That kid’s a fucking idiot, and there’s no doubt he will spend the majority of his adult life in a federal prison … but that was the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
THE FINAL STRAW
At this point, you may be thinking that Cancun sounds like an amazing drunken party paradise. Who wouldn’t think that getting fucked-in-half drunk every night and screwing random college girls was a cool job, right? It was … for about two weeks.
Then reality starts catching up to you, especially if you’re like me and cannot understand the concept of moderation. The human body is not made to withstand dumping poison into it every day. Nor is it built to endure constant sleep deprivation, or deal with deafening club music pumping through it for 12 hours a day. And as much as I like having sex, at some point—even with condoms—all the contagious retroviruses and germs you catch from physical contact begin to overwhelm your immune system.
And the FOOD! Don’t even get me started on eating Mexican food. It’s awful. Not only is it Mexico, it’s Mexican people cooking for retarded American tourists. In the Venn diagram of food, this is where “bad” intersects with “doesn’t care about quality” and “foreign sanitation standards” to create truly appalling meals. Even drinking 3000 calories of alcohol a day I lost weight, because I just couldn’t eat the slop they served.
After about six weeks, I was coming to the end of my party rope. As much as I loved getting paid vacation, I was getting tired of it. I hated the bullshit of law school, and Cancun was the opposite of that—but this place had its own suite of bullshit that was really starting to bore the fuck out of me as well. It sounds ridiculous to say I was tired of getting paid to party and fuck, but I kinda was.
Then this happened. This incident was the final straw that made me go back home.
Like I said, by this point my liver was made of iron. I would wake up, drink 10–15 beers at the afternoon beach party, take a nap and then drink another 15–25 drinks at night, and still couldn’t really get drunk. My body became supremely efficient at processing the poison I was dumping into it.
Well, this particular week there was some sorority there that loved me. They were all kinda mediocre looking, from some Big Ten degree factory, I honestly can’t remember which one. I want to say it was Purdue, but I really don’t know. Nice enough girls, and they were super impressed with me, so I liked them.
Anyway, one night we were in some club, and I tried to explain to them how being in Cancun had affected me:
Tucker “You don’t understand, I can’t get drunk anymore.”
SororityGirl “Oh come on, every guy says this.”
Tucker “I don’t think you understand who you’re talking to.”
They kept talking all sorts of nonsense and trying to call me out. I got fed up with their hopeless whore logic, and became determined to drink these bitches into a coma.
Tucker “OK, let’s do a drinking contest. But it would be unfair for me to take you on without a handicap. So I’ll do this: I’ll out drink each of you … collectively. There are six of you. Each of you do one shot, and I’ll do SIX.”
They looked at me like I told them I have phone sex with dolphins. They really couldn’t comprehend this contest; I guess critical thinking night wasn’t an event on their rush calendar. I eventually just stopped using words, and lined up two groups of six shots.
Tucker “See—one for each of you, and six for me.”
They stared at me in complete and utter disbelief (though, being that they were from the Big Ten, they would have spelled it “udder”).
SororityGirl “You can’t do that. You’ll die.”
Tucker “Is that supposed to scare me? If I must face death to get drunk.
I willingly accept the challenge.”
SororityGirl “Uh … OK. Let’s do it.”
Those first shots are my last clear, unambiguous memory from the night. You know the saying, “Don’t write checks with your mouth that your ass can’t cash”? Well, that night my mouth was Bernie Madoff and my ass was his Ponzi scheme.
My next memory is intense, awful pain. I’m not even sure I would have qualified as alive in some states. I’ve woken up from major surgery that was more pleasant than that morning. My entire body ached; my head felt like it’d been stomped by a rhino, I was so dehydrated that I couldn’t blink my eyes, and my arms and legs wouldn’t work. I would wager that—when I woke up—it was one of the ten drunkest moments of my life.
Even worse, I have no fucking clue where I am. This is not my hotel room. This is not a hotel room I even recognize. I begin to realize that there is a girl lying next to me on the bed, shaking me, saying something. She is not happy. She is also not skinny. Or attractive. She may not even be human.
Still struggling to come out of my haze, I also notice that this isn’t one of the girls I drank with last night. Though judging by her size, she may have eaten them.
AngryFatty “Tucker.”
Tucker “Arrrrr whhhhaaaaa aaaaaayyyy.”
AngryFatty “Tucker, wake up.”
Tucker “Neeeeeeeeed rrrrrrrrrrrr fuuuuuuuuuuuck.”
AngryFatty “Tucker! TUCKER, WAKE UP!”
Tucker “Jesus, alright! I’m awake! What?”
She glares at me with the type of look you give your dog when it shits on the rug.
AngryFatty “Tucker … why is there a condom in my ass?”
No matter how much hangover pain you are in, that sentence will make you laugh.
In fact, I was laughing so hard, I rolled out of the bed, fell onto the floor and hurt myself even more. I pulled on the first piece of clothing I could find, and just walked out. I mean, what else could I do in that situation? Investigate?
