Assholes Finish First (26 page)

Cop “OK, so this Rockwolf guy, who ran off as soon as you stopped, he was the one driving AND the one throwing things out the window?”

Nils “YES! You fucking finally get it, congratulations.”

Cop “And what were you doing?”

Nils “I was fucking passed out. Like I was when you assholes found me!”

Tucker “Nils, chill out dude, he’s just trying to help us.”

Nils “Fuck this fucking BULLSHIT! I didn’t fucking do anything, I am sick of this!”

Cop “So Rockwolf was doing everything—driving drunk and throwing bottles out of his window—and you guys just chilled out and let him?”

Tucker “Yeah man… he’s a bad dude. We should never have hung out with him.”

Cop “Yeah, he sounds like it. What does he look like?”

Tucker “About my height, my build, brown hair, brown eyes… pretty normal looking. Except he’s a tool.”

Nils “THIS IS BULLSHIT! I DIDN’T THROW ANY FUCKING BOTTLES!”

Cop “OK, maybe he was driving. But, you’re a big dude. You ain’t normal. Why did that lady point YOU out as being the one that threw it? You don’t look like the guy he just described.”

Nils “I don’t know… how the fuck am I supposed to answer for some crazy black woman? We all look alike to them, I guess.”

Cop “Uh-huh. OK. Just calm down, we’ll get this sorted out soon.”

Maybe twenty minutes later, some other cop came in with a huge fat black guy who fucking stank. Badly. They put him in our cell, and he immediately lay down on the floor and passed out. This went over with Nils about as well as a fart in church.

Nils “What the fuck? This guy fucking smells like shit! Get him the fuck out of here!”

Tucker “Dude, just chill. This is not the right way to deal with cops.”

Nils “Fuck these assholes! I DIDN’T THROW THE FUCKING BOTTLE AND NOW THEY WANT ME TO SIT IN FAT ALBERT’S STINK?? FUCK THAT!!”

I could keep writing everything Nils yelled IN ALL CAPS, but you get the point. He was a drunk, belligerent fucking asshole. For an hour. The only thing that eventually shut him up was when the plainclothes came back in, pretended to believe Nils’s story this time, and bought him a 7UP and a bag of Fritos from the vending machine. Nils was like a happy kindergartner after that, thinking he’d won the hearts-and-minds battle. Idiot.

I’d gotten to the 32nd sometime after 10pm, and at midnight, FatCop came and took me out to the front area. The captain was out there with the Irish Desk Sergeant, and the Haitian Cop.

Captain “So you weren’t driving?”

Good cops are like good poker players—they are good at reading people. I wasn’t about to try to bullshit this cop, but I had OBVIOUSLY been driving the RV. The way to deceive someone like that is to remember the old adage: It’s not a lie if you believe it. When he looked into my eyes, for that second, I really believed in my soul that I hadn’t driven that RV.

Tucker “No sir, I was not.”

Captain “OK… go sit over there.”

I was across the room but I could hear them talking:

Captain “What do you think?”

HaitianCop “I think he was drinking and driving.”

FatCop “He passed the field tests and only blew a 0.07. He could be lying, but I talked to him for a while, he seems like an OK guy.”

DeskCop “We tossed the RV good, like I told you, there was nothing there but alcohol. I don’t think they’re criminals, just really fucking stupid.”

The captain thought it over, told the Haitian Cop something, and then walked off. Ten minutes later, FatCop came over with a piece of paper and walked me to the front door.

FatCop “OK man, we’re not charging you. Take care.”

Tucker “What about Nils? The other guy with me?”

FatCop “Oh, no no no. He’s going to the Tombs.”

I thanked him profusely, shook his hand, and walked out of the 32nd Precinct a free man. It was 12:04am. I tried to hail a cab to take me to my friends, so I could start drinking again—you know, to celebrate this astounding victory.

Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to find a cab at midnight in Harlem? You’d have an easier time finding pussy in a monastery. After ten minutes I started walking south. A mile later I’m at the corner of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King… there are SO MANY jokes I could make here, but
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
is one of the most profoundly moving and influential books I’ve ever read. So I’ll skip the jokes and tell you exactly what happened. I had to literally get in the light under a streetlamp and stand in the middle of the street, waving cash in my hand, to get a taxi to stop.

