Hate starts pounding on the front of his steering wheel, trying to get it to stop. Nope.
AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNN.
We are still driving, and every single person is staring at us. Immigrants don't lay on their horns this much during regional ethnic parades. Go out to your car right now and lay on the horn for ten seconds. It'll drive you nuts. Now picture us driving around campus with a horn going off like that ... except it doesn't stop ... and there is a red-faced bowling ball of anger behind the wheel thrashing back and forth, screaming into a dashboard.
AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNN.
We turn a corner, and standing there is a group of at least 50 freshman undergrads doing a campus tour. Every single one is staring at our car in confusion. Credit and I were laughing our asses off before, but the combination of Hate's anxiety over this horn going off, and the genuinely quizzical expressions of these kids as to why some asshole in an old Nissan Pathfinder would honk like this is too much to handle. I have to grab my dick and pinch it off to stop from pissing myself with laughter.
AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNN.
Hate is now completely freaking out. He's stopped sparring with the steering wheel, and instead has turned to violently ripping the entire cover off the front of it while simultaneously trying to keep control of the car. This doesn't work well; the car drifts and jumps a curb before Hate can pull it back onto the road. The freshmen's heads have followed us from the corner all the way down the street, like watching a streaker break out of the middle of a funeral procession.
AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNN.
Hate finally gets the entire front cover off the steering wheel and mashes primally on the internal mechanics until the horn stops.
Credit and I have tears rolling down our faces. Hate is totally frazzled, not laughing at all. It takes a long time for all of us to compose ourselves. When we get back to our apartment, I notice something: Tucker "Hate ... where the fuck is your airbag?"
Hate drove an old 1994 Nissan Pathfinder. This was before the airbags were built into the steering column, and instead were basically just slapped onto the front of the steering wheel. I used to have a lot of dirtbag thief friends in high school, so I had a sneaking suspicion about what happened.
Hate "What do you mean?"
Tucker "Dude, look at all that empty space between the steering wheel cover and the steering column. And see how it says "Airbag" on the cover? There is supposed to be an airbag here. But it's not here. That's probably why your horn got stuck."
Hate "Why would my airbag be missing?"
Tucker "Well, it probably got stolen dude. You can sell those things to shady parts dealers for a lot of money. Did your car get broken into recently?"
Hate kinda looked at the constituent parts for a while, confused. The wheels turned in his head, and it hit him.
Hate "Oh ..." [he got a look of painful and pitiful resignation on his face] "... my cousin drove the car this summer when I was in Italy."
Credit and I broke down in laughter again. That was all he needed to say.
Hate's cousin couldn't be more opposite of him-a liar, a thief, a con, everything. The absolute archetype of the prodigal son. Pretty much any time anything is fucked up in Hate's home life, you need look no further than his cousin to find the explanation.
Tucker "Dude ... your cousin stole your airbag ... dude!!"
Credit "Wow."
This was fucked up though. This wasn't like taking $20 out of his wallet.
This was quite literally putting his life in danger.
Tucker "Are you going to do anything? Confront him?"
Hate "No. He'll just deny it and act all offended and that I even suggested it was him."
Tucker "What are you going to do then?"
Hate sat there for a minute and ran through his options, one by one, until he settled on the most depressingly obvious choice.
Hate "Drive around without an airbag I guess."
Another brick in Hate's wall of anger ...
THE JIMMY JOHN'S INCIDENT
While there was no shortage of little things Credit and I would do to piss Hate off, nothing we ever dreamed up could have had the impact on his repressed, psychotic rage like the events of November of our 3L year.
In law school, everyone interns between their 2L and 3L year at the firms they presumably want to work. After you spend your summer there, you go back to law school for your last year, and then some time in the fall the firm tells you if you have a permanent job offer after you've graduated. If you do, then your 3L year is even more of a joke than law school normally is-why worry about anything if you already have a job, right?
Once we all got back to school from our 2L summer associateships, the months went by and the formal offers started rolling in. PWJ and El Bingeroso got theirs before they left their firms for the summer, Jojo, GoldenBoy, Credit, JonBenet, Brownhole, and SlingBlade all got theirs in September or October. That left Hate and me.
