Slots, Sluts & Sots

No lie told since Christ’s body went missing has fooled more people, and cost more money, than this one. Sure, Aladdin and Paris stand where I last saw a vast prairie of dirt, and bazillionaire Steve Wynn has dumped into the new development rising behind a chainlink fence, but I didn’t see any of that. In fact, over the course of nearly 36 hours, I scarcely stepped away from the sanctuary of the Stardust, and only at the wee hours when the truly desperate are out and about. Hookers looking for the rent. Drunk tourists stumbling the distance between Stratosphere and the Black Pyramid. Hack poker players hunched over their cards and the green felt, slowly bleeding their second mortgage into the kitty. And after a quick jaunt to Circus Circus and the Riviera, I shuffled my feet through the collage of escort advertisements and brothel marketing before crossing the street and heading back to the Baccurat Bar, clutching a souviner shirt and two postcards from the Promised Land.


Oh, and if any of you sick fucks out there were wondering, the slot machines are still perfectly functional. I tested all of them, and they took every goddamned dollar I gave them before paying out to the old woman two machines down. By the time I fell into the car to catch my flight, the resonating chime of quarters in the metal tray and octogenarian cackling had rendered me insomniac.


Not to say the trip was a total failure. Indeed, if you omit the several hundred dollars I dropped like wasted cockshot in the shower, and the pathetic attempts to cajole cocktail waitresses into my room for the Redneck Special, I would gladly look over at Vegas and smile in the morning. Blackjack, no Jacks, One-eyed Jacks, the cards weren’t falling for me, but a steady diet of Seagrams 7 and 7 kept me perfectly ignorant until I came to in the parking garage, convinced somebody had stolen my car, and realizing my keys were on the bathroom counter in a room some 2000 miles away. Maybe. Or had I bartered them and the title for another stack of chips, screaming at the Pit Boss, while I watched that goddamned Roulette ball wreck my childhood, turn my hair grey, and render me impotent? Leaning on parked cars and dragging one foot, I felt like a rape victim escaped from a car trunk. Judging from the security guard’s face, I did not look far from the truth.


The details, mercifully, are still quite blurry. Chasing skirts at Simon restaurant at the Hard Rock. Dumping a frozen Margarita on some teenaged girl by the Pool. Surfing the room service cart into the elevator before pushing every button between my floor and the lobby. Glass breaking, the lacquered fingernails in the bathtub, a blonde wig in the hallway. Chewing ice at the Terrace Bar while transvestites haggled drink prices. Having run my comp card through the ceiling and welcome out the door, I was finally dismissed, which suited me fine. If you’re not winning in Las Vegas, then you’re a Loser, and you’d best get going before you become one of those 200-year old fucks hunched over a slot machine, feeding nickels to the one-armed monster with your arthritic fingers, waiting to shit yourself again so you can go home.


Vegas is the place for me!