The Experience Pt.2

 This is part of a fictional series of stories based on stuff that I've seen working on Fremont Street. Just think of it like that guy who wrote all those memoirs and got exposed and had to apologize on Oprah, except I'm telling you that it's bullshit at the beginning. I embellished. 

     Two things that should not be combined: heartbreak and swing shift. Could there be any more impetus to make terrible decisions than to be getting off work on Fremont street at two-thirty in the morning with a fresh wound and be expected to make logical choices?

         But even I wouldn't resort to a Fremont street hooker. I was sitting at the bar after my shift the other night, collecting my thoughts and to be honest a little alcohol makes it easier to sleep when you have to unwind at three in the morning. The screen in front of me was desperate for my attention, pretending to show me straight flushes or four cards to the Royal. I decided quickly I wouldn't fall in to that trap. But the free drinks make everything somewhat copasetic. A girl near me started talking to me.

       “You look young, you just start here?” she asked me. Her tiny skirt did not fit with the winter weather. It never gets unbearably cold in Vegas, but she did everything short of having Bruce Buffer announce that she was a working girl. There's little room for discretion in these matters. Or need for it, for that matter. The security guards are in on it, they have to be.

“Yeah, it's my third week.” I told her. I got a good look at her, she had light brown eyes and a great smile.

“Ah, you spend that first paycheck yet?” she asked. So blunt and quick to dip into my financial situation. I don't know if her tactics are subtle to the average drunk idiot at the bar, but they seemed pretty blatant to me. But I was bored.

“Nope, I'm pretty good with my money. Direct deposited right into the old savings account. I just try to live off of my tips and save the paychecks.”

               “You make pretty good tips? Usually the cute ones make bank.” I think the biggest difference between hookers and interaction with normal girls is that hookers like to center the conversation on you, whereas normal girls like you to ask them questions about them. Or at least this is how I felt as I sat heartbroken at the bar. Her ploy was starting to work on me. For some reason I respected her blatant honesty. We could just cut through all of the pussyfooting and tact that happens in normal courting and get down to brass tax. And it was nice having someone who wanted to talk about me.

“I do alright. Had a really good night tonight,” I fibbed a bit. I tried to do the logistics of the deal in my head. Do I get an employee discount? Maybe a non-weirdo rebate that I get back a week later? Okay, don't go down that road. Let's end this now.

“Awesome. Hey this bar is kind of cold, would you want to go somewhere else?” she asked.

“Nah, I'd better get home. Gotta go to the DMV as soon as they open tomorrow.”

“Well, everybody thinks the DMV is empty first thing in the morning, but there's always a line. It's best to go around ten after that line goes away.”

“Thanks for the tip. Have a good night,” I said. I went home and slept well that night. I went back to the bar the next night, wondering if I'd see her spitting game at some other sucker. The bartender set a napkin down in front of me.

“So what did you have to do last night that was so important?” he asked.

“Huh? I went home and crashed, why?”

“I was thinking you might have had a better excuse for turning down that girl last night than the DMV, unless you're just a pussy, which is totally cool.”

“The working girl?”

“That wasn't a working girl you idiot. I work the graveyard shift every night here, I know the hookers, and that girl is not one of them. Notice how she didn't look like a meth head.”

“Vodka tonic, please.” I folded my arms and put my head down while he squeezed the lime into my drink until it was a ball of stringy remnants curled into the fetal position.

The Experience Pt.1

This is part of a fictional series of stories based on stuff that I've seen working on Fremont Street. Just think of it like that guy who wrote all those memoirs and got exposed and had to apologize on Oprah, except I'm telling you that it's bullshit at the beginning. I embellished.

I stood in the elevators with two other people cascading down the employee parking garage when one of them said, “sure is eerie riding this elevator knowing somebody jumped off the top of the garage yesterday.” The woman was in her early fifties, wearing a dealer's outfit of slacks and a vest over a button up. Her hair looked like it had been sprayed into the same mold for twenty years straight. It stood in perfect alignment like a Spartan Phalanx, or freshly mowed blades of uniform grass.

Personally, if I were to jump off a building, it would be double digits in floors. I'm just saying, seven stories sounds like if you landed the right way you might just end up disfigured for the rest of your life. I swear I've seen a television special where a girl was skydiving with a baby in her womb she didn't know about and crashed to the ground and the baby survived. I don't want to take my chances with anything less than fourteen, fifteen stories.

This was something like my second week working on Fremont. The Experience. A microcosm of tortured souls. Alcoholics, homeless, street performers, power hungry bosses, prostitutes, all lurking around every corner. Not to mention all of the inconsiderate tourists that don't look where they're walking.

