Assholes Finish First (40 page)

If nothing else tipped me off to her craziness and the inevitable disaster that would result, this should have. I should’ve known that the “I’m
cool with you fucking other girls” shitck was a bad sign, and ANY girl who claimed to be cool with it was not only very delusional but also self-abusive and bug-fuck crazy.

In fact, I DID KNOW THAT. Of course I did, it’s obvious. I just convinced myself that this was different. She wasn’t crazy, this was just a sign that she recognized how awesome I am. Clearly all these hot girls should want to be with me this much, no matter what the cost. I’m Tucker Fucking Max!

The idea that she was an emotionally unstable codependent train wreck, who would do anything and pretend to be anything in order to attach herself to a high-status man who showed her even basic decency never occurred to me. I was too addicted to the constructed image of my own transcendent awesomeness to see the grains of truth starting to assemble themselves, but they were there, if only I’d had the courage to see them.

Gentlemen, listen to me: What seems too good to be true, is. It’s never different, and you’re not different. You may be really awesome, you may even be more awesome than me, but there are some inviolable rules of life that none of us can escape from. I’ve made a career out of breaking every rule there is. Most are easily breakable, without any consequence. But some are not: gravity, death, taxes, and the fact that no sane woman—no sane HUMAN—would subject herself to that degree of disrespect from her partner. These are just not changeable. I may be awesome, and I may have all the game on earth, but a disaster is a disaster, no matter who you are.

I did not always know this. I used to think I could get everything I wanted without having to pay the price for it. You can’t. Life is a trade-off. This relationship taught me that the devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for, which is exactly what this girl held herself out to be: everything I could ever want in a girl… but with a hidden cost.

Once we actually started dating—only three weeks or so after we met—with each passing day it became a little more obvious what that cost was: delusion. I had not found the perfect girl for me. What I had found was an LA girl who quickly figured out what I wanted her to be, then masterfully changed her external self into that. I was dating an actress, except this wasn’t a movie, it was real life, and she wasn’t playing a role, she was playing me.

There’s one problem with playing a role: It works for only a limited time. Your real self comes out eventually. For Alexa, it started with some minor crisis, like she couldn’t start her car and needed a ride to school. Then she had a fight with a friend. Then her mom threatened to cut off her credit cards (yes, her parents still paid her bills). Then came some issue with an ex-boyfriend stalking her. The crises started small but kept building, kept getting bigger and bigger and more and more time-consuming. Before I realized what was happening, she turned me into Captain Save-a-Ho. Me.
Tucker Max
.

This perpetual state of crisis allowed her to probe the emotional landscape of the relationship. What I would tolerate, how I responded to issues, and where my weaknesses and vulnerabilities were. Guys, let me explain something else to you: A woman in constant crisis is a Charybdis to be avoided at all costs. I know that sometimes it can feel nice to be the problem solver or the white knight, but her problems are a way to (1) control you, (2) soothe and reassure her insecurities, and (3) use you as a shield from the world so she doesn’t have to face her inability to deal with reality. Alexa was doing all of this to me and, like a pussy-whipped teenager, I was falling for it.

Once she figured out what worked and what didn’t, she knew how to run me, got secure in her position, and shifted from playing the role I wanted to being who she really was. The cool, mature girl became a petulant child, who pouted and whined about everything. The fun, carefree girl who was always down for a good time became insufferably selfish and evidenced a complete lack of empathy for anything or anyone. The mature, grounded girl with ambitious plans for the future started to display
a soul-sucking insecurity about everything in my life, becoming petty and manipulative about even the smallest things.

A specific incident really sticks out in my mind as the moment I began to recognize that this girl wasn’t who I thought she was. When I met Alexa, I was living in NYC; I was only staying in LA for a few months to sell the TV show. My last night in LA before I went back, Alexa and I went to a really nice sushi dinner with Bunny and a few other friends. Alexa was a fucking brat all night because she wasn’t the center of attention—this was mainly because the people at the table were really smart and she had nothing to add to the conversation, since it wasn’t about celebrity relationships or haute couture or any of the five or so topics she could speak about intelligently. Afterward, trying to be nice, I decided we’d go to her favorite dessert place. Like any spoiled child who manipulates the situation into her way, this cheered her up immediately.

