I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell Read online

  12:59: I do the first shot. It doesn’t go down well. I decide to take a short break from drinking. The crowd is not impressed.

  1:10: Reality sets in. I am going to vomit. A LOT. I try to discreetly make it outside.

  1:11: I knock a girl over as I sprint through the door.

  1:11: I trip over a bush, stumble into it, and begin throwing up. Out of my mouth. And nose. It is not pleasant.

  1:14: I can’t figure out why my legs hurt so much. I look down at them in between heaves. I have no pants on. Thorns and branches are embedded in my shins.

  1:18: The vomiting is over. I am now trying to stop the bleeding. A bright light hits my eyes. I am not happy. I tell the owner to “get that fucking light out of my face.” The owner of the light identifies himself as an officer of the law. I apologize to the officer, and ask him what the problem is. A long pause ensues. The light is still in my eyes. “Son, where are your pants?” Remembering past encounters with the law, and realizing there is no one around to bail me out of the county lockup, I summon every bit of adrenaline in my body to sober myself up. I apologize again, and explain to the officer that my pants are in the restaurant that is less than 50 feet away, and that I came outside to share my sushi with the bush. He doesn’t laugh. Another long pause.

  “You’re not driving tonight are you?”

  “Oh, NO, NO, NO…no Sir, I don’t even have a valid driver’s license.”

  1:20: He tells me to go back inside, put on my pants, and call a cab.

  1:21: I go back into the sushi restaurant. A few people stare at me in a peculiar manner. I look down, and then tuck my partially exposed sack back into my boxers. I don’t know what to do about my bleeding legs. I look around for my pants.

  1:24: I can’t find my pants. My breathalyzer is in clear sight. I blow. A.23. Someone informs me that my challenger just blew a .26. They add that he hasn’t thrown up yet. I tell them to “kiss my fucking ass.” My last clear memory.

  8:15am: I wake up. I don’t know where I am. It is very hot. I am sweating horribly. It smells like rotting flesh.

  8:16: I am in my car. With the windows up. The sun is beating down directly on me. It is at least 125 degrees in my car. I open the door and try to get out, but instead I fall onto the pavement. The scabs that cover my legs tear and reopen as I move. My penis falls out of my pink Gap boxers and lands, along with the rest of me, in a dirty puddle on the asphalt.

  8:19: The fetid standing water finally jars me into full consciousness. I can’t find my pants. Or cell phone. Or wallet. But I do have my breathalyzer. I blow. A .09. I am still not eligible to drive in the state of Florida.

  8:22: I drive home anyway.

  Let me be clear about this night: it was in my top five drunkest nights ever. I was completely shit-housed. I threw up multiple times, some of them through my nose. JESUS CHRIST, I WOKE UP blowing a .09. That’s fucking ridiculous. That device is awful. It is the devil dressed in a transistor.

  My advice to you: Avoid it at all costs.

  THE NIGHT WE ALMOST DIED

  Occurred—April 1999

  Written—July 2001

  There are fun nights, there are crazy nights, and then there are those nights that make men legends.

  It was a Saturday night in law school. Me and four friends (Hate, Golden-Boy, Brownhole, and Credit) had collected at El Bingeroso’s apartment. El Bingeroso had a college fraternity brother in town, Thomas, and wanted to show him a good time. We got there at around 7pm, and immediately began cooking large quantities of meat and drinking lots of alcohol.

  El Bingeroso, who lived with his fiancée, was excited about seeing his college friend and began attacking the Natural Light. His fiancée, Kristy, knowing El Bingeroso’s proclivity towards unruly drunken behavior, caught me in a corner and made me promise to stay sober so I could drive. Owing her a favor, I agreed. Though pissed at the time, it became the best decision I have ever made in my life.

  All the meat and liquor in the apartment consumed, we headed out. We decided to try a new bar. Someone mentioned that a place called “Shooters II” had a mechanical bull. This was an easy call.