Hate was already nervous because other people at his firm got their offers much earlier. Then Halloween passed and he still didn't have an offer. He was all but catatonically freaked out. Whispers started about his offer. Credit used his peanut butter one day by accident and Hate screamed at him for an hour and broke a lamp. The whispers became louder.
Then he got the letter. He excitedly tore it open to find ... no job offer from his firm.
This is awful for a ton of reasons. It means you now have to take class seriously. It means you have no job security. It means you now have to go through the interview process again during 3L year. Which is the mark of Cain both at school (almost no summers from Top Ten law schools don't get offers) and within law firms (what 3L is interviewing again at a top law firm without an offer from his 2L summer firm?). That is just disastrous. Ultimately, it means you've done something really wrong.
Hate did not handle this well. Coming back from our summer jobs, Hate was probably the most excited of the entire group. He'd landed a spot working in the best firm in Philly, and finally, he thought, all the dues-paying and bullshit he'd put up with in his life was paying off. He was going to graduate with a prestigious job, make $125k/year to start, and live in Philadelphia-a great sports town with lots of short girls who would be impressed with a guy who had a job and didn't hit them. Now, all that shit was gone and he was fucked. Again.
Credit and I steered clear of him for at least a week. He had this seething, Boy-Named-Sue anger that permeated everything he did. He was like a coiled spring, and though we loved provoking his anger into fits of rage, Credit and I were not stupid enough to do it when he might direct it at us personally.
[In fact, no one really gave him much shit, because they were too busy shitting on me. If you read IHTSBIH, you know that story about my 2L summer when I worked at Fenwick & West, and how my firm summarily fired me during the summer because I was such a drunken disaster. Not only that, because my email about the incident leaked out beyond my circle of friends, and pretty much everyone in the legal world knew about it. So like Hate, I came back to Duke for my 3L year without a job, but unlike him I also returned as the laughing stock of the entire legal world.]
About a week after he got the bad news, Hate's Raging Internalized Emotion reached new and dizzying heights during an episode that has gone down in law school legend and come to be known as "The Jimmy John's Incident."
By 3L year, we'd graduated from two TVs in the living room-one big and crappy, one small and crappy-to DirecTV in all three of the apartment's bedrooms. Why? Three words: NFL Sunday Ticket. Credit was a Jets fan, I'm a Redskins fan, and Hate is a Steelers fan. We needed every game on. And because there were some Sundays where all three teams were playing at the same time, we not only needed three TVs, we needed three receivers too. On Sunday morning like clockwork, we'd bring the TVs out of Credit and Hate's rooms and put them in the living room, so all of us could watch the games together, like in a sports bar.
Hate had gotten his letter on Monday. It was now Sunday, and for the first time all week, something was going to go right for him: The Steelers were playing, and they were favored, and the Steelers don't let their fans down. For those three hours, Hate could forget about all his problems and enjoy some football.
He woke up early, set all the TVs up, got all the games on the right channels, and instead of cooking, he decided to treat himself to a delicious and relaxing take-out meal while he watched his team win. He asked us if we wanted anything, then left. Twenty minutes later he came back with his favorite fast food item-a Jimmy John's Turkey Club Sandwich, complete with sour cream and onion potato chips and an ice-cold Coke to wash it all down.
He'd timed it perfectly, and arrived at the apartment right as all the idiot TV talking heads were finishing up their "analysis." He sat down on the sofa, placed his bag on the coffee table, and almost like a Japanese tea ceremony, set about placing all of his items in perfect harmony. First he took the Coke out, opened it with a crisp release of CO2, took a sip, put the cap back on (he likes to keep it as carbonated as possible, weird I know) and placed it to the side. Then he took his chips out, opened the bag, popped one in his mouth, and placed the bag to the other side. Finally, he took the sandwich out, unrolled the paper, laid the hoagie out in front of him, and opened it. Hate likes to put his chips on his hoagie and eat them that way, to give it a crunchier texture. He started placing the chips when all of the sudden: Hate "OH WHAT THE FUCK!! MOTHERFUCKER THAT FUCKING SHIT!!!!"
This was a serious anger eruption, at least 30 seconds of uncontrollable, unintelligible cursing. Credit, his girlfriend Rachel, and I were also in the living room watching TV, and we all kinda jumped at the vitriol in his tone. We didn't say anything as he went on and on; it was that intense. Finally, we understood the problem: Hate "I TOLD THAT MOTHERFUCKER TO NOT PUT FUCKING MAYONNAISE ON THE FUCKING SANDWICH AND NOW LOOK AT THIS!!!"