Out on the sidewalk, I realized that I didn’t have anything on my feet. Then, when I saw people gawking at me, I looked down at what I wearing. It was not mine. There I was, barefoot, in dark pink hot pants walking down the street. Everyone was laughing at me. I tried to get on a bus back to my hotel, but I didn’t have any money. The MEXICAN bus driver gave me a look of contempt, closed the doors right in my face, and pulled away. I had found the floor of working class Mexican decency, and was now in the basement below it.
Two days later, I left. Cancun beat me, like it eventually beats everyone.
THE CONSEQUENCES
There is no doubt that Cancun changed my life, but the effects of my trip to Cancun reverberated far beyond me.
Before 2004, there was no class attendance requirement at top tier law schools. Law school administrators assumed if you’d made it that far, you were probably a dedicated, anxious nerd just like them. They figured you would WANT to do all the pointless, bullshit stuff assigned to you—without them watching over you—just to prove to your classmates, who you were constantly in competition with, that you were strong enough and smart enough to hack it.
Well, directly because of me and my trip to Cancun, the American Bar Association changed their attendance rules for ALL law schools. Below is ABA Accreditation Standard 304, adopted in August 2004, two years after I put up my website detailing many of my law school antics, where I talked openly about never going to class and living in Cancun during my 2L year (emphasis mine):
At any time after the fifth week of a course (or halfway through a summer session course), a student who has been determined by the instructor to have attended fewer than 80 percent of the class sessions in any course will be required to drop the course from his or her registration upon the instructor’s so indicating to the Academic Services Office.
An instructor may also impose stricter attendance standards or other sanctions for nonattendance, including lowering of a grade, provided that students are informed at the start of the course of the instructor’s attendance rules and possible sanctions.
The instructor (referred to in paragraph 1) should take attendance with such regularity as is needed to insure reasonable accuracy in determining a student’s attendance record.
Obviously I was not involved in
the discussions that led to the adoption of this rule, but I can tell you that at least two people—people who claim to have been privy to these discussions—have emailed me and told me that this rule was not only passed in direct response to the stories about not going to class I’d posted on TuckerMax.com, but that the rule is known colloquially in the ABA as “The Tucker Max Rule.”
I have accomplished many things in my life, and I am prouder of all those things than this—but being responsible for “The Tucker Max Rule” is one of my favorite signature moments. Brady has his gun law, Megan got her pedophile law, and Amber got her alert, and now I have mine.
POSTSCRIPT [ONLY FOR LAW STUDENTS AND POTENTIAL LAW STUDENTS]:
The best part is that I didn’t even have to pay the consequences for my little stunt, but ALL future law students do. You’re welcome. The funny thing is, I wasn’t at all the first to figure out that law school class was bullshit—everyone who’s attended law school knows that. Law students are being punished by the ABA not because of what I did, but because I told the world the truth about law school.
I’m not apologizing. I don’t even feel bad for you law students. The fact is, for 95% of the people who attend, going to law school is a mistake. When I was going, I was just like you are now. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but had no idea what it actually meant to be a lawyer. All I knew was that people spoke reverently of lawyers, that everyone said that being a lawyer meant you were a success, that it paid really well, etc. Like all idiotic college kids, I wanted status without having to do much to get it. Law school seemed the easiest route. Sound familiar?
What I didn’t know then, that I do now is that easy status and success comes with a very high price: your soul.
If you’re in law school, learn from my mistake and quit. Right now, before it’s too late and you are too much in debt. Go live your life, do something enjoyable. It’ll never happen if you’re working as a lawyer. NEVER.
And if you’re in college and thinking about going to law school, don’t. Kids email me all the time asking for law school advice. It’s always the same:
Do you want to waste three years of your life debating stupid and utterly irrelevant minutia? If so, get your JD.
Do you want to get a degree that forces you to spend your life sitting in a drab office, churning out tedious paperwork for a shitty, condescending boss who’ll you’ll hate (and then eventually become)? If so, get your JD.
Are you a boring, facile, socially retarded whore, who is desperate for the illusion of money and success, regardless of the cost to your life and the lives of those you love? If so, get your JD.
Do you want to be the type of person who doesn’t create anything, doesn’t make value for others, who can’t be proud of his job, but just fucks other people over? If so, get your JD.
If not, go do something productive with your life, something that adds value to the world, and that does NOT include law school.
DRUGS ARE BAD, MMMKAY?
Occurred, July 2002
About a year after graduating, I went to DC to visit SlingBlade and Hate. Apparently, we didn’t ruin enough people’s lives in law school, so we decided to attend a party thrown by two girls we went to school with. We weren’t “technically” invited, but we just assumed they didn’t have our phone numbers and went anyway.
The party was a typical collection of DC young professional shitbags. Whoever said that Washington, DC was “Hollywood for ugly people” is fucking brilliant, because that perfectly describes not only the city, but this party too. Everyone wanted to tell you how important they were, who they worked for, what their SAT score was (seriously, I heard two people talking about that—they were at least 26 years old). It was a giant dick-measuring contest for people who had no other use for their dicks because they all looked like they’d been face-raped by a low-speed drum sander. Name-dropping is hard enough to stomach when you don’t give a fuck about the names being dropped. It’s even harder when they’re dropping out of the mouths of people whose gender you might as well guess with a coin flip.
