Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
Page 18
After getting kicked out of so many casinos, we had developed quite the following. We had a posse of people, mostly Asians, taking pictures of us and pointing and yelling. It was like they couldn’t believe how much progressively worse we were behaving, the more we got in trouble. What started as a small following soon became a large fan group. Our sheer size and sweatiness combined with our absolutely reckless behavior and inability to stay on our feet made us irresistible. I knew Dave was drunk at this point, because he had no problem with the Asian flash mob following us. He’s told me before in confidence that he has a real fear of traveling to Japan, on account of being so much bigger than everyone. He thinks they’ll associate him with Godzilla or something. After we got kicked out of the Bellagio, we grabbed another round of outdoor whalebone Long Island iced teas for us and also a bunch for our new group of friends. Big mistake. That tab came to about six hundred dollars, and I’m pretty sure they stopped charging us after they ran out of whalebones. Anything for our new friends, though.
The plan was to walk the Strip east for another half mile, then cross and try our luck at the Hard Rock Café. We adopted a new strategy, in which we chose our next spots based on where Sean was owed the most favors. He was cashing in all of his chips that night, and word came to us that the Hard Rock was actually fudgie-friendly. It was past midnight at this point, and I was starting to lose steam. I was becoming a mess. I had problems to worry about. While my brothers had their phones and wallets safely tucked between their two pairs of fudgies, I was dealing with a cracked phone and three missing credit cards on account of my stuff repeatedly falling out of my single pair of undies. On top of that, every time I got cash back after buying drinks, I threw it in my undies like it was a big coin purse. It was like I was wearing a diaper made of singles and I legit had a nickel in my butthole. Do you know how dirty money is? Whatever, you only turn twenty-one once, right? I was getting fed up with my phone and wallet getting in the way of my sick-ass dance slides, and I had to be at max flexibility if I was going to keep up with Dave and Sean. Those guys were sliding like the dickens. As a quick and thoughtful solution, I gave my phone and wallet to my new friend Akiha to hold on to. She was dressed up like a sexy cop and had actually let Dave smooch her for a little bit earlier in the night, so I knew I could trust her with my stuff. Asians are trustworthy, right?
You know what aren’t trustworthy? Whalebones. Who the fuck drinks cocktails out of those things? They are fucking HUGE! After my last on-the-street whalebone, well, I blacked out for a while. Maybe it was closer to a brown-out, because I can account for a few things. To start, I should not have trusted Akiha. She straight up left and was gone. I had some pretty interesting charges on my cards when I canceled them the next day. Akiha had herself a nice night. When I came to, I was peeing on my feet in a very nice bathroom, and Akiha was probably halfway back to the Orient! I was phoneless, without wallet, and without brothers in a city where you need that stuff. Where the fuck were they? Where the fuck was I? I grabbed the first trustworthy-looking guy I could find. He was dressed up like James Earl Jones’s character in Coming to America, the King of Zamunda. He wore a giant lion’s head draped over him like a sash and a ton of gold. He nailed that costume, and we hit it off right away. He was very helpful and gave me the facts I needed. I got his number, actually. It’s still in my phone under King Jaffe Jaffer.
I was at the Hard Rock. Somehow we had gotten in. Or I had gotten in? I wasn’t sure if they had been with me or what was really going on. I also didn’t have a phone or a wallet, but I did have a drink and my costume was still intact. I was smiling. All good signs. I quickly peeled off one layer of tube socks. Oh, I didn’t tell you? I went double tube socks. That was my leverage when my brothers got two pairs of undies and I didn’t. With clean socks and a road soda, I set out on the Strip to find my brothers. It couldn’t be too difficult, considering the attention we were getting earlier. I took off on my own, having conquered my blackout. The first person I asked pointed me toward them. Well, in their general direction, anyway. My hunt quickly became the most entertaining game I’ve ever played. I kept forgetting how I was dressed and asking people if they’d seen people who were dressed like . . . well, me. It was like following the yellow brick road of giant white guys in their fudgies. I asked every Asian in sight. It was honestly foolproof. Have you seen two . . . guys who look exactly like me?? Yup! Thatta way. Put some fucking pants on, by the way; you are truly disgusting. Eventually, I spotted the guys.
