Las Vegas is a Weird Town: American Dispatch Number 4
Judy Garland used to gargle Somewhere Over The Rainbow after engaging in the act of what many these days call fellatio. By all reports this was a popular request of friends, acquaintances and cheap pimps, all of whom once kept close company with Ms Garland. This is weird, but entirely true. My friend Boss told me this at four in the morning and I have no reason to doubt him. Why should I? It takes someone very creative to make up a crazy tale like that. And at any rate, he is from good stock. Gamblers, League-Heads, Catholics. Hell, even Darren Britt came from that lot and you can be sure that when he leaves Sunday morning Mass, he is betting heavily the same as all those related to Boss do. It is a very popular activity on a Sunday afternoon at Sunny South Crescent and all the other places the Boss family call home. Except, of course, Boss himself. He seems to find gambling dull and it is without doubt his biggest flaw. He is tough to explain and even his family aren’t really sure what happened. He is a mystery and it is probably best to leave it at that.
No doubt. Judy Garland was extremely weird.
And so is Las Vegas.
Weird, intense and not a place for those with a tendency to binge. Which is okay for a professional like me. But for perennial losers with a weakness for heavy and ill-advised gambling, large breasted female hustlers and free booze, the consequences are heavy. You could be paying the price for a long time to come and it isn’t always just financial. The cheap pimps and suited thugs will stomp a hole right through you and then rummage through your pockets for change as you lay bleeding on the very expensive casino carpet. That is fact. A dollar speaks loudly in most places but in Vegas, he is mayor. Always pick up a nickel, always fleece a sucker. They are the only rules Vegas locals run by and if they aren’t strictly adhered too, those so called locals soon find themselves in some trough like North Vegas or Barstow.
Things started to get heavy on the first night and never really ceased until we crossed the Californian border in our rented Pontiac Grand Prix. We had our wits, our cash and our dignity but it was a close call and lesser men would still be on their hands and knees in the MGM or Circus Circus or the Horseshoe looking for all three and wondering what the hell happened. Here is what happened: you weren’t up for the gig and you should contact me immediately for all your gambling needs. I bet on most things and I am friendly enough if the action is fast and the rub is mine. I am always on the lookout for suckers and bad gamblers who don’t understand momentum and only have occasional winning runs as a result. They won’t admit this but who cares? They are stupid hillbillies and their credit is bad and if you have bad credit, your opinion is worth about as much as junky in Siberia.
Wow. Things are getting a little vicious. But sometimes they have to so we’ll just leave it at that and continue down this path. For good or ill, of course.
The first night is tough to piece together but the weird scribbled notes provide the basic outline of shameful greed and complete weirdness that existed inside and outside of the Wynn Hotel. All was going rather swimmingly. A mid-morning arrival allowed for some heavy afternoon baseball wagering. Sports always have and always will be my game- I am an addict for sports and sports news across the globe and will always have an edge against the dumb money- and I took more than the complimentary drinks they afforded your highly strung author. It was a tremendous run and one of those little streaks only real gamblers value. Six out of seven, across the country. From New York to San Fran and a few well chosen cities in between, the news across The Big Board kept coming up Punt, as those who gamble with me like to say.
The real cherry was the Hall of Fame game, the NFL season opener. Betting on preseason games is tantamount to chewing on lit rubber but I was drunk on expensive vodka and high on the prospect of professional football returning. More Favre, more Niners, more cheap stompings in places like Houston and Oakland and Atlanta. So I did what any professional would have done and I bet heavily on the Pittsburgh Steelers, giving away a measly three points, to smack up those overrated fools from New Orleans, who no longer have Katrina to whip them into a victorious football team. The football Gods are no longer keen on New Orleans. Not this year and probably not ever. A professional football gambler and occasional drinking acquaintance that once partied heavily with Goldie Hawn, who for personal reasons shall remain nameless, told me many years ago to bet heavily on new coaches in preseason games. “That is where us professionals make our money…we are Greedheads and we get in early…take that to the bank”. I, of course, did not. Those who advertise betting heavily on preseason football games are usually very dangerous and very drunk and it is often best to avoid them in the month of August. Which I did. But his words filled my head like shit fills a paddock on that bright and shiny Sunday evening in the Nevada desert and I unloaded on the Steelers. They, of course, won comfortably and did honour to Steel City and the new coach and all of us who are writing off the New Orleans Saints in 2007.
