Assholes Finish First (20 page)

Tucker “Maybe it’s because I’m so awesome.”

Girl “No, that’s not it at all.”

Tucker “Why?”

Girl “I guess I just hate myself.”

T
HE
T
UCKERFEST
S
TORY

Occurred—March 2003

In the summer of 2002, I left Boca Raton and moved to Chicago to pursue my calling as a writer. I started off the same way everyone else does; by trying to get published. I took my five best stories at the time—all of which are now in
I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell
—and sent copies to every single agent, publishing house, magazine, newspaper, and alt weekly I could find an address for. At least a thousand query letters and emails went out.

90% ignored me, and the other 10% rejected me. There were even a few people who took the time to write me personalized rejections, telling me how awful my writing is and how I should do
anything
but be a writer. The stories that eventually anchored a #1 best-seller and spawned a new literary genre got precisely ZERO interest from the very people whose only job is to discover new talent. And publishers wonder why they’re going bankrupt.

That sort of rejection would discourage most people. Not me. I’m a narcissist and a genius, and I knew what I had on my hands. If no publisher wanted my stories, I’d just put them on the internet (it may seem obvious now that putting them on the web makes sense, but in 2002 putting commercial writing on the
internet
for
free
was essentially unheard of). I launched
TuckerMax.com
on September 9, 2002. I remember the exact day because I’d spent the previous month so focused on all the necessary tasks to get the site up—learning about HTML, Photoshop, hosting, etc.—that I had completely forgotten that the one-year anniversary of 9/11 was two days away.

The gods love courage and defiance, and I had both. Within six months my site became a phenomenon; it was getting tens of thousands of visitors a day. I was one of the very first “internet personalities.” MTV did a documentary about internet dating that starred me, I got a Hollywood agent to pitch my stories as a TV show, and of course, the book publishers—though last to the party, as usual—decided that they should offer me book deals.

In the movies this sort of thing happens overnight, but in real life, it’s slow in developing. TV shows, movie deals, books—these things take a lot of time. But I was getting immediate attention on the internet, and at the beginning, that was the thing I loved the most: the newfound fame.

I’ll be frank: Like most people when they get their first taste of success, I was an arrogant fuck about it. I thought my shit did not stink. I was getting a lot of attention, and though it was almost all limited to a small group of hard-core fans, within that niche I was a legit star. And that attention and adoration was very intoxicating to someone like me who, after being rejected by the mainstream media companies, had, in less than six months of full-time writing, attracted real fans.

A lot of my fans congregated on the message board community that I set up on my site. SlingBlade loved to go on various message boards of the sports teams he hated and talk shit to them, and he suggested I put one up so we could do the same thing to random people. I did, and lo and behold, the thing took off. Almost from the beginning, hundreds of my fans came every day, but instead of talking shit, it became like a real internet community.

It’s kinda hard to explain the dynamic of the early Tucker Max Message Board. Some of my real friends hung out there—PWJ, SlingBlade, Jojo, TheCousin—and we used the place not only to talk to each other but to meet my fans too. The more time we spent there, the more of a community it became, all based around my writing. I probably spent anywhere from three to five hours a day on there, just hanging out, bullshitting with people, and making jokes. This was 2002, and social media was
completely new, and it was exciting to interact with people I didn’t know, but who loved and respected me because of my writing.

Two of the earliest members of the message board were semi-pro wrestlers, Rosh and TripleSH. Rosh was a 20 year old virgin from rural Pennsylvania who vacillated between alcoholism and religious fundamentalism. TripleSH was a third-rate pseudointellectual from New Jersey who seemed like a nice guy. They asked me to be the celebrity judge at the bikini contest at one of their wrestling shows. I agreed, for two reasons:

1. Even though they weren’t paying me, I was still so new to the “fame” thing that I was really excited to get invited to be a “celebrity judge” of anything, especially hot girls in bikinis.

2. I expected to spend a few hours at this thing, and then the rest of the weekend in NYC partying with my real-life friends.

Of course, I sent a flurry of emails to my law school friends bragging about my new fame. They called me an idiot for going to New Jersey at all, and they had the gall to mock me for being such a crappy celebrity that I could be considered famous only at a semi-pro wrestling event. Fuck them, they were just jealous that they weren’t famous like me. Haterz!

About two months before I was supposed to go to New Jersey, I was out of town without computer access for a weekend. Rosh and TripleSH picked this time to start a thread announcing to the message board community that I was coming to New Jersey, and that everyone on the Tucker Max Message Board was invited to come party with us. They named the event TuckerFest, and by the time I got back into town, the thread was three pages long with people discussing their travel plans. Several people had booked plane tickets already, from California, Mississippi, Ohio, Florida—it was totally out of control. Before I knew it, something like 30 people I didn’t know at all were coming to New Jersey to throw me a party.

What’s so funny about this is in retrospect is that, at the time, I didn’t really see anything unusual about it. I mean, why shouldn’t all these people spend all this money and time to party with me? I’m fucking awesome! It never occurred to me to ask what it said about them that they were so eager to do this, or why their lives were so desperately empty that they wanted to glom on to some random dude with nothing but a few funny stories on a crappy website. But such is narcissism. Those sorts of questions just don’t occur to you.

Though this was going to be the first time I’d ever really met any of my “fans,” I thought I knew what was coming. In my naïveté, I honestly thought everyone coming would basically be like me and my friends. That’s the way these people on my message board had portrayed themselves on the internet, so of course that’s the way they would be in real life. Because people are just like their internet personas, right? Besides, come on, why would nerds and tools want to party with me, knowing how mercilessly I abuse people I can’t stand? These people have read my stories, they know what I’m like. Knowing that, if they still want to hang out with me, they must be pretty cool… right?

