Читать книгу I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell - Tucker Max - Страница 10

Occurred—various, 1999–2001

Written—June 2005

While at Duke Law School, I made some of my best friends on earth. Guys like PWJ, GoldenBoy, El Bingeroso, Hate, JoJo and Credit made my three years there some of the best of my life. Even though all of them were awesome in their own way, one friend stands out: “SlingBlade.”

SlingBlade is white, about 6'1", a generally good-looking guy except for his huge nose. Picture a younger Owen Wilson, fucked up nose and all, but with a buzz cut. The first time I met SlingBlade was in the law school library. JoJo was sitting with him at a table shooting the shit, and I joined them. Even though I didn’t know him at the time, when SlingBlade started talking about a movie he’d just seen, saying things like, “It was so bad I had to hit myself in the hand with a tack hammer to take my mind off the pain it caused me,” and “I’d compare watching that thing to masturbating with sandpaper,” I knew that this kid was hilarious, and I wanted to hang out with him some more.

Over the ensuing months and years I’ve gotten to know him much better, and it seems like every layer I uncover is weirder and more hilarious than the next:

OCD, GI Joe, and His Nickname

When I first went over to SlingBlade’s apartment, it was to pick him up on the way to a bar. This was about a month or so after I met him in the library, and I was a little weirded out: his place was a shrine to obsessive-compulsive disorder. He kept it meticulously clean and spartan to the extreme. The only things in the living room were a TV on a stand, a single chair in front of it, and a PlayStation2 at the base of the TV. The controllers had the cords wrapped around them, placed on each side, equidistant from the PS2 base, which itself was perpendicular with the TV stand. On his shelf were about 300 DVDs, perfectly aligned and arranged alphabetically by genre. He had a lot of the standard guy movies like Scarface and Godfather, but most of his collection was sci-fi. He had every Star Wars and Star Trek DVD I’d ever heard of, and lots I hadn’t.

His bedroom had only a bed and a desk. The bed had Batman sheets and a Green Lantern comforter. Just about every free piece of space in the room was occupied with dolls, or as he calls them, “action figures.” He must have had like 100 various toys all over the place, most of them were set up like they were fighting each other; the GI Joes were battling the Spawn characters, Superman and the Justice League were squared off against Star Wars figures, and dozens of other genres that I didn’t recognize were locked in frozen combat with each other. I was momentarily encouraged by the hot Jeri Ryan poster on the wall…until I realized that she was dressed as Seven of Nine (the character she plays on Star Trek). The kicker was a talking Yoda doll that he had on his desk. I walked by and the thing blurted out, “Size matters not.” I punched it, and it chirped at me, “Beware the Dark Side.”

Tucker “Dude, have you ever brought a girl back here?”

SlingBlade “Yeah…once.”

Tucker “What did she say when she saw all this?”

SlingBlade “I don’t know. Nothing. It was dark.”

I am not a toy expert, but one thing I did notice was that he had both the older and the newer GI Joes. Because I loved my GI Joes—when I was TEN—I jokingly asked him about them:

Tucker “Are the new GI Joes better than their 80’s counterparts? I don’t see how you can beat the old school Snake-Eyes.”

SlingBlade [The exactness of this response is due to the fact that he re-wrote it for me. From memory. You think he might be OCD?] “The answer is a resounding yes. The old figures suffered from a potent and debilitating malaise known as Wasting Rubber Band Syndrome.

WRBS occurred when you held the legs of Duke or Roadblock, the only two GI Joes you had since your parents were poor and hated you, and spun around the top portion to create a ‘super-spinning punch’ wherein the figure would triumph over his enemy, much to my adolescent delight. This punch was an amazing tool, used only under dire circumstances, such as when Cobra (populated by conscripts from my sister’s Barbie collection who were sold into white slavery) was about to overrun your Lego fortress. Why Lego, you ask? Because your parents wouldn’t spring for the GI Joe base. God forbid you should spend twenty dollars so your lonely son, who spent his formative years confined to quarters for things like “backtalk” and “auto theft,” could have a cool fortress for his only friends. Coincidentally enough, I won’t be springing for the silver package when I stuff those two idiots into the old folks home in a few years. Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?

Anyway, after enough super-spinning punches, the rubber band would snap, and your GI Joe would be cleaved in two. You would then cry, as your supply of friends had been effectively cut in half.

