Vegas For Labor Day

I just got back from Vegas again. I dunno. I think I was there way too long. I think a good Vegas vacation lasts 48 hours. Long enough to fuck some shit up, maybe win some money, and go home. By the 3rd day I was bored and looking for stuff to do. See, the flight over should have been an indication as to how the rest of the trip was going to pan out. It was like Fratfest '06. Testosterone was flowing everywhere, I wanted to punch every 21-year-old male in sight (and subsequently sleep with their girlfriends). Aside from there being about 50 frat boys on the plane (at times yelling out stuff like "show me your tits!"), and maybe 10 Bridge & Tunnel whores (who would have probably obliged with the tit-showing, had we not been in a metal tube 30,000 feet in the air going 600 mph), the plane was cramped. Continental Airlined should change their slogan. I’m not sure what it is now, but here’s a suggestion: "Continental: For People Who are Happy Just to be on a Fucking Plane."

I think this fits first because the planes look like they were built in Eastern Europe in the late sixties for people with no legs and/or arms. On both flights I sat crammed in my seat, tossing and turning and cramping up. I marveled at the girl I sat next to on the flight down there. She was cute and about my age, so I was hoping I’d be able to strike up a conversation, since sitting next to someone on a plane is about as close to a date as I can get. But instead she sat down, put her iPod on, covered herself up, and slept the entire time. I mean that literally - she was unconscious from the moment we took off to the moment we landed (and I should know, since I watched her the whole time). Meanwhile, I sat uncomfortable in my too-small/partially broken/definitely stinky seat, feeling awkward and dirty and a little randy.

Secondly, I don’t know if they were filming "Growing Up Gotti" on my flights but they certainly could have been. My god. I don’t know what I liked best: when a dozen guidos were screaming, "Yo - where the AC at?" from the back of the plane for the first hour, when I actually heard someone freestyle rapping a few rows ahead of me (much to the delight of the passengers around him), or all the testosterone (see above) flowing freely.

The staff reacted to all this by essentially rolling with the punches and hiding. In five hours of total flying, I think I saw the flight attendants for a total of four minutes. I don’t blame them. Fortunately, I had enough Xanax coursing through my veins that I spent most of my time in the air talking to St. Anthony while the entire cast of Entourage had a dance party by the lavatory.

So we finally get there at like 11PM. The temperature? 90. 90?!? At 11PM?!? If you're unaware of this, it's hot in Vegas. Like, real hot. Uncomfortable hot. Not good. And though there was air conditioning everywhere, stepping out into the open air was just unbearable.

But there is one good thing to come out of heat: slightly sweaty women. I’m not talking obese women here, walking around eating giant sandwiches and sweating through their shirts, but rather normal attractive women who, because of the unbelievable heat, walk around with a slight glow to them.

And my first day in Vegas I realized why I like this little bit of sweatiness. Because

sweat:women::glaze:donuts

Yes, I am fat. But no, I do not care. I like my donuts and my women a little shiny, wet, and covered in crystallized sugar. I make no apologies for this. And screw you for judging me.

I don’t know why the sweat does it for me, but it just does. I know for women, it doesn’t work the other way around. Sweaty guys are not hot (I would guess). Especially me. When I sweat, all my body hair gets matted down and becomes dark and I look like a black bear. But I digress…

So add slight sweatiness to the list of things I think are hot. If you’re keeping score, I like:

- slight sweatiness
- the messy ponytail
- tanness
- girls who can dance
- lip gloss
- hoop earrings

Apparently, I like strippers. So be it.

Anyhow, so the first day was spent recouperating from my Xanax daze, eating, discovering new levels of jet-lag, oogling women, and trying to not get annoyed at every frat boy (and Labor Day weekend in Vegas could have easily been renamed Frat House Fuckfest, sponsored by Abercrombie & Fitch) who was blatantly trying to stick his dick in anything with two tits and a hole (heartbeat optional). Sure, boys will be boys, but it becomes a problem when I inadvertently get grouped into the frat boy category, because I look like one. What was I supposed to do? I'm on vacation and I want to wear shorts and flip-flops. Apparently the memo went out early and so did every frat boy. So women looked at me with the same disdain that they looked at any other chubby frat guy looking to get laid. Not that it mattered; I could have worn a shirt of one hundred dollar bills and I still wouldn’t have been able to get noticed.

