NEWS: Chick Lit Is Dead. Long Live Fratire.

With titles like "Real Ultimate Power," a satirical ode to the masculine prowess of ninjas; "The Modern Drunkard," a paean to getting hammered; and "The Game," a manual for manipulating and bedding women, they collectively represent the once-elusive male counterpart to so-called chick lit, and so perhaps deserve a cheesy epithet of their own. How about: fratire.

"All of this is a reaction against over-socialization, or maybe an over-feminization of the culture," said Jeremie Ruby-Strauss, Mr. Max's editor at Kensington and a point man for the genre. "I think all of these books are about men searching for a model other than what they're being told to do, something more rebellious, less cautious and less concerned with external approval."

Laughing_Man said:
Am I taking a step backward in my ascent to intellectualism by saying I pre-ordered the Alphabet of Manliness?

Shalome said:
I really, really enjoy both Tucker Max and Maddox.

I figure that there must be a bathroom somewhere in the lobby, so I shoot down the hall and hop in the elevator. Once in the lobby I can’t seem to spot a bathroom anywhere. So, I head around the corner to the front desk, which doesn’t face the lobby. It’s about 4am, and no one is at the desk. I furiously hit the bell for at least a minute--CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG --until some poor lady comes out with sleep lines all over her face and tells me that the bathroom in the corner of the lobby.

It is hard to describe, so let me give you an aerial picture of what the lobby looks like:



I turn the corner from the front desk into the lobby and realize I don't know which side of the triangular lobby she is talking about. I don't have time to go back and ask her, and I see a white door at the end of the left-hand side, so I quickly waddle towards it. Why am I waddling? Because I have to physically hold my butt cheeks together to prevent myself from crapping all over my pink Gap boxers. I am literally pressing my ass cheeks together with my hands. One of the prouder moments of my life.

I nearly bust the door off it’s hinges as I plow through it. I hear a loud, “AYYYY!!,” that almost literally scares the shit out of me. I jump back to see that this is a janitor’s closet, complete with a small Mexican lady janitor. I momentarily contemplate taking a dump in the janitors bucket, but decide against that, mainly because of the presence of said female janitor.

I try to be as diplomatic as possible, considering that I am about to crap my pants:

Tucker “WHERE IS THE BATHROOM?”
Janitor “No, no se habla Ingles.”
Tucker “WHAT?!? Huh, uh…DONDE ESTA FUCKING BANO?”
Janitor “AYA, AYA!”

She points across the lobby. About 60 yards from where I am standing, at the complete other end of the lobby, there is a set of doors that have a large “Restroom” sign over them. Right where the front desk lady said it would be, except on the opposite side of the lobby.

I have about half a second to make a crucial decision: I can either sprint and hope I make it there before I shit in my boxers, or I can stick my thumb up into my ass and shuffle the 60 yards to lavatory freedom. The decision is simple: I break into a full-on dead-ass sprint.

I am a decent athlete, I played football, baseball and basketball in high school, and I stay in good shape. I have run from cops before, I have run from guard dogs, from a legitimate drive-by shooting once while in Kentucky, but I don’t think I have ever run that fast in my life. Nothing motivates like the prospect of being covered in human excrement.

Unfortunately, I was not fast enough. It went something like this:

-20 yards into the run I feel my boxers start to sag.
-30 yards into the run, about halfway, I feel my ass crack and legs get noticeably wet.
-40 yards into the run, my boxers have slid down to mid thigh. I am struggling to keep it together.
-50 yards into the run, I can feel wetness all over me and little specs of something hitting the back of my head and ears.

By the time I get to the bathroom door, the end of the 60 yards, I have completely lost it.

I am shitting myself. Full on crapping in my pink Gap boxers.

I step out of my boxers as I crash through the door. Shit is puddled in the seat. I blindly hurl them away from me, and nearly break the door to the first stall. I plop down on the seat and immediately slide off, because my ass is covered in slimy, runny feces. All the while, my butt hole is spouting forth waste. I finally get situated on the toilet and lose perhaps 20 pounds in the next 2 minutes.

During a short respite in my nearly superhuman flow of crap, I notice that the toilet is almost completely full of shit, so I flush. Predictably, the toilet overflows. Great. I move to the next stall, and continue my little adventure, except this time I courtesy flush every few seconds.

By the time I finish, I am physically exhausted, completely dehydrated, and my eyes are tearing up from shitting so hard. I laugh at the inadequacy of toilet paper to clean my body. I take my shirt off and see that the back of it is completely covered in little specks of shit that my heels kicked up from the diarrhea that ran down my legs as I ran. I throw the shirt in the trash, and then see the mirror. My pink Gap boxers are crumpled in a ball on the sink, with a thick black streak leading from the top of the mirror down to them. This is their final resting place.

Completely naked and covered in my own poop, I chuckle, because at this point if I don’t laugh I have to cry. As I open the bathroom door to the lobby, I think to myself, “Who else on earth could be having a worse night than me?”

My question is immediately answered.

I see a trail of shit, starting very wide at my feet, getting progressively smaller until it apexes at the chunky white shoes of none other than the small Mexican lady janitor.

Her eyes met mine. We may have been separated by numerous religious, language and socioeconomic barriers, but the "What the fuck just happened?" expression on her face crossed all boundaries.