As I exited the elevator I surveyed the area where the man committed suicide the day before. It didn't look clean, none of the pavement downtown looks clean. But it certainly didn't look how I expected it to look; ie blood stains, perhaps a dislodged finger that nobody bothered to pick up. The guy worked there for something like eighteen years. And that was it, even his blood stain was gone after one day. Forgotten. We can't have that kind of bloodshed on display so close to the entertainment.

I think the guy was a porter, which for those who aren't familiar with the casino terminology, is kind of like a janitor. Some tough guy has too many shots at the bar, pukes all over the floor, and who cleans it up? The bartender, right? Nope, the porter. Haven't you ever wondered what happened to all those cups you left on the floor or near a machine when you were drunk and didn't care? Some old guy making a decent wage who has been cleaning up after drunk idiots for eighteen years cleaned it up. Clearly we see where that can lead.

I had a long day at work. Dealing blackjack can be brutal. My table is near the craps tables where every five minutes or so some annoying group of girls yells, “WOOOOO!!!” Blackjack can be a very fast game where people lose a lot of money before they realize it. People are always getting angry, sometimes at each other because one guy doesn't know how to play right. And people are drunk. They think I miscount and they yell. The pit boss reviews the tape and they get a free meal even though I didn't miscount.

“Stay after for a drink?” Rick, the craps dealer asked me.

“No, I'm broke man.”

“The first one's free, you get a free post-shift drink,” he said.

That's a thing? No wonder these people get stuck here. I declined anyways, I had not adjusted to being up so late yet, and I just wanted to go to sleep. Two-thirty in the morning would eventually become the norm for me, but at this point it was foreign. At two-thirty in the morning there aren't many people left on the streets. The performers have retired their costumes for the night, and most people have either overdosed or passed out by that time. It caught me off guard when a guy asked me if I was driving home. As opposed to what? Walking?

“Yeah, I'm driving. Why?” I responded.

“Do you think I could get a ride man? I'm desperate. It's just down a few blocks, I lost my friends. I could really use some help man, please,” he said. He didn't look threatening. Smaller than me, and certainly less sober. Although I'm not sure what he was high on.

“Sure,” is what an idiot would say. And that's what I said. The guy seemed genuinely in need of help. We walked to my car and he thanked me a few times.

“Do any drugs?” he asked. Not the kind of question you normally get within the first five minutes of a conversation anywhere else.

“Not really, no. Weed sometimes. Why?”

“I think I got some at the crib I can give you for the ride. I just really appreciate it man,” he reiterated.

“I'm good man. Don't worry about it.”

He pointed me the direction to go and off we went. He looked paranoid. He grabbed his face.

“I think my jaw is broken,” he said.

“What? Seriously?”

“Me and my homie got into it with this dude over his girl. He hit me first, but we lit him up real good after that. Dude's face was messed up.”

Something I would have liked to had been informed of before I let the guy into my car. I think he was full of shit. I haven't been around too many broken jaws, but I'm pretty sure he would have been in severe pain and his speech would have been messed up. Either way, he was a dick.

“Shit. See the cop cars over by 7-11? We've got to keep driving a little bit. Go down the road a little further,” he said. Is this where I get lured into the middle of the ghetto and get robbed? I watched to make sure he wasn't itching towards some sort of weapon. I had to take control of this situation.

“Dude I'm going to throw my hat out the window,” he said.

“No, don't do that.”

“They might recognize the black hat,” he shivered out of frustration.

“It's going to look suspicious if you throw a hat out the window. You're being paranoid. Nobody's looking at my car. My shit is registered, my brake lights work, I have no warrants...just tell me where to let you out.”

“Over there I guess.”

Never again would I give somebody a ride anywhere near Fremont.

Experiencing the Animal Kingdom in Green Valley

Although we feel every malicious step the summer takes towards us, the heat has not yet arrived in full force, and the Samaritans of Las Vegas are stuck in between turning on the air conditioner, or opening windows and doors. In a household consisting of three young males, the door stays open.

There are a few things in our house that might be attractive to a stray dog; scattered Kibbles and/or Bits, a bottle of ketchup on the floor that nobody can explain, but namely my roommates’ dog Megan. Megan is a small Beagle mix with a cute face and personality. She tends to chew on shoes, but she doesn’t have the jaw strength to complete the destruction. It still seemed strange when we heard the non-threatening yelp of a miniature pinscher at our door late in the evening.

We looked at the dog as he filibustered at our door. By we I mean me, Scotty in one of his trademark pro-rap or pro-weed shirts, and Ken, probably dominating at a video game at the time. The unfortunate thing about a miniature pinscher, or a mini-pin as some lame people I have run into at the dog park refer to them as, is that they have the markings of the powerful Doberman, but none of the pinache. They’re like a little dog with a Napoleon complex, barking at things that tower over them.

We were intrigued by his brashness, although we didn’t like his manners. We stood up and he ran out into the street. We did what anybody else with nothing better to do would do, and followed him outside. Megan chased behind us to watch the scene unfold. It was clear to me that there was a connection. I suggested that the dog was here not for violence, but for reproductive purposes. The idea didn’t catch on quickly.