  By the time we arrived, El Bingeroso and Thomas were so drunk they were singing Johnny Cash songs and kicking cars in the parking lot. The rest of the party was not doing much better. Hate, normally an edgy person anyway, was so drunk he was eyeing stop signs suspiciously. Having wrestled with Jim Beam for the past two hours and lost, he was ready for a fight. Brownhole and GoldenBoy were already staggering. I prepare for the worst.

  We had to pay a $2 cover. The girl behind the counter was dressed in a tight red Lycra cowgirl outfit, replete with white lace and frills. Her boots were black and white snakeskin. But it was the white leopard print ten-gallon hat really brought the outfit together.

  The bar was decorated in classic neo-Western Roadhouse: long-horns, oil cans, and saddles adorn the walls. I half expected Patrick Swayze to be smacking around unruly townies. I was so busy looking at the redneck paraphernalia, I failed to notice it before I heard Hate gasp, “No way! This is awesome!”

  In the center of the bar was something I had never seen before in my life: Live professional wrestling.

  Let’s be clear about this: there was a ring, a full wrestling ring set up in the middle of the bar, and there were people, ostensibly professionals, in the ring, wrestling each other. I must have stood there for a good three minutes, trying to let my brain catch up with my eyes.

  A real life ring, right in the middle of the bar. Two sweaty, out of shape wrestlers grappling, and a white banner behind the ring, proclaiming for all to see, “THIS IS THE SOUTHERN WRESTLING ASSOCIATION.”

  Hate is the first into action. Being an ex-high-school wrestler, completely shit-housed, and constantly filled with rage, he immediately pushed his way through the layers of crowd to arrive ringside, and began yelling curses at the wrestlers.

  “THESE FUCKING CLOWNS ARE AWFUL! MY GRANDMOTHER COULD WRESTLE BETTER THAN THIS! YOU’RE LUCKY I’M NOT IN THERE, YOU COCK-SUCKING PUSSIES!! LET ME WRESTLE, I’LL KICK THEIR FUCKING ASSES!!”

  This continued for a good five minutes. All of us were mesmerized, drunkenly fixated on this surreal comedy playing out before our eyes. To Hate’s credit, the guys in the ring were not in good shape. If by “not in good shape,” I mean “fat and disgusting.”

  A mere one beer later, Hate made his move. He stepped over the ropes that separated the crowd from the ring, and began banging on the canvas, yelling at the wrestlers. A bouncer told him to stop. Hate takes this as a cue to get into the ring, and beer firmly in hand, tried to climb into the ring. Two bouncers pulled him out of the ring before he could climb all the way in. We collected Hate from the bouncers, promised he would behave, and gave him another beer. Hate continued repeating, “My grandmother could kick their asses, this is a complete joke,” over and over to himself.

  Then I noticed how much we stood out. We were dressed in the standard grad school uniform: khakis and button-downs. No one around us shared our fashion sense. They were dressed in “redneck casual”: dirty blue jeans and assorted trailer park shirts (e.g. WWF shirts with logos like, “Come Smell What the Rock Is Cooking”). The better dressed had on cowboy hats, cowboy boots, flannel shirts and clean blue jeans. Having grown up in Kentucky, I knew that these sorts of people generally don’t take kindly to those they perceive as rich and snobbish, especially when they’ve been drinking. I filed that thought under “obvious foreshadowing.”

  By this time, Hate had separated from us and found his way into a discussion with a group of younger rednecks about the relative merits of the North versus the South. Hate is from Pennsylvania. They did not share his views. He claimed that he could whip any wrestler in the bar that night. Two of the rednecks, one very fat, claimed to be cousins of one of the wrestlers, the one called “Motorbike Mike,” or some such bullshit. Hate questioned the sexuality of their cousin. A girl in the group claimed to be the girlfriend of “Motorbike Mike.” Hate que
stioned her taste in men, her moral turpitude, and her intelligence.

  The fat one, the alleged cousin of Motorbike Mike, who was apparently also somehow a relative of the girl, took exception to this. He was about 6'1", making him a good eight inches taller than Hate. He had thick glasses, so horribly smudged I wanted to rip them off his face and clean them on my shirt (remember, I’m sober). His white tank top shirt had grease and ketchup stains on it, partially covering the “George Strait” concert logo.

