Assholes Finish First

by Tucker Max

  As night fell, we were on track to be in Cleveland around 10, giving us a solid three to four hours of drinking time at the bars. Soylent was driving and I was in the passenger seat with the map, when Sippy—two hours removed from his last spill and brimming with confidence—snatched the map from me and threw it in the back of the RV:

  Sippy “Dude, I’ve got it from here. I grew up in Columbus and used to party in Cleveland all the time. I know this town backward and forward. I AM THE FUCKING PRINCE OF CLEVELAND!”

  Want to guess what happened next?

  He proceeded to take us on a three-hour tour of the Cleveland suburbs. Had he been skippering the S.S. Minnow with Gilligan as his first mate, SippyCup could not have gotten us more lost. And we couldn’t even use the map, because dumbass Sippy had thrown it in the beer he spilled, and it shredded to pieces.

  We FINALLY pulled up to the bar at 1am, just as they made last call. Did I mention that Cleveland is a 1am drinking town? Fuck you, Prince of Cleveland, and fuck your shitty city.

  Tucker “I seriously want to fight you right now.”

  Sippy “I’m so sorry, guys. I want to fight myself.”

  Soylent “Sippy, I think if the drunk you fought the sober you, they’d both lose.”

  Part 3: The Case Western Dorks

  We’d decided to stop in Cleveland for two reasons: It’s the obvious stopping point between Chicago and NYC, and there was a board member there, PigPen, who we were giving a ride to.

  PigPen met us at the bar with two friends, undergrads at Case Western Reserve University. The two undergrads, TweedleDoofus and TweedleDork could not believe our RV setup. Case Western is legendary for being a nerd school, on par with my alma mater. These guys, though they were probably studs in their Calc 320 class, were not used to being around people who had lives that didn’t involve doing regressions.

  TDork “Holy shit, look at this thing. You guys are so cool!”

  Tucker “No dude, it’s not us, it’s you. We’re not that cool; you’re just that much of a fucking nerd.”

  They went on and on, gushing about how cool the RV was, how awesome we must be just being on this road trip, etc. The highlight was when Sippy confidently gave them drinking advice… as he slurped beer from the sippy cup tied around his neck.

  We only had 5 people in an RV that could fit 7, and we could use two more people paying for shit, so TheGinger invited them to come with us. They gave each other a shocked, wide-eyed look, like they couldn’t believe we’d allow them to hang out with us, almost like the first time you take training wheels off a kid’s bike and he rides without falling down. I poured two more shots for each.

  TDoofus “I’m not sure. I promised my girlfriend I’d drive her somewhere tomorrow.”

  Tucker “Girlfriend? You’re only 21, you’re not going to marry her.”

  TDoofus “Yeah, but I really like her. She’s even not an engineer. I want to go… but I think I need to ask her.”

  Tucker “ASK HER??? You gonna ask her to hold your dick for you when you piss too? Grow a fucking sack. I thought PigPen told me his friends were men! I don’t see any tits on you, so if you’re a man, WHY AREN’T YOU ACTING LIKE ONE?”

  TDoofus “You don’t think I need to ask her?”

  Tucker “Let me give you the maxim I guide my life with, the one that’s led me to greatness: ‘Ask forgiveness, not permission.’”

  TweedleDoofus paused. I could almost see testosterone rushing through him for the first time in his life. I handed him a beer.

  Tucker “The Dark Side is a lot more fun. Join us.”

  He turned to TweedleDork:

  TDoofus “Dude, let’s do it! This is so crazy!”

  Their only request was that we stop at their frat so they could pick up some clothes for the trip. They’re in a frat? I had to see it. And mock it ruthlessly.

  We stormed that frat house like Saxons raiding the English coast, screaming and banging into things. When we hit their TV room, girls began huddling next to guys and screaming. I was expecting we’d be welcomed as long-lost brothers. Instead, we were hushed by a handful of sober nerds because “some guys have midterms tomorrow.”

  Soylent “I think the Tweedles are the cool guys in this frat.”

  Tucker “Wow. Time to teach them what cool means.”

  I went off to cause trouble, Sippy and the two nerds packed their bags, and Soylent went to go find supplies. Even though he’d bought out a Walmart, he’d forgotten a few things. He broke into their janitor’s closet and came back to the RV with garbage bags, toilet paper, a bottle of bleach, and a mop handle. Not a full mop, just the handle.

