I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (18 page)

streets, man.
"
Sling Blade "And do you think that perhaps your poor negotiation skill
s
had something to do with this? Hmmm?
"
Beggar "No man, my ex-wife kicked me out man, I got nowhere to go.
"
SlingBlade "You just said the magic words. Here's your beer back.
"
Beggar "How about some change?
"
SlingBlade "Don't push it. You're lucky I haven't knocked out you
r
tooth.
"

We decide to go to a strip club, The Yellow Rose. To this day, I stil
l
laugh recalling our thought process: EI Bingeroso is too drunk an
d
violent to walk around the streets, so let's take him to a place with nake
d
women and large angry bouncers! Sounds great! It'll be all sunshin
e
and kittens from there
!

There are six of us, so we split into two cabs. Cab 1 is me, Mermai
d
and Dirty. Cab 2 is PWJ, SlingBlade and EI Bingeroso. It's only like te
n
minutes to the Rose, and Cab 1 arrives with no problem. The three o
f
us go inside, and immediately Mermaid says to me, "We are i
n
Gomorrah.
"

If you go out a lot, you know that you can never try too hard to make
a
party; you just have to kinda see where the night takes you. You d
o
that enough, and every now and then you stumble into one of thos
e
absolutely perfect situations, where it seems like everything just fall
s
into place. It was that kind of night at the Yellow Rose
.

It was a Sunday night, so the place was not crowded, but for som
e
reason there were lots of dancers on shift. We were dressed well, ha
d
lots of cash on us, and all three of us have good game, so before w
e
realized it there were about 5 or 6 girls hanging with us at our table
.
Dirty assesses the situation, looks up at me, gives his devious smil
e
and then pulls a classic Dirty maneuver, "Ladies, do you know wh
o
that guy is?" He points to me. "That is Tucker Max. He looks like
a
humble guy, but in reality he is one of the creators of, and the fourt
h
largest stockholder in, Yahoo. I'm sure I don't need to tell you ladie
s
what Yahoo is, do I?" Of course, two of them did require explanation
,
but the other four knew what it was, and one said she owned stock i
n
Yahoo
.

Now, obviously this is not even remotely true. I was dirt poor and didn'
t
even own the car I drove. But Dirty went to the PT Barnum School o
f
Marketing, and learned the most important lesson very well: The bigge
r

the lie, the more likely people are to believe it.

I pretended to be unassuming and nonchalant as he kept talking me up. All six couldn't have been hooked more if we'd landed them with tackle and a line. The best part was the dancer who owned stock in Yahoo seemed to know a little bit about the stock market, and tested me by asking who the CEO was. I had worked for Fenwick & West that summer, and one of their main clients was Yahoo, so I knew quite a bit about them. The look on her face when I said, "Are you kidding? I helped hire Tim Koogle," was fucking priceless. 1thought she might go down on me right there at the table.

Playing the part, I ordered bottle service for the table, and before we knew it, there was free lap dances and gratuitous groping all around. It was great. One of the strippers had done some porn before, so I asked her about something I had always wondered about: Tucker "I understand how female porn stars are selected, but if you are a guy, and you don't have a huge cock or shoot 8-ropers, how do you get into the porn industry?" Mermaid "Networking, dude, networking." Stripper "I don't know. I just fucked whoever they told me to. It paid good." Tucker "Well isn't that pleasant? I bet your parents are beaming with pride."

We had all six convinced to come back to our hotel with us, when all of the sudden Mermaid looks up at us and goes, "Where the fuck is EI Bingeroso?"

In our eagerness to exploit strippers, we had totally forgotten about the other three guys. I checked my phone-4 missed calls, all from PWJ. I wondered what was vibrating in my pocket. Mermaid grabbed my phone and went outside to make some calls. He came back five minutes later with a look of complete exasperation on his face, "Dudes-EI Bingeroso is in jail. We need to get out of here." Leaving the strippers and what should have been a night of carnal ecstasy that would have made Caligula blush, we return to Embassy Suites. PWJ fills us in on the story of Cab 2:

As soon as they got in the cab, PWJ and SlingBlade realized that EI Bingeroso was in trouble. He was passed the Violent Drunk Stage, and was now barreling towards the Comatose Drunk Stage. In order to keep him awake, they asked him questions.

PWJ "So, EI Bingeroso, how did you meet Kristy [his fiancee]?
"
EI Bingeroso "Dude, I met her in a bar, man. It was in college. I worke
d
there.
"
PWJ "Was she in a sorority?
"
EI Bingeroso "Yeah man, I met her in a bar.
"
PWJ "I know this, you already told me that. What did you do on you
r
first date? Something special?
"
EI Bingeroso "I met her in a bar, man. I met her in a bar.
"
It went on like this until he basically collapsed in Sling Blade's lap
.
About two minutes later, and only about 3 blocks from the strip club, E
I
Bingeroso shoots upright and says, "We need to pull over!
"
Assuming that he is going to throw up, the cab immediately pulls ove
r
into the parking lot of a convenience store. EI Bingeroso gets out
,
stumbles around for a second, unzips his pants, drops them to hi
s
feet, and starts pissing. Right in the middle of the parking lot
.
He is still weaving, and PWJ doesn't want him to piss on his pants, s
o
he gets behind EI Bingeroso, wraps his arms around his chest, and hold
s
him up while he pisses
.

