by Mike Stangle
Have I mentioned that Quack is a sick fuck? Just as people are starting to accept what they are seeing with Quack’s insane exterior, they begin to experience how deeply deviant he is on the inside. He is the most perverted man I’ve ever been around, and he makes absolutely no effort to hide it from anyone in his company. I think it’s his way of putting people to the test right away. If he disgusts you, he figures that it was coming eventually, so you might as well end the conversation now. If you laugh, you’ll love him forever. Right away, he puts you on his level. Within minutes of your first conversation he may reveal to you his preference for large nipples on a woman (I don’t want to be able to tell where the boob ends and the nipple begins) or his personal rules he won’t break (I insist on being on top when I sixty-nine). Even the way he compliments my mom is strangely off (you look handsome today, Mrs. S). I recently walked by him at a party and overheard him finishing a story. All I caught was “. . . she asked me what was on my penis, and I said nothing, babe, I just shaved my pubes into the shape of a GoPro. Can we drop it already?” He was talking to my aunt Loretta. At three in the afternoon, at a family barbecue. Quack is out to make himself laugh first and foremost; if others find him funny, it’s an added bonus. One time for Halloween, he dressed as Ed Harris’s character from The Truman Show. He wore round glasses, a backward Kangol hat, and a hands-free headset. He walked around screaming, “Cut the feed!” the entire night. He didn’t break character once. Pretty much no one got it.
Have I mentioned Quack has almost killed me more than eight times? Many people have had near-death experiences in their lives. For a guy in his late twenties, I’m farther down the wrong end of the bell curve than I’d like to admit, but I’m still breathing. I attribute that to Quack. Not the still breathing part, no way. That’s blind luck, and I’m living on borrowed time. I mean, it’s my position on the bell curve that I attribute to Quack. Anytime I’ve had the realization that I was in true danger, the one that gives you that funny feeling in your butthole, Quack has been by my side and responsible for getting us there. Most of these experiences have taken place far away from home. That’s when things get the craziest. The way to get Quack in his wheelhouse is to go more than two hours away from home. Because Quack never flies anywhere, that would mean you’ve got a drive ahead of you. If it’s with Quack, there will be a cooler overflowing with cold Coors Lights. It’s a staple of any drive over two hours. Don’t count on Quack to do the driving, though, not even in his own truck. He is there for one thing and one thing only: to crush Coors Lights at an alarming rate. Quack has only owned (and will ever own) pickup trucks. He’ll claim it’s because he is a construction worker. That’s bullshit. He won’t drive a car because a car doesn’t have a truck bed to dispose of empty Coors Light cans in with a toss over your shoulder while opening the next one. His truck bed looks like Scrooge McDuck’s giant vault of gold, except it’s filled with silver . . . bullets, that is.
In the spring of 2012, our friend Lance Bass was graduating from law school and having a party to celebrate what was a monumental feat among my group of friends. Our high school graduation parties were wild, not because we were proud of graduating from high school, but because we genuinely didn’t know when the next time anyone in our group would ever graduate from another institution besides a federal penitentiary. Fast-forward eight years, and we’ve got a law school party on our hands? Fuck yes. Lance Bass pulled out all the stops, too. He rented a big house in Lake Placid, New York. In its history, that town had two things happen and two things only:
1. Host of the 1980 Winter Olympics, site of the “Miracle on Ice”
2. Host of Lance Bass’s law school graduation party
Lake Placid won’t let either of them go. The town is more than three hours away from where we grew up. Let’s do the math. Three hours is more than two hours, and two hours qualifies us for . . . FULL COOLER. We hit the road at once. We were so antsy in the pantsy, we left at noon even though we weren’t planning on pregaming for the pre-party that preceded the cocktail hour until at least five o’clock. It was a good thing we erred on the side of caution, too. About halfway between Albany and Lake Placid is Lake George. Remember Lake George? Sure you do. If you’re passing through Lake George, you’re not going to not stop in and experience the vibe a little, right? We thought we’d quickly grab lunch at Duffy’s Tavern on the water, because it sounds like a bar that should be in The Simpsons, then maybe have one dog beer each (seven human beers) before hitting the road again.