I eventually got Credit on the phone, and he said that everyone left TuckerFest in New Jersey hours ago, and he brought the only cool people from the event to a bar in Greenwich Village. Twenty minutes later I walked in to a massive round of applause. Even though only 10 people there knew me, half the bar erupted, because my friends had told everyone the RV story. TheGinger, Credit, and Sippy filled me in on the details from what happened in the 32nd Precinct, I told everyone my DUI story and what happened with Nils, and of course everyone saw me for the hero I was, a modern Jesus risen from the dead to drink again. The guys bought me
endless rounds of shots, the girls fawned over me, I drank and partied until 2am, and then went home with a cute girl who worked for
Playboy
.

Let’s sum up the day, just for perspective:

Beginning at 10am, I poured a constant stream of alcohol down my throat, got behind the wheel of an RV, drag-raced an ambulance, destroyed an apartment building, crashed into dozens of vehicles, hurled bottles and cans at random cars, got in a multi-vehicle chase, terrorized the most dangerous part of New York City for hours, started a riot, got arrested, sobered up enough to beat every charge within five hours, went back out, got drunk again, and finished the night by fucking a
Playboy
girl at 3am. And at 3:30. I finally passed out after fucking her one more time, at around 4am.

Just one day in my life, and only one possible conclusion from it:

I AM THE GREATEST MAN ALIVE!

Part 6: The Dorks Strike Back

You have no idea how much I wish the story ended there.

As I rode a cab back to the Teaneck Marriott Sunday morning, Sippy called and told me where everyone was hanging out, and I walked into that hotel room still riding the highest of highs… only to immediately come crashing down.

The previous night at the NYC bar, Credit and PlayboyGirl told me about the TuckerFest party in Hoboken, and how awful it was, how it was packed with nerds and losers, and how it was good I didn’t make it there. I don’t know if I didn’t listen or didn’t believe them. Maybe I was just too enamored with what I had pulled off that day to care, but right there in front of me in that hotel room was seriously the sorriest collection of dorks I’ve ever met in my life—
and they were my fans
. I was in shock.

I have tried to push the memory of those people out of my mind, but some things you can’t unsee. Like the kid with a lazy eye wearing a Members Only jacket with mustard stains on it. Or the girl who was probably only 23 but already dressed like a crazy cat lady. And I’ll never forget the college kid who had flown there from Columbus, Ohio. He was a virgin. The fucking kid was going to COLLEGE at OHIO STATE and he had NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND ANYONE TO HAVE SEX WITH HIM!

I couldn’t handle it, and went down to the RV. I figured if the intolerable nerds were in the hotel room, then the cool people must be in the RV, right?

I heard them before I saw them, and it got worse after I opened the door. Before I could identify the new odor that immediately stuck to my lungs, I saw PigPen next to Ambersnax, smiling and holding her hand, Soylent at the table next to Xgatax, looking bored, and TheGinger in terror. Like he’d just seen an alligator drag a baby into a lake.

Tucker “What the fuck is going on here? TheGinger, what’s wrong?”

TheGinger “Go look in the garbage can. The one the keg is in. Then go look at the bed.”

As the two trolls insecurely overlaughed to each other, I peered into the plastic Hefty can and saw, floating in the water surrounding the keg like dead bodies, at least ten used condoms. On the bed, there was so much blood it looked like Roman Polanski’s house after the Manson family was done with it. THAT’S what that smell was:

Nasty period sex.

Tucker “Are you fucking kidding me? Who did that?”

TheGinger “PIGPEN AND AMBERSNAX!!”

The troll cackling reached unprecedented levels, and PigPen and Ambersnax gave each other a little hug. I wanted to puke. You know that nasty,
old nudist couple that goes to swingers clubs and is always too eager to be there? The ones that clearly weren’t ever cool in their lives but opted for the sexual deviance scene because it was the only one that accepted them? PigPen and Ambersnax are that couple in its youth.

TheGinger “And Xgatax gave Soylent a blowjob! In the same bed this morning!”

I went outside, took a deep breath, relaxed, and pushed all of it out of my mind. At least I still had my first big celebrity event to go to. That was something cool, something that could get me away from these fucking losers and put me back in my rightful place: Greatness.

I will never forget my arrival at the venue. Rosh and TripleSH had already told me that they were amateur wrestlers, but they didn’t tell me anything that could prepare me for what I walked into.