There was also a secondary problem named Fatigued Thumb Syndrome. FTS was when the GI Joe received a constructive form of leprosy due to overuse, and their thumbs would fall off, rendering them incapable of holding a weapon. Once the thumb was gone these figures became almost useless. At this point the only thing they were good for was renaming them for one of your enemies at school and then melting them on an open flame or destroying them with a firecracker. Neither problem exists in the current version, from what I can tell.

In unrelated news: I’m still single.”

Looking through his DVDs, I saw a movie that didn’t really fit with the sci-fi/gangster themes of the rest of his titles: Sling Blade. I love that movie, and asked him why he had it. He told me it was his favorite movie, and started reciting lines from memory, in the same low, baritone gravelly voice that Billy Bob Thornton used in the movie.

[In case you have never seen it, Sling Blade is a fantastic movie about a semi-retarded man named Karl Childers. My buddy SlingBlade relates on a very personal level with Karl (played by Billy Bob Thornton) because they are both very sensitive people who feel disconnected and hurt by a world that doesn’t understand or appreciate them, and as a result must wear a social mask that is different from their inner self. The only major difference is that SlingBlade is a fucking genius, while Karl Childers is mildly retarded.]

This was only like the fourth or fifth time I’d ever hung out with him, so I didn’t really understand how unpredictable and random he could be. After we got to the bar and had some drinks, I was talking to a hot UNC soccer player, and SlingBlade was playing wingman with her friend. I guess the girl he was talking to was an idiot, because eventually he got bored, and when he gets bored you never know what he’ll do to entertain himself:

Girl “So, do you like Duke?”

SlingBlade [imagine his voice in a low, baritone rumble, like Billy Bob Thornton’s in the movie] “Some folks call it a Kaiser blade, but I call it a sling blade, hrmmmm.”

Girl “Excuse me?”

SlingBlade “I reckon I want me some of them French fried taters, hrmmm.”

Girl “What did you say?”

SlingBlade “I reckon you ’bout dumb as post, hrrmmm.”

Girl [to me] “Your friend is scaring me.”

Tucker “Me too.”

After a few nights of this, I stopped trying to fight it and just went along, because after all—it is pretty damn funny. We’d be talking to some girls, and if they bored us or pissed us off, we’d just bust out with these improvised mini-montages from the movie. Usually, I’d play the role of Doyle Hargraves, the abusive boyfriend (played in the movie by Dwight Yoakam):

SlingBlade “I reckon this’n girl ’bout to fuck you, hrmmmm.”

Tucker [in a redneck voice] “Boy, you shut yer mouth or I will beat the dog shit outta yew.”

SlingBlade “I want me some of that there vaginer, hrrmmmm.”

Tucker “Dat’s it! Linda—I’m bout fed up with this retard hangin’ round the house!”

Random Girl “What is wrong with you two?”

The McGriddle Argument

Even though he can be weird in a lot of ways, SlingBlade is a legit comedic genius. The purest example of this is “The McGriddle Argument.” On the message board attached to my site, SlingBlade and I were talking about a McDonald’s breakfast sandwich called the McGriddle. This is the basic transcript of the discussion:

Tucker: “Dude—that thing looks disgusting. It has to be nasty, with the syrup shit in it. What is that?”

SlingBlade: “I can only assume from your cavalier attitude that you have yet to partake of the wonderment that is the McGriddle. Let me enlighten you. What happens is the One True God grows them on trees in the Elysian Fields using a heretofore unused incantation. He then proceeds to magic them down to your local eatery where whatever Ghetto Bastard cook your McDonald’s has rescued from welfare that week proceeds to wrap it in cellophane and pass it along to you, the fortunate consumer. You proceed to ingest this finery in the vain hope that your obviously overmatched taste buds can somehow grasp the delectable intricacies it is suddenly faced with. Is that egg? Why yes it is, and bacon too. But wait—they didn’t add…yes they did, yes they did indeed. They added cheese. And then, then my friends, they wrapped it in a sumptuous pancake bun! As your taste buds try to process that amazing piece of information, IT hits them…the syrup nugget. THE MOTHERFUCKING SYRUP NUGGET! It announces itself with a burst of confectionery grandiosity the likes of which your palate has never seen.”

Tucker: “So you like them?”

