Wonder Showzen
Someone collapsed in the aisle during our flight to Vegas. It happened too quickly for me to catch anything more than the aftermath, but that alone was sufficiently entertaining. Every television/movie cliché was present, from the craning of passenger necks, to the stewardess' demand for calm, to the broadcasted request across the entire cabin for a doctor. When none materialized, they called out for a nurse. Somehow, we managed to catch the one flight devoid of anyone possessed of medical training. In the end, though, it was not a huge deal. The important thing is that I learned that a fainting spell is a surefire way to guarantee you are the first person to deplane after landing.
It was otherwise an enjoyable enough flight owing largely to the fact that an empty seat separated A. and I. He insisted, as always, on the window, necessitating my rising twice for his trips to the bathroom, but otherwise I barely had to deal with him. Just one seat sufficed to distance me from his need be entertained. I plugged into my iPod and did Washington Post crosswords while he angrily struggled with a small book of similar puzzles he purchased for his journey.
"They're all too hard," he complained.
I gave my usual "couldn't give a shit" grunt in response.
"Four letter word. 'Georgia has two in it'..?"
I thought for a second and then responded, "Gees."
"What?"
"G-e-e-s. Like the letter gee."
He looked at me in disgust, then put the book away for the rest of the trip. I noticed him tittering to himself a few minutes later and glanced over to see him scribbling furiously on a yellow notepad. From what I could tell, he had opted for making up his own crossword puzzle in a vain effort to validate his own cleverness. Clearly, he expected me to ask what he was doing so I could initiate the chain of events that would end in me being challenged to play his game. Since I failed to bite, the yellow pad ended up set aside as well, while I spent the remainder of our journey focused on my suduko.
---
As we stepped onto the moving walkway in the Las Vegas airport, a commotion just ahead caught our attention. A woman was shrieking at another man. We apparently came in mid-way through the rant.
"-the woman you wanted to marry. I'm the woman you asked to marry you five times. I'm the woman who married you. Now shut the hell up and come on!"
With that, she spun one-eighty and stalked down the moving walkway. The man meanwhile stood statue-still, either seething, stubborn or both. A. and I passed him, following in the wake of the furious shrew for a good five minutes, while her apparent husband dwindled out of sight.
She never looked back.
---
That our cab driver on the trip to the Freemont was of Italian descent seemed indisputable; he spoke and carried himself like a bit player from the Sopranos. When we asked to be taken to Las Vegas' most historic casino and the smallest hotel on Fremont Street, his surprise was genuine.
"You know, in all my years driving a cab in this town, I ain't never taken no one to the Golden Gate Casino."
A fact that my glutinous companion found hard to believe considering the Golden Gate's "world famous" 99 cent shrimp cocktail.
A. and the cabbie then bantered about what a big deal the NCAA tournaments are in Vegas. Apparently, sports betting on basketball is practically as a big a deal as the Superbowl, and this was likely why damned near every hotel room on the Strip was booked up. Presumably, this had something to do with why V. was being forced to stay in the Venetian even though his convention was across the street at the Wynn. Our cabbie, meanwhile, explained that while he, like all native gamblers, enjoyed betting on the outcome of the games he could not imagine sitting around watching basketball.
"I mean, who wants to watch a bunch of mulignans running up and down a court for hours!?!"
---
After a tediously long ride up one floor in an antediluvian elevator, we negotiated a long, yellow hallway so narrow that you had to turn your body sideways when passing another guest only to find ourselves in a room only slightly larger than my apartment's kitchen. That they managed to squeeze two beds into it is nothing short of miraculous, though the beds were admittedly minute themselves. Our view out the window was of a trash-strewn alleyway one floor down. Other than the dumpster, the only notable feature was a nondescript door that individuals would periodically knock on before disappearing inside. Our keycard looked like a giant microchip from the Seventies and the vent in the ceiling of our bathroom allowed you to experience whatever was happening in the bathroom immediately above as though you were actually in the room (I was treated to a man retching into the toilet, which sounded so nearby that I initally assumed it was A. just outside the door). Our lilliputian beds were surprisingly uncomfortable for something ostensibly featuring a mattress and sheets.