Clear as day, slathered all over one side of his hoagie, was the yellowish white goop. Hate DESPISES mayonnaise. If mayonnaise were a racial minority, Hate would have gone to jail for hate crimes against it years ago. Before we could even really do anything, Hate shot up from the sofa, paused for a second looking for something to strike, but finding no target for his anger, took both his hands, grabbed the coffee table, and flipped it into the air as he released a primal scream.
"FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKK!!"
This was a straight up Incredible Hulk move. Coke bottle, chips, sandwich-everything goes flying. Here was Hate, so angry about the fact that a condiment he didn't request was on his sandwich, that he FLIPPED OVER A COFFEE TABLE.
And as you might expect, Credit and I completely lost it. To this day, whenever I laugh really hard at something, I compare it to how hard I laughed in that moment, at that incident, because for my life, that is the gold standard of laughter.
As Hate stood there fuming, his lunch spread across the living room, Rachel did not laugh. She was not as accustomed to Hate's ridiculous outbursts. Instead of laughing or instigating him, she thought the best thing to do was try to help.
Rachel "Oh my God ... Hate, are you OK?"
Like any good girlfriend, she immediately got up and started cleaning, asking Hate if he was OK. She put the coffee table back upright and even reassembled his lunch-which was essentially unharmed because the Coke had the lid on, the chips mostly stayed in the bag and the sandwich stayed in its wrapper.
Rachel "Hate, I like mayonnaise, I'll eat this, lemme go get you another sandwich without it."
Hate "No no." He was forcing back his rage in the face of her genuine concern, "I'll just eat it."
Rachel "Hate seriously, I can go get you another sandwich, it's fine."
Hate "No."
He wanted to really let loose and go on a patented Hate rage storm, but he couldn't, not with her there. Here was this nice girl trying to put everything back together for him, and because he was such a nice guy, all he could do was swallow the rage in the face of her sincere concern. In fact, he was kind of ashamed by it.
Of course, Credit and I were still laughing too hard to even speak. Oh God, what I wouldn't give to have a video of the next 30 minutes with Hate trying to make the best of this awful situation. He took a chip and did his best to scrape off all the mayonnaise, but you know as well as I do-getting mayonnaise off bread is the culinary equivalent of a rape shower. Scrub all you want, it doesn't change what happened here.
With every squishy, slightly mayonnaise-flavored bite, Hate's face contorted with indignant contempt and furious anger. It was like watching someone literally eat shit and die. Every chew was another reminder of how unfair life was, how he was always on the receiving end of the fucking, how he always got the short end of the stick. It was the perfect metaphor for his life-every bite was a reminder that he couldn't win.
By the end of the sandwich, Credit and I were fucking exhausted. Credit even had the hiccups. Who knew that one pot-smoking sandwich-monkey could bring one man so close to complete collapse?
THE LEFTOVERS.
When we were moving out of our place at the end of law school, it was a pretty chaotic scene. We were all moving to separate cities, so we had to divide up our stuff and figure out who owed what to whom before anyone left. I was leaving first because I wanted to get down to Florida early for some reason-I'm sure it involved having sex with some spirit-crushing skank-so I was basically sticking Hate and Credit with all the bullshit tasks that come with moving out of an apartment, like the fucking dick that I am.
About an hour before I left, Hate and I were running down all the stuff that had to be done and issues that had to be resolved.
Hate "What about my bucket, Max? Are you going to replace that?"
Earlier that year, my car had been stolen from the apartment complex. For some random reason, I had a bucket in my car when it happened, and when the police found my car, it had been completely emptied of everything in it, bucket included.
Hate "And you still owe like $300 for rent and bills. How are you going to pay that?"
Tucker "Well, all the furniture in the living room is mine, and my mattress is here. How about I leave that, and you can sell it, and keep all the money."
Hate "What? Sell the furniture??"
Tucker "Hate, this is some pretty nice stuff, I mean, you can probably get more than $300 for it."
