Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates by Mike Stangle Read Free Book Online Page A

As a side note, eleven of those sixteen eventually transferred out to other schools. I was just an eighteen-year-old kid with an appetite for fun, God damn it. We established a resistance. Every Thursday, Friday, and most Saturdays, we would buy a Weekender (a thirty-pack; credit: Mousey Lynch, RIP), sit three across in the Ross Hall men’s bathroom with our pants around our ankles, and drink. You’re reading this correctly. We had to act like we were taking a shit in order to sneak booze. Bottom line: Butler was miserable and getting worse. It was time to call home and break the news that I needed to transfer. My dad’s disappointment was a real kick to the dick that I didn’t need.
    The one nice thing was I did come home from Butler with the body of a Greek fucking god. It was miserable to have to get up at 5 a.m. and sprint every morning. It was miserable to have to lift weights twice a day six days a week. It was miserable to drink never and exercise always. In general, being healthy is downright miserable. I guess it wasn’t that miserable to be in incredible shape, though. I had the body of Michael Phelps but the bravado of Ryan Lochte. It was a deadly combination, and I couldn’t wait for that year’s Purge. If I ever stood a chance, this was it. By the end of my second semester, I had made a nice rebound with my grades and thought that might have started off my summer in the right place with JT. A “nice rebound” was a relative term, as JT would point out, because it would have been tough for me to fall off the floor. Good point, JT. Doesn’t mean we can’t get along this summer, right? Oh, Dad, did I mention I’m miserable at Butler and I’m not going back? Where am I going? To the State University of New York at Geneseo—the college no one has heard of, unless you’re a teacher or a farmer, or both. Why am I transferring there? Because the gal to guy ratio is 6:1 and all people do there is rage. That’s why I’m going.
    I could see why he wasn’t happy with my life choice. That I concealed my true, degenerate interior with a lacrosse-playing persona was just about the only thing my dad liked about me at the time. It was no wonder we fought within literally minutes of me arriving home from Indiana that summer. The night before, I was fourteen hours into the seventeen-hour drive and decided to stop at a friend’s school for the night, before hitting the homestretch the next day. For a few very silly legal reasons that are somehow still an issue ten years later, I won’t get into just how I got arrested at my buddy’s school that night. But I will tell you that it involved Senator’s Club whiskey, and an alleged “all-you-can-eat” buffet at Ponderosa. That next day, somehow, someway, news of my arrest traveled back to Menands faster than I did. To this day, I don’t know how he knew, but when I pulled into the driveway that next morning, JT was standing on the front lawn, hands on the hips of his cargo shorts. I was so fucked. I started heavy breathing. I got nervous. I felt like Luke Skywalker running around that swamp with Yoda’s balls on the back of his neck: Remember your training! I was jacked up—psychologically, yes, but also physically. This was my day!
    I got out of the car and immediately started yelling. I don’t know what I was even yelling about. I just knew that if I yelled loud enough, I wouldn’t hear the things my father was yelling simultaneously. He apparently had the same exact strategy. We were standing face-to-face, screaming total nonsense. At one point, I think I might have even kicked dirt on his shoes. It didn’t take long for us to come to blows. No matter how strong I was then, how much I thought I was his physical match, I learned very quickly that with the sole exception of retard strength, nothing compares to old-man strength. He had me pinned within seconds. I think