But then, this is what we paid forty dollars for.
I figured slumming it for one night had its own charms, and if anything it would only make us appreciate the luxury of the Venetian all the more. I did, however, forget about A.'s snoring.
On all previous vacations, we have always been a trio. P. and I have done our best to make certain that A. has his own room, or is at least pushed far enough out of ear shot that we have some hope of resting ourselves. It had, as a consequence, been so long since I worried about such things that I forgot the preternatural noises that emerge from A. while at rest (though one should hardly be surprised considering the array of god-awful sounds and smells he readily produces while conscious). It is so beyond snoring that I cannot do it justice. Not only is it obscenely loud and reverberant, but it is punctuated every thirty seconds by snorting that crescendos into outright choking. Whereupon, he suddenly ceases to snore (indeed breathe) altogether. A. actually will gurgle at this point, mumbling something incoherent yet resembling english before falling silent for a five count, only to resume snoring and repeat the entire process from the beginning. Needless to say, it was unimaginably difficult to sleep even when completely exhausted.
Although he quieted down a bit (and moved farther away) at the Venetian, I would pretty consistently find myself sleeping no more than a good five hours (if that) every night.
---
Gambling was working according to plan. I stick to my system and things fall into place. By the end of our first night, I had cleared a hundred and forty-five bucks from miscellaneous table games around the Freemont. By early evening of night two, I was up to two hundred and twenty-one.
Then I screwed myself.
Royally.
A. and I were on our way to the Rum Jungle at Mandalay Bay where I hoped to finally score another taste of the ludicrously sweet confection that knocked me on my ass in January (either the Cherry Pow or the Hawaiian Puck, unfortunately I was too drunk at the time to remember the name). Along the way, we passed through casino after casino of mid-to-high stakes table games, the sort that I still do not yet feel comfortable playing. Then it happened. I think we were passing through the Riviera (though I am uncertain because all casinos blur together after a while) when we came across a five dollar blackjack table. A. wanted to sit down and give it a shot. I was up more than two hundred bucks so I figured "why not?"
In the process, I broke not only one, but three of my basic tenets of gambling.
1) Do not play blackjack
For whatever reason, I have always had the worst luck with the game. It is unbelievable to witness. I sat at a table with A. and two other experienced players as well as a very motherly dealer, all of whom discouraged me from going with my gut. Time and time again, I followed their advice and was told by everyone that I made "the mathematically correct choice" but it just "didn't work out." That's all well and good. But I lost money while they, particularly A., raked it in hand-over-foot.
2) Do not sit down at the same table as A.
Experience has taught me that we seem to live on opposite ends of the scales of Fate. When I am up, A. is down, and vice versa. Even if that is merely me projecting, the fact is that gambling loses a certain degree of fun when we are competing against one another. I find myself paying as much attention to his hands as I am to my own, sometimes more. There are few things more torturous than watching as the dealer throws down cards and seeing him dealt an Ace moments after I get the three. Not only am I screwed, but I get to watch in horrible anticipation of his inevitable blackjack.
3) Do not buy back into any table game
In general, my policy is to cut and run at fifty to twenty-five percent of my original buy-in. If I am still losing, it is time to find another game. I usually try to buy in with enough money to give me ten to twenty hands of whatever I am playing. It seems like a magic number, giving myself just enough time to get lucky or acknowledge a hopeless situation without going broke.
It was just five dollar blackjack. With such low stakes and money to burn, I was more than willing to violate tenet one in the name of companionship. Otherwise, I would look like a killjoy and/or have to stand around waiting for A. to make millions as he continued to delay what had come to seem an impossibly distant visit to the Rum Jungle. So, we sat down and, taking the dealer's advice, I managed to lose more slowly than my companion. When A. completely lost his hundred dollar buy-in before his ordered drink even arrived, I decided I would stay in. Even though I was down to about thirty bucks of my original hundred, I seemed to be on an upswing. With A. actually out of the picture, my luck was turning around.