  The redneck desperately needed a course in logic. He was losing an argument to someone so drunk he tried to climb into a wrestling ring:

  Hate “The South is full of inbreds and rednecks. How are you related to both of them?”

  The redneck tries to explain. I’m not able to follow. Hate ignores him.

  Hate “None of this changes the fact that they’re dating, and they’re related. That is incest. You are Southern, inbred trash.”

  Redneck “Yeah, well the North is just a bunch of rich bitches.”

  Hate “Possibly, but that doesn’t change the fact that you have not responded to me. You are obviously an idiot also.”

  Redneck “Wa, well… You ain’t worth a shit, and neither is the North.”

  Hate “Oh, that’s a great comeback. You’re making my point for me, moron.”

  Redneck “Bitch, I’ll fight’cha ass. We’ll see who’s better then, ya rich bitch.”

  A few more minutes of this, and the wrestling round mercifully ended, creating a short break in the action. I pulled Hate away from this stimulating conversation, and we joined everyone else at the bar. Hate ordered shots for the group.

  After a post-shot round of beers, the mechanical bull started up. Hate not only signed himself up, but continuously yelled across the bar at the fat redneck with the smudged glasses until he came over and signed up also. El Bingeroso slammed a ten-dollar bill on the bar, and called the redneck out.

  El Bing “Hey FATASS, ten bucks says my friend rides longer than you.”

  Redneck “Screw you, Northern bitch. I’ll fucking outride your mom.” El Bing “What? My mother’s not here, idiot. You just have to outride him,” pointing at Hate.

  The redneck walked off without answering. After a few girls rode the bull, the redneck got on and was thrown after about four seconds. A poor showing. We mock him mercilessly. He flips us off. We cheer loudly.

  Hate rode for the full 8 seconds, an eventful eight seconds at that. The first four or so he was doing fine, until the bull reared back, and flung him forward. Hate, had he been like the redneck, would have flown off into the cushions. But Hate is sort of like a British pitbull: once his jaws are locked, nothing short of death can get him to release. As a result, his entire body landed on his crotch, which hit his hand, which he had tied to the saddle horn. You could almost see him turn green as his entire body weight crushed his testicles against his wrist. To his credit, he stayed on for the full 8 seconds.

  Hate, along with El Bingeroso and Thomas who have joined in the North vs. South discussion, begin taunting the fat redneck.

  Hate “Hey, Jethro, how’d I stay on longer than you? Your fat ass alone should have kept you on for more than four seconds.”

  Thomas “Can anyone from the South do anything right?”

  El Bing “Maybe if you weren’t fucking your cousin, you’d be able to hold on tighter.”

  Hate “I thought the North wasn’t worth a shit? I’ve never even seen a mechanical bull before tonight, and I outrode your sorry ass.”

  The redneck flips us off again, yells a stream of non sequiturs that he presumably intended as disparaging remarks, and storms off with his friends. This enrages Hate:

  Hate “HE OWES YOU TEN DOLLARS!!”

  El Bingeroso and I convince Hate that it’s OK, that in this case a moral victory is sufficient.

  The mechanical bull interlude over, wrestling began again. Everything stayed calm for a while. The two wrestlers were incredibly fat, but they were using props (trash cans and such) and fake blood, so it was entertaining.

  I went to the bathroom, and when I get back Hate had disappeared again. I found him up against the ring, trying to grab one of the wrestlers by the ankle. I run over to the ring, where the bouncers had pulled him off the ring, and were trying to calm him down. He did not respond to them agreeably.

  At this point, dealing with Hate was like taking a leashed pit bull to the Westminster Dog Show. I assist the bouncers with moving Hate away from the ring, and he and I end up in the area where the fat redneck and his entourage are. By this time, Motorbike Mike has come down to hang out with his girlfriend and myriad cousins. Hate, seeing the fat redneck, demands El Bingeroso’s ten dollars. Motorbike Mike and I try to break them up, when Hate realizes who he is and yells at him,

  “YOU FUCK YOUR COUSIN! YOU INBRED BITCH, GIVE ME MY TEN DOLLARS. I’LL KICK BOTH YOUR SOUTHERN WHITE TRASH ASSES.”

