Assholes Finish First (38 page)

I’d prefer to keep fooling myself, at least for a little while longer.

T
HE
F
RESNO
V
ET

Occurred—March 2007

When I lived in LA, one day I got a pretty funny email from a woman named Tara, a 30 year old doctor living in Fresno. She complimented my book and all the other standard bullshit, and asked me what project I was working on next. My response:

“What’s next? I’m going to fuck a hot 30 year old doctor who loves my book. Send me a pic, so I can see if it’s going to be you.”

She sent a pic, was pretty cute, and we went back and forth for a while until we settled on a time for her to come to LA and hang out. The first night, I started to see the crazy come out. Not enough to prevent me from fucking her, but the seeds were planted.

• She wasn’t just a doctor. She actually had TWO doctorates: A PhD in biochemistry and a doctorate in veterinary medicine. No one stays in school for that long unless she’s hiding or overcompensating.
  
• The fact that she did all this before she hit 30, points to overcompensation. No one puts that sort of insane pressure to succeed on herself if she isn’t overcompensating for some external trauma (in this case, probably a judgmental and overbearing father who tied love and acceptance to external indicators of achievement).
  
• She’d never heard of Cesar Millan. That by itself is not weird, except that she’s a vet and he’s the most famous dog trainer in America.
  
• She was what I call emotionally constipated. Some subject would come up in conversation that was clearly sensitive to her, but she would
  pretend it wasn’t there and just smile and move on. When a girl’s mom leaves her and her dad at age 3, and she laughs about it and then asks about the Redskins defense this year—that’s not a good sign.
  
• She was the worst storyteller of all time. Literally the worst. She claimed she had some stories that were almost as good as mine. They may have been, but judging by the way she told them, they were about as exciting as a Boggle tournament. One story was so long that we drove from the east side of LA to the west side ON AN LA FREEWAY DURING RUSH HOUR, and by the time we arrived, she had still not gotten to the point. By the end of the story, I’d forgotten what my life was like before she started talking.
  

We hooked up that first night, and it was not good sex. She was not just emotionally constipated in conversation, she was the same way in bed. It was like trying to fuck an ice sculpture.

For some reason, many guys think crazy girls are better in bed. This is for two reasons: (1) they hear it from other idiots who don’t know anything and mindlessly repeat it, and (2) they mistake promiscuity for skill.

Just because you’ve had more dicks in you than a detective agency doesn’t mean you’re good at sex. I’ve fucked hundreds of girls in my life, at all different points along the crazy spectrum, from completely sane to completely batshit insane, and I can tell you from a position of authority that crazy girls are NOT better in bed. There is no relationship between sanity and sexual skill.

In her defense, though, the first time you have sex with someone, it’s not always that great. But she was really smart, which is a huge turn-on to me, so I was more than willing to give her another chance. We hung out and hooked up a few other times, but she got weirder, the sex got even worse, and I eventually lost interest and moved on.

I didn’t return her calls or talk to her for a week or so, then one day she texted me like four times telling me what she was doing that day at work,
asking what I was doing. Not realizing the level of nut job she actually was, I tried to be polite and responded that I was out with Nils, doing nothing, and then went back to ignoring her. This is not the right way to deal with crazies. A little attention is the worst thing you can do; they interpret it as meaning you still care, and all they have to do to get your attention is try harder.

Nils and I went out to dinner, came home—and found her there. Sitting on my couch. Watching TV and petting my dog. Like it was completely ordinary for her to be casually waiting for me.

I froze. Nils is normally a really calm guy, but he got this look of terror on his face. He immediately went and looked in the kitchen. Later on, he told me why: “I fully expected to see a rabbit boiling on the stove.”

Tara “Hey, I was in LA, and I thought I would stop by and see how you were, because you know, you said you weren’t doing anything.”

Tucker “How did you get in?”

Tara “The back door was open, so I just came in. Murphy seemed happy to see me, so I figured I’d hang out with her for a while.”

This was just so fucking weird. Not funny weird, like some hilariously peculiar prank Bam Margera would pull on Don Vito. This girl DROVE OVER THREE HOURS without making any plans with me. Then broke into my apartment. This was creeper weird.