Hate erupted at this suggestion-for obvious reasons-and went into a diatribe: Hate "Jesus Christ, Max, this is fucking ridiculous. We still have to pay this month's rent, we still have to rent this place out for the summer to cover our lease, we have to clean everything to get the deposit back, WHICH I PUT DOWN, we also have to-"
I'll spare you the details. It was basically a ten-minute monologue about all the ways I have failed him as a roommate and let him down as a friend over the past few months, and everything else generally on his mind. I think that's what he said; I wasn't really paying attention. He ended with this: Hate "AND I'M STILL MISSING A BUCKET! That is a lot of shit to get done! What the hell are we going to do, Max?"
His was seriously upset; the veins in his neck were pulsating, there were tiny flecks of spittle around his mouth and his lips were pursed into a tight circle. This demanded a serious response from me. I looked him in the eyes, and in the most concerned voice I could muster, I responded: Tucker "Hate ... let's just hope for the best."
Even Hate laughed at that. And I left.
I received approximately 20 pissed off emails from Hate over the next week, but I think my favorite was from Credit. It was about how, when they finally sold the sofa-for like $50-they found what I had been doing for the TWO YEARS we lived in that apartment: Stuffing every single piece of junk mail I'd received behind that sofa.
Because of the way the sofa was positioned in the living room you couldn't see behind it, so when they moved the sofa, approximately 100 pounds of direct mail spilled out. It was an avalanche of my bullshit literally dumping itself right at Hate's feet, one last fuck you from life before he left law school.
Credit said when Hate saw the mess, he didn't yell, he didn't scream, he didn't violently lash out at the sofa or the wall. He didn't say or do anything. He just stood there for a second staring at the massive pile of mail and catalogs, then shuffled out of the apartment and went for a walk by the lake.
Credit said it took three huge garbage bags to haul away all that trash, but it was worth it for that reaction from Hate. I'd finally broken Hate, and I wasn't even there to see it.
TUCKER RUINS A WINE TASTING.
Occurred, October 2002 I let a female friend of mine sucker me into going to a young professional wine tasting event with a bunch of her co-workers. Though I love wine, I hate formal wine tastings because of the type of people who tend to go to them. They attract the worst kind of pseudo-intellectual, the type of person who knows nothing, thinks they know everything, and looks down on everyone else who doesn't share their stupid pretensions. Fuck all of those people. As soon as I got there I realized this event would be like that, so I tried to escape, but my friend saw me.
Friend "Tucker! So happy you're here! Thank you so much for coming. I owe you big."
Tucker "Yeah, wine's not the only thing you're gonna swish and spit tonight."
So there I am, irritated as an unwiped asshole because I am surrounded by the type of people I loathe most: uppity, idiotic, pompous douchenozzles pontificating on shit they don't actually understand, because they think it makes them look cool in front of people they don't actually like.
So what do I do? Shut up and deal with a few hours of discomfort in a mature, adult manner? Stand quietly by myself in the corner until it was all over? Pretend I was enjoying myself so as not to cause discomfort to anyone else?
FUCK THAT, AND FUCK THESE SHITBIRDS!.
The only way I could endure this tsunami of suck is to do what I always do in these types of situations-entertain myself at the expense of the posers I hate by shattering their illusions and destroying everything they stand for: 7:15pm: I strut into the foyer. I am surrounded by people who think they're better'n me. I decide to bust out my best redneck voice, and belt out, "Put tha women n' chittlins' to bed, Imma gettin' loaded tonight!" Their eyes go wide. They're not sure how serious I am. They will learn.
7:18: We get our tickets. It's $25 apiece. Still in overly loud redneck voice, "TWANTY FIVE DOLLERS! Exactly how much wine is we gettin' hur?" The woman doesn't know I'm a fucking asshole, so she's nice, "Well, it's a tasting event. We encourage people to try many different kinds." I smile, "So ike'an drank as much of tha wine as I want?" She is hesitant, "Well, yes ... I guess so." I bellow out, "SOUNDS LIKE A WAGER TO ME!!!"
7:22: I walk to the first table. A French vineyard featuring a beaujolais. I stare at the bottle, and ask them, in my best redneck accent, "How yew say that'n wurd?"
7:23: After six failed attempts at the pronunciation, they begin to suspect I am mispronouncing it on purpose. I think the realization came when I said, "So that'n thur is it like dijonnaise?"