  Tucker “Dude, why do we need a mop handle?”

  Soylent [in all seriousness] “In case we have to kill someone quietly.”

  Tucker “Doesn’t hitting someone with a mop handle make a lot of noise?”

  Soylent “I’m not going to hit them with it. If the need arises, I take this,” [He whips a seriously scary knife from his pocket] “and tie it to one end of the handle, cover it with a condom, and stab them with it.”

  Tucker “Why tie a knife to the end of a mop? And a condom??”

  Soylent “Do you understand how modern forensics works?”

  Tucker “HOLY SHIT!”

  Aren’t military guys fun? We all pile back in the RV.

  Sippy “Well, I guess we should find a hotel room.”

  Tucker “Dude, it’s 2am. We got here too late to pick up any girls at bars. Fuck getting a hotel room, we’re rolling to NYC.”

  TheGinger “We can’t drive through the night! That’s insane.”

  Tucker “It won’t hurt your deposit if we drive through the night.”

  Soylent “Pretend your parents are fighting and go hide in the back. I’ll handle it from here.”

  Soylent chugged two Red Bulls and pulled us out of Cleveland. Everyone stayed up drinking for the first hour, having fun and bullshitting. Then TweedleDork got a phone call. He looked kinda mortified, hung up, and then summoned the courage to ask a question:

  TDork “Yeah, uh… I don’t want to make any accusations… but did one of you, umm… take a shit on a table in the frat cafeteria?”

  TheGinger spit out his beer, he was laughing so hard. Without even breaking stride, I calmly assured them:

  Tucker “I can’t imagine any of us would do something like that.”

  The Tweedles kinda looked at me weird and laughed nervously. It’s not a lie if you believe it.

  Everyone hit a wall at 3am, especially TweedleDoofus. He passed out. Mid-sentence. We were laughing at him and mocking him… until he started vomiting everywhere. It was this awful mixture of energy drink, beer, tequila, and Cheetos. We took his sweatshirt off him and used it to wipe most of it up, but it didn’t get rid of the stench. The whole RV smelled like nerd death.

  Everyone else went to bed. I wanted to sleep, but by the time I was tired, Soylent had been behind the wheel for about 14 hours (he had the shift coming into Cleveland also), and I couldn’t leave him by himself. Friends don’t let friends drive an RV alone all night while wired on Red Bull, so I drank one and rode shotgun with him.

  Around 9, everyone woke up and we stopped for breakfast. Afterward, Sippy took the wheel so Soylent and I could sleep for the rest of the drive. I climbed into the space above the driver’s cab and went right out.

  I woke up about three hours later. It was hard to sleep with DMX blasting on the radio and the RV shaking like Michael J. Fox. I looked over the edge of the bed and witnessed a scene I will never forget.

  Soylent was sitting directly behind Sippy, hands gripping the back of his seat so tight his knuckles were chalk white and his fingers nearly tearing into the fabric. Every muscle in his body was fully flexed, veins popping out of strange places in his neck and head, nostrils flared to their limits, eyes wide with the type of fear and terror you see on the face of someone staring at their own mortality.

  Tucker “Dude, have you gotten any sleep?”
<
br />   [Soylent, not taking his eyes off the road, barely shakes his head]

  Tucker “Why not?”

  Soylent [in a rapid-fire, terrified, raspy voice, as he looked up at me with the most pitiful, frightened look I have ever seen on an adult man] “SIPPY’SOUTOFCONTROL! HESGOING100BANGINGHISHEADANDLOOKINGATWRECKSNOTWATCHINGTHEROAD! WE’REALLGONNAFUCKINGDIE!!!”

  I lowered my head over the ledge and looked out the front windshield to see the RV swerve around a tractor trailer, missing the bumper by no more than two feet. Sippy was bobbing his head back and forth to the music as if nothing happened, then threw both hands off the steering wheel into the air to “raise the roof.” The speedometer was shaking at around the 90mph mark. He looked back at me, in the complete opposite direction of the road, and screamed with the music:

  Sippy “WHERE MY HOOD, WHERE MY HOOD, WHERE MY HOOD AT!!!”

  Soylent “YOUREGONNAHITTHATCAR!!!!! WATCHTHEROAD!!!! AAAAHHHHH!!!!”