Charitable fuck that he is, he couldn't allow me to play alone for long. He bought in for another hundred and it all turned sour.
A. started winning. More people joined the table and they started winning. Rapidly, I lost my hundred. I felt shamed into buying back in. Surely, I couldn't be the only dick on the table losing money. Besides, even with that lost hundred, I was still one hundred and twenty-one up for the trip. So, I bought in and continued to lose. Then, I lost the remnants of that buy in another "correct" decision. I was so pissed at having taken the advice of all the gathered experts only to lose that I threw in my last hundred from my wallet.
By the time I burned through that, A. was up about three hundred dollars and I... Well, my two-hundred and twenty-one dollars profit for the trip had inverted into an eight-nine dollar hole.
At one point, A. actually fronted me twenty-five dollars in chips from his ample winnings to give me a shot at winning it all back. I worked that twenty-five up to a hundred, but didn't cash out because I wanted to make it to a hundred twenty-five (that way I could both climb out of the hole AND pay back A.'s loan). That bit of greed did me in.
This was the point when our fortunes truly flip-flopped. I couldn't seem to get a break the rest of our stay in Vegas. Meanwhile, A. was suckling so fervently at Fortuna's teat that he literally found a five-hundred dollar chip on the floor of the all-night diner in the Four Queens. Somehow, myself and the wait staff all managed to miss that one. By the end of night two, he had well over a thousand dollars in profit, while I was either eighty-nine or one hundred and fourteen in the hole (depending on whether you counted the twenty-five dollars A. fronted me).
Things never got much better than that, gambling-wise.
---
Luck was with me, however, when it came to our kindly benefactor V. The two of us had quietly drifted apart following our failed movie project and my bad break-up with S., V.'s best friend. I was extremely concerned upon learning that I was expected to eat at least one meal and hang out one to two nights with V. in exchange for mooching off his company's generosity. It turned out that two nights in the Venetian was probably worth the price, but happily it also turned out that the price was far lower than expected. V.'s work proved so time-consuming that I saw him for a grand total of four hours over two days. Only two and a half of those were even spent "hanging out" in the sense of drinking, talking and otherwise wandering around together, a small price to pay for the luxury and refinement of the Venezia hotel tower.
Venezia Tower is a so-called "hotel within the hotel." As though the Venetian itself weren't decadent enough, an elitist oasis was built within. The Venezia Tower actually has its own second lobby, accessible via a particular elevator. Pleasant security guards card guests for merely wandering the halls. One inexplicably pointed A. and I toward the jacuzzi without us asking. Needless to say, it was all pretty posh.
Our bathroom was the size of the entire suite at the Golden Gate, complete with dual sinks, both bathtub and standing shower, and separate toilet closet. The suite itself featured two queen-sized beds, two widescreen televisions, and a submerged living room/den area with full-sized writing desk, couch, plush chairs and fully stocked minibar. A pleasant view of the gardens, pools and fountains in the courtyard below was offered through ceiling-high mirrored windows (finally, someone realized how important it is to be able to fuck against the glass without fear of complaint or arrest). V. left us alone with only the restriction that we not order anything more than twenty dollars from room service.
It wasn't long before I was milling around in a gold-trimmed white bathrobe while A. consumed four dollar Diet Pepsis and gourmet chocolates. When we weren't gambling, we watched wacky game shows on one of the seven different Asian television channels.