We pulled up at the location, and I thought the address was wrong. What kind of wrestling event goes on at a crappy, run-down Elks Lodge in the north Jersey suburbs? Except that Rosh was waiting for me in all his enthusiastic, spandexed virgin glory.

I got out of the car and he immediately started yapping to me about God knows what as we came to the entrance. I could hear the wrestling going on in the back hall and was walking there when a girl at a cheap card table stopped me:

Girl “It’s $5 to get in.”

I just stood there, not responding, almost in awe of the audacity of this woman. To try and charge ANYONE to be there, much less the lone CELEBRITY invitee… I just walked past her. I think she got mad, I have no idea, Rosh handled it. I turned the corner into the main hall. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe something like the WWE, just smaller, but whatever it was, this was not it.

The wrestling ring looked like something you’d buy at Toys “R” Us. Inside it were two “wrestlers,” guys who were built like your average Teamster. Shit, they probably were Teamsters. It’s not like those fat fucks do any actual work. There were maybe a hundred people milling around, I guess you would call them spectators, except very few were paying attention. They looked like they’d gotten lost and stopped to ask directions. The quality of that crowd was about the same as an average redneck carnival. There was a bar… except it served only soft drinks and water.

Unless I someday attend a Big Ten women’s basketball game, this will go down in my personal history as the single worst sporting event I’ve ever attended.

While I was standing there still processing this scene, a little kid came running up to me and started talking to me like he knew me. Slowly, it dawned on me:

This is TripleSH. This is the wrestler who invited me here.

He was like 5'5” and might have weighed 110 pounds. I’ve seen more muscle on a chicken wing than on this guy. I’ve taken shits bigger than him. He was wearing spandex tights, a singlet, a terry-cloth headband… AND A CAPE.

He was giddy that I was there and introduced me to the promoter—some greasy sleezeball I wanted a glove to shake hands with—while bouncing around me like a little kid. He wasn’t the only one sweating me. The whole gaggle of TuckerFest nerds from the hotel had shown up.

You should have seen the “bikini contest” I was there to judge. It was like Lucifer opened the doors to hell and unleashed the Ragnarok. For real. I am pretty sure one of the girls had a vestigial tail. I wouldn’t have fucked these girls with Rosh’s dick and TripleSH pushing.

At the time, I thought this would be a legit event, sort of like my celebrity coming-out party. Of course now, looking back at my hubris, I laugh
hysterically at myself. Nonetheless, that was my thought process at the time, and this farce made me feel like a joke. I was completely and officially freaked the fuck out and did the only thing I could do: I retreated deep inside myself. Stood there like a statue, silent, unable to move, unable even to process the trauma I was witnessing.

Jojo, being the cocksucker that he is, found it endlessly amusing because I was now face-to-face with my fans, the fans that I thought having made me cool, when in fact most of them were the biggest posers and losers on earth.

Jojo “Max, you’re famous!!”

Tucker “Dude, what the fuck is going on?”

Jojo “These are your fans, Max.
This
is your fame!”

Tucker “Fuck you. If these are my fans, I’m out. If this is fame, I don’t want it.”

Jojo “Come on Max, they love you! Embrace them! Don’t give a fuck and just fuck shit up.”

Tucker “Look at them, dude… I think I’d rather die.”

So what did Jojo do? Did he try to counsel me, maybe help me work through these issues, perhaps help me probe my narcissism to understand why I was reacting this way? Fuck no. In law school, Jojo’s nickname was the Instigating Negro because he constantly fucked with people. He would find your weakness or pain and then hammer that sensitive spot over and over again, causing you maximum awkwardness and him maximum enjoyment. He decided to fuck with me by acting the way that all my poser fans wanted me to act: like a fucking fool.

The dude went straight Koko B. Ware, running around the Elks Lodge with some girl’s pink shirt tied to his head, flapping his arms and yelling at the wrestlers, trying to grab the mike from the announcer, booing the bikini girls, making fun of everybody—basically, everything these people expected me to do in this situation. And I stood there doing nothing. The whole time. Didn’t mock one person, hardly even spoke.

Why was I like this?

This story happened in March of 2003, and as I sit here and putting the finishing touches on it, it is April 2010. It took me seven fucking years to grow up enough to be honest with myself about the nature of my reaction and admit what happened that day so I could write this story: