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Media Whore
The Inescapable Entertainment
"Bottoms Up! The only afternoon topless show in Las Vegas!" screams the poster near the garage entrance of the Flamingo Hilton. The image is that of a statuesque showgirl with a weighty headdress and even weightier breasts.
"Hey, how about that one?" I ask facetiously.
"Yeah, I can't even tell you the number of times I've wished that I could get my tittie fix in the afternoon," John says dryly. "What do you have against Debbie Reynolds anyway?"
"I'm not sure. Something about the idea that her show description promises to include Debbie's famous impressions."
John and I have been arguing about which Las Vegas-style show to take in for almost the entire 4 1/2 hour car trip. I had proposed At The Copa with David Cassidy & Sheena Easton for its nostalgic '40s setting, as well as its nostalgic '70s and '80s stars. John was in favor of Siegfried & Roy--in support of our gay brethren no matter which side of the closet door they're on--until I told him their tickets run over a hundred bucks a head. Now here we are in the City That Never Sleeps and he's become fixated on the Debbie Reynolds revue at The Orleans, having just noticed the billboard on the way into town.
"The Debbie Reynolds show starts at 7 p.m. Do you know what that says to me?" I ask rhetorically.
"That Debbie wants to make sure we won't be too tired to have sex after the show?" John offers.
"It tells me she's catering to a demographic that takes advantage of early-bird buffets and considers nine o'clock to be a excellent bedtime."
John and I are a little more than fuck buddies and a little less than boyfriends. We've agreed that we're incompatible in the long term--I'm a little too cynical for John's taste and he's a little too insular for mine--but we hang out together and have sex when we're between relationships. Sexually, we're very compatible.
I suggested this Las Vegas getaway because I thought it would be a great way to have sex all weekend. We never spend entire weekends together in the city because that's too domestic--we don't want to get the wrong idea about what we are to each other.
"Tell me again why we're staying at the Flamingo," John bitches as we hump our baggage across the casino to get to the room elevators.
"Because I got us a special Internet rate and the room is costing less per night than the starting price for a single ticket to see Debbie Reynolds."
"Uh-huh," he nods.
"Besides, what could be gayer than a pink casino with this many mirrors?"
We finally arrive in our room--30 doors south of the elevator and the ice machine--and I'm upset to discover that we don't have a view of the courtyard. "I specifically requested a room facing the garden," I say indignantly.
"It's all the same to me," John says.
"I wanted a view of the penguins and flamingos," I complain.
"We'll go down and see them later," he shrugs. "Let's have sex."
This next part is embarrassing. I actually hear myself telling John that I have a bit of a headache from the drive and I'd like to take a quick nap first. John turns on the television and settles on Cops. The last thing I hear before I drift off to sleep is a woman telling an officer that she had to run all the red lights because she was being chased by people who wanted to make car parts out of her.
I wake up refreshed and ready to take John up on his offer, but he's not in the room. There's a note on his pillow. "Couldn't sleep. Went down to the casino. --John" I pull on some jeans and a Condomania T-shirt--Vegas is the ultimate "come as you are" resort--and head off to the casino.
I wander up and down the banks of machines. Since we've never been to Vegas together, I don't know what John likes to play. He seems like the video poker type, so I head toward the "Quartermania" zone. As I scan the rows of machines, I spy an unbelievably handsome guy who looks a little like Dean Cain--this is a bit of a rarity in Vegas where male visitors tend to run the gamut from Guido guys to paunchy middle-aged men to wizened seniors wheeling oxygen tanks from slot to slot. No one is playing the machine next to "Dean," so I take a seat.
I consult my wallet and remember that I have unwisely brought my $300 stake in hundred-dollar bills. I'd spent all of my smaller denominations on the way over--it's hard to change C-notes at mini marts and fast-food drive-throughs.
I don't want to relinquish my stool to look for a change cage, because every other poker machine in Dean's vicinity is taken and someone is bound to swoop in and sit beside my beloved if I vacate. "Excuse me, can you change a hundred?" I ask him casually.
"Sorry, big guy. Too rich for my blood," he laughs.
