Sloppy Seconds: The Tucker Max Leftovers (43 page)

Junior “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!!!! WERE YOU HERE FOR THE CAR WRECK??”

DemonWhore “I KNEW YOU WEREN’T GOING TO MARRY ME!”

Junior “I STILL HAVE BLOOD ON MY SWEATER!!”

This went on for at least ten minutes. DemonWhore threw such a fit, bitched and complained so much…Junior relented. They went to the Deerfield Beach pier, and got married. With the blood of a relationship that was so bad, someone tried to end it by driving a car into a seawall, still on the sweater of the groom. GOT MARRIED WITH BLOOD STILL ON HIS SWEATER.

Here’s the best part: Junior and DemonWhore came home that night and told me the whole story. Where they were, what the car looked like, I even saw the blood on his sweater. They just left out one small little detail…THE ENTIRE PART ABOUT A WEDDING. I knew something was weird to begin with—I couldn’t figure out why the fuck they would be in the Palmetto Park gazebo that late at night—but it never would have occurred to me in a million years that they were there to get MARRIED. It made no sense.

Maybe six months later, Junior moved out and told me the news: He and DemonWhore had gotten married. Not really a shock, except I was kinda pissed he didn’t even invite me to the wedding.

Junior “Well, it was kind of an impromptu thing. There was only me, her, a priest and a lawyer.”

Tucker “When was this?”

Junior “Well…that’s the other thing…”

He filled in the blanks. I almost shit myself.

While Junior is religious in the normal way that most people are, I am not. I don’t practice any sort of religion and I don’t believe in God, at least not in the type of God that organized monotheistic religions are based on. And I don’t really even believe in fate, at least not in the way most people think of fate, but still…sometimes certain signs should not be ignored.

Tucker “Junior, YOU BELIEVE IN GOD!! If there was EVER a time to believe in that type of shit, if there was EVER a time to pay attention to the signs that the universe sends you, THIS WAS THE FUCKING TIME!”

Junior “Yeah.”

Tucker “God was so against you marrying her, he TRIED TO KILL A COUPLE AT YOUR WEDDING!!”

Junior “I know.”

Tucker “AND YOU STILL GOT MARRIED!!???!?!!?! THAT VERY NIGHT!!!”

Junior “Yeah.”

Tucker “WITH THE BLOOD OF THE WOMAN ON YOUR SWEATER!!!!”

Junior “Yeah.”

Tucker “Oh my lord. DemonWhore is so much more evil than I realized.

Dude…don’t bother praying anymore. God is done with you. The only person in history to get a clearer message from God was Moses. After ignoring this sign, even an all-forgiving God would forsake you.”

Want to predict what happened?

Thank God it was just divorce. Thank GOD they didn’t have kids. The actual divorce was just as disastrous as any awful divorce you’ve heard of. I am pretty sure DemonWhore’s first settlement request even demanded a share in Junior’s soul. This basically sums her up: The divorce court judge, after dealing with DemonWhore for a month in multiple motions and hearings, got so fed up, he said this to DemonWhore—FROM THE BENCH:

Judge “You are the most evil, sadistic wench who has ever come before my court, and I’ve been doing divorces in south Florida for almost 15 years.”

Direct, verbatim quote. When you are so awful you get a DIVORCE COURT judge in SOUTH FLORIDA to say that to you…you’re the absolute worst of the worst. And yet, Junior still married her.

Where is Junior Now

Junior is still one of my best friends on earth, but has his shit together much more than he used to. He now owns restaurants in Florida, and though still dates broken, fucked up women,
nothing
as bad as Demon-Whore. I don’t even think that’s possible.

I go visit him all the time in the West Palm Beach area. If you follow me on Twitter (
@tuckermax
), I usually tweet about when I go to his restaurants, so you can come meet him. Unlike most of my friends, he likes it when people know him from my books.

SOME GLIMPSES INTO MY CHILDHOOD

People are always asking me about what I was like as a kid growing up or in high school or shit like that. I don’t fucking know. I never write about those periods in my life because I’m not a fucking biographer and I don’t particularly enjoy chronicling trauma survival—I like writing funny, engaging and entertaining stories about my life, not annoying little anecdotes about shitty aspects of my childhood.

That being said, I do have a few childhood stories that are kinda funny:

MOM!

When I was a kid, my mother was a flight attendant. As a result, I spent many hours of my childhood riding on planes. I’d probably been to 15 countries by the time I was 5.

One time, when I was about 3 or 4, my mother and I were flying somewhere. She wasn’t working this flight, so we were travelling as passengers in normal passenger seats. I was sitting on her lap, because I was still at the age (and size) where it was cute and convenient (and legal) to do that. About midway through the flight, I had to take a shit.

I told my mom I could go make a poop without her help. I walked down the aisle, opened the door, turned and pulled the latch back like I’d been taught, and got on the throne.

I was right: I was more than capable of taking a shit without any help from anyone. But when I was finished, I realized that I couldn’t quite perform all of the essential functions of bathroom duty, so I opened the door, and yelled down the plane:

“MOM! COME WIPE MY BUTT!”

A smattering of nervous laughter broke out across the plane as my poor, horribly embarrassed mother got up from her seat in the front of the plane, and walked all the way to the back to tend to my request.

I JUST LIKE TO SAY ‘SMOCK’

My mom and I had a lot of arguments in my youth. Most weren’t that funny, at least not to me, but one that does make me laugh is the argument that led me to discover that I unequivocally was smarter than her.