  Despite being so close to a fiery death, I could not stop laughing. Soylent is an ex-Marine—who’s been in real combat, with people shooting at him—and here he was in a state of panicked fear, put there by the driving of a 22 year old entry-level consultant.

  TweedleDork and TweedleDoofus were not far from Soylent’s state of mind. Obviously unaccustomed to the effects of large quantities of the drink and still severely intoxicated, they looked like the frightened refugees you see on CNN after some natural disaster in a third-world country.

  TweedleDoofus had vomit matted in his hair, TweedleDork still had sleep lines on his forehead, and both kept staring at each other with a “what the fuck have we done?” look in their eyes. I got Soylent a drink to calm him down and offered them both a drink. TweedleDork looked at me like I told him to felch a rhino, and TweedleDoofus gagged and nearly threw up again.

  We drank more beer—it’s amazing how much more you drink when you get your beer from the shower—and Soylent eventually calmed down. Though not before Sippy pulled the RV onto the shoulder to get past some road construction, running over two dozen orange cones in the process.

  TweedleDoofus was jarred out of his PTSD when his cell phone rang. The conversation was so good, I made Sippy turn down the gangster rap:

  TweedleDoofus “Hey baby… Uh, well, it’s hard to explain. I’m in an RV driving to New Jersey… No really, I… I… I don’t know. Is there any other way you can get a ride? I’m really sorry. What about April? Can she give you a ride?”

  TweedleDork explained that today was the funeral for TweedleDoofus’s girlfriend’s grandmother. It was in Akron, and he was supposed to drive her.

  Tucker “Wait, THAT is what you had to do for your girlfriend? You had to drive her to her grandmother’s FUNERAL? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. You’re fucked! Why did you come with us last night? You let me talk you out of THAT? Dude, how stupid are you?”

  He gave me the angriest look a nerd can give someone he is afraid of, and walked into the bedroom in the back. TweedleDork turned away from us and spent the rest of the drive blankly staring out the window, rocking back and forth in the captain’s chair.

  We arrived in NJ a few hours later and checked into the hotel. After putting our stuff in the room we immediately went out to eat. TweedleDoofus and TweedleDork stayed in the room. When we got back, we found this note on the bed, along with a $20 bill:

  “Guys,

  Sorry, but we have to go back to Cleveland. I know we were supposed to stay the whole weekend, but this wasn’t what we expected, and we really have things to get done at home. We’ll take a taxi to the bus station, and get a bus home. Here is $20, I hope this covers our share.”

  There isn’t much to tell about that night. I ignored all my fans and went into the city with my real friends, got hammered, talked a ton of shit to all kinds of posers, threw peanuts at hipsters, daring them to confront me—none did, of course—and blew a sure thing with a very good-looking girl by insulting her panty hose. Whatever—let’s get to the good part.

  Part 4: The Harlem RV Story

  Saturday morning I woke up refreshed and ready for a big day. There were two “events” my fans had planned for that weekend: Saturday night was the party at a bar in Hoboken that they insisted on calling TuckerFest. On Sunday, I was to celebrity-judge the semi-pro wrestling bikini event, and they were all going to attend.

  Jojo and Credit lived in Manhattan, so on Saturday morning, I decided to drive the RV into the city, watch the Kentucky basketball game at Jojo’s apartment, pick them up, and then drive back out to TuckerFest that night.

  Around 10am, I collected Nils, TheGinger, and Sippy, and we went to pick them up. Already in the RV were Soylent, PigPen, and three of the most wretched fucking people I have ever met. Their internet names were Xgatax, Ambersnax, and Rockwolf.

  Xgatax: I’m not sure I can convey in words how annoying this girl was. Sickeningly obese, covered in acne, at least three chins, with the loud, obnoxious fat-girl voice that seems to carry for miles and never stops, she smoked, and had the stupidest sense of humor since… EVER. Don’t believe me? Think I’m exaggerating? Look at this picture and tell me you can’t see that description:

  Ambersnax: When I first looked at her, I had to move from directly in front of her so I could see her whole face at once—her nose is THAT big. She not only breathed and smelled with that thing, I think she took fluids and food through it too. I’m confident I could have fit my dick in it. I can’t even describe what the rest of her face or body was like; her nose overshadows my memory. The one thing I do remember was her voice. Ambersnax’s awful cackling voice pierced my spirit. If the US Army played recordings of Ambersnax excitedly telling jokes to the detainees at Gitmo, they would all break within the day. Imagine Fran Drescher, but without the class or sophistication.