“I told you,” I shouted as we looked in the back yard and saw the mini-pin mounting our sweet little companion only a few minutes later. He had slipped his fragile little body through the gate and ran his game. Although the fairy tale of dog courtship is not that cut and dry. Megan was fending him off, she did not want nor need his services.

“Maybe they already finished, and she just thought it was just alright,” Scotty said, connecting the dots first. It was obvious at this point that we had to intervene. We approached it to eradicate it and the mini pin lunged at Scotty with a bark, but to no avail as he just leaned back, balling his hand into a fist in case of emergency.

We discussed what a terrible guest this little dog was. You don’t sneak into somebody’s back yard, have sex with their dog, and then threaten them. Then the dog did the unspeakable. He squatted and pooped. Things got out of hand after that. There were scuffles. Names were called. We chased him out and he retreated into the street. We went and watched television, ten minutes later we see him mounting Megan again in the back yard. We chased him back into the street. It took two or three cycles before we realized that Megan was just crawling out my bedroom window by jumping on my bed.

By this time we felt like disappointed fathers when their daughter brings home a guy who is way less than what they deserve, and despite what they tell her she just keeps seeing him because, “we’re meant to be together forever” at seventeen years old is really going to happen.

It was probably a good thing Megan had a little maturing experience, but it’s times like these that I wish my roommates had a Rottweiler for instances when mini-pins roll up trying to act like a boss so we can get some real nature in this house.

Much ado about Nutting

Much ado about Nutting

Because an eye grabbing headline gets ratings. Irrelevant or not.

Actually a title of a Looney Tunes episode. Turns out I'm not as clever as I thought, again.

I reached into my bankroll with plans on nurturing it. If you live in Vegas and you don’t have a bankroll, then you aint doin’ it right. I had been steadily grinding mine up to one hundred and eighty dollars with some savvy football bets. Basically, I got lucky.

A bankroll starts as a dream. It’s when you tell yourself, “I’m going to do this right. I’m going to gamble the smart way.” It’s delusional, but it seems like a way to keep yourself from gambling your life away. Most people just lose money until they end up sitting at a slot machine just hoping to break even and drink for free.

In theory a bankroll is something you should be rigorous and stern about. In practice, a bankroll is very malleable. It can be used like an instrument tuner; as long as you’re in that yellow zone between in and out of tune, you can get by. Any bankroll expert has their own methods, and current theory would dictate that you never use more than ten percent of your bankroll on one bet. Five percent is probably high.

Sometimes though, you must take calculated risks if you ever want to play in the big leagues.

And if you consider taking a pot cookie and spending about half of your bank roll on a poker tournament with no preparation calculated, then I took a risk just so.

It was ten thirty in the morning and I was on my way from the gym to the MGM. The pot cookie was delicious, with little peanut butter morsels. I could faintly taste the marijuana, but I could see how one might eat the cookie and never even know. I’d never consumed pot in that manner before. I’d heard it is a completely different experience from smoking. Remember that story a few years back when the two cops ate some kid’s pot brownie and called the cops on themselves saying they were leaving the universe? I figured my odds of winning the tournament were very slim. Then I remembered that a major league pitcher once threw a no-hitter in the throes of an LSD trip.

People started trickling to the tables and the tournament started a few minutes after eleven. I didn’t feel high yet, and I sized up the competition to see if anybody looked solid. Across from us circled around a table there were a bunch of cowboys in town for the PBR event. Somebody asked if they were in our tournament and I made a joke that your hat must be “this” tall to play in that tournament. Everybody chuckled and the host of the room announced that the cards were to be in the air.

On the first hand a wispy looking old man with saggy forearms next to the dealer asked, “so how does the betting sequence work? This is no limit, right?” The dealer looked at him like he just asked if he could eat his asshole, and a couple people sighed. Everybody wants an idiot at the table, but nobody wants the guy who holds up the game because he doesn’t know how to play. Part of me wondered if this guy was a shark trying to pretend he doesn’t know how to play. I chalked it up to me being jaded from growing up in Las Vegas. Recognizing shady people like that is integral to survival. I wasn’t high yet, so I ordered a screwdriver. It’s free, why not?

A few hands later this overconfident guy who would play on his phone as soon as he was out of every hand put the old man all in. The old man called and as the lax guy turned over his top pair, the old man turned over a full house and knocked him out of the tournament. He played solid the rest of the day, and my gut feeling was confirmed. This guy probably recited that same line at casinos around town every day, twice a day. That motherfucker. By this point I was thoroughly high, and considering that this whole tournament might be a conspiracy.

How many of these guys work here?

