Dallas Fan Fiction Week.

I, Nowitzki.

We all love stories. And sometimes those stories, even when fictitious, involve famous people. Which brings us to Dallas Fan Fiction Week. For the remainder of the week, we’ll post made-up stories that involve various Dallas celebrities — some written by our own staff and freelance crew, and others from some well-respected writers and personalities we reached out to from across the city. Why are we doing this? Honestly, there’s absolutely no reason, except for the fact that fan fiction is dope and we do dope shit.

I suppose I do want to root for an athlete that looks like me, though. Not only because I am bad at sports, but also because I have a limited imagination, so it makes it easier for me to make-believe that it was actually me who scored all those points in the big game.

Thing is, it can’t just be any dopey white guy — otherwise I’d root for that dumb hick Larry Bird like so many jack-offs in Boston before me. No, he has to really look like me. The shaggy blonde hair, the scruffy beard, the harsh Teutonic face.

There is only one athlete that fits this description, and his name is Dirk Nowitzki.

I refrain from referring to him as my “hero,” because, as an existentialist, that’s a title I reserve only for myself. Still, he plays for my hometown team and I hold him in high regard, with the exception of that time he completely blew it in the 2006 Finals.

My father, like him, was part of the master race. My mother was not, and I would forever blame her inferior genetics for my cruel fate of not being born a 7-foot-tall killing machine. Thus, with basketball off the table, I was forced to pursue the only other viable career for a man with my rugged bad looks. I am a stand-up comic.

Lucky me, I’m quite good at comedy — so good, in fact, that I had been booked to perform at an Oktoberfest celebration at the third largest German restaurant in Dallas.

“Oktoberfest? More like Cock-toberfest, am I right? Fucking sausage party going on here, both, uh, literally and metaphorically.”

My set went great.

“I shouldn’t pay you for that, but a deal is a deal and I’m a man of my word.” said Klaus, the owner of the restaurant, who clearly did not understand comedy. He slid my payment — two bottles of Jägermeister — across the bar to me.

“Pleasure doing business,” I said, tucking one of the bottles in my jacket pocket. “Also, I’m available for German New Year.”

“That’s not a thing. We celebrate the same New Year as everybody else.”

“Whatever! I’m available, goddammit!”

New Year’s Eve was the type of event that could command three, maybe even four, bottles of liquor if you found the right kind of sucker.

Klaus said something in German that I didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter. By that point, my attention was elsewhere. Across the room was none other than Dirk Nowitzki, doing the chicken dance, which looked more like an ostrich dance with his weird, lanky frame, but whatever. This was my chance to do the only thing one can do in a situation like this: Challenge him to a drinking contest.

While I’m no athlete, I’ve trained my liver like one. Unfortunately, since the liver has no muscle tissue in it, I have only irreparably damaged easily one of the top five most important organs in the human body. On the plus side, that sucker’s basically Rocky Balboa now, and that is exactly what I need in a drinking contest of this magnitude — the ability to disregard all common sense (and my own safety) to prove I am better than another man, and more importantly, another celebrity.

I challenged him directly: “Hey, Dirk. You and me, mano-a-mano.”

“I’m from Germany,” he said. “I don’t know what mano-a-mano means.”

I shoved one of my bottles of Jägermeister into his chest.

“You don’t know a lot of things, pal.”

“I don’t drink liquor,” he said politely, probably out of fear.

“Well, it’s your lucky day,” I replied “Because this shit barely qualifies as liquor. Now, drink it!”

Perhaps it was peer pressure, but he took a giant swig: “Oh god, it’s so awful.”

“You’re goddamn right it is,” I said, taking a pull myself.

And thus began an epic drinking battle for the ages.

At first, I don’t think Dirk liked me very much, probably because of my insistence on only talking about how our grandfathers probably killed a bunch of each other’s friends during the war. However, as more and more of the foul alcoholic syrup was consumed, our relationship became less adversarial, and more like two Vikings trading stories in Valhalla.

“Shawn Bradley has the biggest dick I’ve ever seen!” he said enthusiastically, holding his hands nearly two feet apart.

“Uh, that’s cool, Dirk,” I smirked, scanning the room and hoping I’d recognize someone else in the restaurant so I could tell them to get a load of this guy. With no one else in sight, I gave up and continued to listen to his tales of all the giant penises he’d seen. At one point, I thought about asking him about comedy, but then I remembered Paul Varghese is his favorite comedian and I rolled my eyes so hard that I lost my train of thought.

Eventually, Klaus kicked us both out because Dirk wouldn’t quit talking about big dicks, so we ventured off into Koreatown for a little late-night karaoke. Dirk kept singing that awful David Hasselhoff song over and over again, whereas I delighted the audience with the soulful sounds of Phil Collins’ Tarzan soundtrack.

They too asked us to leave.

With nowhere left to go, we retreated to Dirk’s palatial mansion and continued drinking into the morning before eventually passing out.

“Hey Dirk, how do y’all say pussy in German?” I asked the next morning while browsing through his extensive collection of German pornography.

Dirk groaned, then rolled over and vomited up a vile combination of spatzle, schnitzel and Jägermeister.

“That’s a really gross way to say it, Dirk Nowitzki. No wonder you never get laid.”

He was barely listening.

“Oh, mein Gott, Coach is going to kill me.”

“Uh, that’s called murder, Dirk. I don’t know about that weird place you’re from, but last I checked, that’s illegal in the United States.”

He continued, unfazed: “We have to play our hated rivals, the San Antonio Spurs, in six hours, and I’m too hungover to get out of bed.”

My liver and I, on the other hand, were feeling great.

