, teasing him, tying him up … and then it took a real bad turn. Little did we know, this was the type of strip club where you needed a safe word. They got real serious whips and chains, tied him up with Gitmo restraints, and FUCKED. HIM. UP. Not like a normal stripper just venting her suppressed rage—these girls were S&M professionals, and this was some serious abuse porn. It was like watching the Rodney King tape, except this guy didn’t have it coming.

  When they were done, the bachelor was visibly exhausted. He staggered off the stage, fell to his knees, and vomited blood everywhere. Well, it was almost certainly red wine—you know, because he was a stupid French-Canadian—but still, he was in bad shape. We talked to the waitress about this, and apparently, this was standard procedure at this club, nothing unusual.

  Tucker “GoldenBoy, you didn’t tell us about this.”

  GoldenBoy “I don’t really remember it being like this. I was real drunk though.”

  PWJ “Guys, I’m thinking I’ll skip that portion of the bachelor party.”

  After seeing that, none of us had the gall to push PWJ into doing it, so we skipped that part and just got PWJ a bunch of dances.

  Because this was a pretty fancy place, there was an attendant in the bathroom. I hate those guys, but in America they are generally pretty nice and leave you alone if you don’t engage them. I guess it’s different in Montreal. After I finished pissing, I was walking out, and the dude starts in on me:

  Attendant “Aren’t you going to wash your hands?”

  Tucker “My penis is clean, my hands are clean, I didn’t piss on my hands—that means I don’t need to wash them.”

  Attendant “That doesn’t sound right to me.”

  Tucker “You work in a fucking bathroom. I don’t think I’m gonna take advice from you.”

  After a few drinks, I decided to prepare my buddies for the show that was about to start. Not a strip show, mind you. This was a show I was orchestrating: I’d invited a bunch of girls to come and hang out with us. They were all girls I’d never met, but who had emailed me through my site when I announced I was coming to Montreal.

  Tucker “Alright guys, the first set of girls should be showing up any minute.”

  Hate “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  This was 2005, so by now the dynamic between all of us from law school was starting to change. From about 2000 to about 2004, I was sort of the black sheep of the group. Where everyone else had taken the normal career path and just choked down all the bullshit being a lawyer requires, I was the one who got fired from my summer associate job and was effectively kicked out of the legal profession. As they progressed in their careers, I was the one who got fired by my dad from the family business. As they started to get married and get serious about family, I was the one who kept partying and went on this ridiculous “I want to be a writer” wild goose chase. As they started to make real money, I was the poorest of the group, the one who didn’t have a job, the one who looked like he was going nowhere.

  But around 2005, it started to turn around. I was making money off my website. My friends were starting to get questions about me from random people they worked with who’d read my website. I had a book coming out the next year. And girls were starting to come to me to hook up, instead of me having to do the normal guy thing, and work to get them.

  I’d told them some of these girls we were coming out. Of course they were skeptical. They still thought this writing thing was stupid bullshit, and that I would eventually have to give it up and get some sort of conventional job, like the rest of the sheep.

  And then, three girls showed up to the strip club. Two of them were pretty, and all of them were looking for me. They even got us a really good table up front. Almost immediately, a bunch of the strippers came. At first I thought it was because they thought I was hot or knew who I was or something. Yeah right, like a fucking French-Canadian can read English. Nope, the girls who came with us knew like half the strippers that worked there.

  Tucker “How do you know all these girls? Do you work here?”

  Girl “No, not at all. We, uh, just go to school with them.”

  SlingBlade “Jesus Christ.”

  Tucker “HAHHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

  Hate “Riiiiiiiiight.”

  Tucker “You can just tell us the truth, we don’t give a shit. I’ll fuck you either way, it’s just if you work here, I need to know so I can get more condoms.”

  Girl “I swear! They all go to school with us!”

  GoldenBoy “So you’re telling me that the whole ‘stripper in school’ thing is not a myth?”

  SlingBlade “Next they’ll be telling us that they’re real humans beings, and not simply objects for our vile lust.”

  Then two more girls came looking for me. I was talking to one of them, when the last girl who told me she was coming finally showed up. By herself … and she was stunning. Ridiculously hot. She introduced herself:

  Frenchie “Allo, are you Tucka?”

  Thickest Quebec accent ever. Instant turn off. I look at her again, up and down. She’s the hottest girl in this whole place, strippers included.

  Tucker “You wore deodorant, right? OK, you’re sitting next to me.”

  Fuck it, I don’t care if she talks like her tongue is stapled to the roof of her mouth. Hot trumps frog.

  She ended up being a really cool girl, and all of us had a great time. With seven guys and six girls, the ratio was great, the beer was very delicious, and the girls turned out to be pretty cool. Even the girls who came out to fuck me and realized I was fucking the Frenchie didn’t get pissed; they just hit on my friends. Considering most girls think my law school friends are not only nicer than me, but also better looking, this worked out great.

  One of the girls was … a bit slow. She told us she was half Irish and half Mexican. We immediately dubbed her “MexiMick.”

