HILARITY ENSUES
TUCKER MAX
BOOKS BY TUCKER MAX
I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL
ASSHOLES FINISH FIRST
HILARITY ENSUES
SLOPPY SECONDS
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COPYRIGHT © 2012 TUCKER MAX
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My real name is Tucker Max. All the events described in the following stories are true to the best of my recollection, though certain dates, characteristics, locations and other trivial details have been altered.
I hope you enjoy reading about my life as much as I have enjoyed living it.
THE CANCUN STORIES
Occurred, Spring Break 2000
I worked in Cancun, Mexico for six full weeks during my second year at Duke Law School. I left Durham at the end of February, and then stayed down there for spring break season. You’re probably wondering: How could I up and leave not just school, but the entire United States of America, while still enrolled in a top ten law school, with classes going on every day, and not have any negative consequences?
Because everything about law school is a complete fucking joke.
Yes, Duke is a top ten law school, but the only thing difficult occurred well before I ever set foot on campus; getting admitted. Once I actually arrived on campus, I realized that not only was the hardest part done, but everything else was a complete joke. The emperor had no clothes.
Going to class is a complete waste of time. The professors don’t care about teaching; they either ramble endlessly about meaningless shit, or they spend the whole time telling you how important they are. The students are no better; the ones constantly raising their hands to talk (they’re called “gunners”) are all pompous suck-ups, and add nothing of value to the conversation. The work itself is a fucking joke; there’s no daily homework, it’s just reading and “considering issues”—and I would say that probably 90% of what you go over in class has no bearing on either your life or your job as a lawyer. Think about that—most of what you learn in class has no application anywhere outside of law school.
Grades aren’t a problem either. Your entire grade is based on one final exam at the end of the semester. Law school professors all use the same basic test format and look for the same basic type of answers. If you crack the law school test “code” and write for what they are looking for, the tests are a cinch. If you’re really smart, you don’t even need to study. Just read through the book about a week before the test and you should be able to walk in and pull out at least a 3.0. You’re not going to be top of your class doing this, but you can easily graduate in the middle. At a top tier law school, that’s more than good enough to get a lucrative law firm job (at least it was when I was in law school … now, if you’re in law school at all, you’re just totally fucked regardless of where you graduate in your class. But that’s a different discussion.)
By mid-first semester of my first year, I’d already stopped going to class. By second semester, I didn’t bother buying my books. I spent that money getting drunk in Chapel Hill and fucking my way through a bunch of UNC sorostitutes. By second year, that was getting boring, so I looked for other ways to push the envelope. I decided I would go on vacation. During law school.
The problem is that I had no fucking money. But there are solutions to that. I could be one of those air couriers who gets to fly to Bangkok for like $50 if I don’t bring any luggage and let the courier company use my allotted cargo space, but that requires responsibility and accountability—no chance. Then I thought—what about those companies that ship kids to various spring break spots? They have to have on-site staff, right?
I did a little research, figured out which companies were hiring, and started calling people. Getting a job overseas is pretty easy, especially at resort-type places. They’re always desperate to find halfway competent help, and if you have a little intelligence and a lot of aggressiveness—I definitely have that—about getting the job, you’re usually in. I just kept bugging every one of the travel services, making sure they knew how awesome I was until one hired me for the spring break season. Easy and obvious. When you spot market inefficiencies you don’t tip your cap and go on your merry way. You ruthlessly exploit the fuck out of them.
So in the middle of the second semester of my 2L year, with all my law school classes still in session, I left North Carolina for Cancun. They paid me like $400 a week, plus expenses and accommodations … and my entire job was to party. I got paid to be me. I would show up at the day party, get hammered, go fuck some girl, take a nap, go to the night party, get hammered again, and fuck another girl. I woke up every morning sending out AMBER Alerts for my dignity … and I was getting paid for it.
If you’ve never been to Cancun or done this kind of “job,” it’s hard to understand what a fucking shitshow it is. You think your college partying days were bad? Not like Cancun. You may disagree, but you’re wrong. You may have gone to the best party school in America, and you may think you threw down—and I am sure to some extent you did—but remember:
Cancun is where college kids go for vacation when they want to party EVEN MORE.
These are some of the funnier stories—at least the ones I can remember—from my time there:
WHY TO LEARN CPR
This incident happened at the famous bar Pat O’Brien’s. There is a huge outdoor bar area that is grassy and hilly. It was relatively early in the day and I was bored and walking around checking things out when I saw a dude lying on his back, in the grass, way in the corner. Something about the way he was lying looked weird, limbs all akimbo, so I went to make sure he was OK.
He was not.
Dude had a vomit bubble coming out of one nostril. This is REAL bad; it’s the first sign of asphyxiation, and means he is literally drowning on his own puke. I immediately roll him over, and give him the Heimlich. I know for CPR I probably should have given him mouth-to-mouth, but fuck that—if the Heimlich worked, I wouldn’t have to put my lips on the puke-filled mouth of some random dude.