SlingBlade, Hate, and I fought back in the only way we knew how: We got combatively drunk and mocked everyone.
This story has two different accounts, SlingBlade’s and mine. This first section is an email SlingBlade sent out to all of our law school friends a few days later, and after is my account of what happened to me after the party:
SLINGBLADE’S ACCOUNT
“We arrive at the party that Megan and Chelsea are throwing. Hate proceeds to kick everything off right by waltzing up to Megan’s neighbor, who is 50 and has brought two teenage children along, and asking him why he isn’t getting his kids drunk. Tucker engages a marginally attractive special-ed teacher. She claims that her autistic students can read her mind. Tucker claims she is an idiot. She decides to nickname him “Big Yellow” for some reason. He threatens to skullfuck her. She calls him a date rapist. Tucker tells her not to leave the party alone.
I decide I will keep score at this party. It’s early, but Tucker is in the lead:
Score, Round 1
Hate: -1
Tucker: 5
SlingBlade: 0
Megan and Chelsea give me the tour of their new place. It’s boring and I’m not drunk enough. Halfway through a rambling and pointlessly sentimental story about some cheap bric-a-brac they think is precious, I just walk off and go downstairs to get beer.
Tucker is speaking to a girl who looks like Death itself. She is an emaciated wreck. Tucker flashes me a thumbs up and informs me she has a “ridiculous body,” which is Tuckerspeak for “I know she’s ugly, but I don’t care because she’s a slut.” Tucker continues speaking to her for two hours, for which he is docked points at a compounding rate.
I have lost contact with Hate, who has descended into the basement, but I am able to piece together from the surviving refugees that he is in rare form. People are fleeing up the stairs like the radon detector went off.
I hear bellowing as I head down the steps. Hate is posing for pictures with random people, pulling his shirt down and rubbing his nipples. He takes a camera from someone and then uses an entire roll of film taking pictures of himself. No less than three people profess to me their fear of him. The gauntlet has been thrown down.
Then I lose a pull-up contest to Megan. A girl. Moving on.
Score, Round 2
Hate: 20
SlingBlade: -10
Tucker: -15
Tucker is still talking to Skeletor. Hate is nowhere to be found. I walk into the kitchen, see a girl writing something down and ask her if she’s writing down directions to the gym.
SlingBlade has arrived.
I attempt to convince an Asian girl who told me I was offensive that I was black and that she shouldn’t be insulting one of her “comrades in the struggle.” I tell her about how The Man framed me, and that the drifter was already dead when I got there. She flees.
I start talking trash to Megan’s female friend from work. I forget most of it, but a large portion had to do with my preference for little girls and her poor personal hygiene. The clincher was when she told me she had a Great Dane. I told her when I see a girl walking a large dog, I just assume she’s having sex with it. She was so mortified she left the party, only an hour after she got there.
I decide to walk up to random girls with a pen in my hand and ask them what their street address is. We have no takers.
Then I start speaking to the third roommate, a UNC grad. It goes like this:
Her “How do you like this painting of the UNC quad?”
Me “Oh, that’s stellar. Wait a minute—shouldn’t there be a dead prostitute in the street here. And shouldn’t there be an indigent man on this bench. [Gives her a look of pity] Oh, sorry—‘indigent’ means ‘homeless.’”
Her “You’re obnoxious. I don’t know why I’m talking to you.”
Me “Because I’m the best looking guy at this party and you’re still operating under the illusion that you hav
e a shot with me.”
Her “Oh really. Guess what—I know your type. You hit on every girl you see and have no standards whatsoever.”
Me “You’re right. And that’s why I’m talking to you.”
The conversation ended quickly after that. I proceed to the main party area where the mockeries that pass as girls are and start screaming as loud as I can across the room to Chelsea:
“CHELSEA WHERE ARE THE GOOD LOOKING GIRLS YOU PROMISED ME?? THESE GIRLS SUCK. [Girls give me dirty looks] YES YOU!! DO YOU HAVE AN EYE PROBLEM? ARE YOU TRYING TO EYEFUCK ME!!! DON’T YOU DARE JUDGE ME!!!”
A group of girls is taking pictures. One of them takes a pic with me. Unfortunately she is fat, which I not-so-politely inform her of. I believe I pointed to her stomach and said, “Yeah, they’re called sit-ups.” I then informed the girl with the camera that I would “need my pics blown-up poster size and framed. But in oak, not mahogany. Mahogany disagrees with my complexion.”
Score, Round 3
SlingBlade: 30
Hate: 20
Tucker: -26
I am ready to declare victory. Unbeknownst to me Hate is putting on a little dog and pony show of his own in the living room. I go in there and observe that the only fifteen feet of empty space in the entire house are in a direct circle around Hate. He is sitting on the bottom of the stairs gesticulating wildly and alternately yelling personal insults and laudatory sexual comments at everyone within earshot. A girl walks up to me and introduces herself. After discovering I know Hate, she informs me he is shady. Displaying an exquisite sense of timing, at that exact moment Hate yells across the room to her what a great ass she has.