Alexa was one of those girls everyone hates because they can eat the worst shit and still have amazing bodies. Because of this, she was always eating candy and cereal and pizza, but her favorite thing in the world is a dessert called a Bazookie. It is a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie served in a round baking tin, with two scoops of vanilla ice cream and fudge on it. She LOVED that thing, even ordering it delivered to her house.

We got one to share for the table. When it came, she attacked it. Not in a funny or playful way. She was—and I cannot be more literal about this description—knocking people’s spoons out of the way with her spoon and taking their bites away from them. Her selfishness was so aggressive, I half expected sparks to fly off the colliding metal utensils. It was almost inconceivable that an adult would act that way.

I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. She got this expression on her face that was equal parts rage, greed, and malice. You know what it reminded me of? The look that Gollum, from
The Lord of the Rings
movies, got when he was jealous of Samwise’s relationship with Frodo. The CGI in that movie did an amazing job capturing the evil, soulless eyes of a
sociopath, and as Alexa ripped fudge-drenched cookie out of my spoon, I saw those eyes in her. The curtain on her soul was pulled away for a brief second, and it was awful: no capacity for true emotion or love, no empathy, not even the remotest possibility of consideration for others. There was nothing human there, only someone who knew how to pretend really, really well. It was spooky.

Even though I felt all of this that night, I didn’t have the courage to fully admit it to myself. I couldn’t accept what I had seen and then act on it accordingly. I had built her up in my mind to be what I wanted her to be, and she had played that role so well, that even when I saw something that made me know in my heart it was all a sham… I just couldn’t face the harsh truth. I should’ve learned my lesson, broken up with her, dealt with the fallout, and moved on. But I didn’t. Instead, I ignored my intuition, pretended it didn’t happen, and went back to NYC, still believing in my fantasy.

It was stupid, weak, and cowardly, I know. But it’s what I did.

A month later she came to NYC with her parents and her brother, to visit her sister (who went to Columbia). Alexa was staying with me in my new apartment in Chinatown. Alexa was even worse when she was around her mom—where do you think she learned how to be a soulless sociopath?—and she was an insufferable cunt as soon as she got to my place.

Of course, it probably didn’t help that my ex-girlfriend Bunny was staying with me at the time also. This was a recipe for disaster that a kindergartner would have enough emotional intelligence to avoid, but I was far too narcissistic to recognize it. I mean, yeah, Bunny and I had dated, but that was four years ago, and we hadn’t slept together since that time, and Bunny was my best friend. How could this possibly upset Alexa?

No, really—that was my fucked-up thought process at the time.

All Alexa and I did the whole week was fight. And not good fighting. It was the bitter and hurtful type of arguing that people do when they won’t face what they’re really mad about. My place became like an episode of
COPS:
empty bottles and cans; abusive, vitriolic, top-of-your-lungs screaming; neighbors pounding on the walls; exes and current girlfriends in the same apartment. All we needed was some dirty underfed children running around in diapers and the redneck milieu would have been perfect. And of course, no matter how much we yelled or screamed or what we said to each other, Alexa and I always ended up fucking like rabbits anyway.

Bunny “Tucker, if you’re going to break up with her, you shouldn’t keep sleeping with her. It sends the wrong message.”

The second to last night she was in town, Alexa, Bunny, and I went to meet my agent and his wife at the Mercer Hotel for drinks. Alexa was mad and said nothing all night. She just typed on her Sidekick, ignoring everyone. I was so embarrassed at what a childish brat she was being that we ended up fighting some more, and I took her home early.

Back at the apartment, we argued more, and Alexa threw her Chanel bronzing powder onto the marble tiles on my floor, smashing the container into a thousand pieces and casting a permanent golden hue into the mortar. Considering the tiles were black, it was actually kind of pretty.