---
When we finally made our way to Rum Jungle, A. was walking on air, or some combination of air and more than a thousand dollars of profit. He generously offered to ease my pain by buying me "one of those fruity drinks" I was yammering on about. I was both exhausted and beating myself up for not only violating my gambling rules but failing to get out when I could have minimized my losses. We discovered, however, that Rum Jungle had transformed into a night club complete with go-go dancers and a twenty dollar door charge. Instead, we settled for high-priced martinis at the Iron Square next door. There, A. bought the first round while I bought the second. As is his habit, he latched onto a married woman, this time an aging hippy who worked for IBM. She introduced us to Jewel of Russia vodka and A. very shortly found himself completely smashed and fabricating stories about meeting Gary Gygax, founder of Dungeons and Dragons, to impress a female with no interest in him whatsoever.
We stumbled back to the hotel suite at 3am with him cackling maniacally. V. was already asleep in one of the beds. I quickly grabbed the other, leaving A. with the couch. The fact that he took it without protest only underscored how drunk he was.
---
Between A.'s continued snoring and V.'s 7am wake-up call, I slept very poorly. But even so, I could not fathom staying in bed past eleven o'clock. A. did not share my reservations. After showering and bemoaning my fate to D. via the cell, I wrote A. a note and left it in the bathroom (the only place I could guarantee he wouldn't miss it).
"BORED AS HELL. GOING TO WIN BACK MY MONEY. WILL BE BACK IN ROOM AT 4 PM. OTHERWISE, CALL MY CELL.
DON'T FORGET YOUR ROOM KEY."
An amazing feeling of freedom washed over me the moment I stepped out of the casino without him. It was like I was suddenly on vacation instead awash in obligation. I didn't have to follow where he lead, debate where we were going to eat, wait for him to finish gambling where he wanted, or point out when he left his room key or wallet behind on a table or in a cab seat. I was able to enjoy myself completely. I wandered out into the brisk morning air and strolled through the milling throngs. After visiting a few casinos, it rapidly became clear that the only place I would feel comfortable gambling my way out of the hole was the low-stakes Freemont. So I grabbed a cab and set off to make my fortune.
I picked up small amounts here and there, three dollars from the only slot machine I played in all of Vegas, another ten from 3-5-7. Then the entire morning took a nosedive when I sat down at the fairly new Texas Hold'em table game. It usually is a good option if you are content to neither win nor lose in a hurry because most of your time is spent pushing the same twenty bucks back and forth between you and the dealer. On this occasion, however, I was stuck with a dealer who either did not understand the game or was outright trying to cheat me. This was my second really bad experience with an incompetent dealer. Strangely enough, on both occasions they have been from Laos and working the shittier casinos downtown. For all I know, this was the same bitch who tried to fuck me on the Lady Luck roulette table a year ago.
She outright robbed me of twenty dollars no less than twice, refusing to recognize that even in a case where I had no pair it was possible for me to still beat her in a high card hand if my fifth card was higher than hers. We argued about it thrice. Once she actually yielded. Twice, however, she scooped up the money and cards too quickly to allow debate and refused to talk about it. Rather than call over the pit boss, I cut my losses at fifty dollars down and went to another table, but that experience seemed to trigger another downward spiral. I could only find a single 3-5-7 table open at that early hour and it was not doing right by me, so I would periodically wander off, try something else, then return.
A. meanwhile awoke at 2:30pm, having slept just under twelve hours straight. He called me around three and we made arrangements to meet at Circus Circus, where I hoped to continue my attempts to feed the hole. Unfortunately, that left me a half-hour to wrap things up and, under time constraints, I took stupid risks. After withdrawing the last hundred allocated for gambling from my ATM, I boarded my cab three-hundred and eighty-nine dollars down.
---
I was my last two hundred dollars into a three hour game of 3-6 limit Texas Hold'em when the wheel of Fate spun once more. A. had been driven out early. After dropping a hundred on Hold'em, he wandered off to lose money elsewhere. I meanwhile was finally making some traction when he returned, bought in sixty more dollars and promptly lost that. Disgusted with his perpetual losses at Circus Circus, he demanded we depart for greener pastures. This is probably the point where I should have refused and ridden my streak as long as possible. I was more than five hundred dollars down by this point and at least the slow crawl of a few pots at poker was going in the right direction. Alas, because he had no cell phone, no capacity for independent existence and we were both hungry, I tried to content myself with the knowledge that, despite my debts, I was seemingly winning again. I stopped obsessing over the amounts and began just enjoying the small wins when they came.
