Tucker Max, Unplugged

In his autobiographical tale “The Famous Sushi Pants Story,” modern-day libertine Tucker Max decides that it would be reasonable to buy a portable alcohol breathalyzer and try to match his blood alcohol content to his age. In the process, he takes off his pants at a sushi bar, aggressively challenges a stranger to a drink-off, and wakes up bleeding in his car, his last memory of someone telling him “kiss my ass” at 1:24 a.m.

For those Bell Lap readers who have not yet discovered him, we present Tucker Max of TuckerMax.com fame, the man who received a B.A. from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Duke Law School (two facts he mentions frequently), but decided to make a living blacking out, juicing women, and recounting his adventures on the Internet.

“I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” Max’s new book, is a collection of Max’s most infamous Decameron-like stories alongside some newer material. A perusal of the new book reveals that this same man once left a 20-foot trail of diarrhea in the lobby of a Texas Embassy Suites, got kicked out of a hockey game for wrestling the mascot on the ice, and had sex with a girl with a colostomy bag.

To be fair, these tales of debauchery lead the reader into a Catch-22. On the one hand, Tucker’s inherent narcissism and sheer sexual success should arouse suspicion, followed by jealousy and self-loathing. On the other hand, he pulls undeniable power moves like copulating with a Target employee after picking her up during a mesh shorts purchase. Even if you’re categorically opposed to any writing that includes a hierarchy of belligerence peaking at “Tucker Max Drunk,” you can’t deny that Max displays an instinctive knack for calling out wanksters of all kinds.

But a closer look will reveal a deeper lesson. The stories are ancillary to Tucker Max himself, the man who stands up and acts where the rest of us sit and dream or masturbate. In the face of everything around him—social norms, ugly girls, stupid people, law firms, hotel employees, self-righteous d-bags, the very limits of human existence—Max has striven to break through boundaries and has sought to stake a claim for himself as a human being you may try to go over but never around. Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue brings us the famous Athenian claim that “the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.” Max’s life is this principle realized.

He tried to clarify his message to the Bell Lap in a phone interview.

“I try to explain to people that the only way to be cool is to be who you truly are, and the only way to live life is to do the things that you want to do and be the person that you want to be,” says Max, “no matter who that is or what that is or how you have to do it. That’s the only way you can be genuinely happy.”

It’s advice Max challenged us to take at this breeding ground of sexual repression we call Harvard. Every time we suggested that we might not be men enough for the task at hand, he called us to rise to a higher level.

“Tucker,” we said, “girls at Harvard are ugly.”

“Fuck you dorks. I went to University of Chicago. You guys may have a pair of jacks, but I got pocket aces with ugly girls, so don’t talk to me about ugly girls, alright?”

“Tucker,” we said, “girls at Harvard have self-esteem. They don’t take off their clothes for alcohol.”

“You know what I’ve always found? Just ask. ‘Take off your shirt.’ ‘No way.’ ‘Come on, take it off.’ ‘I won’t do that, I’m not that kind of girl.’ ‘Take it off right now.’ ‘OK!’ Nine times out of ten, if you ask, you’ll get it.”

“Tucker,” we said, “have you heard about Jenn Sterger, the FSU ‘cowgirl’ with the biggest chest in the West? Do you think we could get with her?”

“Honestly, dude, she’s not that hot,” he told us. “She came to my website trying to pimp her pictures but we absolutely eviscerated her.”

“Tucker,” we cried, “are there innate differences between men and women in the areas of advanced science?”

“I followed the debate, and I think [University President] Larry Summers was right, but he just wasn’t very tactful about his comments, and I think in a lot of ways his attackers set up straw men and attacked the straw men instead of actually attacking his points. But I don’t want to talk about this, dude, there’s no possible way you could be interviewing Tucker Max and ask me about the Larry Summers debate. Come on now.”

In other words, this campus could benefit from Max’s book, if only to finish that thesis, seduce that proctor, or punch that d-bag bartender at the Kong in the face.

In the meantime, Tucker Max will be signing his book (and female body parts) at the BU Student Center, on Saturday, February 18, from 5-8 PM.

Bell Lap will be there. Will you?