Of course, I still slept with her that night. Come on, be reasonable—there was pussy in my apartment. What else am I supposed to do, throw rocks at it?

The next morning she got her stethoscope out of her purse and did an exam on Murphy.

Tara “I think Murphy has tachycardia.”

Tucker “She’s a healthy dog with a normal dog life. How could she have an irregular heartbeat?”

Tara “It’s mild, but there are a few things that can cause it. Stress, diet maybe. Next time I see you, I’ll bring more of my stuff with me, check more into it.”

Of course, this freaked me out. I do not mess around with the health or happiness of my dog. I immediately took Murphy to the vet, even though she’d been there only two months earlier. Our normal vet couldn’t hear any sort of irregularity, but he’s old, so I didn’t trust his hearing—this is my dog’s health we’re talking about, I’m not taking chances. I had them bring in the two other vets who worked in the office, a nurse, and a vet tech to listen to her heart, but not one of them could hear anything unusual.

Then it hit me: She didn’t hear anything. She was looking for an excuse to come back to my place. Instead of “forgetting” a toothbrush at my place, she was using my dog’s health as the leave-behind.

Holy shit.

I quizzed the vet about canine tachycardia, and it was exactly as I suspected: It’s a rare problem in dogs, has no definitive treatment, and can require multiple visits over a period of time to monitor it.

Are you fucking kidding me? This woman, WHO IS A VET, is going Munchausen by proxy—on MY DOG—in order to stay in my life?

That set me off. You can fuck with me all you want—I’m a pro, I can handle it—but you do NOT mess with my doggy daughter.

I was enraged, but since she was a woman, I couldn’t just go kick her fucking ass, so I did the only thing I could do: I immediately and permanently cut her out of my life. No more contact in any way for any reason whatsoever. She kept emailing me and texting me, I don’t know how many times, but it was enough that I redirected her email to my spam folder.

Maybe a week later, I was out drinking with my buddy Ben, and told him this story, and he thought it was just uproarious. Yeah, it’s real funny
when it’s not YOUR place she breaks into. We got really shit-faced, and he spent the night on my sofa because he was too drunk to drive home. The next morning we woke up hungover, decided to go to my favorite breakfast place, and walked outside my apartment…

…to find Tara, in her car, pulling up at my place.

Tucker “
Tara??
”

Tara “Hey.”

Tucker “What are you doing here?”

Tara “Uh… I was in the neighborhood, and… uh, I just came by to see what you were doing.”

Tucker “In the neighborhood? You live in Fresno.”

Ben gave me the most pitiful look I’d ever seen on his face, like a toddler whose parents are yelling at each other. The dude was terrified. I could see the fear in his eyes as he wondered if this is how it would end for him, catching a stray bullet because he was standing next to Tucker Max when one of his crazies finally lost it.

Tucker “Um… OK, well, we’re going to breakfast. See you later.”

I didn’t wait for an answer, just got into my car. Ben was so scared he ran to the passenger door, almost dropping into a combat roll on the way there.

That was the last time I saw her in person. But here’s the thing with my crazies: They’re like emotional burglars. After I cut them out of my life, they seek out other people in my life in order to sneak back in. I sent this story to Bunny to proofread for me—mind you, Bunny had never met this girl—and she called me right away:

Bunny “Tucker, is Tara’s real name [redacted]?”

Tucker “YES! How did you know that?”

Bunny “Oh my God! She’s been emailing me intermittently for years, asking me about you!”

W
ILFRED
B
RIMLEY’S
D
AUGHTER

Occurred—May 2007

When I lived in NYC, I was kinda seeing this model, Crissy. She was hot in the way that fashion models are—angular features that are very photogenic but didn’t stand out that much in person—and loved to have sex, which was nice. But, like all models, she was WAY too thin. The girl was so skinny you could have put cotton on her head and used her to clean your ears.

Hot and likes to fuck is cool, but you can find that plenty of places. The best part about Crissy was that, unlike most models, she had an actual personality. She was legitimately smart (she dropped out of an Ivy League school to model full-time) and was funny too. Not double-over gut-laugh hilarious, more funny in that I’m-trying-too-hard way that smart girls usually are.

