Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (21 page)

Was I assuming too much? Maybe. Was her vulnerability probably more rooted in how embarrassed she would be for people to find out that a babe like her was fooling around with a goof like me? Probably. But for that moment when our eyes met, I realized how far beyond me she was emotionally—how far I was from having
any
sort of cause even remotely as close to my heart as vegetarianism was to hers. Son of a bitch . . . I just couldn't do it. What did I do instead? I had convened and primed a jury of my peers, and now I had no exit strategy! All eyes were on me. People were hungry and wanted to get to their hot plates. I started to sweat. I used an extended pause, but it only generated more anticipation. Finally, I threw in the figurative towel. I claimed that my entire case had been an elaborate hoax to distract everyone from the fact that she threw up on my penis mid-blow-Johnson. I chose
a
real truth over
the
real truth. Was Moonbeans embarrassed? Sure. Was her cover as a fake vegetarian blown? Nope, safe and sound.

(Dave)

I've got a friend named Quack. Quack is tough to describe. If I start with his personality, it will take away from how bizarre he looks physically. If I start by describing his taste in women, you'll get violently ill before I get into how big a sweetheart he actually is. And if I start by describing how big a sweetheart he actually is, I'll be telling a bald-faced lie.

His introduction is always strong and throws people off right away. Quack. Quack? Why the fuck is his name Quack? Yet that is possibly the only easy thing to understand about him. Quack's full name is Ryan Grady Quackenbush. Aside from Mike and me, Quack is the only person whose true full name will appear unchanged in this book. It'd be borderline impossible to drag Quack's reputation through the mud any more than he's been doing since the day I met him. Ryan was a twelve-year-old fat kid, and Quack was his persona. “Hi,” he'd say with his tiny little hand reached out for a dead-fish handshake, “Quack. Like a duck.” He'd walk away before people knew what to think. That's still his move to this day. He knows people need a moment to digest not only what they are hearing, but also what they are seeing. Half the people who meet him for the first time probably aren't listening to a word he is saying. Quack is arguably the most uniquely shaped individual this world has ever known. He is quite rotund, to be frank. His body is almost a perfect sphere, actually. Add to that, he only stands at exactly five feet tall “on the nose,” he'll have you believe. But I've maintained for years that he is actually only four feet eleven. The Quackenbushes, as a family, aren't the tallest bunch in the world. They're all short. They breed down, too. Every new generation of Quackenbush children is like opening up another Russian nesting doll to find an even smaller one inside. Quack is the shortest of the bunch. He is the little nugget at the very center.

Quack's mother has become a world-class seamstress over the years, I'd imagine from having to always hem regular people clothes to fit her family of lawn gnomes. Seamstresses always have measuring tape around, so I stole a roll from his mom and carried it around with me for weeks waiting to plot my move. When we were seventeen, Quack exclusively drank Gatorade-and-vodka. It was the only thing he would ever drink. No beers, no cocktails, no literally-anything-we-could-get-our-hands-on-because-we-were-seventeen. Nothing but Gatorade-and-vodka. The sugar in this combination constantly left him with vicious hangovers. I jumped him and tried to measure him when he was in the midst of sweating his way through one of the worst of these hangovers. He was mowing grass in his backyard, and I was smoking grass in mine. Moments after I finished, my dad came home and made me help him give our racist German shepherd a bath in the backyard. As we chased her around, cornered her, and tied her to a tree for her wash-down, I noticed how helpless she was. She gave in and let it happen. This would be the blueprint for how I would finally prove Quack's true height. Knowing it was Saturday morning and he would be mowing grass, it was the perfect opportunity. I didn't even hesitate when I got to his place. I hopped his fence, ran up behind him, and literally kicked him as hard as I could in the back. That was about as far as I got. I had this whole grand plan and all these dog-washing tactics I was going to use. I couldn't even pin him down! It was like wrestling the Kool-Aid man. I couldn't get my arms around him! I was an in-shape seventeen-year-old lacrosse player, and I lost a wrestling match to a five-foot punk named after a buoyant waterfowl. From that day on, he was incontestably five feet tall.

Have I mentioned that Quack is a sick fuck? Just as people are starting to accept what they are seeing with Quack's insane exterior, they begin to experience how deeply deviant he is on the inside. He is the most perverted man I've ever been around, and he makes absolutely no effort to hide it from anyone in his company. I think it's his way of putting people to the test right away. If he disgusts you, he figures that it was coming eventually, so you might as well end the conversation now. If you laugh, you'll love him forever. Right away, he puts you on his level. Within minutes of your first conversation he may reveal to you his preference for large nipples on a woman (
I don't want to be able to tell where the boob ends and the nipple begins
) or his personal rules he won't break (
I insist on being on top when I sixty-nine
). Even the way he compliments my mom is strangely off (
you look handsome today, Mrs. S
). I recently walked by him at a party and overheard him finishing a story. All I caught was “. . . she asked me what was on my penis, and I said nothing, babe, I just shaved my pubes into the shape of a GoPro. Can we drop it already?” He was talking to my aunt Loretta. At three in the afternoon, at a family barbecue. Quack is out to make himself laugh first and foremost; if others find him funny, it's an added bonus. One time for Halloween, he dressed as Ed Harris's character from
The Truman Show
. He wore round glasses, a backward Kangol hat, and a hands-free headset. He walked around screaming, “Cut the feed!” the entire night. He didn't break character once. Pretty much
no one
got it.