He immediately starts coughing and all kinds of shit comes spitting from his mouth and nose. That triggers some kind of violent spasm and he starts puking all over the place, making a complete mess of himself. Yeah, he ruined his favorite Señor Frog’s t-shirt, but that’s way better than fucking dying.
The Mexicans call the ambulance and they take him away to the clinic. After it was all over, it dawned on me: I just saved a dude’s life. That’s pretty fucking cool.
I was strutting around the bar, saying stuff like, “I saved a guy’s life today. What’d you do? Jack shit probably.” Now I know why doctors are so arrogant.
That was on a Tuesday. On Thursday, I saw the guy out with his friends.
Tucker “You back at it already? Brave man. Make sure and take it a little slower this time.”
Guy “Uhh … OK.”
It was obvious by his eyes that this dude was not registering who I was.
Tucker “You don’t recognize me?”
Guy “Uh … not really.”
Tucker “I’m the guy who saved your fucking life at Pat O’Brien’s. You were choking on your own vomit, I gave you the Heimlich and called the ambulance.”
Guy “Oh, yeah. I don’t really remember that day much, but yeah I’m alive, so OK, cool, thanks.”
Tucker “You don’t remember it? You don’t remember going to the hospital?”
Guy “Not really. I mean, I remember starting the day, and I remember leaving the hospital yesterday, but that’s about it. But if you really saved my life, then thanks, I guess.”
Tucker “You guess???”
Unappreciative fuck didn’t even buy me a drink. That’s why you don’t try to
o hard to save the life of a University of Tennessee frat guy.
BOOT AND RALLY
I know I said my only job in Cancun was to party, and that’s the way it worked out most of the time, but ostensibly I was supposed to be doing actual things as well. Like make sure the kids who traveled to Mexico with our company went back to America alive.
So late one night in a club, I was watching this one guy who was in bad shape, making sure he didn’t die before his friends came to get him. I was talking to girls at the same time, however, so I wasn’t paying that much attention.
He was sitting on a couch and leaned over to puke, and as he did this, he pulled his hat off his head and threw up right into it. I probably should have called one of the busboys to clean it up, but in Cancun, this is pretty common. Plus, the girls and I were all having fun watching him.
He just sat there for what seemed like forever with his mouth open, drooling bile into his hat, which was completely full. Like a bowl of soup, except it was vomit. He eventually sat up, drank some water, and started to actually look like he had some life back in him. Then he got up, reached down for his hat and, having forgotten that he threw up in it, put it back on his head.
The dude didn’t even flinch as the vomit oozed out the sides and down his face and head.
Of course, we all broke down laughing. He looked at us with one of the most pissed off drunk faces I’ve ever seen, and then walked off, without saying a word, vomit trailing behind him.
GIVE ME TWO PAIR, I NEED TWO PAIR
I don’t think it’s that funny, but this story always cracks up my friends up for some reason:
I left a club real late one night with a girl and went back to her hotel. By the time we were done fucking, it was like 6 or 7am. Even though I was exhausted and still really drunk, I decided to take the bus back to my hotel so I could sleep it off there and not have her bother me. I got on the bus, and even though I swore I’d stay awake, I promptly passed the fuck out.
I’m not exactly sure when I woke up, but it had to have been at least 10am. When I’d gotten on the bus, it was all Mexicans riding to work to start their shifts; now it was pretty much all young kids riding to various beach clubs to day drink. I’m not sure how many times I passed my hotel; the bus just runs in circles along the one road in Cancun, but I managed to stay awake until it got back in front of it again, and got off.
I must have been much drunker and more sleep deprived than I thought, because it wasn’t until I walked out on the sidewalk that I noticed I was barefoot. How could that be? I remember putting my shoes on when I was leaving the girl’s hotel room last night …
DID SOMEONE STEAL MY SHOES OFF MY FEET WHEN I WAS ASLEEP ON THE BUS?
Yes Tucker, someone did. Some dirt-poor Mexican realized that I was so deeply into a drunken stupor, they took my shoes off my feet. On a public bus.
WELCOME TO THE THUNDERDOME
Because the Cancun resorts are so nice and everything looks clean and neat, it’s easy to forget that Mexico is NOT America. So when the vacationers would show up, I would take pains to explain this to them. Yes, being in Mexico is good because you can get as drunk as you want at 18. But there is a flip side to no rules: The American safety net isn’t there to protect you from the consequences of your stupid decisions.
There are two things I saw that really drove this home for me.
The first happened when I was sitting out by the pool at my hotel one day, drinking and flirting with some girls. Some stupid frat guys were being idiots and jumping from the rocks into the pool, which the Mexican employees didn’t like at all. Then, one of the guys got the brilliant idea that instead of jumping 10 feet off some fake cliffs next to the pool, he’d be the coolest guy in his group and jump off a third story balcony that overlooked the pool. He got up there, screamed for everyone to look, and dove in. Head first.