How did we have so much energy and how could we continue to drink hard alcohol? Well, it was my twenty-first birthday, so I was automatically invincible. On top of that, we all ate a ton of Adderall during that Akon set from earlier. Have I mentioned how much I sweat? With the combination of Adderall, tequila, dancing, dress shirt with no undershirt, and my fucked-up adrenal glands, it was a rain forest. The circles of sweat under my arms were so big they stretched to my nipples. I can’t control it, so I’m not embarrassed about it, okay?! Dave did not let the sweat go unnoticed (as if anyone hadn’t noticed it already; he just made it okay to talk about). From then on, most of his dance moves were interactive with mine. If I was raising the roof, he was underneath me pretending to wring out my pits like wet washcloths, to the rhythm of the song. He’s pretty interpretive.
Put yourself in my shoes for a minute. I’m newly twenty-one, single, my tighty whiteys are well received, and I’m drunk. Remember all that angst about being left out of all the fun last trip to Vegas? That was all forgotten. By now, I was on to looking for love in all the wrong places. What I mean by that is I was being a complete lush. Really not playing hard to get. The problem was that every time I was talking to a gal, Dave would walk over at some point with two things: 1) shots, because it was one of those kind of nights; or 2) some sort of insult about my sweaty armpits. The gal would look down, I’d act weird, she’d walk away. Dave would be satisfied, we’d take the shots. I didn’t mind at first. Things repeated like that for a while, until I started to get really drunk-mad.
As we were cruising toward the eastern side of the Strip, I ran around the corner, determined to dupe Dave somehow. I needed to embarrass him, hit him with something, just get him. I came across a stack of newspapers that were advertising nudie gals. It was bundled up pretty good. Immediately my brain replayed a cartoon I once saw of Bugs Bunny smacking some guy with a stack of newspapers. Hilarious. That is exactly what I would do. The Asians will love this. I bent down to grab the papers, just as Dave was coming around the corner toward me yelling, “Where are you, you Sweaty Sack of Shit!?” I executed your classic spinning shot-put throw and absolutely crushed Dave with the stack of papers, right off his feet. Hilarious! Well, until he didn’t get up. A cool fourteen seconds later, one of our new friends whipped out some smelling salts. Why was this guy carrying smelling salts? I don’t know. The real question is, why don’t you carry smelling salts? They can come in handy. I now carry smelling salts, in fact.
Dave came to immediately, and I stopped nervous sweating, but continued regular sweating. He was okay, kind of. Something had changed. The first thing I expected to happen was for him to attack me physically. I had really gotten him good with the stack of papers, much worse than I saw it playing it out in my head. Fortunately, he was concussed to the point of retardation. He didn’t remember what I’d done to him, thank God. I quickly blamed it on my least favorite Asian in the group, and we carried on. On top of the unhealthy amount of drugs and alcohol that was in his system, his brain was now functioning in four-wheel low. He was on all fours, crawling slowly, for a long time. I could not believe the things he was forgetting. We can laugh about it now, because he’s still here and only a little slower than he used to be, but at the time, Sean and I were downright worried.
The rest of the night, Dave made no sense whatsoever. He kept wandering off the Strip with groups that were not ours. We did a pretty good job of keeping concussed Dave with us and without a beverage in his hand for the rest
of the night, until the very end of it. Our Asian posse was very concerned with his well-being and helped us keep him out of trouble. Those guys were good to him, but they called it a night around three and the Stangle boys were alone once more. Around 4 a.m., things were getting hazy again. All I can really say is that at some point, Sean and I lost Dave. Flat-out lost him. In our defense, holding on to Dave was like trying to keep track of a learning-disabled dog with amnesia. He didn’t even recognize us at that point. What about long-term brain damage, you say? That’s not the point of the story, so quit asking questions. Dave and I will hash that out between us.