Win, lose or draw, I am a firm believer that you should indulge in vodka and beer and whatever else becomes available if the situation is right. And it seemed to be. Most winners get drunk and give their bankroll back and more while the losers try to sober up and lose their nerves and a lot more cash. Balance is the key.
Somewhere, as we stumbled along from casino to casino singing tunes like “Sweet Caroline” at a dueling piano bar and yelling loudly with some Geordie bastard who was proclaiming the virtues of Alan Shearer, someone deemed that a triple tequila shot was in order. It was probably Boss. He has a tendency to call for brutal drinks when he is drunk. But it may have been Kendall as well…he is wiry and can surprise you with his attempts to get you legless and vomiting. So drinky, drinky and then the blur.
All of a sudden, we are back at Tower Suite room number 1210 and Boss is screaming, demanding to know where the hell we got to and why we had left him alone. Had we? Was Boss on acid? The tequila was having a weird effect on everyone. All of a sudden hotel management is banging on the door and taking Boss outside “for a little chat”. Kendall is vomiting violently and management is threatening eviction, claiming neighbours had reported gunshots coming from the room. Kendall somehow lifts himself from the toilet floor and is a little unhappy about the situation, shaking Boss and demanding to know what he had done. “I will drive to Los Angeles and never come back” he screamed, before passing out in a drunken stupor.
Kendall did not drive to Los Angeles the next day. He proceeded to drink and gamble heavily for the next two days and nights, schooling various establishments at Blackjack while Boss let his entire family down by getting chain-whipped like a circus lion at the tables.
I continued to win on baseball but suffered such a brutally horrifying loss on the poker table that it is lucky I didn’t have to go and sell my ass on Fremont Street which, to be perfectly honest, would not fetch all that much. Or sell the Boss brain to a strange group of so-called experimental scientists who had come to Vegas looking for those with large debts, to experiment on of course.
The time was late but for me, it was the 11th hour. We were at critical mass. My brain was frazzled but my nerves were strong and my confidence was high. I was seated at a table with some weird behaving Arabs who were either cheating or plotting when communicating in a language I was unfamiliar with. But they were big spending suckers and I felt that we could reach some amicable situation where I had all their money before I had them kicked off the table and out of the casino. They were my focus and all was going to plan. I just hadn’t accounted for some schmuck college student seated to the left of the dealer. And in the end, that was my great failing.
I held a queen and a nine when the flop came down ten, jack, king. That is a fairly decent straight and one worth betting heavily. So I did. And I got taught some valuable lessons about poker and money and Vegas and terrorism and life when, with every last chip I had sitting squarely in the middle of a very large pot, the college student schmuck flipped over a queen and a bullet. It was like a steel-capped jackboot to the jaw followed by a vicious laugh so chilling it froze your bones. The brutality was intense, the damage total.
Most would have opened up their wallets and sought vengeance on the bull that had stomped them and the coven of witches who cackled heartily and without mercy at the vile cruelty of fate they had just witnessed. But I am not most. I revere both Richard Nixon and Hunter S. Thompson and claim them both as personal heroes and not many can claim that. I rested, returned the following morning, drank Sam Adams for lunch and bet on baseball. It worked and I am still alive and still liquid.
But it was a close call. Even professionals find Vegas to be a tough and unforgiving town full of cheap sluts, sleazy hustlers and money hungry titans who have no heart. Only a bank account. So Semper Paratus my loyal friends. Or you will be eaten alive and never be found. Even your bones will be used. Nothing goes to waste in Sin City.