Only then do I realize how contrived I must seem to him, like I'm some lame-ass who carries around large bills to impress people. "It's just what the bank gave me," I say, trying to save face. "I went into the bank instead of using the ATM, and I gave the teller my withdrawal slip, and she said, 'Hundreds OK?' And I said, 'Sure," and I wasn't even thinking about needing to cash them."
"There's a change cage right over there," he says. "They'd be happy to change it for you." He doesn't take his eyes off his video display even as he points to a booth about 50 feet from where we're sitting.
By this time an elderly woman has walked up behind me and is pretty seriously encroaching on my personal space. Clearly, she wants the machine.
I hurriedly take out one of my hundreds and feed it into the bill slot and watch my 400 quarter credits rack up on the display. The woman sighs heavily and moves on.
"So you're gonna go for it, huh, big guy?" Dean asks affably.
"Sure, what the hell, huh?" I toss off casually as I begin playing five quarters per hand. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. One pair. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Three of a kind. Nothing...
Dean's fortunes go up and down. Just when I think he's about to run out of credits and leave, he hits a four-of-a-kind or a straight flush and he's right back in the game. My credits are on a slow but constant downward trajectory.
"There you are! Did you have a nice nap, sweetcheeks?" John has found me and is standing behind my stool. John only uses cutesy couple-speak when it will publicly embarrass me.
Dean smiles.
"Oh, hey, I was looking for you," I offer lamely.
"Yeah, I can tell. Hey, you're doing all right!"
"Um..."
"180 credits. That's close to, like, 50 bucks. Now you can see Debbie Reynolds and you won't even have to spend your own money."
"Yeah, I guess I better cash out while I'm on top," I say uneasily, glancing at Dean who has a big smirking grin on his face. I hit the "Cash Out" button and grab a change cup to catch my "winnings."
"Good luck," I say as John and I depart.
"Thanks. Hey, have a great time at Debbie," Dean enthuses. "I hear she does a great Barbra Streisand."
John and I visit the penguins and the flamingos, then we decide to head over to the Rio to watch the Parade in the Sky and belly up to their "Best of Vegas" Carnival World Buffet.
At the entrance to the Rio, a sign informs us that the Parade in the Sky performers toss "light, brightly colored beads" into the audience. If we are "uncomfortable" with this activity, the sign warns, we should enjoy ourselves in other areas of the casino while the show is in progress.
"What kind of complaints do you suppose triggered that?" John asks, bemused.
"I'm not sure, but it takes the air out of any notion that we might really be in New Orleans, don't you think?"
A cocktail waitress brushes past in what can only be described as a thong-and-ruffles ensemble, and John visibly winces.
Phobias of brightly colored bead projectiles and nearly naked cocktail waitresses notwithstanding, we watch the Parade in the Sky, which features too many Pointer Sisters numbers and tambourines for our tastes.
At the Carnival World Buffet, we're seated near the giant rotating desert carousel. I'm not a person who typically gives over to decadence in wholesale fashion, but I'm on pseudo-vacation time and am therefore allowed to eat whatever I want. After giving the nine or ten food stations a go-round, I return to my seat with a plate that contains a slice of prime rib, cauliflower in butter sauce, a smattering of seafood pasta salad, a taco, some pad thai, a couple of pieces of sushi and--resting atop it all like a meaty and primitive crown--a barbecued beef spare rib.
John, who is engaged in a modest salad course, looks disapprovingly at my plate. "If I were served that in a restaurant, I would send it back."
"Yeah, so would I," I shrug. "Each piece sounded good in the moment, but the various flavors might not work very well together."
"If a Sudanese contingent were to tour the buffet right now, you would want to kill yourself with your own fork."
"I know. Luckily, the chance that could happen is infinitesimally remote."
It is when I'm gripping my rib with both hands and wrapping my jaw around a particularly thick portion that John says dryly, "God, watching you eat five kinds of meat in one sitting is such a turn-on for me. Will you please fuck me with your manly tool after dinner?"
I laugh so hard I'm afraid I might pelt him with a mouthful of barbecued beef. "What about Debbie?"
"Screw Debbie," John announces. She's probably a vegetarian."
Back in the room at the Flamingo, I'm feeling a bit full. A lot full. I promise that we'll have lusty animal sex in the morning. John rolls his eyes, and we head back down to the casino.