SlingBlade: “If you EVER speak ill of the McGriddle again I will personally force-feed you one while I fuck you in the butt using the wrapper as a condom and then donkey punch you when the infused syrup nuggets explode in your mouth.”

Ironically, I think more people on my message board have commented on that than anything I’ve ever written there.

“Welcome to My Life”

But of all his little quirks, one characteristic truly defines SlingBlade: his issues with women. The first few times we went out, the same basic thing happened: I’d hit on a hot girl, he’d play wingman and hit on her friend, but invariably he’d get depressed and/or upset with her, insult her, and she would run off crying or get mad at him. At first this was bothersome, because the hot girl I was talking to would usually leave with her pissed off/upset friend. But after I got used to it, I was more intrigued than upset. This was a decent-looking guy who was not only blowing pussy, he was doing it on purpose. Who does this?

I had to drag it out of him, but I discovered what is perhaps the most defining story of his life: he and his high school girlfriend, the love of his life, went to different undergrads. He never cheated on her because he is an honest and moral man, but she did not possess the same integrity. She fucked half her school, and never told him. At least not until he went down to visit her and didn’t understand why all these guys kept coming by her room asking her what she was doing later…until she dumped him and asked him to leave. He has never recovered, and still cannot deal with women on a meaningful romantic level.

After that sort of trauma I can understand having issues with intimacy, but he should still be able to hook up. You don’t have to be in love to fuck, right? Even though SlingBlade agreed with that notion in principle, it didn’t work for him in practice.

You know that saying, “Any club that would let me be a member, I wouldn’t want to join?” SlingBlade assumed that any girl that he liked enough to want to fuck, wouldn’t want to fuck him. But any girl who did want to fuck him without first knowing him and respecting him, he automatically thought was a whore…and he refused to sleep with a girl he regarded as a whore. This absurd Catch-22 pretty much guaranteed that SlingBlade got no ass.

Add in his low tolerance for stupidity and his utter disdain for whorish female behavior, combine it with the fact that many of the girls I hit on fit right into either the dumb or slutty categories that he hated, and you have a recipe for hilarity. This is only one example:

A few months after law school graduation I went up to DC to visit SlingBlade for a weekend. He was in bad shape, even for him. Working 70 hours a week doing document review as a temp (the lowest level of legal work), living in a crappy overpriced apartment in Alexandria, no women or prospects, SlingBlade was as thoroughly depressed as I’ve ever seen him. From what I could tell, the only thing that brought him joy was beating his roommate at Tetris. I decided to take him out, get him drunk and see if I couldn’t get him out of his despair.

We pre-partied at his place and got hammered, then went to some bar in Clarendon that was packed with hot girls. Across the bar I see what I think is a super-hot girl.

Tucker “Look at her; that girl is hot.”

SlingBlade “She probably looks alright when it’s dark.

Tucker “What are you talking about? She’s hot.”

SlingBlade “Here’s a shock. Let’s see: she’s a tall slutty blonde, and you are drunk. Cupid has spoken.”

We walk over there, but before I can hit on her I realize much to my dismay that SlingBlade was right: Her hot face and great tits are paired with ghetto booty and elephant legs. This girl had a cover-of-Maxim upper body and a World’s Strongest Man lower body.

SlingBlade “HAAHHAHAHHAAH—Welcome to Zerosville, population: Her.”

Tucker “I need some more shots.”

SlingBlade “Well, you know who to go to if your car gets stuck, and you need a push.”

Tucker “Dude…just leave me alone right now. If I hook up with her, you can make fun of me all you want tomorrow, but let me have my illusion tonight.”

She comes over and starts flirting with me before I can even get my shots down. I played it coy as I talked to her, but not because I was trying to run advanced game; I was trying to hurry up and get drunk so her legs would look skinnier.

Tucker “So, what do you do?”

ElephantLegs “Well I’m about to finish school, but I’ve been doing some modeling, and I’ll probably do that full time when I graduate.” SlingBlade “You’re a model? Right, and the red ‘S’ on my chest means that I’m Superman.” [Did I mention that he was wearing a Superman shirt…to a bar?]

ElephantLegs “I model!”

SlingBlade “I might believe you were a model if you didn’t have such fat legs. Oh wait—have you been in a Lane Bryant catalog? That kind of modeling?”

ElephantLegs “NO!!”

Tucker “In her defense, do you realize how much money plus-sized models can make? It’s shocking.”