Have I mentioned Quack has almost killed me more than eight times? Many people have had near-death experiences in their lives. For a guy in his late twenties, I'm farther down the wrong end of the bell curve than I'd like to admit, but I'm still breathing. I attribute that to Quack. Not the still breathing part, no way. That's blind luck, and I'm living on borrowed time. I mean, it's my position on the bell curve that I attribute to Quack. Anytime I've had the realization that I was in true danger, the one that gives you that funny feeling in your butthole, Quack has been by my side and responsible for getting us there. Most of these experiences have taken place far away from home. That's when things get the craziest. The way to get Quack in his wheelhouse is to go more than two hours away from home. Because Quack never flies anywhere, that would mean you've got a drive ahead of you. If it's with Quack, there will be a cooler overflowing with cold Coors Lights. It's a staple of any drive over two hours. Don't count on Quack to do the driving, though, not even in his own truck. He is there for one thing and one thing only: to crush Coors Lights at an alarming rate. Quack has only owned (and will ever own) pickup trucks. He'll claim it's because he is a construction worker. That's bullshit. He won't drive a car because a car doesn't have a truck bed to dispose of empty Coors Light cans in with a toss over your shoulder while opening the next one. His truck bed looks like Scrooge McDuck's giant vault of gold, except it's filled with silver . . . bullets, that is.

In the spring of 2012, our friend Lance Bass was graduating from law school and having a party to celebrate what was a monumental feat among my group of friends. Our high school graduation parties were wild, not because we were proud of graduating from high school, but because we genuinely didn't know when the next time anyone in our group would ever graduate from another institution besides a federal penitentiary. Fast-forward eight years, and we've got a law school party on our hands? Fuck yes. Lance Bass pulled out all the stops, too. He rented a big house in Lake Placid, New York. In its history, that town had two things happen and two things only:

1. Host of the 1980 Winter Olympics, site of the “Miracle on Ice”

2. Host of Lance Bass's law school graduation party

Lake Placid won't let either of them go. The town is more than three hours away from where we grew up. Let's do the math. Three hours is more than two hours, and two hours qualifies us for . . . FULL COOLER. We hit the road at once. We were so antsy in the pantsy, we left at noon even though we weren't planning on pregaming for the pre-party that preceded the cocktail hour until at least five o'clock. It was a good thing we erred on the side of caution, too. About halfway between Albany and Lake Placid is Lake George. Remember Lake George? Sure you do. If you're passing through Lake George, you're not going to
not
stop in and experience the vibe a little, right? We thought we'd quickly grab lunch at Duffy's Tavern on the water, because it sounds like a bar that should be in
The Simpsons,
then maybe have one dog beer each (seven human beers) before hitting the road again.

I'm not sure how, and it's an entirely different story altogether, but Quack and I ended up playing nine holes of golf with two local fishermen we met at the bar. Have I mentioned Quack also has a vicious gambling problem? And he can't golf well at all?
We'll end up in the black,
he kept saying. Somehow, he was right. It's not shocking that two salty fishermen found his humor appealing. They were buying dog beers on the course like crazy, too. I think I had two dog beers. Before I knew it, we were back on the road after a quick four-hour pit stop. Now we were tuned up for a big night.

Quack and I rolled into Lake Placid at about 8 p.m., just as the cocktail hour was wrapping up. “I'm sorry, sir, the bar is closed, as the party will be moving upstairs for dinner now.” It's not what we wanted to hear. Quack peeled off a hundred-dollar bill (I should mention Quack is the richest person I know and completely self-made; I know, right?) and all but shoved it down the poor bartender's throat as he told him
I didn't go through the trouble to put on this goddamn tie to hang out sober, compadre
. Quack had insisted we pack some suits for our trip, “Just in case we have to get buried up there.” I think he was serious.

When we were about an hour out of town, we received word from the party that it was a swanky affair; attendees were suited up and wearing dresses. Have you ever taken off all your clothes and put on a full suit while driving a pickup truck with between two and three dog beers in you? The only thing harder is for Quack to do it. With his unique body type in play, he has developed an entire system for getting dressed. It's like watching a paraplegic get off his wheelchair to take a shit. There is grunting, sweating, a lot of arm work and breath control. Add in the confinements of a pickup truck at high speed and you can see how Quack had earned another drink. I went to the bathroom to take a much-needed pee and by the time I came back, Quack was in mid-handshake with the bartender as I heard, “. . . like a duck. Now, about those beers I need.”

The remainder of the cocktail hour, dinner, and reception rolled on as expected. We were seated at the kids' table, while aunts and uncles looked at us with complete disgust. Every time the waitress walked by, Quack goosed her butt and asked for another round—even though she was there to deliver the current round. By the time dancing broke out, we were already climbing the scaffolding of the social guillotine. Lance Bass had this uncle who seemed to have a real problem with us. Quack will tell you it was because I was getting handsy while dishing life advice to his uncle's eighteen-year-old daughter, who was set to attend Geneseo College that coming fall, my alma matter. That was only half of it, though. This red-faced uncle had a wife, too. She was short and thick and right up Quack's alley. When you're only five feet tall (allegedly), here is how your body stacks up to the average woman while dancing with her: your eyes are directly in line with her breasts, and your hands have nowhere to rest but on her ass. If you're looking to nudge a pissed-off uncle over the edge, Quack dancing with his wife is how you do it. We were coming at him from all angles: his young daughter getting the creep treatment from big Dave; his dear wife's butt getting kneaded like dough by a fat midget in a suit. A man can only take so much. He practically chased me out of the party, long before the party was over. I was all alone and had nowhere to go but to the bars in town.