I wake in the morning to find John watching Bush's inauguration. I had totally forgotten about it, perhaps intentionally.
"Good morning," John says in a world-weary tone.
"Hey. Sorry about last night," I offer.
"Oh, don't worry about it. The country's going to hell. Who cares about sex?"
"Well, I do, and you do, and probably even George and Laura do, though I would prefer not to think about that right now, and I'm sorry I brought it up."
"Yeah, I'm sorry you brought it up, too."
"So..." I say.
"Now?"
"Why not?"
"OK."
John takes off his robe and climbs back into bed. We lay on our sides for a while just looking at each other. John's very attractive to me, kind of nerd-chic with horn-rimmed glasses, thinning hair and prematurely graying temples. He's square-jawed and only one cheek dimples when he smiles. Bush is droning, "Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character."
"Compassionate conservative bullshit," John spits.
"Should I turn that off?"
"No, I'll be fine."
I'm running my hands down John's stomach, trying to tease him to action.
"Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos," Bush intones.
"Yeah, there's a hell of a lot of civility in trying to derail accurate vote counts because you know you really lost, you son of a bitch!" John yells at the screen.
"Hey John, buddy, I agree, but this isn't very erotic," I plead.
"I'm sorry. I'll concentrate," he says.
"OK, concentrating isn't terribly erotic either. Why don't we do this another time?"
"No, seriously, I'll be fine," John argues. "He's just an idiot. I can't stand the fact that we're going to be ruled by an idiot for the next four years. At least."
"I know." I pause. "So tell me what you want."
John sighs heavily. "You know, Buddy is going to New York to live in the Clinton home, but Socks is going to live with Betty Currie."
"No, I didn't know that," I say, rolling away from him. "Maybe Socks and Buddy don't get along."
"Where are you going?" John asks.
"I'm getting the impression this isn't a good time."
We watch the remainder of Bush's address. He manages to seem interminable even though his speech is only fourteen minutes long. Personal responsibility...blah, blah, blah. Conscience, sacrifice, commitment...blah, blah, blah. Our boy Barney Frank would later pronounce the address "vacuous."
We have solid plans to make big monkey-love later that night.
We're back at the Rio. Unknowable forces have lured us back to the Carnival World Buffet--this time for lunch--where I vow to be more prudent about my choices. I eschew the barbecued beef sparerib.
After lunch we decide to engage in some light gambling before we take in--sigh--the Debbie Reynolds revue at the Orleans a couple of blocks away. John and I go our separate ways. Humiliated by my video poker losses, I opt for video slots, which feature any number of nostalgic themes from Monopoly to I Dream of Jeanie. The biggest head scratcher is the slot machine based upon Jeopardy. Alex Trebek's grinning visage lures me over to what for all the world should be the first Vegas slot with a knowledge contingent. Alas, no questions are asked in this version of Jeopardy, making it--for my money--the lamest popular culture reference in Vegas.
My favorite machines are based upon The Addams Family--they seem to be among the few themed slots in Vegas that don't lean too heavily on a cuteness factor. Giant likenesses of Uncle Fester and Lurch tower over the machines, and payouts rely upon successfully lining up so many spiders or candelabras or Things.
I'm aware that we've been in the Rio casino for some time though I'm not wearing a watch, and the marketing wizards at the major Vegas casinos do what they can to make the gambler's experience as disorienting as possible. There are no clocks in casinos, and gaming areas are sufficiently distant from entrances and exits so that it's impossible to know whether the sun is up or down. It's never terribly bright or too dark. Working in a casino must make employees feel like they're in a perpetual gloaming.
An older woman in a silk jogging suit sits down next to me and feeds a $20 bill into the machine. She immediately wins a bonus round in which she must touch a window on the screen in order to collect a mystery prize. She seems lost.
"What d'ya do?" she asks me.
"You touch a window and you get whatever value is revealed."
"Where do I touch?"
"It's pretty random. Just pick one of the windows on the screen and touch it."
"The screen?" she asks, kind of squinting at me.
"Yeah, just touch one of the boxes."
She looked at me as if to say, OK, I'll do as you say, and then you'll feel like a dummy when nothing happens. She touches one of the windows and a 50-coin bonus is revealed. The credits rack up on her machine. "Hmmm..." she says. "Look at that." She looks at me with some distrust, as if I've just been exposed as a voodoo priest.