ElephantLegs “I DON’T PLUS-SIZE MODEL!! I’ll have you know that Ford signed me to a contract just last week!”

SlingBlade “Whatever. You did that on your back.”

One great thing about SlingBlade’s attitude was that he was truly great at unintentionally playing “The Bad Guy.” When you are picking up girls, sometimes having an asshole friend can actually work towards your advantage. Though this girl was all pissed off and huffy at SlingBlade, it made her more into me. Not only is it easy to be the good guy when a Bad Guy is there, but that little exchange made her really want to fuck me, just to prove that the Bad Guy was wrong and that she was desirable.

But there is a limit to what a girl will endure before she gets pissed and leaves. I talked to her for a while longer, solidified my position, and then took SlingBlade around to try and get him in with another girl. And of course if I can trade up too, that’s always a plus.

The next group of girls we talked to were really cute, and one seemed into SlingBlade.

Girl “I totally recognize you from somewhere.”

SlingBlade “Perhaps we go to the same comic book store.”

He said that sarcastically, but she didn’t get the joke.

Girl “No, no, that isn’t it. I think I saw you riding a bicycle the other day, over in Ballston.”

SlingBlade “Are you fucking stupid?”

Girl “What?”

SlingBlade “Yeah, I was riding my bike to the porn store. I take my bike there so no one will recognize me.”

Girl “I have to go find my friends.”

I get us in with another pair of really cute girls. Things were going great for me…sadly SlingBlade’s girl was not quite up to the task:

Girl “I am hoping to get my masters in psych after I get my B.A.”

SlingBlade “It takes someone very smart to get a psych degree.”

Girl “I’m smart.”

SlingBlade “The smartest thing to ever come out of your mouth is a penis.”

Girl “I’m NOT STUPID!”

SlingBlade “IT STOPS TALKING TO ITS INTELLECTUAL SUPERIOR OR IT GETS THE HOSE.”

She turns and walks away.

SlingBlade grabs his nipples like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, “I’D FUCK ME!!”

Tucker “Dude, do you realize that when you insult one girl, you aren’t just fucking it up with her, you are polluting her entire group of friends? See those girls that she’s sitting with? Now as far as that group is concerned, we might as well be lepers.”

SlingBlade “Did you hear the nonsensical prattle spewing from her pie-hole?”

Tucker “Dude, I am your best friend. Help me out here.”

SlingBlade “Best friend? I can’t begin to elucidate my hatred for you.”

Tucker “That’s the funny thing: I really am your best friend, but if I died tomorrow, you wouldn’t come to my funeral.”

SlingBlade “I don’t know. Maybe…if nothing good was on TV.”

I try one more time to get him set up with another girl, but that ends before I can even get them both drinks. As I am ordering, he yells out:

“FELLATIO WON’T FILL THE HOLE IN YOUR SOUL!!”

That pretty much sealed his fate with all the other girls at the bar, so we head back to ElephantLegs. In a stroke of luck, this time she’s with some other girl. OtherGirl is very pretty, has a great body, and seems sweet, so she and SlingBlade get along well enough that when the bar closes, the four of us decide to go to IHOP together. As we are walking out, I pull SlingBlade aside:

Tucker “Dude, be cool, this one likes you and wants to hook up. Just be yourself and everything will be fine. She seems like a good girl.” SlingBlade “Yeah, I think so. And if she doesn’t find my unique blend of caustic wit and political satire amusing, I’ll just pull out the ‘B’ game: potty humor and thinly veiled masturbation references.”

I should have just pushed him into traffic right then to save us all time, but what can I say, I’m a loyal friend.

We get to IHOP and there are about thirty people, mostly black and Hispanic, waiting in line. SlingBlade storms in front of them, yelling: “There are white people who need to eat, make some room, white people need a table, outta the way.”

It was obviously a joke, and most people got it and laughed. The Alexandria city cop working the door did not.

Cop “If your attitude doesn’t improve, you are going to sort it out in the tank.”

SlingBlade “OK, Mr. Plastic Badge. So, which section of the police academy entrance did you fail, hmm? Perhaps it was the hospitality portion.”

Tucker “Dude—he’s a real cop.”

SlingBlade “Oh…we’ll be leaving now.”