For most of my early life, I thought I might be smarter than my mom. Until I got to be about 10 or 11, that was probably just childhood hubris. Around 12 though, I started to realize I might be right. I remembered things better, I did calculations in my head faster, I always seemed a step ahead of her. This is not to say I thought my mom was a dumbass—I was just a genius, and I developed pretty quickly intellectually.

My mom loved Scrabble, and I would play with her a lot and she would always beat me. Until the day of this story. I was stomping her all over the board, ahead by at least 50 points with maybe five words left apiece. She put some word on that went to the edge of the board, and I struck gold on my next turn, triple word scoring with “smock” to further extend my lead.

She had completely crap letters, and could not find anything decent. She would normally throw them in and skip the turn, but being so far behind she had to get some points with what she had. As a last ditch effort, she added an “O” to the “K” at the end of “smock” forming “OK.” No chance. I called her out for violating the Scrabble rule that prohibited abbreviations.

We argued for like 20 minutes. And not the good kind of argument where she makes legit linguistic points and I refute them—this thing was ad hominem all the way, with both of us cursing and insulting each other. It was like a scene straight out of “Intervention”.

Finally, I had enough, grabbed the dictionary, found “OK”, pointed at the ‘abbrv’ sign right next to it and shoved it right in front of her fucking face to see. She blurted out an angry:

Mom “I DON’T CARE WHAT THAT DAMN THING SAYS, IT’S A WORD TO ME!”

Tucker “YOU’RE FUCKING WRONG AND I’M SMARTER THAN YOU!”

Mom “I AM YOUR MOTHER AND I AM KEEPING MY POINTS!”

I took the dictionary and smashed it on the Scrabble board, then turned over the whole table on top of her, scattering the tiles everywhere.

That was the last time we ever played Scrabble.

GUACAMOLE IS DELICIOUS

My dad grew up around the food business and still owns restaurants to this day (Max’s Grille in Boca Raton is the flagship). As a result, I’ve been exposed to a lot of food experiences, especially at an early age. I can remember trying things like caviar, lobster, sea urchin, veal, and any number of other unusual or exotic foods, and of course, most were extremely delicious.

One time, I was about 11 years old, I was in Florida visiting my dad and step-mom, and her parents—my step-grandparents—were there as well. The five of us were at dinner, and being that it was fall and soft-shell crab season—one of my favorite foods—I ordered the special.

The dish came out and looked fantastic. It had an Asian fusion theme and soy sauce with it, but whatever—it was pan-seared soft-shell crab. You could garish it with cat poop and it’d still be awesome. Next to the ramekin of soy sauce, I noticed these big, almond shaped green things.

Tucker “Dad, what’s this?”

Without the slightest hesitation my Dad responds:

Dad “That’s a special type of guacamole.”

Tucker “Guacamole is delicious!”

Dad “That’s especially good, pop it in your mouth and try it.”

I grab it, shove it in my mouth and start happily chewing on it. There is no obvious flavor at first…

…then all of the sudden, my mouth EXPLODES from the heat, my nostrils are seared by violent pain, my throat feels like it’s being gripped in a vice…

…and I vomit all over the table. All over everyone’s food, plates, everything.

It wasn’t guacamole at all. It was a full slab of wasabi (Japanese horseradish). That I ate all at once, vigorously chewing, not having any idea what I was in for.

StepMom “Oh my God Dennis, look what he did!”

My dad and step-grandfather almost die they are laughing so hard. I mean that literally—my step-grandfather choked on his food and almost had to have the Heimlich applied he was laughing so hard, and my dad nearly blew a vein in his forehead from laughter.

I was not laughing. It took me at least three hours, and gallons of water, to get the wasabi taste out of my mouth, nose and lungs. For a fucking food guy, my dad could have at least told me that water only makes it worse and you need to drink milk to mute the pain. Maybe if he hadn’t been laughing so hard, he would have thought to tell me.

HOW I LEARNED TO MASTURBATE

There are only two types of liars: Those that say they don’t, and those that say they quit. Everyone masturbates. The only people who don’t masturbate are eunuchs and midgets whose arms are too short to reach their privates.

I’m no different. I love jacking off. At this point in my life, I still masturbate at least once a day, and that’s even if I’m having regular sex with a girl(s). I used to be way worse—when I was 22, if I found a good video on the internet, I’d skip a class to rub a few out.

If you are too young, stupid, or repressed to have found your genitals yet, you may be asking yourself why I’ve incorporated masturbation into my daily schedule with such fierce dedication. The positives are numerous: you know your body better than anyone else, it’s quick, free, easy, and fun. And these positives far outweigh the negatives, which are none.

Masturbation is not better than having sex with a girl, but it can definitely be better than dealing with all the girl’s shit. There have been dozens of girls in my lifetime who, when presented with the chance to fuck them, I’ve turned them down and masturbated instead, simply because I knew that after I shot my nut, my hand would not get pregnant, not give me an STD, and not expect me to entertain it or stay awake talking about shit I don’t care about.

As much as I love masturbation, I started doing it late in life. Because I grew up in Kentucky in the early 90’s, before the internet really existed in a meaningful way, I wasn’t even fully sure what masturbation was until I got to be like 13 or 14. I just knew it was supposedly awful and anyone suspected of it was summarily mocked, so I never really thought much about it.

Don’t get me wrong; I had plenty of my uncle’s old porn stashed under my bed, I just thought you were supposed to look at it, like a study guide or a topographical map. What if a girl you were with decided to do yoga on a pool table and rest her shoulders on the felt in downward dog position while she tucked her head underneath her leg, sucked on her tit, stuck her ass up in the air and pressed the tip of a pool cue against her clit (my uncle liked
Hustler
)? You needed to be prepared.