“Relax, Dirk. I’ve got a plan. I’ll just pretend to be you. It’ll be fine.”

“But you’re so short and fat! They’ll never believe it.”

I rifled through his wallet, stealing all his forms of identification.

“Oh, they’ll believe it.”

“What the hell happened to you, Dirk? Why are you so short and fat now?” said some new guy on the team that I didn’t recognize because I haven’t really watched that much basketball in the last two years.

“Uh, an anvil fell on my head, and, uh… smooshed me.”

“You funny as hell, Dirk Nowitzki,” laughed the new guy.

Suddenly I realized something about comedy that had never occurred to me before: When you’re really famous, people will laugh at whatever you say. That’s how that sonofabitch Shaq does it. I made a mental note to become more famous.

“Hey, everybody: Dirk’s all smooshed from an anvil and still playing! He’s crazy as hell!”

An effete team doctor slinked out like a rat snake from behind one of the lockers.

“Ummm, excuse me, but I don’t believe that’s scientifically possible,” he said in an extremely nerdy voice, while adjusting his glasses with the tape in the middle like some sort of Poindexter.

“The fuck you say to me, pal?” I fired back, unable to restrain my inner tough guy from not taking any shit from such a fucking dweeb.

“Well… uh… you see… if an anvil, had, uh…”

“Can it, Dr. Nerd-dick!” commanded Mark Cuban. “That’s the greatest Maverick in the history of the Mavericks that you’re getting all stupid with it.”

A lot of people don’t realize it because he’s always surrounded by his stable of human racehorses on TV, but Mark Cuban is tall as shit, which really cranks up that Frankenstein look he has going on.

“B-b-b-b-b-b-b…” the nerdy doc blubbered.

“Y’know what? You’re fired! Get outta my locker room!”

When Cubes punched a locker, the doctor realized he was not fucking around at all.

“I never liked that guy, Dirk.”

“Me needah, Mahk Cooban,” I said, afraid I was slipping into an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression.

“Dirk, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have an anvil fall on your head,” Mark Cuban offered rather sympathetically. “Hell, that sounds like something that’d only happen in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I just want you to know how much I appreciate your bravery in playing tonight despite it.”

“Hasenpfeffer!” I exclaimed.

“What?”

“Hasenpfeffer… you know, like in that episode of Looney Tunes where the German king guy wanted to eat Bugs Bunny? And he kept yelling Hasenpfeffer?”

“That’s great Dirk,” said Mark Cuban. Then he turned around and left.

Word had spread of my horrific anvil-related injury, and the new guy took it upon himself to get everyone to sign a “Get Well Soon” card for me, which I found to be a touching but odd gesture considering I was still going to play that night. I made a note to tell the coach to bench him, as his kindness would undoubtedly be a liability on defense.

I walked to the middle of the court for the opening tip off. Standing across from me was my second least favorite basketball player after Shaq: Tim Duncan. Years of bad memories suddenly swarmed in my head. All the losses. All the trophies that didn’t belong in San Antonio. All of it, this motherfucker’s fault.

As he leaped up into the air for the ball, I stayed on the ground, and did the only thing that made any sense: I punched him square in the dick, which was every bit as large as Dirk had told me it was the night before. He immediately crumpled to the ground, and I continued my savage assault, punching and kicking him one time for every boring ass Finals game I watched with the Spurs in it.

The other players then pulled me off of him, and I was escorted out of the arena by the police. It didn’t matter. Everyone was giving me a standing ovation. I had won.

The next day, Dirk angrily called me to let me know he had been permanently banned from the National Basketball Association.

“That’s how basketball go, Dirk.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“Follow me on twitter at @ihatecomedy,” I whispered into the receiver.

Dirk hung up the phone. I saved his number in my contacts under “BFF.”

Poor bastards, I thought to myself. Then I remembered they all deserved it. Writers are a lot like comedians: They love to drink and they think they’re smarter than everyone else. However, writers all secretly wish they could do what comedians do: Be a brash moron who says whatever he wants to in front of a crowd without any repercussions. But alas, they are cowards, so they usually wind up working for some tyrant like Pete Freedman.

While most people wanted to be Spider-Man when they were children, Pete wanted to be J. Jonah Jameson, Spider-Man’s asshole boss at the Daily Bugle, and this was apparently the logical conclusion to his weird childhood fantasy.

“GET THE HELL IN HERE, WERTH!” he shouted from inside his office.

I took my time, as I had nowhere in particular to be.

“What the hell is this garbage? I asked for Dirk Nowitzki fan fiction, and you give me Clint Werth fan fiction!”

“Uh, first of all, that’s not fan fiction, that all actually happened.”

“What? This is ridiculous! Not to mention the plot holes, like the fact that Oktoberfest doesn’t even happen during basketball season. Or the fact you look nothing like Dirk Nowitzki!”

I’d had enough of Pete’s big mouth. I gave him an open-handed slap, which immediately knocked him unconscious. The Central Track writers, who had all been nervously watching, stood up and cheered.

“Sit the fuck down and get back to work, you weasels!” I barked at them. “I read what you fuckers wrote about Jason Lee, and I didn’t like it!”

And thus ended my short but spectacular career as a writer for Central Track.

Clint Werth is both a beloved and hated comedian from Dallas, twice named the Best Comedian in Dallas by the Dallas Observer (2012 and 2015). He’s performed at the Oddball Comedy and Curiousity Festival and Fun Fun Fun Fest, and has opened for the likes of Doug Stanhope, Neil Hamburger, Kyle Kinane and former professional wrestler Mick Foley. He is featured on Stand Up! Records “Texas Mess” compilation. Follow him on Twitter at @ihatecomedy.