We’re all sitting at a long table, and by the time the food comes, I have Betty hand-feeding me calamari. All the while, Jim, another Duke Law student, sat across the table from this scene, unable to believe what he was witnessing, and (I swear this is true), eating ribs with a fork. Needless to say, this scene was just too much for most of the other summer associates. And the look on the face of one of the junior associates was priceless when I leaned over and asked her if the woman feeding me calamari was actually a partner. Yeah, I was a little out of control.
Everyone scatters except me, Betty, Kathy, and one other summer. I’m assuming they saw the train wreck coming, and didn’t want to be anywhere near when it hit. Smart decision. My car was still at the firm, so Betty offers to give me a ride to the office to get it. I accept, and then another summer, Brian, invites himself along. “Oh, I need a ride to the office too.” I didn’t really understand why at the time, but Betty gave him a mean look, and agreed to take him along.
[Side note: The only reason I can tell you this next part is because truth is an absolute defense to libel, and this particular event had a sober witness named Brian, who went to law school at Columbia. Though it may seem libelous, this is the complete truth. I’d been drinking, but I remember this vividly. If you don’t believe this, find him and ask him about it. He has no reason to lie for me.]
We get to the firm, and Brian and I get out of Betty’s car, and then she turns off the car and gets out herself. She looks up at the building (Fenwick has all of a ten story building in Palo Alto), then looks right at me and says, “It looks like I left the lights on in my office. I should probably go turn them off. What do you think?” I am oblivious to the implied meaning here, and look up and say, “Whatever, who cares—they’re halogen, it’ll cost like three cents for the night. Forget it.”
Betty gets a mildly frustrated look on her face, and still staring right at me, says, “I need to go up to my office and turn off my lights. Maybe you should come up there…help me out.” Did I ever mention how retarded I am when I get drunk? Well, I missed that signal too, “No, whatever, they’re fine, don’t worry about it.” She kind of pauses for a second, looks right into my eyes, and says, “DO YOU…want to come… HELP ME…turn off the lights… IN MY OFFICE?”
Bingo. That one registered.
What did I do? Did I go with her up to her office and fuck the shit out of her? Did I dot her eyes right on her desk? Did I show her that this 24-year-old knew exactly what to do with that 40-year-old?
No. In perhaps the single stupidest move of my life, I quickly said no, jumped into my car, and tore out of the parking lot. The irony here is so fucking thick it’s ridiculous. There is no category that Betty falls into that I have not slept with before; I have hooked up with women as old as Betty, uglier, more married, more children, everything. Shit, I have a hard time counting the times I’ve turned down sex at all, unless the girl was ugly and my friends were around.
So why did I chicken out? Why did I pass up such a sure thing? I DON’T KNOW!! That’s the worst part. I can’t figure out what happened. It’s like for about five minutes of my life, I was a moral Puritan.
The next weekend was the firm retreat at Silverado Ranch in Napa Valley. My roommate and I drove up Friday afternoon, in my car, checked into the hotel, and then met everyone in the reception area. Starting at around 7pm, there were cocktails and hors d’oeurves, and then at 9pm the charity auction was starting. I get to the reception promptly at 6:58 to find numerous well-stocked open bars…and no food. OK, there was some shrimp, perhaps some baklava, and maybe even a petit four or two, but nothing substantive to eat. Well, HELLO, what do you think is going to happen? Did no one involved in the planning of this thing ever hear of the behavioral effects of alcohol on an empty stomach?
By the time the auction started, I was so drunk I was walking around carrying, seriously, two bottles of wine in my hands; red in my left, white in my right, taking alternating swigs from each. I sat, clutching my wine bottles, at a table right next to the stage, with my roommate, about maybe five or six other summers, and a few junior associates.
The charity auction was only for the 400+ people associated with the firm (and their spouses), and was all firm-specific items. Things like the managing partner would cook you dinner, you could throw things at some other partner, a chair from a partner’s office, etc. I forget where the money was going, probably to Our Sisters of the Festering Rectum Orphanage, who knows? Most of the things were stupid, so I just sat there and solemnly poured wine into my face. Then an item came up, which, in my drunken stupor, I simply had to have: The hiring partner, John Steele, would chauffeur you around for a night in his Cadillac. Beautiful, I thought in my inebriated stupor. If I buy this, they have to give me an offer. That’s how drunk I was.
The bidding started at $50. It slowly went to $60, then $80, then $100, so I got bored, and just stood up on my seat and held my paddle up. The auctioneer took this as a sign to just start yelling out ever-increasing numbers, never even looking at the other bidders. The bid got to around $600, with no one bidding but me, and I yelled at him to quit. One or two other people might have thrown a bid in there, when John Steele got on the mike and said that if a summer won, he’d pay half. This, predictably, doubled the bid immediately.
When the bidding hit about $2,000, I thought I had it won. No one else was bidding, when all of the sudden, Aparna, another summer who was good friends with me, knew the condition I was in (shit-housed drunk), and knew that, given my egomaniacal personality, I would not stop bidding, ever, no matter what, regardless of the price. So, with the help of a few partners bankrolling her, she started slowly bidding me up. $2,200, $2,300, $2,400…
The next thing I know, I’m on stage, and I grab the microphone from the auctioneer, and start yelling at her. I’m doing it in a teasing way, but I’m like, “Aparna, what are you doing? You know you can’t afford this. You’re just trying to mess with me. I have to win this; it’s the only way I’m getting an offer.” This sends the crowd into fits of laughter. I wasn’t even trying to be funny, but hey, put some liquor in me and you never know what’s going to come out.
He kicks me off the stage, the betting gets up to about $3,300 or so, I climb back on stage, wrestle the mike away from the auctioneer, and start yelling, “This is not fair. You have partners bankrolling you, I only have a few scrubby summers in my corner. Seriously, Aparna, I need this. QUIT!” Again, eruptions of laughter.
The bidding eventually hits $3,800, and this time the auctioneer says, “Alright Tucker, come on up here. I know you’ll come up anyway.” I get on stage, and eventually have to make the call, do I go to $3,900 or not?
Microphone in hand, in front of everyone, I say, “Fuck it—go ahead.”
The funny thing is, people not associated with the firm think this is why I got fired. Not at all; the managing partner came up to me afterwards and told me it was the funniest thing he had ever seen at a firm event. The name partner, Bill Fenwick, told me, literally, I did Kentucky proud. Another partner I didn’t know told me I was awesome. For the rest of the night, I was a star. Believe it or not, that’s the absolute truth.
We end up back at the hotel, and the summer associates and some other junior associates go to someone’s suite, and we’re playing cards, drinking, and socializing. It was about this point that I blacked out. My last clear memory is trying to convince some summer to beat up an associate, because he was cheating at poker. The next day, Eric told me that I tried to hook up with Aparna, but all I could manage to do was pass out on top of her. It was that kind of night.
I wake up the next morning, it’s like 11am, and I feel like a bag of ass. All the summer associates were supposed