A Banana, A Gun, and Eight Bucks... Viva Las Vegas
My god I must have slept for an eternity. At least it felt that way. No one had called my room yet, so I didn’t know if anyone else was up. The sun was shining brightly through the window and gone were the purple glowing light boxes that provided so much fun the night before. No, now the angry yellow sun focused in on me as if it was god’s flashlight. He knew I was up to no good and he was calling me out. I just wanted to keep sleeping, but brain was ready to start the day. I looked at the clock. 7:30AM.
7:30AM in Las Vegas is the worst time of the day ever. The only people that are up are the senior citizen crowds, towing their oxygen supply around in handy green cylinders, the extraordinarily obese people on their way to the first of their seven all-you-care-to-eat buffet bonanzas, and the last dregs of the all night party machines. The latter of the three are the most miserable people on earth. Without fail, they are in that cottony mind frame, where they’re beyond the apex of their drunken stupor and only moments away from the crushing debilitation that will be their hangover from drinking dozens of Miller Lite’s and several yards of icy margaritas. They’re always at the craps tables… throwing dice off the table… cheering every roll only to realize the misread the dice and had lost. Then they clap for themselves and reassure themselves that next time they can do it. Their wives and girlfriends often hang on as long as possible, but most of the time they just stand glassy-eyed at the end of the table, propped up so they don’t fall to the floor. Everyone once and a while a sudden cheer or boo will startled the emaciated harlot into brief consciousness and she’ll utter the immortal phrase, “did we win, can we go to bed now?” That is always answered with, “just one more roll, baby. Just one more roll.”
That process starts about 3:00AM. They’ll one more roll it for hours. By 8:00AM I was bored and wandering the casino looking for a banana. I walked past the craps table and saw that scene. Five people still playing. None were having fun. It’s was mechanical. Same bets, same dice, same results, repeat until rich or broke. I could see by the chips on the table that the people they had lost quite a bit of money and were making desperation bets to get it back. They’d lose those too.
I found my banana. That and a bottle of water was my strolling breakfast. I walked outside for a bit to get some smokeless air. It felt good. It was comfortable outside and I had the strip mostly to myself. I got a good walk in and headed back to the room feeling pretty refreshed and in amazingly clear mental state despite getting little sleep over night.
I called my wife and talked to her for an hour. Since it was afternoon at home, she was up and half way through her day. She mentioned that she’d gone and bought an air hockey table at a yard sale that morning. Awesome.
While other guys might have had jealous or scornful mentalities because their husbands were “whoring it up” in Sin City, my wife bought an air hockey table. Just in case you were wondering whether or not I have an awesome wife… there ya go. We chatted a bit and decided to take a shower and such. Get cleaned up a bit.
The bathrooms at the Imperial Palace are mostly unremarkable with single exception being the water pressure in the shower. I stepping into the shower and the super powerful fire hose burst of water instantly eroded my scrotum. Just blew it completely off. I started dancing around trying to find a safe spot with no body part touching the abrasive geyser of water that was trying to kill me. Luckily, I caught my scrotum before it went down the drain and was able to reattach it with the handy sewing kit provided by the hotel. Just in case you’re ever in a hotel room and notice a free needle and thread, beware the shower saw. You’ve been warned.
While I was being flayed in the shower, the rest of the guys were getting up. Mike and Devin had played craps until 6:00AM, but seemed none the worse for wear. We debated briefly what to do for breakfast/lunch. Half wanted breakfast, half wanted lunch. Mike looked like he just wanted to make the vomit. The whiskey he’d been pounding hand over fist the night before apparently tried to kill him and wasn’t completely finished with the job.
