Viva Las Vegas!

“It can be argued that man's instinct to gamble is the only reason he is still not a monkey up in the trees.”


-- Mario Puzo, Inside Las Vegas


And the next two days in Las Vegas may well send me running back into those trees, or at least back to Headquarters where I’ll spend hours babbling at my secretary and clawing at my eyes in an attempt to blind myself. Before I purchase a pawned firearm from one of the local schoolkids and kill the fool I’ve become. A sputtering speed freak screaming about crooked dealers and feathered dancers, coming down from that strange high you only get when you’ve lost everything and the sun is still days away from rising.


There is not enough tequila in the bottle.


Dispatched on a crucial mission from King God Allah himself, I am doomed to spend the next 48 hours in this whirlwind of light, silver, and perfume which lights up the Nevada desert. And since the plane hit the ground, I’ve been surrounded by Elvis impersonators and hidden escorts, interspersed with Mexicans handing out pornographic advertising. Coins pumping like mercury through the slot machines, fueled by arthritic fuckers with strong right arms and the booze those cocktail whores bring. This is the madhouse where everything is not enough, and going too far still doesn’t cross the Line.


Especially considering after a mere six hours in the Sun Casino, all the money is gone, my girlfriend has gone missing, and my attorney isn’t accepting collect calls. They even kept my luggage, and rightfully so, considering the bar tabs away from which I’d slunk in shame. The girl at the airline counter tried to tell me how accidents happen, people make mistakes, and my bags would eventually come back from Chicago or Memphis or wherever she had them sent. She has no doubt seen this sort of thing before, broken men falling off airplanes, crumpled like that last five dollar bill exchanged for a plastic chips and one last chance. Once last dance. Vegas is the Stripper Goddess in platform shoes and an ass like an Altar, to whom I have emptied my pockets in tribute, knowing the entire while those naked breasts will be the only skin I’ll see, but still I gave her everything because I am human, and because I Hope. Hope she’ll play a faster game in the back room. Hope that credit card will hold out. Hope she’ll whisper something about after-hours in my ear, and that somehow after all this losing, I’ll Win.


Wrong.


And standing there in the parking lot, outside the club this afternoon, I slowly realized that love was not enough, that the pretty girl snuck out the back door, that Vegas got me. Again. But I knew this when I walked in the door, just as I knew it when I booked the ticket. You can’t take it back, and you can’t wash it off. No matter how much you drink.


We’ll see about that.