Silly, naïve Tucker. I was utterly unprepared for the epic shitstorm that was coming. The events of that tragically comic weekend would become the touchstone for changes in my website, my life, and the lives of everyone even tangentially involved, including the proprietors of an RV rental company in Aurora, Illinois, the staff and guests of the Teaneck Marriott, numerous residents of New York City, and the cops of Harlem’s 32nd Precinct.

Part 1: The Plan

A few of the people who were planning to attend TuckerFest lived in and around Chicago, and they wanted to hang out before the event in March. I was still so new to the whole fame thing that going out and meeting random fans seemed like a perfectly good idea to me.

The first guy who wanted to hang out was named Stydie. He lived in Chicago, and I first encountered him when he sent me this email, in January 2003:

“Tucker… I don’t remember what color envy is (green or purple… fuck it who cares) but I might as well be looking at the world through envy-tinted glasses right now.

I think you should know that the six hours I’ve been at work today have been spent on your site. I’m amazed. Impressed. If you really are fucking real you are living the life that so many of us peons can only dream of. I only wish I had the balls and sheer audacity that you possess to put these bitches in their place. The fact that you have been able to absolutely demoralize and walk all over so many of these uppity whores is very inspirational.

I mean Christ… you’re the hero of the common man… the people’s champion. You are realizing lack of regard for rules and society that a normal schmuck could only imagine in his wildest dreams. I myself used to have this attitude in college, but the weight of the amazing amount of bullshit in the world has since crushed my spirit.

While “no remorse!” used to be our battle cry… it’s now something dejected and pathetic like “get me another blue label on the rocks so I can pass out quicker and forget about the mind-numbing social landscape that is Lincoln Park.” You have reached out and grabbed life by the balls, and for that you deserve every ounce of self-gratifying attention that you undoubtedly receive as a result of this site. Tucker Max, my hat is lifted to you. Reading the accounts of your exploits helped me remember that there’s really no point in being nice or accommodating because unless you are a complete asshole, the world will take advantage of you.”

Looking at it now, you and I see the same thing: a desperate cry for help. But this was one of the first emails I’d ever gotten like this, and I thought it was so cool that this guy not only thought my stuff was funny, but was also inspired by it. Instead of doing what I would do now with the hundreds of emails I get like this every day—politely thank them or just ignore them—I decided to take pity and help the kid, so I invited him out with me.

He showed up to my place 40 minutes early. I was still eating dinner. He had a full-length black trench coat on and looked 15. For a split second, I thought the ghost of Eric Harris had left Columbine to haunt me.

He spent the first ten minutes stammering over small talk. Dude couldn’t have been more nervous if I’d shoved an 8 ball of black-tar heroin up his ass and sent him through customs. All of a sudden, his eyes lit up, and in the most excited, high-pitched voice I’ve ever heard out of grown man:

Stydie “So how drunk are you?!?”

Tucker “Not drunk at all.”

Stydie “Why not?”

Tucker “It’s 7:30. I’m still eating dinner. We aren’t due at the bar until 10.”

Stydie “So what? You’re Tucker Max! You should be hammered right now!”

Out of his coat he pulled a half-f bottle of Jagermeister and three warm Bud Lights. I assumed he was kidding, so I kinda stared at him—waiting for the punch line.

Stydie “Come on man, you’re Tucker Max. I’m calling you out, I’ve already been drinking!”

Dude’s serious. I guess
he
is the punch line.

This was the first time I’d ever met someone who knew me only from my stories, and for a second, I was just honestly confused. I didn’t yet
understand why I shouldn’t hang out with this type of young, retarded male fan—but Stydie was generously providing my first lesson.

Tucker “You want to… outdrink me… with your warm trench coat alcohol?”

Stydie “Yeah, man, come on, let’s see what you got! I was in a fraternity in college, I can throw ’em back!”

I had some moonshine in my freezer (I’m from Kentucky), so I poured us three shots apiece and then made him go beer for beer with me for two hours. At 10:30, we got into a cab to go to the bar. The idiot was so drunk, he started nodding off on the way there. He woke up long enough to get a beer at the bar, which he spilled on his shirt, right before he puked all over himself in the bathroom.

Tucker “I thought you were going to outdrink me, you fucking pussy! Look at yourself. No wonder you’ve given up on life, you’re a fucking failure at it!”

Despite the fact that he really did suck in every possible way, he had that mix of overeager enthusiasm and uncoordinated energy that you just can’t stay mad at, like Scrappy-Doo. And even though he was a complete dork, he had that one thing you can’t teach: desire. The dude wanted to learn, so I ended up kinda taking him under my wing and trying to teach him all the things he clearly needed to know. Like how to stay awake past 10:30pm.

Stydie was actually much more active on the message board than I was at the time, and he became friends with two guys who lived in Indiana and were always posting funny shit: TheGinger and Soylent. About a month before TuckerFest, he invited them up to Chicago to come out with us. As much of a loser nerd as Stydie could be, these two were not. They were actually really fucking cool guys, dudes I might be friends with in real life.

TheGinger was a short, portly guy, and a contradiction in every way: a huge computer nerd who could drink like a motherfucker. Socially
anxious, but fun as hell to go out with. Supersmart, but always doing dumb, self-destructive things. Afraid of breaking the rules, but willing to do crazy things. Had no confidence in himself, but drunk he had more balls than anyone. If you have ever known the cool computer nerd type, the ones who simultaneously fit into and break all the stereotypes, then you know what I’m talking about.