We take the girls across the street to Denny’s. I guess they have lower standards for seating drunk idiots than IHOP because they give us a table immediately. SlingBlade goes to the bathroom and when he gets back he tells the table:

“Dude, taking antibiotics and then drinking beer is a bad idea. I just let loose a symphony of bowel movements, each in different pitches and melodies. It was like a poop xylophone in there.”

I think this is hilarious, while the girls do not. Some people just don’t get good potty humor. After we order, SlingBlade and OtherGirl start getting to know each other.

OtherGirl “So what do you do in your free time?”

SlingBlade “Cut up Guatemalan hookers and bury them in shallow graves by the interstate.”

OtherGirl “What was your family like?”

SlingBlade “My dad was so mean, he’d give my sisters and me ten dollars on Christmas Eve, steal it back from us that night when we were sleeping, and then beat us on Christmas Day because we lost it.”

She was a nice girl, but wasn’t getting the jokes. Sensing the night slip away, I tried to shift the focus by talking about ElephantLegs’ ex-boyfriend. He was a complete tool, and I figured this sort of gossip would be more OtherGirl’s intellectual speed.

ElephantLegs “Yeah, he was 26, and I was 20 when we met. We met at a Macaroni Grill my friends and I were eating at, in [a very rural college town].”

SlingBlade “He is an assistant manager at a Macaroni Grill? In that city? HAHAHAHAH. This one sounds like a winner. Was he a townie?

Did he have a goatee and drive a rusted-out Firebird?”

ElephantLegs “No, he was a really good guy. He was cool.”

SlingBlade “He sounds like the type of guy who would profess his love for a girl in spray paint across a highway overpass. I bet his busy schedule includes screaming into his pillow and crying himself to sleep, because his life sucks.”

SlingBlade decides that his food is taking too long and that he can do better than the current line cook, so he leaves the table and goes into the kitchen. There is no one in there, so he messes with the griddle, flipping knobs and switches until it turns on. The female cook comes around the corner, she sees him, stops and stares at him in astonishment for a few seconds as he pours some pancake mix on the griddle. He sees her, and she questioningly shrugs her shoulders at him, to which he replies:

“I’m hungry. I’m gonna make me some flapjacks.”

She didn’t think it was funny, and we had to leave our second restaurant of the night.

The girls drove their own car, and in the parking lot we tried to figure out what to do. OtherGirl came up with a good idea:

OtherGirl “You know… I have a hot tub at my place. What would you two say if I asked you back there?”

SlingBlade “Heeellllloooo staph infection.”

Tucker “He has health insurance. We’ll follow you.”

In the car, SlingBlade looked about as happy as a Mormon getting a lap dance.

Tucker “‘Hello staph infection?’ What the fuck is wrong with you?”

SlingBlade “Why do so many women disgust me?”

Tucker “Because you are fucked up and can’t get over your ex. Are you gonna hook up or what? That girl seemed into you.”

SlingBlade “Yeah, I guess. She seems nice. I don’t know.”

We go back to their place and there are already a bunch of people at the house; apparently one of the other roommates was having a party that night. OtherGirl mixes us a few drinks, and we sit around and talk awhile before ElephantLegs and I get into the hot tub and start making out. A few minutes later, I hear him screaming from inside:

SlingBlade “Oh you don’t want to hook up with me? What, my fetid, hoppy beer breath bothering you? Oh yeah, Daddy drinks too much!”

SlingBlade comes out to the deck:

SlingBlade “I am leaving.”

Tucker “Why? What happened?”

SlingBlade “I’m going home to get my gun so I can kill everyone here.”

He storms off before I can put my shorts on (ElephantLegs had them off in the hot tub) and catch him. I find OtherGirl:

Tucker “What the fuck happened? Why did he leave?”

OtherGirl “I don’t know—your friend is weird.”

Tucker “There has to be a reason. He wouldn’t just storm out.”

OtherGirl “Well, I think he got mad when he tried to kiss me.”

Tucker “What happened?”

OtherGirl “I backed away.”

Tucker “WHAT? Why would you invite him back here if you didn’t like him?”

OtherGirl “I don’t know. I thought I did, I just didn’t feel like it.”

I could not believe that this bitch flirted with him all night—and she was FLIRTING—and then dissed him AT HER PLACE, AFTER SHE INVITED HIM BACK THERE. It’s not like she had to fuck him, but to deny even a kiss after all that is really bad. Especially for him; it’s not like this guy has lots of self-esteem with women to begin with.