I won’t go too far into detail, because it was gruesome, but the guy ended up paralyzed from the neck down. It was a bad scene, and I gotta be honest—I’m pretty sure the Mexican “paramedics” made it worse. I don’t think proper spinal stabilization techniques involve jerking the victim around by the head. Of course, I’m not a doctor; I just watch a lot of “ER” and “House.”
If there is a bright side, it was that he lived. Two weeks after that, someone died. Not even by doing something obviously stupid, like jumping in a hotel pool off a balcony, but by doing something they thought was safe.
There are two bungee towers in Cancun. One is made out of wood and built over water. It’s as safe as anything in America. Even if the cord breaks, you just hit the water, no biggie. When I went bungee jumping, that’s the one I used. It is far more expensive than the other bungee tower. Why?
Because the other one is a crane. Just a normal fucking crane, sitting in a parking lot right above the asphalt. I don’t know if any official statistics are kept on that thing, but I can tell you that just in the time I was there, there was one near-miss accident with a kid who came with our company (the cord snapped and the safety line saved him), and another kid had the ropes secured improperly, and he fell out of the harness and died. I didn’t see it, but it was all hushed up by the locals and everything went on as normal.
Sadly, he was not the only person to “die.” I put that in quotes because I know of at least two people that went missing while I was in Cancun. They completely disappeared, and no one could find them. I never saw anything on the news about it in America because this was pre-Natalie Holloway, before the 24-hour news cycle figured out they could milk the disappearance of pretty white girls for money. I have no idea if they were ever found or not.
Sorry, that’s not a very funny section. The Cancun hotel zone on spring break is like fucking Thunderdome. Go at your own risk. Especially if you’re an idiot.
HOW TUCKER MAX BECAME “TUCKER MAX”
Before I got to Cancun, I’d gotten my little pencil wet plenty of times, so I thought I knew how to get girls and I thought I understood women. I didn’t. Cancun taught me that all my assumptions were completely, totally wrong.
I got laid and had fun before I went down there, but only in spite of myself, not because I knew what I was doing. Cancun taught me the two big life lessons that have guided me since, the two things I always tell people when they ask for life advice:
1. Be honest: I wasn’t really a liar back in America, but I was no different than any other young stupid guy trying to get ass; I thought you had to “convince” or “persuade” women to fuck you, and it was their job to kinda resist and make you work for it.
In Cancun, doing anything other than being direct and telling the truth was a complete waste of time. In Cancun, everyone let loose and did the things they wanted to do—getting drunk, fucking, being a little reckless—but were afraid to do in America. They felt safe letting go because it was Mexico; as if it didn’t count down there. Girls wanted to fuck, and here, as opposed to America, they were honest about it. Complete honesty worked way better than telling girls what you “thought they wanted to hear.”
But it was more than that. Being honest wasn’t just about telling the truth and being direct to girls—it was also about being honest to myself, and owning everything about who I was. I wasn’t looking for anything serious at that point in my life, I just wanted to get drunk and fuck a bunch of different girls. Once I figured that out and admitted it to myself—which I hadn’t done in America, but did do in Cancun—everything changed. By being honest with myself about what I wanted, it freed me up to be honest and direct with girls … and as a result, I got way more pussy with much less effort.
2. Don’t worry about results, just have fun: There were so many girls in Cancun, it was hard not to get laid. Because I knew I had pussy locked down basically any time I wanted it, I stopped worrying about it. I didn’t stop caring whether I got laid or not, but I did stop caring about any specific girl. By releasing my desire for any specific girl, no girl’s pussy had a hold on me anymore, and as a result I had more fun
and was more fun to be around. This took some practice at first—I’m not the fucking Buddha—but when I finally got the hang of it, a miraculous thing happened: I couldn’t beat the pussy off with a stick. Ten times the girls with 10% of the work, all because I just had fun and didn’t care what any specific girl (or person) thought or did.
Once these two things combined in me—complete honesty and not caring about the results—the world changed overnight. I remember the specific night where the combination of these lessons were burned into my head:
I was one of several dudes talking to this one really hot girl. She was the type that knew she was hot and was used to getting a ton of attention, and because all these guys were sweating her, she was bitchy to everyone, playing hard to get. Not even a month earlier, I might have fallen for that; I would’ve tried even harder, and worked to out compete the other dudes.
But barely halfway into my first week in Cancun, I’d already fucked like four hot girls. I didn’t care about this girl anymore; I knew I was getting ass. Whether this particular girl wanted to fuck me had become irrelevant.
Released from any focus on the outcome, not caring about anything other than entertaining myself and having fun, I started fucking with her and saying completely ridiculous shit just to make everyone laugh and put her in her place: