Almost Interesting (26 page)

Dick Trick:
When trying to get girls to watch porno, try to sell it like a real movie to hook them in. “Babe, this is just like
Pirates of the Caribbean
. Except no pirates. Aaaand no Johnny Depp. No story and just a bunch of random fucking.” You’re not Roger Ebert, relax and give it a chance . . . stop being Penelope Prude.

Dick Trick:
The more girls trash their exes, the more they are in love with them. It took me forever to figure this out. If you’re hearing six months later what a dick this ex is, run, FAST.

Dick Trick:
Avoid the girls who talk too much. I think they do this to seemingly bond with a guy they like. They love for you to call them to chat. I hate when they ask, “Can you call me?” Or, “Can you call me right now?” Or, “Can you call me when you get in the car?” Or, “Can you call me when you get up?” Never date these battery burners. Any chick who keeps you on the phone twenty minutes a day is a drag. I always try to stick to texting, because there is less chance of triggering a blab-alanche with that mode of communication. Never ask, “How was your day?” because that’s just pulling her string. You’ll never get another word in once that thirty-minute run-on sentence starts. Sometimes I will just say to a girl, “I gotta get off the phone, it’s almost nine.” And they say, “Nine
P
.
M
.?” And I go, “No, nine percent battery. I started with one hundred. I’m hanging up.”

Dick Trick:
Don’t call a young girl on the phone when you first meet. This sets off her “old man” radar. And my God, never,
ever
leave a voice mail. I once heard two twenty-four-year-old girls talking about a guy one of them had met. She thought he was cute, but she decided she wasn’t into him. When the other asked why she said, “Oh my God, it’s so embarrassing,
he called me.
” And the other girl goes, “Oh no, gross. What a loser.” I had to chime in, “Wait, is that bad?” And of course, that immediately set off a loser alert on me. “Of course. I gave him my number to
text
me. What the fuck am I supposed to say to this guy if he calls? You walked by me last night at the club that was fun. Tell me your life story.” The other one then pipes in with, “Holy shit, speaking of losers, I had a guy leave me a voice mail last week.” So I’m sitting there darting my eyes knowing I’ve made this blunder and ask, “Well, what did he say?” She says, “Who the fuck knows? I didn’t listen to it. Are you kidding me? Who would leave a voice mail? I don’t even know how to listen to them.” I was in shock. This is so odd because I’m from the days where girls get mad if you
don’t
call, so this is all new to me.

Dick Trick:
When you meet a girl, there’s some clear signs you can pick up early to know if she actually wants to hook up or if you’re going to be a buddy. The first sign is if she calls you “buddy” in a text. “What’s up, buddy?” You’re dead in the water. Another one is being referred to as “silly.” You text her, “Where you at, yo? Why don’t you come by?” And she answers, “I’m at home, silly.” No girl is planning on fucking you if she calls you silly because that’s a name they usually reserve for an eight-year-old nephew. Also be very careful of lunches. I hit on a girl for a year when I realized I had settled for three lunches in twelve months. It was time to hang up the cleats on that one, it’s not happening.

And, for my final words of wisdom . . .

Dick Trick:
Never tickle a girl when she has diarrhea. Take my word for it, the fun stops quickly.

EPILOGUE: THE TIME I DID TOO MUCH COKE

I
miss coke. You know, cocaine? Or whatever we used to call it. Coke, toot, blow, rails, lines, blast, chalk, powdered Pepsi, devil’s dandruff, sniffy jiffy, power flour, booger sugar. It was all the same to me. Great. I got introduced to coke the first year of college. One of my fraternity brothers was a part-time dealer to help pay for school. I guess that counted as a work study job? It definitely beat working in the cafeteria.

Let me back up a bit. I had decided to go to Arizona State University, and was pledging SAE. I had a job, too, working part-time in a men’s clothing store. And I was trying to do stand-up whenever I could. All of this added up to mean that I was always tired and always on the verge of flunking out of school. I used to be the chess and spelling bee champ, and now I was a dumb-ass. This was a very hard adjustment to make, to be honest. So there I was, flopping around school all out of it when one day my entrepreneurial frat brother said, “Do you need a bump?” These were magic words I would learn to fall in love with.