But still, making me laugh at all is hard, so I liked her. It meant I could enjoy her as a person instead of just using her as a fuck hole when I was horny. Of course, there is a cost to combining those two attributes, funny and female—show me a truly funny girl who doesn’t have emotional issues, and I’ll introduce you to my stable of unicorn thoroughbreds ridden by leprechaun jockeys.

But shit, it’s not like I can’t deal with a girl who has some emotional issues. I call that Tuesday. The problem was, that wasn’t the only thing that was off about her. She was just always… weird. Her version of weird wasn’t like the quirky or peculiar stuff you can sometimes get with smart girls. Hers was more, why is she always slurring her speech and passing out at inappropriate times? I’ve hung out with enough drunks to know the signs of real alcoholism, and she didn’t really have many of those: most
notably, she didn’t drink all that much. There was just something about her that didn’t fit.

I didn’t think too much about it though, mainly because ALL models are fucked up in some way. I just chalked it up whatever unique cocktail of mood-altering substances she used to help her to deal with the pain of having an overbearing and unloving mother who pushed her into a soul-crushing profession where she is judged almost exclusively on how unhealthy she can look.

We were out drinking one time, and she was bitching because I never go down on her:

Crissy “Why don’t you eat me out? I suck your dick. And I’m good at it. It’s bullshit!”

Tucker “You’re good at it because all your purging has made your throat all slippery. It’s like an oyster cave in there.”

Crissy “So? You should still go down on me.”

Tucker “We aren’t dating. I don’t know where your pussy has been.”

Crissy “Well, I don’t know where your dick has been!”

Tucker “Right, but you go down on me anyway. The difference is, I have self-respect.”

We eventually came up with a bet to settle the issue: I had one week, and if I could get us a key to Gramercy Park, she had to give me head in the park. If I couldn’t, I had to eat her out in Battery Park. She picked that park because it’s at the tip of Manhattan and she thought it’d be romantic to look at the Statue of Liberty as I performed cunnilingus on her. Weird, I told you.

If you don’t know, Gramercy is a gated park in NYC that can be accessed only with a special key. Because it’s New York City and everyone there obsesses over the most ridiculous status indicators, the only people who have keys are the fancy ones who think they’re better’n everyone else. Well, Crissy didn’t know it when we made the bet, but I had a friend in
NYC who is one of those fancy people with a key. He agreed to let me borrow it on the condition that I set him up with a female friend of mine he liked. He didn’t know I’d already fucked her—easy trade for me (I guess he knows now; sorry man).

We met at a bar right next to the park and had a few drinks, waiting for it to get late enough and dark enough to not get the police called on us by some old lady. After a few drinks, she started acting… off. Not even necessarily drunk, just somehow off.

Tucker “You sure you’re OK? You’re acting even weirder than normal.”

Crissy “No, I’m fine, seriously… I want to do this. Besides it’ll actually help.”

Tucker “Help you? With what?”

Crissy “With… whatever… Let’s go, I want to suck your dick in Gramercy Park.”

And that she did. I sat on one of the benches and she blew me under the stars in the middle of Gramercy. Take that, you fancy park-locking snobs!

As I got close to cumming, I started looking around for a good place to shoot my load. Maybe on the bench or the raked gravel paths or maybe on the big statue of Edwin Booth. You know, as a
Fight Club
–esque “fuck you” to their pretentious little private park. She felt me getting up and grabbed my hips, pushed me back down and deep-throated me. Her gag reflex was like her appetite: nonexistent. She kept her mouth on my cock as I came, slurping up every bit of my cum.

Even though I was proud of shooting my load in Gramercy Park, I really I wanted to shoot it
on
Gramercy Park. I wasn’t pissed off or anything, but it was just another weird thing about Crissy—I know girls who like swallowing, but how many girls insist on swallowing to the point where they grab your hips so hard they leave bruises?

Afterward, she actually did seem a little better, so we went back to the bar and had a bunch more to drink as we bragged to everyone about getting head in Gramercy (no one cared), before going back to her place to fuck.