I’m not sure how, and it’s an entirely different story altogether, but Quack and I ended up playing nine holes of golf with two local fishermen we met at the bar. Have I mentioned Quack also has a vicious gambling problem? And he can’t golf well at all? We’ll end up in the black, he kept saying. Somehow, he was right. It’s not shocking that two salty fishermen found his humor appealing. They were buying dog beers on the course like crazy, too. I think I had two dog beers. Before I knew it, we were back on the road after a quick four-hour pit stop. Now we were tuned up for a big night.
Quack and I rolled into Lake Placid at about 8 p.m., just as the cocktail hour was wrapping up. “I’m sorry, sir, the bar is closed, as the party will be moving upstairs for dinner now.” It’s not what we wanted to hear. Quack peeled off a hundred-dollar bill (I should mention Quack is the richest person I know and completely self-made; I know, right?) and all but shoved it down the poor bartender’s throat as he told him I didn’t go through the trouble to put on this goddamn tie to hang out sober, compadre. Quack had insisted we pack some suits for our trip, “Just in case we have to get buried up there.” I think he was serious.
When we were about an hour out of town, we received word from the party that it was a swanky affair; attendees were suited up and wearing dresses. Have you ever taken off all your clothes and put on a full suit while driving a pickup truck with between two and three dog beers in you? The only thing harder is for Quack to do it. With his unique body type in play, he has developed an entire system for getting dressed. It’s like watching a paraplegic get off his wheelchair to take a shit. There is grunting, sweating, a lot of arm work and breath control. Add in the confinements of a pickup truck at high speed and you can see how Quack had earned another drink. I went to the bathroom to take a much-needed pee and by the time I came back, Quack was in mid-handshake with the bartender as I heard, “. . . like a duck. Now, about those beers I need.”
The remainder of the cocktail hour, dinner, and reception rolled on as expected. We were seated at the kids’ table, while aunts and uncles looked at us with complete disgust. Every time the waitress walked by, Quack goosed her butt and asked for another round—even though she was there to deliver the current round. By the time dancing broke out, we were already climbing the scaffolding of the social guillotine. Lance Bass had this uncle who seemed to have a real problem with us. Quack will tell you it was because I was getting handsy while dishing life advice to his uncle’s eighteen-year-old daughter, who was set to attend Geneseo College that coming fall, my alma matter. That was only half of it, though. This red-faced uncle had a wife, too. She was short and thick and right up Quack’s alley. When you’re only five feet tall (allegedly), here is how your body stacks up to the average woman while dancing with her: your eyes are directly in line with her breasts, and your hands have nowhere to rest but on her ass. If you’re looking to nudge a pissed-off uncle over the edge, Quack dancing with his wife is how you do it. We were coming at him from all angles: his young daughter getting the creep treatment from big Dave; his dear wife’s butt getting kneaded like dough by a fat midget in a suit. A man can only take so much. He practically chased me out of the party, long before the party was over. I was all alone and had nowhere to go but to the bars in town.
Lake Placid has a lake in the middle of town. Weirdly, it’s not Lake Placid but a smaller lake called Mirror Lake. On one side of Mirror Lake was Lance Bass’s party, at which I was no longer welcome. On the other side are al
l the fun bars, my only consolation. Unless you have a boat, having a lake between you and your destination is a real pain in the dick. That’s what I kept thinking as I was walking the perimeter of the lake in my suit, drunk and alone. When I was about halfway around it, I got a call from Quack. Shortly after I had been chased out of the party, Quack had his turn, too. Have I mentioned Quack is a really fast runner for being so short and stubby? He can really scurry. It’s saved his skin several times, and this was no exception.