This momentary pause for reflection was very short-lived. We picked up the arguments with renewed vigor. I honestly don’t know what we were arguing about or what was said, but I do remember that she flew into a rage at something… and took a swing at me.

No, seriously: She struck me.

It wasn’t like she could cause substantial damage, and she didn’t use a weapon or stab me or anything like that, but she unquestionably physically assaulted me, in anger, during an argument.

Tucker Max, victim of domestic violence.

I hope you are laughing as hard reading that sentence, as I just did writing it.

Jokes aside, arguing is one thing, but physical violence is something entirely different. By then, I knew we were going to break up, but there is nothing that will harden your resolve and force change quicker than someone putting their hands on you in anger.

Tucker “That’s it. We’re done. You need to go stay with your parents at the Ritz. You can catch a cab outside.”

She tried yelling again for a second but stopped when I calmly told her that if she didn’t leave in a timely manner, I’d call the cops. She got really quiet and creepy, put on tons of makeup, and then loudly started telling me about how she was going to hurt herself.

Alexa “I don’t even know how to get to their hotel. I’ll just sleep in the street.”

I ignored her.

Alexa “And I’m going to buy drugs from homeless people.”

Kept ignoring her.

Alexa “And I’ll probably get raped and die. I don’t care anymore.”

Whereas this sort of emotional manipulation might have worked to some extent as recently as 30 minutes earlier, I was now unreachable. Much later than it should have been, I had finally admitted to myself who and what Alexa really was.

She packed up all her stuff and stood in the living room staring at me. I watched
Arrested Development
and pretended she didn’t exist. No
matter what she said, I just ignored her. Depriving her of attention was too much for her to take, I guess; she eventually exploded again, throwing her iPod at me. I have to say, she has a good arm, and good aim, because it hit me hard, square on the chin.

It’s weird, but super-high-stress situations seem to bring a calm over me. If my vacuum cleaner won’t start, I get enraged and freak out and can’t deal with it. But put me in a ten-car pile-up or bar fight or something like that, and I’m calm as a baby on Benadryl. That’s one of the few benefits of having parents who are yellers; you learn at a young age how to stay calm in the face of serious stress and trauma.

I stared at her for a second, picked up the iPod, walked casually out onto my deck, took a little crow hop, and launched that thing like Ichiro gunning out a runner from right field. The blue face lit up and pinwheeled away into the night, making an audible
ping
as it bounced off the lower level of the Manhattan Bridge. It was beautifully symbolic, watching Alexa’s dysfunctional playlist spin its way out of my life. A very Zen moment.

I know it wasn’t the most mature way to deal with my emotions, but it worked. I came back into the apartment smiling and happy. Alexa wailed:

Alexa “You’re buying me a new one! Oh my God—at least you didn’t throw the Chanel case.”

Addendum

It would be nice to end the story here and be able just to blame everything on her and make myself out to be a hero, fighting the good fight against the crazy, fucked-up LA whore.

But we all know that’s not the whole story; this coin obviously has two sides. I’m a guy, and I’m weak in the face of pussy, and I have my own
issues that led to me dating this girl… and because of this, I ended up fucking her two more times.

The first time was about a year after we’d broken up. I was living in LA and hadn’t really talked to her at all since we had broken up and she left NYC, even though she called me every few months. She had just broken up with a famous guy she was dating, and being the emotional vampire she was, she needed a soul to suck life out of. She was so persistent and still.so.fucking.hot, in a moment of weakness and stupidity, I told her what bar I was at. Once there, it only took twenty minutes before she got to the point:

Alexa “I want to come home with you.”

Tucker “No chance.”

Alexa “Why not?”

Tucker “Because fucking you is a bad idea.”

Alexa “WHAT? Why?”

Tucker “Let’s see—you’re a toxic, codependent sociopath. And like every girl in LA, you have herpes.”

Alexa “I DO NOT! Whatever. You don’t want to fuck me anyway.”

Tucker “Why, you on your period?”

Alexa “No! Gross!”