He wouldn’t pick up his cell, so I just go back to the hot tub and ElephantLegs, who after 20 beers looked surprisingly good in a bathing suit. We get pretty hot and move inside to finish off, when she drops a bomb on me:

ElephantLegs “I’m not sure if we can hook up. Let me ask my friend.” Tucker “What do you mean?”

ElephantLegs “Well—I don’t live here. I am visiting from Ohio. All those bedrooms belong to her roommates. I’ll see if she’ll let us use her room.”

No fucking way. NO FUCKING WAY.

Of course OtherGirl says no. OK, fine, I can understand not wanting other people to fuck in your bed. So I go through the other options. ElephantLegs wouldn’t hook up on the patio, “Someone might see us,” or on the sofa bed we had to sleep on, “There are other people passed out in the living room. What if they wake up?”

In a last ditch attempt to save the night, I make what I think is a very reasonable suggestion: ElephantLegs takes OtherGirl’s car, and the two of us go to SlingBlade’s place and hook up. He has an extra bed.

Do you want to guess what Princess CockBlock told her friend? “No.”

I was furious. OtherGirl had taken what could have been a great night, and totally ruined it, for no fucking reason other than her whim. That’s OK bitch: I got summin’ for you.

The next morning I woke up early, went into the bathroom and locked the door. I took off the lid of the toilet tank and dropped a gargantuan shit, right in the tank. I have hit many home runs in my life, but this was my first upper-decker.

Then I took a Sharpie marker I found in her house and wrote on the underside of the lid:

“This is for [SlingBlade]. Whore.”

I put the top back on the tank and used about half a roll of toilet paper to wipe my ass, putting all of it in the bowl. As I expected, the toilet clogged when I flushed it, spilling shit water all over her bathroom floor.

I immediately get a taxi back to SlingBlade’s, stopping to say goodbye to ElephantLegs on my way out. I am laughing hysterically.

ElephantLegs “What’s so funny?”

Tucker “Tell your friend I’m NOT sorry. She’ll understand.”

I take the taxi back to SlingBlade’s, laughing the whole way, and walk into his place at like 7am, still giddy. I find him sitting in his chair in front of the TV, soaking wet, fists clenched up in rage and a look of exasperated anger on his face the likes of which I’ve never seen.

Tucker “Dude—what’s wrong?”

He points out the window to his car. The front and rear windshields are completely out, and the hood and roof have massive dents in them.

Tucker “OH MY GOD! What happened to your car?”

SlingBlade “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Tucker “Why are you all wet?”

SlingBlade “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Tucker “Have you been sitting here all night?”

SlingBlade “I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. God obviously hates me. HATES ME. Nothing ever goes right. ALL I WANT IS PEACE AND QUIET AND A SMALL LIFE WITH MY NINTENDO AND COMIC BOOKS. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK???”

After a few hours he calmed down, and I found out what happened:

It was raining heavily on the interstate as he drove home. He was cruising along in the right lane, still mired in self-loathing over his rejection, not noticing that he was riding in the blind spot of a truck. He noticed too late that the truck was swerving from the left lane across his lane in order to make it onto an off-ramp. SlingBlade had to swerve violently to avoid the truck careening across his lane, and since he was going fast and it was slick, he ended up driving right into a road sign at about 60 miles an hour.

It impacted on his bumper, smashed into the hood of his car leaving a huge dent, then somersaulted and crashed into the roof—popping both the front and rear windshields out—before flying off behind him. The truck kept driving, never having seen what it did. In his own words:

SlingBlade “After the sign destroyed my car, I slammed on the brakes and stopped. Once my heart rate dropped below 200, I was able to pry my fingers off the steering wheel and thank all major and minor deities that I was still alive. I had to kick the front and rear windshields fully out, because they were both cracked and falling in. Once I regained enough of my motor control to drive, I pulled off, and realized that even though they saved my life, the gods were still mocking me…and every drop of rain that hit my face through the gaping hole where my windshield used to be was proof of this.”

Tucker [not even holding back my laugher] “That SUCKS.”

SlingBlade “Yes it does. Welcome to every day of my life.”

Tucker “Hold on now dude—fate may fuck with you, but I fuck with fate right back.”

I filled him in on my upper-decker. He told me I was a bad person, but it was one of the few times I’ve ever seen him crack a genuinely warm smile, even if it was wet and fleeting.