  SlingBlade “You’re half Irish, half Mexican? Wonderful. So you’re drunk AND lazy.”

  MexiMick “We aren’t drunk or lazy! Everyone in my family has a job!”

  SlingBlade “Oh please. The legacy of both of those cultures is alcoholism and carbohydrates.”

  MexiMick was the least attractive of the group, which naturally gave Credit the best shot. He wasn’t doing well on his own, so we convinced her that Credit was Mexican and she should hook up with him for cultural unity. Dude is as Jewish as matzo ball soup. Not smart, she was.

  MexiMick “He is kinda cute.”

  Credit “It must be the salsa stains on my shirt that make me so attractive.”

  SlingBlade “For someone who cleans all day, you sure are messy.”

  Tucker “YOU LEAVE MY GARDNER ALONE.”

  Hate “I might believe Credit is Mexican, but never that he’d do yard work. He has the motivation of a broken vending machine.”

  MexiMick “Leave him alone, he’s nice! I think he’s a good Mexican!”

  Tucker “Credit is a terrible Mexican! I bet I speak more Mexican than Credit: Taco, burrito, enchilada, quesadilla!”

  MexiMick “Hey, there’s no such language as Mexican! It’s called Spanish!”

  SlingBlade “And here I was wondering why everyone thought you were dumb.”

  Tucker “Credit, look at all these tables that need to be bussed. Get to work! ¡Ándale ándale, arriba, arriba!”

  At some point, a stripper with a thick ac
cent came over and made the mistake of talking to SlingBlade.

  FrenchStripper “Allo. You are very sexy.”

  SlingBlade “You look like you’d be sticky to touch.”

  FrenchStripper “You want dance? You like hummingbird move, yes?”

  SlingBlade “I like my own move. Prematurely ejaculating and then crying myself to sleep. I call it the Double Starburst.”

  FrenchStripper “What is ‘premature ejaculating’?”

  The Frenchie with me translated for her, but she just looked confused. She had three names tattooed on her arm. So I asked the obvious question.

  Tucker “What are those tattoo names of? Your kids?”

  FrenchStripper “Yes, my children.”

  SlingBlade “You have kids? Wonderful. Parlez-vous social services?”

  Through her laughter, my Frenchie translated again. I guess the stripper got it this time, because she left. No wonder my books have been translated into over 25 languages, and still not French.

  I thought I was with the hottest girl in the strip club. Then this ridiculous girl walked by holding a tray of drinks.

  Hate “Wow. Look at her. Why is she waiting tables and not stripping?”

  SlingBlade “Because her father loved her?”

  Tucker “No, he just didn’t sexually abuse her. If he loved her, she’d be working at Cheesecake Factory.”

  Some of the girls we were with knew the hot cocktail waitress, and told us she was in school with them, so they got her to come over. I order our table a tray of shots—Thug Passion, to fuck with my friends. And I make a point of telling her to hit on SlingBlade when she came back.

  HotWaitress “That guy? I hear he’s been kinda mean to some of the girls.”

  Tucker “That’s just his social mask. Underneath it, he’s actually a sweet teddy bear, I promise.”

  She comes back, we do our shots, and she delivers in a way I’d never have expected.

  HotWaitress “So why are you so mean to everyone?

  SlingBlade “I’m not mean to everyone. Just stupid people. So I’ll probably be mean to you.”

  HotWaitress “I’m not stupid.”

  SlingBlade “EVERYONE IS STUPID EXCEPT FOR ME.”

  HotWaitress “I’m smart. I’m as smart as you.”

  SlingBlade “You’re as smart as me? Look, just because you can beat a meth-addicted French stripper at checkers doesn’t make you smart. It just makes you the tallest midget.”

  HotWaitress “I could say the same thing about you. Being mean doesn’t make you smart either.”

  SlingBlade “Oh, sweet irony. I wish you were smart enough to understand what the word irony means, so you could get that joke.”

  HotWaitress “I know what irony is.”

  SlingBlade “HAHHAHAAH! Oh please—PLEASE—explain to us as to what irony is.”

  HotWaitress “It’s when something is not what you expect it to be. Like you mean the opposite of what you’re saying.”

  STUNNED SILENCE.

  This girl might be a fucking idiot, she might have number of problems, but make no mistake about it—she was right. That IS the real definition of irony, not the synonym for “coincidence” that idiot hipsters use it for when they want to sound like they know something.

  Tucker “OH MY GOD THAT WAS AMAZING!!!”

  HotWaitress “I told you I was smart!”

  Everyone cracked up. SlingBlade just sat there steaming. It was awesome. The best part was that in the middle of us cracking up, he reached for his drink, but was so rattled that he knocked it over and it spilled all over himself. He just sat there, staring at the empty glass, vodka and club soda soaking his lap.

  SlingBlade “Even God is laughing at me right now.”