And, of course, enjoying A.'s losses.
I talked him into blowing a hundred dollars on a penny slot machine. Once again, I would have walked away from that very same machine a winner (for the briefest of periods of time he was actually ten dollars up) but I knew A. wouldn't. He can never accept a small win, so he lost it all.
And he just kept losing.
After a fabulous dinner (including a five-shot "Collective") at Quark's (one last hurrah before the Star Trek Experience leaves Vegas altogether in April), we made our way to the Imperial Palace where one can suffer the indignity of losing one's money to a celebrity impersonator dealing blackjack while dressed as Bette Midler. There, I made certain to stick to my rules, playing at different tables than A., walking when I had turned a profit but seemed to no longer be winning. I picked up another measly seventeen bucks before calling it quits for the evening, content to watch him lose. Not just content... Egging him on.
I watched him drop three hundred on 3-5-7. Earlier, he had lost one hundred sixty on Hold'em, plus at least a hundred more on other assorted table games at Circus Circus. True to form, A. managed to make his twelve hundred dollars in profit shrink in record time. By the time V. joined us, he was actually in the hole.
He was in the hole.
After being up twelve hundred dollars, he was now in the hole.
Despite being five hundred down myself, I no longer felt quite so bad about myself. Doubtless, the ample number of Stingers helped (which I continued to consume despite a bartender informing me that it was "an old lady's drink"). I tripped along behind A. and V. as they chattered like monkeys and made a beeline for a liquor store where V. bought a bottles of rum and ginger ale. We spent the evening back in the hotel suite clad in nothing but bathrobes, drinking and attempting to watch V.'s pirated DVDs of Wonder Showzen.
---
The next morning, I celebrated my last day in the Venetian with a different sort of gamble. Once again awake long before A., I found myself considerably horny. I have been conditioned by my long-distance relationship to expect hotel sex. With no decent alternatives available to me, I was forced to make do with a quicky under the covers. I imagined D. was there, his head slipping beneath the sheets. He wrapped his mouth around my cock and began bobbing his head on my shaft. We both tried to remain as quiet as possible, lest we wake the beast snoring nearby, but nevertheless I entwined my fingers in his hair and began forcing his head further and further down the shaft. My glans popped against the tight ring at the back of his throat as I thrust more violently into his mouth. After a few minutes of this, I exploded within my boxers, a spreading moist spot that I could not clean since I had nothing with arm's reach. Although I was quiet as a mouse breeding a block of swiss cheese, A. awoke moments after my climax. I could feel the pooling cum slide down my hip bone even as we made the usual insipid morning small talk. I then announced I was going to grab a shower before he ruined the bathroom for us all, stood with my back to him and walked out of view, a grin on my face.
---
I firmly believe I would have come out even and maybe even ahead given a little more time, particularly time without A. sabotaging my winning streaks by either joining in or dragging me away at inopportune moments. Alas, I only snagged a mere thirty-five more dollars playing a ten-dollar Texas Hold'em table game in the Venetian Casino the morning before we headed back to DC. Unfortunately, A. also managed to hit it big, walking away from Vegas two-hundred and fifty up. I view that as less of an accomplishment when one factors in that he found five hundred on the floor and pretty much blew it all. Still, all things considered, I had a damned good time and, despite the terrible run, my luck clearly was looking up at the end.
Nothing better demonstrated this fact than our flight back. A late check-in combined with a packed flight resulted in A. and myself being assigned seats on completely opposite sides of the airplane. Not only did I not have to deal with him during the long ride home, but I didn't even have to look at his fat, smug face. It was just me, a pillow and my iPod.
That night, curled against the cold vibrating window, I felt like the luckiest man alive.