  And then hell starts breaking loose.

  The bouncers lose their patience with Hate, and three of them, plus Motorbike Mike, picked him up and literally threw him out the back door. It was a scene straight out of Road House. I go to find everyone else, still at the bar, to tell them that Hate has been thrown out. El Bingeroso and Thomas are drunk, hanging all over each other, telling college stories to each other that both were there for. Brownhole is talking to the only female bartender with a full set of teeth, and GoldenBoy is cheering the wrestlers, urging them to spill more fake blood.

  When El Bingeroso gets drunk, violence tends to follow. Provoked by the knowledge of Hate’s ejection from the bar, El Bingeroso begins smashing ashtrays and flinging them off the bar. This upsets the bar manager, who pulls me aside.

  Manager “Son, I think it’s time you and your friends left.”

  Tucker “Yes Sir, I agree wholeheartedly. Let me just get them together, and we’ll promptly leave.”

  I huddle everyone together, and explain the situation. We are getting kicked out. As I herd them toward the door, Hate walks up.

  Hate “Hey guys.”

  Tucker “What are you doing here? You just got kicked out.”

  Hate “It’ll take more than that to keep me out of here. I paid my two dollars, I’ve got a bracelet, and I’m getting my goddamn money’s worth.”

  Fine, I tell him we’ve been kicked out anyway, it’s time to leave. I get everyone moving towards the door. El Bingeroso is one of the first outside, and as he waits for the rest of the group, he sees a truck parked right next to the door. He rears back and kicks the front grill of the truck. Twice. I am still trying to round everyone up, when a large redneck comes out the front door, and walks up to El Bingeroso.

  Redneck “Hay boy…hay, did-jew juss kick dat truck?”

  El Bingeroso is unsure how to answer. The redneck is large, and El Bingeroso knows he’s guilty of the offense charged, but he doesn’t seem to want to admit this to the redneck. So he just glares at him.

  Redneck “I asked you a question, boy, did you kick that truck?”

  El Bing “Who the fuck are you?”

  That was apparently the magic phrase, because the redneck immediately open-fist slapped El Bingeroso right in the face. Thomas, who was standing there watching, throws his beer bottle on the ground, takes a little crow hop, and swings at the redneck. His aim is not good, and the fight degrades into a poorly choreographed dance, where El Bingeroso, Thomas and the large redneck are each swinging at each other and alternately moving away so as to not be struck by any counterpunches.

  Before I can even intervene (I was a good ten yards away when the first punch was thrown), ten more rednecks pour out the door. Brownhole and I successfully pull El Bingeroso and Thomas away from the increasingly large group of rednecks, and manage to settle things down for a second.

  Tucker “OK, we are leaving. Sorry about any problems, but we’re going.”

  The group of twenty to thirty rednecks crowded around the door are staring and yelling at Brownhole, Credit, GoldenBoy and I as we try
to pull Thomas and El Bingeroso away from the door.

  A few seconds later Hate pushed his way through the crowd of rednecks, emerging on the other side just as one of them yelled something derogatory at El Bingeroso. Hate, being both loyal and drunk, immediately tackled this redneck, pinning him up against the very truck that El Bingeroso was kicking three minutes prior.

  The events of the next minute are somewhat unclear, but I do remember these images:

  Hate with his head buried in someone’s stomach, waling at his ribs, as other rednecks descended upon him.

  GoldenBoy and a redneck trying desperately to strangle the life out of each other.

  El Bingeroso and Thomas, back-to-back, swinging at anything that came close.

  Credit standing in the street debating.

  Me and Brownhole trying to pull Hate off of his redneck punching bag.

  Then, the defining words of the night rang from out of Brownhole’s mouth: “DUDE, HE’S GOT A FUCKING GUN! GUN! GUN! GUN! A FUCKING GUN!”

  The word “gun” can do strange things to a fight. In this case, it ended it immediately. At those few words, El Bingeroso and Thomas were immediately out in the street with Credit, and GoldenBoy and Hate began retreating, hesitantly, with me and Brownhole, into the street.