I was starting to lose my grip on things. I looked up at the clock and the first break wasn’t for another fifty minutes. I could get up and walk around a bit, but I had already lost about half of my stack and couldn’t afford to miss the blinds. I remember thinking about how cool the felt table felt on my fingers, then thinking that I was way too high to be playing for keeps.

This is just the warm-up game, right?

The blinds kept going up and my stack kept dwindling. I got very low, doubled up, and was still low in relation to the blinds. About twenty minutes before the break our table split up and we filled up the other three tables. They give you this little plastic rack for your chips when you move tables, but my puny stack fit just fine in the palm of one hand. So I meandered around with my chip stack in one hand and the empty plastic rack in the other until the host finally sat me down in my rightful spot. I asked the dealer where to put the empty rack and he said, “just throw it behind you, and make sure you don’t hit anybody.”

Dude, can you not fuck with me while I’m this high?

The table laughed. I had no comeback, so I sat the thing under the table in defeat. The lady sitting directly to the right of me cackled. She had a big stack and an attitude. She represented a common archetype of the female player at a casino. She was cocky and insulting on the surface, but it was obvious she was trying too hard to compensate. She celebrated with a high pitched squeal after every hand she won. A few hands later I won some chips, and I didn’t immediately give my cards back to the dealer (you try stacking a pile of chips while high), so of course she was on the ball saying, “you have to give those back, no matter how good they were.” I smiled because there’s no winning in arguing with a girl at a poker table, and hated her internally.

Finally the game went to break. I realized I went to the gym and never ate anything afterwards, but I didn’t have time to wait for food to cook. I figured some Starbucks would hold me over. Maybe it would even bring me back down from the stratosphere. I took a minute to check out the lion habitat, which was pretty much the most amazing thing possible at the time, even though the lions were sleeping. I’d probably seen the lion habitat about twenty times in my life, but never under those certain circumstances. I feared for the lives of the two young guys in the glass with the lions. I felt bad for the lions. My mood was plummeting almost as low as my chip stack.

I sat back down and the blinds had grown again. A few hands later I was convinced that it was my time to go home. I got Ace-King and planned on going all-in immediately. The second guy to act went all in, and the guy next to him went all in as well. That’s basically the worst situation AK could be in. It’s the kind of hand you want to go one-on-one with. I called anyways, because I had to, and I was surprisingly far ahead when the cards are turned over. It held up and I tripled up. Things weren’t so bad after all.

The next hand a guy went all in against the preachy annoying girl and she had him dominated with two pair until he got a straight on the river. Only she didn’t realize he got a straight, and she did a Tiger Woods fist pump which she actually had to stand up from her seat to perform. Then the dealer said, “straight.”

She sat down and huffed and called bullshit. I smiled. The guy apologized for the bad beat. Some people do that, I don’t. Maybe he apologized in hopes of getting laid. I might do that.

The next hand I knocked her out the tournament and she threw her cards in like an angsty teenager and walked off. I wanted to hand her my plastic rack and ask her to hand it to the host on the way out, but I would actually need it with my current chip stack. Justice was already had, no need to rub it in.

I struggled to stack my chips, still very high and my arms weren’t responding correctly to what I was telling them to do as they were sore from the gym and needed nourishment. I knocked over my empty Starbucks cup and the guy next to me said, “I think you’ve had too much coffee.”

I’m a writer buddy, there’s no such thing as too much coffee.

I dominated quite a few hands after this, and shortly after we were at the final table.

The red ones are 1,000 and the purple 500. Chip stack: Aprox 55-60k.

That was my stack upon entering the final table. We hit another break and I spent the whole time text messaging my friends that I might actually place in the money. I was no longer high at this point. I got a bottle of water, put in my headphones and decided to get serious.

I played the final table aggressively. The top five people got paid, so I knew that a lot of buttholes would be tightening up with people just trying to survive. By the time there were five of us left, I had three times as many chips as the guy behind me. I cruised the rest of the way, even getting pocket Aces for the first time in the whole tournament and wrecking my nearest competitor. By the time there were two of us left, I had about fifteen times as many chips as the other guy and it was only a matter of time. He seemed so worn down and helpless after five hours of playing that he didn’t even attempt to win. He would be content with his seven hundred dollar second place.

When I knocked him out I immediately took a picture of my chip stack, because I don’t adhere to the phrase “act like you’ve been there before” that coaches preach. I had never won a thousand dollars before. I tipped the dealer fifty bucks(like a boss), bought my girlfriend some flowers, and called it a day.

The brown ones are 5,000 and the reds are still 1000. Chip stack: approximately all dem bitches. Todos. 100%.

Needless to say I learned some things. I learned that pot cookies get you very high, but not interplanetarily high like I had expected. I learned that sometimes you make the completely wrong move and get rewarded for it anyways, because that’s how life, like poker, works sometimes. And now I have nine hundred extra dollars to misuse somehow, because poor people still spend money like poor people even when they have more of it.