Gathering Speed

The plan to go home for Thanksgiving took a minor detour. The pacific Baltimore consulates would be returning to the homeland, but not without a quick stop in Las Vegas. 

The concept for the Vegas trip is unlike any other as far as anticipation is concerned. We got a bunch of buddies from home together for a trip, and for weeks in advance, the emails sent back and forth  made us look like the biggest losers on the planet. “Dude, no one is going to sleep!” “Bro…we’re going cougar hunting man. Whoever bangs the oldest cougar wins, man!” Vegas is billed as a paradise of sin and opportunity, where you roll into palatial casinos like you’re in the rat pack. You’re James Bonded out, you’re rolling in duckets, and you will absolutely, definitely get laid. Repeatedly. That’s Vegas.

Vegas isn’t seven dudes in a single hotel room, with a pact that whoever loses the most gets a bed. Vegas isn’t rolling over to O’Shea’s or Imperial Palace in  search of a two dollar blackjack table. Vegas isn’t guys in sweatpants and elderly women without arms  carrying around players cards so when they play five hundred hours of video poker they get a shrimp cocktail.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, because if it got out, no one would ever fucking go.

Think about this for a second, the INSANITY of it; you’re in an environment where you know you’re going to fail. The entire city is built on the absolute certainty that if you stay long enough, you are going to lose. Plus, they’re feeding you booze! They’re coming right out and saying that they are going to impair you.  It’s like someone saying, “Okay man, go ahead and try to jump over that crevice in your ATV. Oh, I’ll be shooting at your ballsack with an airgun. Good luck, sir.”

The moniker of sin city doesn’t exactly fit either. For one thing, it’s the most religious city in America. That’s right. I’m not talking about religion that tells you it’s wrong to do a rail of blow off a set of gigantic fake tits, because that’s never wrong (cue Leykis). I’m talking about God and magic and shit that’s doesn’t make sense. That’s what religion is after all. People are afraid to question their faiths because they’re terrified of dying. People flock to Vegas because they’re terrified that someone else is going to get their free money. But it’s true. You do ridiculous things under the influence of that place. The concept of a Hot Shooter, for example. When you’re underway at a craps table, you believe that the guy in the Corona Visor and the t-shirt that says “Ass: The Other Pussy” can, in some way, throw the dice in a manner that will get them to land exactly the way he wants to. He has no discernible skills and works at a car wash, but knows enough of vector physics to time four hundred bounces correctly. This is what we’re banking on. He stacks the dice up, switches them really fast, wiggles his hand like it’s a salmon over top of it, pretends to finger-bang the table, wipes the imaginary secretion under his nostril, and screams “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!” every forty five seconds. And then there’s that moment when you’re rolling the dice, and you’ve had about seven Red Bull and vodkas compounded by the contact buzz off the phermaldehyde holding the cocktail waitress together, when it hits you. I can control the dice! I can throw any number I want! I am magical! I can see into the future! KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

Seven out. 

Two of us walked away in the black. Severely. The rest were in the red. Also severely. It was my worst gambling defeat of all time. I reached a point of absolute sartori, standing outside The Palms watching the sun threaten to come up over the mountains, signaling that the trip was over and that any attempt to get back to even would be in vain. Technically, they were all in vain, but the next one never is. I imagined how a hangover would just start to develop once I got in the security line at McCarran.

Then I started to think about the next trip, and how ridiculous it was going to be. 

That’s Vegas.