“I Prefer Vaginally-Challenged”

SlingBlade and I interned at the same law firm during the summer after our second year. There is one night that summer in particular that really exemplifies our friendship and explains SlingBlade as a person:

We lived a bit south of San Francisco and were driving into the city for a party. On the way there, a cop in front of us, not in any hurry and with no lights or siren on, ran a stop sign. SlingBlade flipped out. Even though he hangs out with me, SlingBlade is a very moral and righteous person. To him you are either right or you are wrong, and this cop was wrong. He started honking, flashing his brights at him and motioning for the cop to pull over.

Tucker “What are you doing? That’s a cop!!”

SlingBlade “I AM GOING TO CITE HIM! HE RAN THAT STOP SIGN!”

Tucker “What the fuck? Are you crazy?”

SlingBlade “Give me your cell; I am calling 911.”

Thankfully he would not take his hands off the wheel long enough to wrestle the phone away from me, I calmed him down, and we got to the party. It was a launch party for a company called Eveo.com at a clubish-type place, Ruby Skye. Almost as soon as we got there, two girls dressed in clubbing outfits and smeared with makeup came up to me:

Girl 1 “Holy shit—I totally recognize you.”

Tucker “I’m not your baby’s daddy.”

She giggles a little and gives me a coquettish smile.

Tucker “Just kidding. So how do you think you know me?”

Girl 1 “You’re that guy with the website, with the date application on it?” [This was a big deal to me at the time because it was back when my site got no traffic, and I only had the Date Application on it.]

SlingBlade “Oh dear God. What kind of whores are these?”

Tucker “Stop it dude—anyways, yes ladies you are correct, I am that guy.”

Girl 1 “YAY! I knew it! What do I win?”

SlingBlade “An incurable case of Hepatitis C and years of emotional pain.”

Tucker “STOP IT.”

SlingBlade “LINE UP THE SHOTS MAX. YOU KNOW THE DRILL—I GET SHOTS OR THEY LEAVE CRYING!”

For the most part, the only way he will play wingman with girls he doesn’t like is if he is intensely drunk…cue five shots of Jagermeister; it’s time to loosen up SlingBlade.

We get a table and drink and talk. The girl SlingBlade was talking to, Girl 2, thought he was funny and laughed at his jokes, and everything is going great until Girl 1 decides to fuck it up by telling SlingBlade that she has a boyfriend but cheats on him all the time, especially with guys like me. Oh man…

SlingBlade “Well aren’t you just spectacular. I’m glad to see that those ‘Worthless Whore’ lessons turned out well for you.”

Girl 1 “Uh, you can’t make fun of me. You are wearing a Batman shirt out to a club.”

SlingBlade “I’d rather fellate a hot curling iron than listen to fashion advice from you.”

Girl 1 “You NEED fashion advice, you dress like an action figure.”

SlingBlade “Better an action figure than a Bowery prostitute.”

I tried to calm this down, but they got started again.

SlingBlade “Do you have anything else in your life besides work and fellatio? I’m not counting the empty syringes and used condoms decorating your apartment floor.”

Girl “YES! I do lots of things! What do YOU DO besides work? Watch Batman cartoons all day?”

SlingBlade “Woman, do not disparage Batman, or you will find this fork sticking out of your eye. Not only do I watch Batman, I go to the gym. You should try it some time.”

Girl “Excuse me jerk, I run.”

SlingBlade “Run?!? What, do you run to the refrigerator during commercial breaks? Huh, fatty?” [This girl wasn’t fat at all, but SlingBlade likes to push the obvious female insecurity buttons.]

Girl “You are a real asshole.”

SlingBlade “Settle down Slim, don’t hate the messenger. Just curious: have you ever eaten just one of anything?”

Tucker “Stop it.”

SlingBlade “She has—the forbidden apple.”

Tucker “Hey dick head, here’s my beer bottle, go peel the label and shut the fuck up.”

I took Girl 1 to the bar to calm things down, because unlike Colonel Masturbation, I wanted to fuck the girl I was talking to. Girl 2 actually thought SlingBlade was funny, so she stayed at the table to talk to him:

Girl “So you’re single?”

SlingBlade “I prefer ‘vaginally-challenged.’”

Girl [laughing] “You’re so funny. I can’t believe you’re single.”