Now picture this scene in your mind: It's Texas, midnight on a Sunday
,
and in the middle of a convenience store parking lot is a guy with hi
s
pants around his ankles, and another guy behind him with his arm
s
wrapped around his chest. What would you think
?
Me too. And that is exactly what the cop that drove by at that momen
t
thought
.

PWJ said all he heard was the screeching of tires before he looked u
p
and saw a large Austin City Police officer hop out of his car and yell (i
n
a good-ol-boy Texas accent)
:
"WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE YEW TWO DOIN'?!?
"
SlingBlade tried to get out of the cab to explain, but the cop put hi
s
hand on his gun and barked, "GET BACK IN THE CAB!" SlingBlad
e
immediately complied, because this is what a childhood of risk aversio
n
does to a man
.

PWJ stepped in front of EI Bingeroso, "Officer, I'm sorry, please let m
e
explain. My friend got very drunk tonight, and we pulled over becaus
e
we thought he was going to vomit, but he started to pee, so I got behin
d
him to hold him up. He is very drunk, he just needs to go back t
o
the hotel and lay down.
"

The cop was the stereotypical idiot meathead Austin Cop, "So yo
u
think you can just piss here, right on the road, right here in this parkin
g

lot? There's a hospital two blocks away, we're trying to keep thi
s
neighborhood pristine, and you're over here pissing all over the place.
"
PWJ is money under pressure, and for once being the son of
a
domineering military officer paid off-he stayed calm, and after about
5
minutes of very lucid, reasoned and submissive explanation, h
e
reassured the cop that everything was OK and got the situation unde
r
control
.

It looked like he was going to get EI Bingeroso off the hook
.
Then a second cop car pulled up, and the second cop pulled E
I
Bingeroso aside and talked to him separately. PWJ said he looke
d
over about 2 minutes later, saw EI Bingeroso gesticulating wildly an
d
pointing in the cop's face, heard him yell something about "Mr. Plasti
c
Badge," and then watched him get thrown on the hood of the cop car
,
hand-cuffed, and taken away, kicking the rear windows as it pulled off
.
This is when the phone calls started
.

Now back to the hotel room. We decide to send PWJ and Mermaid t
o
bailout EI Bingeroso, and the rest of us go to sleep. It's about 3am a
t
this point. I wake up at 8am, and PWJ, Mermaid and EI Bingeroso stil
l
aren't in. I realize that my phone was turned off, so I turn it on, and se
e
that I have 3 new messages. I listen to them, break down laughing
,
and wake up everyone else to listen to them also. Here they are, copie
d
absolutely fucking verbatim off my voicemail
:

Message # 1, 1:32am: "Jackass, I am in jail ... um, I am in, uh, jai
l
dude. I am in Austin County Jail. Umm ... you need to call me man
.
You need to fucking come bail me out. I'm in jail dude, it's not cool.
"

Message # 2, 2:44am: "Hey dude man, I'm in jail. This is EI Bingeroso
.
You need to come get me. Uhhh ... PWJ called ... it's not cool man
.
Come get me.
"

Message # 3, 7:48am: "Tucker, this is EI Bingeroso man. I'm at the po
-
lice headquarters in Austin. And I just got out of jail. I don't know wh
o
posted bond, but you know, whatever. Like, uhhh, I'm looking for
a
ride, so hopefully I'll run into you guys, and uhh, get a ride. If I don't
,
have a good time in Dallas.
"

As EI Bingeroso was making that last call, PWJ and Mermaid wer
e
waiting for him outside on the steps of the Austin County Courthouse
.
He was finally released a few hours later
:
EI Bingeroso "PWJ, let me ask you one question: What did I do to ge
t

thrown in jail?
"

They bring EI Bingeroso to the hotel, and he is in bad shape. He look
s
like a Johnny Cash song. In addition to his rank smell and disgustin
g
clothes, he has a huge shiner above his right eye
.
Mermaid "EI Bingeroso, dude, what's wrong with your eye? Did th
e
cop hit you?
"
EI Bingeroso "Probably.
"
Mermaid "Why did he hit you?
"
EI Bingeroso "I said horrible things about his grandma in Spanish ..
.
apparently he spoke it.
"
Mermaid "What was going on? How did it happen?
"
EI Bingeroso "I was in a cell with all these Mexican guys, and yo
u
know, I was pissed, so I was organizing a prison riot with the bendejos
,
when all of the sudden the door opened and WHACK. It is not fun wakin
g
up on the floor of the drunk tank, covered in vomit and piss.
"
Mermaid "Are you OK?
"
EI Bingeroso "Yeah, I guess ... Guys, seriously, how did I end up i
n
jail?
"

We recounted the entire night to him. He lost memory somewher
e
around the 6th tequila shot. After we finished telling him the story, h
e
was quiet for second, then looked at us with the most pitiful expressio
n
I have ever seen on his face
,
"Dude ... I am not a good drunk.
"