Sean was in the middle of explaining the finer points of a rare tequila he insisted we drink, out of our minds, at four in the morning, when I realized we lost Dave. Shit. The brother search was on again. Sean and I were incredibly inefficient in our search. The have you seen a guy dressed like us? line was no longer working. I think this was because we were so drunk none of the words came out like that, and we were also really beat up and dirty from the marathon party that was coming to a close. Blood, sweat, and fudgies. No one would help us. After another whalebone Long Island iced tea and a full lap of the entire Strip, we had been looking for two hours and hadn’t seen him in at least three.
We stopped in front of Treasure Island, defeated. If you’ve never been there, a giant pirate ship sits right out front in some water that resembles a lagoon. I was leaning on a railing, looking at the pirate ship, and my peripheral vision caught Dave. He was wading aimlessly through the thigh-deep water. He did not look good, and he was walking exactly like a zombie. We flagged him down and got him out of the water, and were happy to have found him. He explained to us that he’d just been taking a quick swamp nap on the side of the pirate ship display and there was nothing to worry about. He had probably swallowed a little water, sure, but he needed to hydrate anyway, he explained. He couldn’t explain where he’d been or what he’d been doing for the past three hours; he just kept repeating “swamp nap” in this weird little kid voice. We stopped asking questions and conceded to getting a room at Treasure Island for the night. We woke up three across a full-sized bed and had no complaints. We were alive.
Since Dave’d had his swamp nap, he naturally had the most energy the next morning. He did some research and attempted to piece together our night. Remember, this was 2009, so hashtags were in their awkward teenage years. It didn’t matter, we were all over the Internet. Sliding, dancing, kissing, puking, full frontal nudity, you name it. Facebook, Twitter, Photobucket, Myspace, fucking Webshots.
As many times as we’ve recounted that story, I always manage to evade blame for severely concussing Dave with the newspapers. In fact, I have made the ultimate sacrifice in writing this, because he still has no idea it was me. When he reads this for the first time in a couple of minutes, he is not going to be the happiest guy.
Afterword
We Fed Mom a Pot Cookie
Mama,
That wasn’t so bad, was it? Oh, you aren’t even reading anymore, because you’re sobbing uncontrollably? Thanks for still loving us. We’re published now. That means we’ll get to go to some after-parties that go on after the parties we’ll get to go to. There will be champagne everywhere. Do you want to come? Let us first just check that we aren’t getting authors confused with rappers, and then we’ll send you all the details.
Listen, while we’ve got you here and we’re all on the nonjudgment train, we’d like to get one last thing off of our chests. We are genuinely sorry you’re finding out about this now, and I’m sure the night in question will now make a lot more sense, but it was really funny. Besides, if we know you like we think we do—you’ll be laughing and shaking your head any minute now.
Remember when you and Dave came out to visit me in Colorado in the winter of 2012? We skied, we partied, we hit the hot springs, we laughed. Remember that first night, how particularly hard we laughed? We laughed so hard, it didn’t even make sense. We can probably make some sense of it now.
You know those times when you’re put in a situation and you realize that the right thing to do, the responsible thing to do, and the decent thing to do are all the same thing? Then you shrug, look at your brother for confirmation, and do the exact opposite? Dave is a master of that situation—such a dick. I still can’t understand why he’s your favorite.
Anyway, Mama, I’ll cut to the chase. It was Colorado and I was twenty-two years old, so naturally I had a ton of pot stuff around the house. You saw it, thanks for not judging. You, me, Dave, Sean, and about eight of my close friends were sitting in my living room having a few cocktails around the fire after a nice day on the slopes. It was getting late, the wine was flowing. Denny, you were a little buzzed—don’t worry, we peer-pressured you. I looked over and there’s Dave with a big ole pot cookie in hand. Yes, Mama, that cookie had pot in it. It all happened too fast!
You:
Oh, Dave! I didn’t know we had dessert. Where’d you get that, it looks delicious?
One second of hesitation. Dave and I look at each other, shrug.gg
Dave:
Take it, I’m getting fat anyway.
You:
Thanks, Dave, this is DELICIOUS.