  Turns out this girl actually WAS in school with those girls, and she was also an English major and a comedian. Nice. Canadian strip clubs are not like American ones—you can’t automatically assume the girls working there are fucked up, because Canadians, especially French-Canadians, have a much healthier attitude towards sex than Americans. Who would’ve thought?

  As the night went on, I tipped her crazy money to come back and keep fucking with SlingBlade, and though it got a little animated at times, it was obvious these two were a little into each other. I tried to get him to admit this to himself.

  Tucker “She’s hot and cool, and she does seem kinda smart. You should hook up with her.”

  SlingBlade “Zero percent chance.”

  Tucker “Dude, she’s hot. I’d fuck her till I passed out.”

  SlingBlade “You’d fuck the exhaust pipe on her car. The only way I could bring myself to fuck her was, if immediately afterward, I got to beat her skull in with a brick.”

  Tucker “I’ve never seen a girl impact you like this dude. And I think she’s flirting with you too, if you’d stop being a dick and play your cards right, I bet you get something here.”

  SlingBlade “Here is the list of people I would fuck before her: 1. Hitler, 2. Osama Bin Laden, 3. a stray dog infected with mange. Do I need to go on?”

  I was still laughing at his ridiculousness when she came back to the table. She said to me, right in front of him:

  HotWaitress “Your friend is really funny. I like him.”

  Tucker “You like him? You can take him home with you if you want. We don’t want him any more.”

  HotWaitress “I don’t know, he’s kind of mean. He is cute though.” [to SlingBlade] “So what would you do if I took you home with me?”

  SlingBlade “Knock you unconscious and steal everything in your house.”

  Of course he was saying it as a joke, but most people don’t get his jokes. She got it and laughed. This girl was so cool, she even got his ridiculous sense of humor.

  HotWaitress “I think your friend here is a Muppet. He has no body hair, no sex drive, and he’s always making snide comments.”

  SlingBlade “Bitch please. I’ve stepped over better looking girls than you trying to find a quiet place to masturbate.”

  HotWaitress “You can masturbate now? Is your mom proud that you’re finally able to maintain an erection?”

  SlingBlade “I’m going to take a steaming dump in your vagina.”

  HotWaitress “I guess that’s what I would do if I was mad I couldn’t stay hard.”

  WOOOOOO!! I mean … I was in shock. You don’t understand—I’ve known SlingBlade for 10+ years. He is a comedic genius. I’ve never seen anyone not named Tucker Max (or Jojo) keep up with him in a battle of insults for more than three lines. Everyone eventually runs out; he just keeps going. Yet, here was this girl, who works in a STRIP CLUB IN MONTREAL, not just hanging in, but giving it back to him. Hard.

  You have no idea how much I wanted these two to hook up. She was definitely flirting with him at this point. I would have done anything to make it happen. And I tried everything I could. Unfortunately, this was not a movie; this was real life. He just bailed. There’s not even a good ending the story. He just fucking left and went back to his hotel. It was so heartbreaking.

  [Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that, in the movie based on my first book, Nils and I developed the story arc that had the SlingBlade character hook up with the funny stripper—if he wouldn’t fuck her in real life, I was going to make him fuck her in the land of make believe.]

  As the night wore on and we got even more fucked up, Hate got creepier. Not really a shock with him—even though he’s the nicest dude out of all us, sometimes he just comes off creepy. It got to where Hate was just staring at the girls. Like, ‘I’m watching you jump rope in the schoolyard from my bedroom window through a telephoto lens’ staring. At one point he leaned over and said to me in the loudest stage whisper ever:

  Hate “One of these girls is going home with me.”

  Not even two minutes later, the group of three girls got up to “go to the bathroom” and disappeared. A minute later, I got this text:

  “we were going back to your hotel, but your friend freaks us out
sorry”

  Yeah, Hate can do that. No problem. I ended up going home with the stunning French girl who I was planning to fuck anyway.

  The problem was, I was so drunk, I needed to eat first. She took me to some late-night place to get this stuff called “poutine.” If you’ve never heard of it, I’ll try to explain: It’s french fries with brown gravy and chunks of tasteless white cheese on top. I’ve had it sober since then, and it’s disgusting. But when you add it to a stomach that has nothing but beer and cognac shots in it, it’s so delicious you eat two of them.

  Of course, the consequences are not as delicious:

  In the middle of sex, you succumb to an alcohol/carb coma, and pass out, still hard, inside of a French-Canadian girl. I’m pretty sure this is exactly how the French beat the English at the Siege of Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War.

  PWJ’S WEDDING — LEXINGTON, KY

  Occurred, June 2005

  Weirdly enough, PWJ ended up getting engaged to a girl from the city I grew up in, Lexington, Kentucky (lived there from 8 to 16). Not only that, but they decided to get married in Lexington as well.

  For this wedding, I was actually in the wedding party, which meant I had to get a tux. I’m not used to this procedure—I’m normally assigned a seat as far away from the wedding party as possible—so I didn’t realize I was supposed to not only get measured for my tux in Chicago (where I lived at the time), but I was also supposed to go back to the store when it was ready and pick it up and bring it with me to Kentucky.