He explained that “a bump” was just a small amount of cola on the back of a pen cap. (Thanks, school supplies!) It was nothing to be afraid of, and I just had to sniff it. So I took a toot and WOOHOO! SOLD! I loved it! The coke woke me up, I felt great, I was in a good mood, and there was no downside whatsoever. So now I’m skipping around campus, doing my shitty pledge chores and telling someone a thirty-minute story! It was a perfect day!

Well, my buddy had created a monster. From then on I was constantly knocking on his door like a little junkie trying to get a snootful: “Just to get me through my econ class.” He caught on pretty quick that I was hitting him up too often for the freebies, and since I wasn’t a hot model he was trying to sleep with, the well dried up quick.

“Twenty-five bucks,” he said through the door.

“Come on man! Just let me smell it!” (I was so clever. Heh heh.)

Professional dealers have little to no sense of humor. He was all biz now. “The smallest amount I can sell you is a quarter gram, which is twenty-five bucks. But this is really good shit.” I realized later that every single dealer says their shit is good shit. The truth is, it rarely is. This guy was literally the only guy I can recall who actually had really good shit. It took ten years for me to realize a lot of dealers sell terrible shit, mixed with Lidocaine, fruit salad, baby laxative, or soap. It’s always a drag to do a line and immediately say, “Do you have a bathroom?? I have sudden UNCONTROLLABLE DIARRHEA! IS THAT SEXY, LADIES?!” Anyway, I coughed up the twenty-five dollars out of my student loan and got my very first amber vial, one-fourth of the way full of cocaine. Red-letter day.

Unfortunately, I was not good at rationing my stash. It went a bit too fast. Now that I didn’t have to ask for the drugs, I used my own judgment. My own judgment apparently was a bit off because the next day I needed more. I had chipped away at it during class, at my valet parking job. (I needed the cash. Now for coke, apparently.) Then at the club before going onstage then after. I even did some the next morning during breakfast. Who needs coffee! I’ve got blow! But once I was down to zero, I realized that I needed to carve out some of the budget for this. My student loans and part-time gig checks were spoken for with tuition, rent, and food. There was no such thing as spare cash for me. I couldn’t seem to park cars fast enough or fold shirts neatly enough to rack up a twenty-five-dollar surplus. (By the way, at this point I never used coke to get laid. Girls would ask me if I had it and I’d say, “I wish I did. If you find any let me know.” This is against the coke creed. Guys are supposed to lie and say, “Yes, I have some” and then run around and try to buy it. If I actually had some, I was too greedy to fork [spoon] it over. It was a dumb move on my part because the term
coke whore
is no joke. Chicks will do a lot for it. The only thing worse than a coke whore is a coke prude—the girls who snuggle up to you and want to bogart all your stash, and then disappear at the end of the night. There should be a law against all of this. Not that I have experienced either. I have a friend who has.)

Anyway, so I’m at my second job one day, folding clothes. The store was called Johns & Company and was in Phoenix. I was sort of a runner/gofer. I only got the job because I was preppy. (Lame. I get it.) And my brother Andy had worked there forever and had gotten me in. This rich kid came into the store and apparently recognized me from my little bullshit comedy nights. He was sort of freaking out, actually, and it was my first brush with someone acting like I was famous. Even though I was far from it. I was barely local famous, to be honest. He said to me, “I got a new Ferrari out front. It is supercool. You wanna check it out?” “Sure-ly temple!” I replied (trying to live up to my hilarious rep). We went outside and it was a new black 400i. I mumbled the standard car remarks, “Holy shit, this is bitchin’, it’s cherry, it’s tits, etc., etc.” He says, “You want to take a ride??” “Ten-four, good buddy!” (More era-sensitive material. P.S.: It’s killing.) We tool around and he asks if I want a bump of the nose candy. After I laugh at the slang term I give him a serious, “Fuck yes.” He pulls out his amber vial, but his is fancy. It has a bullet on top, which slides right into the nose and you never have to open the vial. After your first huff, you twist and it reloads for the other side of nose. This was genius! Some Steve Jobs of the dirtball world surely came up with this invention. I was in heaven, AND THEN he told me I could drive the car. All my dreams were coming true. Gacked up on free chalk and driving a Ferrari! If he was a chick it would have been perfect.