We opted for the Chinese Tea House. It’s the 24/7 café type place. It was nearby and complete with a bathroom. We sat at a cozy table in the middle of the joint, smartly not placed too close to anyone. We spent most of the meal discussing the HBO series Deadwood. Mike does a disturbingly convincing impression of Calamity Jane. Both Justin and I had a prime rib sandwich and fries. Like the chicken fingers before, they served about 4 pounds of rib on bread. I easily left behind enough food to save Africa. I don’t remember what the other guys had, but I believe everyone was happy. I picked up the check for the meal and we headed off for some Las Vegas fun.
We ended up going back to the rooms to get some things, change, and drop off something. The elevator situation was getting worse by the minute and we ended up opting to just take the stairs. Four flights of stairs up and down would eventually destroy my poor wittle knee. But at this point in the day, it was mostly and annoyance.
We were going to go for a little ride. Devin drove to Las Vegas from Los Angeles so we all hopped into his car to speed off to our destination. I should also mention that Devin’s car is one of those high-end street racing type cars. And cramped if you put in five people. Devin’s bobbing and weaving in traffic made Mike’s stomach try to revolt on a few occasions. The trip didn’t take very long and we arrived at one of my favorite places in Las Vegas… the Las Vegas Gun Store.
At this place you can rent just about any weapon you can imagine that fires a bullet. They do have an RPG on the wall, but it’s not for rent. They’ve got modern assault weapons, belt fed machine guns, world war II submachine guns, pistols, revolvers, everything.
Mike and Devin both picked out to chrome shiny .357 pistols. They weren’t revolvers, but big bolt action pistols like something out of Robocop… dead or alive you’re coming with me creep. Duane grabbed a fun MP-5 submachine gun, and Justin and I went for 9mm Berettas. Duane, being former military, had a field day with his gun. He stitched nice, healthy lines of death through his unfortunate target. I did marginally well with my first clip, but I noticed all of my tightly grouped shots were an inch or two low for the rest of my shots, I was punching out large swatches of bull’s-eye. Previously I’d tried the smaller .380 Beretta and was more impressed with its accuracy when firing moderately fast. With the 9mm version, I did just as well as previously on the .380. I think it had to do with getting more comfortable with the pistol. I went through 50 shots pretty quickly and waited for the rest of the guys. Duane had gone through his 50 rounds in about 20 seconds. That’s what a fully automatic submachine gun will do for you.
A good time was had by all and the gun range was a pleasant surprise for the bachelors. Back to the hotel/casino we went to wash off the gun powder and oil from our hands. While everyone was doing that, I took the liberty of setting up dinner reservations at Emeril’s New Orleans Fish Market. It’s been a tradition of mine ever since I started going to Las Vegas to eat there. The dinner would be late (9:30PM) but we were on Las Vegas time and late dinners are cool. I told the reservation lady that we were celebrating our two bachelor friends getting married. She feigned interest.
We decided to hit the craps tables again. Once again, we took turns throwing down large piles of cash at low roller tables. As more money was laid out, the pit boss kept turning around to her manager pleading for help. “$500 coming in… help! $400 coming in… help! $600 coming in, HELP!” I think it made the poor lady nervous that there was $1500 in cash strewn about the table. Oh well. Heh heh. It was only a $5 table. Duane would once again spectate, but this time there were two stunning cocktail waitresses from some Eastern Bloc country that were worth spectating over. While the rest of us gambled, he went over to the bar and ordered a Cranberry and Vodka cocktail. The bartender gave him a buy one get one free deal. So he knocked those back fairly quickly. I offered to teach him how to play craps and since the table was slow, it was a good time to do so. He bought in with $20 and help his own long enough to get a few more free drinks. I had been down a few hundred at one point, but worked my way back to $8 profit. I decided I’d had enough and tipped my $8 winnings to the dealers.
Mike was ready to go to so we tried to figure out what to do next. It was 5:00PM at this point and the Scores strip club had just opened. Happy hour at the strip club. Our goal was to scout a location for the big event that night. Devin wanted to keep playing dice and Justin stayed behind as well. Duane, Mike and I hopped in a cab and off we went to house of bump and grind.