  Rockwolf: When I met him, he had on Doc Martens, a cheap black leather jacket, greasy slicked-back hair, and jeans with holes in them. His facial hair looked like he messily ate a Popsicle and then rolled around on the floor of a barbershop. This guy was such a tool, I had a hard time even believing it at first. I honestly thought he was kidding. About everything. He wasn’t.

  After watching Xgatax’s cackling sending shock waves through her blubber, and listening to Ambersnax’s nasally shrill screeching, I had an immediate and visceral hatred of them both. These two were the very archetypes of people I hate most, and I was determined to break them emotionally. I owed it to the world.

  I took a few deep breaths, broadly outlined in my head the attack strategy that would wreck them in the most brutal fashion possible, while providing the most amusement to myself and my friends, when it dawned on me: These aren’t just annoying whores who are bothering me at some bar, who I can insult, laugh at, and discard.

  These are my fans.

  I’d already met three of my fans from my site—Sippy, TheGinger, Soylent—and despite their quirks, they were solid enough guys. I thought all my fans would be like that, maybe a bit off in some way or another, but at least normal and fun enough to hang out with.

  These three were disasters in every way possible. I know it seems like I am savaging them, but trust me—they were worse in person. The girls especially; they were the type who make you wish for Revelations to start. There was nothing redeemable about either of them… except that they were my fans.

  I didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t like any situation I’d ever been in. I couldn’t be around these three morons. I’d fucking kill them or myself. But they loved my writing, they were part of the message board community on my site, and they came here to meet me. In any other situation, I would verbally maul people this annoying, but in this case, I just couldn’t. Still, I HAD to get them away from me.

  Tucker “All right, we are going into the city. You two are in your pajamas and need to get dressed. Go, hurry up.”

  Amber “OK, we’ll be fast.”

  Xgatax “Don’t leave without us?”

  Tucker [blank stare] “Go.”

  TheGinger “
Plus, we need more towels, so bring a bunch back with you.”

  I tried to convince Rockwolf he needed to change, but he was fully clothed (in the same shit he wore the night before, he made a point of telling us). The dude was clearly a tool, but he wasn’t in the same league as the two girls, so I just let it go. As soon as the girls were in the hotel, I got behind the wheel.

  Tucker “Someone get me a beer. We’re leaving.”

  We weren’t there to see it, but someone told us they came running out of the hotel ten minutes later, their arms full of towels they’d taken off a maid’s cart. It would almost have been worth it to stay and see that.

  Soylent took the passenger seat, and I floored it. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I was still getting accustomed to the fact that a 40 ft. Winnebago does not have the same turning radius as a domestic sedan. I ran the RV over a huge curb, sending it up onto two wheels, screeching the tires, dumping half the liquor bar onto the floor and shattering three bottles. The RV slammed back down, and everyone in the back had a panicked look on their face. I turned to them and smiled.

  Tucker “What are you pussies afraid of? We have walkaway insurance. Get me another beer.”

  There was a lot of traffic on the way into the city, so even though I was driving, I did what I always do to pass the time: I drank. I had no intention of drinking very much, but when we hit the George Washington Bridge, I was already on beer five. Even I realized this was not good. In order to slow myself down, I had to find something else to occupy my attention, so I started rifling through Sippy’s CD case. The titles of his mix CDs confused me.

  Tucker “‘Stydie’s Christmas Mix’? What the fuck is on there, Perry Como? ‘Stydie’s Easter Mix,’ ‘Stydie’s Summer Mix’? Sippy, what the fuck is this shit? Oh, look at this gem: ‘It Is Most Definitely On.’ You wrote that… in marker… on the CD.”

  Sippy “I title them based on—”

  Tucker “You have a CD called ‘Stydie’s Rockin’ Out Music.’ Stop speaking. Nothing you can say will save you now. You have lost at life.”

  He meekly bowed his head and drank from his sippy cup. Out of sheer curiosity, I popped in “Stydie’s Christmas Mix.” What came on? Ludacris’s “My Business.” Then DMX’s “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Then R. Kelly’s “Remix to Ignition.”