Eventually, he dropped me back at Johns & Company and I started cleaning with a renewed sense of purpose and energy. I was really going for the folding merit badge that day. And no one seemed to notice I was amped out of my gourd. Life was good. Coke was better.

So this guy and I started hanging out. Together, we would hit the comedy clubs, I’d do my stupid sets, and he’d hit me with free bumps. We were like Liberace and his sidekick in
Beyond the Candelabra.
Not really, but close. But one day, things took a turn for the shitty. Richie Rich had some good tickets to see Cyndi Lauper, which was a pretty major concert at the time. He had a date that night, so we all went together. The best part of the show (the songs being a distant second) was the unveiling of a new bullet for my schnozz. A TWO-GRAM BULLET, FOLKS! This was like the new iPhone release. I was in awe. All night long I was bumping on his elbow, “Pass it over, Grover.” He was so focused on his chick he didn’t realize I was double-bumping off it. I did some and then I did some more and I was ready to have fun like all the girls. And then he blindsides me with, “Hey, let’s go, I’m going to drop you off, then take her home.” I go, “Wait, what??” I couldn’t have been more jacked. “I thought we were going to another club.” I realized that I needed some booze to even out the gack but he wasn’t having it. He wanted to get laid. Too bad for me. (Of course, I do another bump along the way. When in Rome . . . !)

My place was actually my friend’s mother’s house, even though I’m a big-deal comedian on the Maricopa County comedy circuit. It was about 1
A
.
M
. I creeeeeep up the stairs toward my room. The house is silent. The buzzing in my head is probably the loudest thing in the place. I sprawl out on the bed, but that is no good. Forget about sleeping, there’s no way I could even close my eyes at this point. I sneak back downstairs and steal an Old Milwaukee from my pal’s stash. My buddy and his parents all have real jobs, and I begin to rationalize my stealing of the beer and my drug buzz by thinking,
I’m in showbiz! I’m different. This is normal!
So I chug down the brew and then head out for a walk, still flying. I feel like I should take a jog over to the Grand Canyon or maybe go dig a pool for my friend. I start getting scared, because I am so energetic. I can’t stop. I come back to wake up my friend, thinking I might need to go to the hospital. He looks at me like I am crazy, and then tells me to go lie down and rolls over. This turns out to be the worst advice ever. There I am staring at the ceiling, panting like a dog. It is really disturbing. I wake up my friend again. This time he tells me to breathe into a paper bag. So I’m going puff . . . puff . . . puff but I don’t really understand that I should be breathing out and then breathe in again. I’m totally doing it wrong. Plus, it was a Ziploc bag so it really isn’t working. I need to go to a hospital, and that is that.

Now this was a pretty ballsy move, to just show up at the hospital gacked out of my mind. This was right before basketball player Len Bias died of a coke overdose two days after being drafted by the Boston Celtics. If I had known you could actually die from cocaine, I’m pretty sure I would have scared myself into a heart attack.

Once we got to the hospital, I was too scared to go in. I was afraid that the doctors would know I was famous. (I wasn’t. I performed at bars during
Monday Night Football
or before karaoke.) So my friend secretly cranked the heat and proceeded to talk me off the ledge for two solid hours. He spent all that time calmly asking me questions to get my mind off the cocaine. Eventually, the sun came up, and I sat there drenched in sweat. “Want to go home?” my friend asks. We head back to his house, and on the way in pass his parents, who are on the way to their jobs. They look at me like I’m a freak, which is more than fair. I spent the day sleeping, like the loser I was.

That wasn’t my last run-in with the white dust, but eventually I decide that I’m over it. I can’t keep up anymore. Just a little vodka and Diet Coke and I’m good.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

S
pecial thanks to Gurvie, Lorne, Venit, Sandler, Caitlin, Levine, Warren, and my brothers Andy and Bryan.

Of course, to Harper.

And to my dad, Sammy. If he hadn’t scrammed on us when we were kids I wouldn’t be fucked up enough to get a book deal. Thanks Scrammy!

PHOTO INSERT

Mr. Hitler will see you now.
Photograph courtesy of the author
.