Food Feature: Honeymoon’s over

Leaving fear and loathing in Las Vegas

We were somewhere above Arizona when I wished the drugs would take hold. There’s no poker face more effective than the empty stare of near exhaustion, and as fate dealt me what seemed like my hundredth hand, I accepted it without a fight — a theme I’d revisit often over the next week.
My traveling companion Thomas had taken to memorizing blackjack charts and wanted to practice the whole flight. I had taken to aspirin and wanted nothing more than for the Sugarplum Fairies All Nude Revue to dance through my head.
I nodded off briefly, but woke abruptly to turbulence. Still half-fantasizing about a whirlwind marriage I’d have to get annulled, I wondered if a Flying Elvis had gotten stuck in one of the turbines.
Staring out the window, my eyes focused on a column of light. Worried we’d overflown Vegas and were landing on the Hollywood set of some straight-to-video sequel to Stargate, I asked encyclopedic Thomas what the deal was with the glowing pyramid. Turns out we were landing near the Luxor Hotel, 45 Xenon lights strong, our lighthouse — one of the “wonders” of the world.
Yes, Las Vegas is full of wonders — things that make you go, “hmmmm.” Vegas “strip” is an appropriate name. Each day, as Thomas and I would escort our earnings to their final resting places, we’d pass countless immigrants passing out flyers for massage services and dancers delivered directly to your door. Did these immigrants mind standing there all day, portable tape decks cooking in the heat, listening to the same warped tape over and over as hypocrites planning to go back to their hotel rooms to call 1-800-2NA-FISH looked at them in contempt?
No job’s easy, not even giving out easy lays. A cabbie explained where the real action is: $250 gets you to the Chicken Ranch an hour away, an hour wait and a ride back. Whatever you do inside, that’s extra. Sure, really long expensive cab rides were exactly why I was here; paying for sex would just be the icing on the cake.
No, I was here to relax — relax my grip on my wallet and my hold on sobriety. I said I was here to see a friend. But I was really here to see what friends are capable of. Thomas was between undergraduate and medical school. He was about to spend years studying the human body, and damned if he weren’t planning his first anatomy lesson: a lap dance. And I was along for the ride — eyes wide but focused.
Casinos are thought out with surgical precision. There are no shortcuts, only long, drawn-out incisions into savings. There are no rainy days in Vegas, so who needs those savings. As you’re tugging at that metallic arm, the casino is pulling your leg. The odds are against you. You can’t win.
Don’t tell me that. I came here with a dream. OK, in a dream. Are dreams illusions or delusions? I never thought the phrase “loosest craps in town” could be appealing, but I bellied up to the first craps table I could find and took an immediate belly flop. It wasn’t until Thomas and I visited old Vegas that I found my rhythm, surrounded by old men and Asians, hanging out under horseshoes that long ago lost their luck.
Watching the old men’s superstitions was fascinating at first — the way they’d eye the table, let the dice settle into their hands and make their bets based on how they laid. I almost expected someone to lick his finger and test the air. Fascinating at first, but I figure if I were someone who might crap out before the dice, if that “lucky” breath blown on the dice might be my last, I’d hurry the hell up. Gin makes a man mean. Losing makes a man mean it.
A 7-11 is as hard to find in Vegas as a real Slurpee it is in Atlanta. After a couple of days the only chip I had left was on my shoulder. But my trip to Vegas was still shaping up to be a real winner. I was especially happy when my friend, Doug, got Thomas and I prime seats for Blue Man Group. In college acid only cost $5 a hit, now what might as well have been called “LSD: The Musical” started at $60.
The Luxor treated us well. Not only did they comp our Blue Man tickets, but Doug and I hung out in the VIP room at RA, the Luxor’s nightclub, hoping to catch a glimpse of DJ Rap’s tightly wrapped chest. Another VIP made a crack about livening up the evening with either coke or hookers. Our host said, in all sincerity, that he’d make some phone calls. Yeah, I thought, that is the kind of guy who can get you some blow, and from the way he’d been looking at me, I mean that two ways.
On our last night in Vegas, Thomas, Doug and I finally sprinted to Cheetah’s. As Thomas went about an arduous 45-minute task of deciding on a lap dancer that ended up being only “all right,” I fell in love with “Alicia.” She wondered if I was British. I wondered if she was high. We shared a cigarette and some body space. And before I left, “Alicia” helped me realize why I really liked, loathed, feared and fantasized about the idea of revisiting Las Vegas: It’s always easier to fall in love with and keep coming back to something you can’t win.






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