SlingBlade “I’m a 25 year old socially anxious, premature ejaculator, and I’m wearing a Batman t-shirt to a club. Is it really that implausible?”

After a few drinks I got Girl 1 settled down and back to the table, and Girl 1 and Girl 2 immediately went to the bathroom together.

Tucker “So, your girl seems into you. And she’s kinda hot. You going to finally close a deal?”

SlingBlade “I don’t know. She has a 2 year-old kid…oh well, at least I know she fucks.”

Tucker “You want more shots?”

SlingBlade “Yeah, whatever. It’s not like I can hate myself any more than I do now.”

It was George Burns who said, “It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.” The same could be said for SlingBlade about hooking up. For him to hookup he has to perfectly hit his drinking sweet-spot. It’s got to be enough alcohol that he is truly fucked up, but not so much that he loses control. The problem with this is that his tolerance is terrible, which leaves him without much margin for error. If he doesn’t drink enough, he still thinks the woman is a slut, and he won’t touch her, but if he drinks too much, he throws up and/or passes out. It’s a delicate balance to get him into his Hook-up Zone.

We do one shot, and then another. At this point the girls return from the bathroom, and he smiles when he sees Girl 2. I get excited because I think I may have hit the spot exactly. I look over about 30 minutes later, and his head is buried in his hands, and he is muttering to his drink:

SlingBlade “Alcohol, I know I can trust you. You won’t leave me like that dirty whore did, will you?”

Girl 1 “What’s wrong with your friend?”

Tucker “He has a problem with women. And alcohol.”

SlingBlade “My liver hurts, my liver is dying.”

Girl 2 “He is really funny.”

SlingBlade “If you aren’t completely repulsed by me, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Girl 2 “You aren’t repulsive.”

Girl 1 “Yes he is.”

At that moment a guy with crutches walked by our table toward the bathroom.

SlingBlade “I wish I had crutches like him, because then I could beat myself to death with them, which would be preferable to my night thus far.”

Since the bathrooms are the small one-person-at-a-time type, the crippled guy had to put his crutches outside the door while he pees. Seeing this opportunity, I decided to lighten the mood at his expense. I run back there and throw his crutches in the empty girls’ restroom. At the table, I cannot control my giggling, because I know what is coming next:

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY CRUTCHES?”

Girl 2 “Hehehehhe—you two are both so funny!”

SlingBlade [in the SlingBlade voice] “How would a man go’bout contactin’ da’ po-lice, were he so inclinded, hrrrmmm.”

Tucker “Oh Christ…not again.”

Girl 1 and I decide to take her car and go back to her place (you know, for sex—something normal people do), leaving Girl 2 and SlingBlade to the Fates. Though I did not see what happened next, SlingBlade recounted it to me the next day:

He kept drinking until Girl 2 left. Without him. Apparently she got fed up with him alternately passing out and calling her a whore in the SlingBlade voice. After her departure he wandered around the bar, finally deciding that he needed to go to the bathroom.

As he walks to the bathroom, he starts veering to the right, and in an attempt to correct this he flings himself to the left. Instead of correcting himself, he ends up slamming head-first into the wall, which lays him out straight on his back. This is directly in front of a bunch of people, all of whom naturally laugh at him.

He’s so hammered that he just lays there for a minute, trying to remember how to stand up. Eventually he rolls himself over, but can’t get up on his feet. Instead he starts to crawl, arm over arm, military-style, to a nearby chair. Once there, he pulls himself up on the seat, looks over to the crowd who was watching and laughing, points to himself and yells:

“Still single ladies!”

Where Is He Now?

SlingBlade is a different person now than he was when all these stories took place (most of them occurred between 1999-2002). Even though I begged him and begged him to start a site similar to mine where he could display his prodigious comedic talents, he repeatedly declined, instead pursuing a very different field. It ended up working out well for him, and he is a much happier person now, mainly because of this new job. He has asked me not to write anything about his current occupation, and of course I’ll respect his wishes.

And yes, though he has sold all his action figures on eBay (for a profit, as he likes to note) and no longer sleeps on Batman sheets, Sling-Blade is still very single.

Update 1/20/2008

SlingBlade is now married. For real, I was even at the wedding. And believe it or not, she’s hot (a solid 5-star), and seems like a very nice girl. So seriously, would all the socially awkward women out there please stop sending me email asking to be set up with him. Aside from the fact he would have hated you anyway, he’s now off the market.