When Angry Uncle was done with me, he came back in for Quack. Only, Quack put up a fight before he was chased out. He poked the bear just enough to give chase. From what Quack described, it sounded like the end of a Benny Hill episode with Angry Uncle chasing him all over town. Quack was calling me from some bushes and was desperate for a rescue. He said he could see Angry Uncle pacing in the streets in front of the party, yelling about the things he was going to do to us when he caught us. Meeting me on the road was a no-go. I told Quack to head down to the water, find a dock, and I’d take care of the rest. It was after midnight on a sleepy evening in Lake Placid. Logic suggested someone had to have a boat I could borrow to go rescue my friend. What’s cooler than getting rescued by boat? Nothing. Maybe by helicopter, but I’ve been drinking. It’s not safe, you guys.
It’s shocking how easy it is to steal a boat on Mirror Lake. There are tons of them all just floating there, ripe for the picking. One dock had two boats. The first was a speedboat, but I was confident it would wake up the nice folks I was borrowing it from. The second was a fifteen-foot pontoon boat with a stationary bike in the middle of it. It looked homemade. I hopped on to get a closer look. It turns out the stationary bike was hooked up to paddles underneath the pontoons. I’d like to imagine myself as more of a steal-the-speedboat kind of guy, but when I weighed grand larceny versus getting in a solid cardio burn, I’m happy to say I made the right choice. I had three dog beers to work off, after all.
This boat could move! It was a fucking blast. It was like I was taking a Spin class, but instead of being the fattest guy in the room, I was the only guy in the room, and the room was made of water. I called Quack again to tell him I stole a boat to rescue him with, and he should walk to the end of the dock. He had no follow-up questions. He simply whispered that I needed to make haste. I made haste, all right; I was fucking flying across that lake. I had discovered that the pedals had these Velcro foot straps that would prevent any slippage, real heavy-duty. By the time I got across the lake to Quack, I was an absolute pro with this boat. I almost wish there had been more boat traffic, so I could have demonstrated a textbook parallel park. I would have nailed it.
Quack had found the longest dock in the history of docks to wait on. It came out about seventy-five feet into the water. I figured he chose that dock because it gave him the most cover in the darkness of night. That cover was immediately blown as I pulled up to the end of the dock and Quack screamed, “Permission to come aboard?!” It didn’t matter if Angry Uncle heard us from the shore, though, because this ship was leaving harbor! Quack was even emboldened to shout back to the shore about how handsome Angry Uncle’s wife had been.
As I pedaled away from the dock, I noticed how much harder it was with Quack on board. This vessel was clearly only built for one person. As I pedaled harder and harder, I knew something was off. We were going in circles, and I couldn’t figure out why. I stopped and let the paddles underneath the pontoons come to rest. After trying to hear if something was broken, I noticed a fanning sound. You hear that, Quack? He wasn’t paying attention. He had somehow gotten Angry Uncle’s wife’s phone number while dancing with her and was texting her about running away together. I did another pedal rotation, and the sound picked up. It was the right-side paddle. It had left the water and was up in the air. That was my first indication that the boat was beginning to tilt. My second indication was when the boat quickly started tilting. First, I felt it in my body, then I noticed it more as the right pontoon came completely out of the water. For some reason, Quack was still standing on the very corner of the boat, where he had hopped on. He was lost in his phone with a really fucked-up grin on his face. Quack, move to the center of the boat. No response. Quack, this thing is tipping. Still no response. Have I mentioned Quack is borderline illiterate? He gave up on reading and writing well before texting came along. As a result, he is forced to concentrate very, very hard while texting with a babe. Now we were really starting to tip. “QUACK!” I shouted. He looked up. “Hey, what’s up Dave?” He said this as if he had just bumped into me for the first time that day. We tilted a little more and a little more and in an instant, BOOM. The entire boat snapped completely upside down all at once. What kind of boat does that? A homemade one. Turns out guys who make their own boats don’t run simulations on what would happen if they had a little meatball friend jump onto one corner. Quack was thrown into the water. I wasn’t so lucky. Those Velcro straps I mentioned? They kept me right where I was as the boat flipped over on me. All of a sudden, Angry Uncle became the threat I was least worried about. I was strapped into a homemade boat that was capsized on top of me. Just as I thought the last of the boat owner’s design flaws had showed its ugly head, I had to deal with one more.