I gave up on trying to meet any women out there. Fortunately for me, the two friends who acompanied me (Mike and Roger) are both 5'6" and weigh 200 pounds each. In comparison, I was an Adonis. This, of course, did nothing for my game. I have no game, and even whilst acompanied by 2 ogre-looking men, my game was still weak. With lines like:

“Seriously, who’s your all-time favorite pope? I like Clement VI.” (Saturday, 8:48pm)
“Yeah, to me, sex is just a game.” (Sunday, 10:11pm)
“Why don’t we go back to my hotel room to listen to some Terence Trent D’Arby?” (Monday, 11:49pm)

I am so lame.

So I gave up on women and stuck to enjoying myself. Admittedly, I could have called up a hooker (a game I always play if I'm somewhere I've never been before [and a good way to gauge the morality of the town] is to grab the local Yellow Pages and open up to "Escort Service" and see how many entries there are). There are, what seems like, millions of hookers in Vegas. There were at least 80 pages in the phone book dedicated to "entertainment". I mean here I was in Vegas, where nobody knew me, and it just seemed an absolutely ideal fantasy land to invite a lady named Candy into my room (and my world) to share a special moment (and by “share a special moment”, I mean I’d ask her to punch me in the face while I masturbated).

Sadly, I instead ordered pizza and pitcher of beer from room service, ate like a slob, and fell asleep with a piece of pepperoni in the bed. What a fucking loser.

So I ate alot, I drank alot, I got to see the Blue Man Group (and Toni Braxton, it was free, shut up), and I won some money. My first night I won $1600. This, of course, meant that I had my food and drinks (and subsequently the food and drinks of my leech-like friends) paid for by other, less fortunate people whose money I inherited. It went quickly, as nothing is cheap in Vegas. Admittedly, I was staying at a nice, expenisve hotel, so I didn't expect anything to be cheap. But, for example, the cheapest restaurant in the hotel was offering a warm bowl of soup for only $7. Unless that soup comes with a complementary blowjob or baby, no thanks.

But when spending other people's money (which is how I justified blowing most of the $1600 I won during the first night), paying $7 for soup is no big deal. Nor was spending $12 for mixed drinks. I opened up a tab and had everything charged to my room. I mean to ask me to sort through money in a dark bar after I’ve been drinking since noon is entirely too much, since at that point I usually stop wiping my ass. My second night in Vegas I was so tired and still jet-lagged (and, oh yeah, drunk) that I tried to pay for some drinks with an ATM receipt. Ooops.

All in all, it was a great time. Like I said earlier, maybe it was a bit too long, but by day 3 I finally got the hang of it and started relaxing (and sleeping alot more). By day 5 I had no desire to leave. I was on a normal sleeping schedule (drink until 4AM , sleep until 1PM), was enjoying the hotel (at $250 a night, there should have been an Eastern European hooker included in the price), and knew where everything was ("there's the bar that has cups shaped like footballs filled with daquiris for only $3!", "don't go down that street, the homeless guy will try to grab your balls"). But the time had come to say goodbye to the big dust bowl.

On the way back to the airport (hungover, wondering where I spent that $1600 that I won, frantically looking for some Xanax), the impending fear of flying started sneaking back. I'm not a fan of flying, as I said before, so whenever I do fly, I try to be my nicest possible self, in order to atone for a lifetime of egregious sinning should my plane burst into a ball of flames somewhere over Pennsylvania. When I got to the airport, I was a complete mess: sweating out 5 days worth of alcohol, shaking, and gripping my remaining Xanax with a ferocity that said, “If you want these, you’re gonna have to pry them from my cold, dead fingers.”

Check-in, security, etc went ok, and I was at the gate waiting, listening to my mp3 player. While walking around, over the loudspeaker I heard, “Will Passenger John Alimma...Ali-Martinez...err...John who is flying on Flight 468 with Continental to Newark please make himself known to the ground crew.” I was upset by this, thinking they were going to tell me that something was wrong and I couldn’t get on the plane, at which point I would have turned around and spent the week trolling the airport high on Xanax and ogling girlie magazines with a giant erection. However, all they did was ask if I was willing to change my row (from an aisle seat to another aisle seat) so that a couple could sit next to each other. I happily agreed. Score some good karma for me.

My good karma was rewarded when I finally sat in my newly assigned seat, next to an attractive woman with the most ample bosom I have seen in a very long time. Of course I spent a good part of the flight back staring at them. I like boobs, so sue me. They are truly, truly magnificent and every day I thank God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and George Washington for inventing them.

Overall, a good trip. But now I'm broke and really out of it. It's gonna take a few days to really recover from this one.