Part II: Recalling the Wicked Dudes

As promised here is Part II of my subpar week. Thinking my week over, my Tuesday commute to night class provided a memorable “blog” experience.

Warning: This post will begin as a recollection of what happened during Tuesday of this week and will then modulate into a sweet flashback sequence, effectively making this post a flashback of a flashback.

Sweetness. Okay, so it’s Tuesday and you’re me.

You’ve effectively been yelled at for 7 straight hours. You take your one-hour lunch break and spend that hour staring out the window at Starbucks feeling sorry for yourself. As you’re reading this, you’re not thinking to yourself, “Man, why am I such a pussy?” because you are, in fact, awesome. So you get up to go back to work, and leave behind your cell phone. (You don’t know that tomorrow, when you return to Starbucks for some more self pity and overly bitter coffee, your cell phone will be waiting for you.) So you leave work not knowing if should look for your phone or go to your night class on The Drama: Theory and Practice. You like your old professor who looks like Bob Barker so you decide to go. You’re sort of hoping that when Professor Barker is lecturing on the thematic elements operating in the Tudor drama that he will call people up to play Plinko. You think too hard about this and end up running late getting to class. Your car is speeding, radio blasting. Suddenly the song ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ by the great Thin Lizzy comes on. Your body goes into a psuedo-epileptic seizure as you have a stellar flashback sequence.

Okay, lets switch roles here. I’m me again and you’re you.

‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ is a song I associate with, not one of my own memories, but with this fat fuck I went to college with named Mark.

I met Mark in my freshmen year because he lived in my wing. For the most part, all the guys in the wing were freshmen, but Mark lived with the RA so he was like two years older than everyone. At first, he seemed cool. Since I had to be up a week early for XC training he was one of the first people I met.

My first impression of Mark was ‘Man, this guy is HUGE.’ That impression never changed. But at first Mark also seemed like one of those ‘cool college guys.’ The type that would be the ‘crazy fatso’ at parties, pulling absurd moves and not afraid of embarrassing himself completely.

Man was I wrong.

As it turned out, Mark had this romanticized image of himself that he was some huge hunk, who was not fat but ‘built.’ He was always asking people to grab his biceps and shit like that. One night my roommate walked into Mark’s room, and seeing that Mark was watching the movie Heavyweights, commented, “Hey Mark, this is a movie for fat kids like us, eh?”

Mark’s face turned beat red and he angrily responded, “I’m not fat. You might be, but I’m not. I ain’t fat.”

I felt like screaming into his double-chinned face, “Yeah Mark, you’re not fat…you’re FUCKIN’ HUGE.” But I didn’t.

So anyway, the song ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ factors into this story in 4 paragraphs. Well, since Mark was a little older than us, and thought we idolized him, he was always telling these ridiculous stories about his fat life. So this one day, we’re all watching TV and he comes barging into the room, turns off the TV and exclaims, “Guys! Big announcement!”

Someone (sarcastically) asked, “Oh do tell.”

Mark, nodding with a big grin on his face, begins, “The Wicked Dudes are comin’ to town!”

“The Wicked Dudes? What the fuck is that Mark?”

“Oh man! I gotta tell you shrimps about The Dudes! The Wicked Dudes! Okay…so me and my friends from home…we call ourselves The Wicked Dudes. We get together, and go on road trips! It’s always awesome. We hit bars in all different cities huntin’ for sweet tail. It’s great, we score A LOT. And get this one…”

Mark looks around, making sure we’re all playing attention and continues, “…when all of us are home from college, we all go to this bar called Fallons and play ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ like 5 times in a row! On the jukebox! Man…we’re awesome…”

At this point, Mark expected us all to be in awe and begin a Q n A session pertaining to the inherent awesomeness of The Wicked Dudes. Instead, much to Mark’s chubby chagrin, we all started cracking up. For the rest of the year, we all patronized Mark with inquiries into the way of The Dude(s).

My part in this was to ask Mark twice a day how I could apply for a Dude membership. I was determined to infiltrate the Wicked Dudes as a mock member. I constantly felt obligated to ask, “So Mark, what is the mission statement of the Dude order, and how do my credentials fit into the collective Dude vision.”

He would always flip out, shake his head, and exclaim, “Sorry, you can’t be in the Dudes.”

My roommate probably annoyed him the most, as every time he passed him in the hall, he’d scream, “Hey Mark!” Then drop down on his knees, throw up a ‘W’ with his hands, and simply bellow, “Wickedddddddddddddddddddd.”

God, I still hate Mark and The Dudes.

Updated: As I was writing this post, I was simultaneously having an AIM conversation with my roommate about Mark.

RoyalTenennbaum: i bet hes doing NOTHING

BobberOrzXC: what job could he do?

BobberOrzXC: be fat?

RoyalTenennbaum: well, thats a job hes the fuckin CEO of

BobberOrzXC: hahahaha

RoyalTenennbaum: mark, he WILL probably eat himself