I’m not exactly sure how this next part happened, so I can only assume that the guy who built the boat is either the biggest retard in the world or he built this feature in as an antitheft device for this very situation. Once the boat was upside down, the pontoons immediately filled with water and the boat sank on top of me. Mike and I grew up floating around on The Entertainer, a pontoon boat. We’re freshwater guys! We get the physical laws of a pontoon. What. The. Hell?
By the time I got my feet unstrapped from the pedals, it was too late. I had a water-filled pontoon boat pinning me to the bottom of a lake. It was freak-out time for Dave. I tried lifting one side, then lifting the other. Way too heavy. I tried to summon that superhuman strength mothers get when they lift cars off babies. I’m not sure why that is such a universal example, as if cars are constantly pinning infants to the ground in a race against the clock, and the only option is for a mom to do a power clean before the car crushes the baby more than it already has? Apparently this happens a lot? Those moms, they find that strength from the love in their hearts. My heart was filled with scorn and cholesterol. Soon it would also be filled with lake water. That boat wasn’t moving, and I was starting to run out of air. My life completely flashed before my eyes. I thought I was going to drown on the bottom of Mirror Lake, in a full suit and tie, because I stole a boat to rescue my asshole friend who is shaped like the Kool-Aid guy. I imagined the scuba divers laughing as they found my body. I imagined the cops having no idea where to begin when they explained it to my parents. Well, he was apparently doing some sort of black-tie-only exercising in the middle of the night. . . . I imagined the Darwin Awards being renamed the Dave Stangle Awards and every embarrassing death from then on being compared to me, the ultimate retard. I imagined what my tombstone would say.
DAVE STANGLE: 1984–2011
Complete Idiot. Dumber than Sticky, the “Retarded Cat” (vet’s phrase, not ours)
As I was ready to let it all go and succumb to the cold waters, I decided to give it one more heave. This time I planted my feet firmly on the sandy bottom of the lake, did my best chair pose (yoga pays off, you guys) with the pontoons on my shoulders, and pushed with all of my might. Nope. Nothing. Shit. Okay, time to die. Something did happen at the last second, though. One of the pontoons, being homemade and all, snapped under the combination of the water pressure pushing it down and me pushing it up. An enormous air bubble let out, as if Earth farted, and one side of the boat let up. FUCK. YES. I pushed off the bottom of the lake and rose like goddamn Godzilla. I ran out of air about five feet from the surface, inhaled about a gallon before I broke the plane, and coughed and choked my way over to the dock about fifteen feet away. I put my elbows up on the dock and choked up the last of the lake water I’d taken in. I was part c
hoking, part coughing, part puking, and I think I might have even pooped a little bit? I’ll admit that here.
When I finally got my bearings, my first thought was my dear old friend Quack. I looked around and there was no sign of him out in the water. What happened to him? Did he survive? Is he okay? Do I have to swim back down and pull his fat little body out from under the boat? God damn you, Quack, GOD DAMN YOU! I WON’T LET YOU DIE! NOT TONIGH—wait. Wait a second. What is that little blob sitting in the lifeguard chair onshore? Is that Quack? If it isn’t, then it’s the Penguin from Batman. Either way, I pulled myself up on the dock and ran in toward shore to see. There at the end of the dock in a soaking-wet suit was Quack looking down at his iPhone and tapping it, then holding it up to his ear, it as if that were how you fix water damage to electronics. His first questions to me confirmed that Quack is a complete fucking lunatic: What were you doing down there? No luck finding your phone? Mine’s busted, too. Water’s nice, though, right?
Fudgies in Vegas
(Mike)
When Dave turned twenty-one, my family celebrated with a trip to Las Vegas. Our oldest brother, Sean, had moved out there a few years earlier, so it made perfect sense. At the time, I was only seventeen years old. Up until that point, getting away with drinking hadn’t really been that much of a problem. I was seventeen, sure, but I was freakishly tall, with two older brothers who looked just like me. I was able to get away with more underage partying than most.