"Can you give me the time?" I ask.
She looks hard at her watch. "It's 6:30."
"Oh, gosh, I've gotta run," I say as I hit "Cash Out."
By the time I collect my cup of coins and find John, we agree that it's too late to try to get over to the Orleans for Debbie's 7 o'clock show.
Instead we head over to the new Paris casino to take a look and have a light dinner.
Paris has a cute little patisserie on the mock cobbled "street" that leads to the hotel lobby and casino. I cough up ten bucks for an essence of lunch meat tucked into a piece of baguette with a side of overcooked pasta in vinaigrette dressing. Another $4 gets me an Orangina.
"At least it's not a buffet," I pronounce.
"It costs as much as one," John grumbles.
A Latina in a blue-striped shirt and a beret comes through with a sweeper.
"Do you think the beret makes her feel silly?" I ask John, trying to make him think about something other than Debbie and the overpriced food.
"It's a lot better than a ruffled thong," he replies. "Are you finished with your sandwich?"
"Yeah. What do you want to do?"
"I want to gamble."
"Vegas loves you," I say as we bus our own table.
The Paris casino is lovely, maybe even a little classy...for Vegas. And the Eiffel Tower replica that bursts out of its floor and through its ceiling is a bit of an engineering marvel.
Signs warn that no "unauthorized weddings" may take place on or near the Paris Las Vegas Eiffel Tower.
"If a boyfriend of mine wanted to marry me at the Eiffel Tower and thought Las Vegas would do nicely, ours would be a very short marriage," I say.
There's no answer, which isn't entirely out of character for John, but I shortly realize he's not beside me. I backtrack to find him sitting at a table game, a game with a live dealer. The placard says, "Casino War--$10 Minimum Per Hand."
"Are you serious?" I whisper into his ear as he hands the dealer $50.
"Yeah, why not?" he asks casually.
"War?!" I hiss. "Like, 'I'll bet my card is higher than yours' war?"
"Yeah. It's fun."
"What does 'Casino War' mean?"
"That the house wins if we tie. It's their edge."
He has already lost his first "hand." King over five. I don't feel good about this at all.
John wins the next hand. Ten over seven. And the next hand Queen over five. The following hand is a tie. Then John enters a winning streak, the likes of which I've never seen outside the movies. He starts to let some of his bets ride so that he's betting sixty, eighty, and a hundred dollars per hand. One of the cocktail waitresses has begun hanging out near the table, ready to get John anything he needs. We order Bombay Sapphire Tonics and Ketel One Vodka Martinis. The casino hopes that the alcohol will go to John's head and cloud his judgment, that he'll bet everything on a losing hand. But John can hold his liquor--he can outdrink me three to one. In fact, by the time John calls it a night I'm completely pickled. He's won over $900. I don't remember being driven back to the Flamingo. I don't remember getting undressed. I certainly don't remember making hot monkey-love.
We pack our things in the morning. I've slept in until ten o'clock. I'm sure I should be hung over, but I'm not. John must have made me drink some water before he put me to bed last night. Maybe he forced some Tylenol down my throat. He's quiet, but not angry. We haven't had sex the entire weekend. Las Vegas is one giant live-in distraction. We check out and hit the road. I'm driving.
"I guess that didn't happen like I thought it would," I say as we turn onto I-15, breaking the silence. "I thought a weekend trip would be a good idea."
"I had fun," John says. "I won close to $1000. We laughed. We got drunk together."
"I got drunk and you watched," I offered.
"Yeah, so?"
"We didn't have sex. We didn't see Debbie. We didn't even see David Cassidy and Sheena Easton in At the Copa."
"Next time," John says with a weird grin on his face.
"OK, next time," I agree, thinking about how couple-like it seems to be talking about future trips. "Traffic looks light," I say to change the subject.
"Yeah, it does," he says, smiling. He slowly reaches over and unbuttons my jeans.
I raise my eyebrows. He unzips me.
"This is so irresponsible," I say in a mock stern voice.
"Yeah, well, it's the only bottomless afternoon show in Las Vegas, and we've got a long drive ahead."
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