Next thing I know, you’re mowing down the magical treat. Giggles ensue. You even asked me for the recipe! Don’t worry, there’s no way Dad made it far enough through the book to actually read this. That night is going to make a lot more sense to you now, huh? Sorry, mama! Love you!
Dave and Mike
Mike, Dave, and Dave’s forehead as kids. Not pictured: The fucking genius who designed Mike’s outfit.
Appendix
Craigslist as a Creative Outlet to Sell Everything!
Shitty End Table
For sale is this here end table. Some call it a bedside table. It is a cool color green and very sturdy and in good shape. My ex-girlfriend sanded it, painted it for me, put new handles on it, then promptly dumped me. If bought for full price, top drawer will come with a nudy shot of her inside of it (8x 10, framed for an extra $10). It is two drawer and good for socks, underwear, other unspeakables. Bulldog not automatically included (negotiable), only shown for size comparison.
It’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests.
Posting ID: 3546505915
Posted: 2013-01-14, 9:39PM EST
* * *
On Mon, Jan 14, 2013, at 10:06 PM, Beth Babicz (bethbabicz@xxxxxx.com) wrote:
Hi there,
I’m very interested in the end table. What are the dimensions? I’d be able to come by and pick it up tomorrow night if that works for you.
Also, I’d be glad to take the bulldog off your hands!
Please let me know.
Thanks!
Beth
On Jan 14, 2013, at 10:11 PM, Dave Stangle (dave.stangle@xxxxxx.com) wrote:
Hi Beth,
Tomorrow works. The dimensions are: 14 inches deep, 17.5 wide, 22 inches high. The bulldog is currently passed out next to me snoring very loudly. Should he keep it up I will consider giving him up to you upon your arrival.
On Mon, Jan 14, 2013, at 10:58 PM, Beth Babicz (bethbabicz@xxxxxx.com) wrote:
Sounds good. I work in upper east until 8:30, so would 8:45 be ok?
I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the pup.
Sent from my iPhone
On Tue, Jan 15, 2013, at 10:42 PM, Beth Babicz (bethbabicz@xxxxxx.com) wrote:
Hey Dave,
So I love my end table but I have to admit—my roommates were pretty disappointed that I didn’t make friends with the funny craigslist guy. We do feel that we are just as witty, so if you’re ever interested in playing Apples to Apples here’s my number: 9413213XXX.
Beth
Sent from my iPhone
From: Dave Stangle (dave.stangle@xxxxxx.com)
Date: Wed, Jan 16, 2013, at 9:06 PM
Subject: Re: Cool green end table—$34 (Upper East Side)
To: Beth Babicz (bet
hbabicz@xxxxxx.com)
Cc: anthony@xxxxxx.biz, Timothy Clinton (Timothy.M.
Clinton@xxxxxx.com), Howard Freedman (howard.d.
freedman@xxxxxx.com), Jackson Kiniry (jackson.kiniry@xxxxxx.com)
Beth,
I apologize for a lack of small talk last night when you purchased the end table I advertised on craigslist. By the time you came to the door a combination of work related stress and severe back pain (from my bad boy lifestyle $$$) had driven me deep into a drug and alcohol fueled haze by which my manners completely escaped me. Had there been less chemicals in my blood stream, which is the case most Tuesdays, I would have offered you a chilled glass of box wine while we spoke of end tables, bulldogs, and your recent move to Manhattan’s East Village. I would also like to apologize as my ad on craigslist clearly states that any buyer who pays full price for the end table is entitled to a nudy shot of my ex-girlfriend. I will consider this an open case. A Lannister always pays his debts.
Regarding your invitation to play Apples to Apples—I happily accept on the grounds that you agree to the following: Everyone knows Apples to Apples is a game based not only on speed, wit, panic, passion, and facetiousness . . . but also on sheer numbers. A game of A2A played 1 vs. 1 would just be downright silly (and at this point creepy as we already owe knowing each other to a craigslist ad). Copied on this email are 4 men. I know each of these men well and can attest to that fact that each of them meets at least 3 of the following 5 characteristics:
1. Tall
2. Single
3. Free Spirited
4. Between moderately to extremely handsome.