Floor Trash Brand Cigarettes
When last we met, our hero… meaning me… was in his Las Vegas hotel room trying to muster the strength to go down stairs to the casino and gamble. Previously, I’d been walking all over the Las Vegas Strip in Harley boots and my body was paying for it. My knee was grinding bone on bone with every step. The pain killers had worn off by now and I could see when I changed shoes that one of my toenails had sliced the neighboring toe open and it was bleeding quite a bit. On top of all that, my back was sore from the flight and walking around trying to keep body weight off my bum knee. I contemplated taking some more pills, but decided that I might do more damage than good and out the door I went with some Visine in my pocket and a makeshift bandage around my toe.
The tennis shoes made walking much better and once I hit the casino floor I stopped feeling old and broken and felt like getting my game on. The tables were $10 minimums at this point. That can get expensive. Over the course of the game I would have anywhere between $10 - $150 on the table at any given time. We decided to buy in like high rollers. Duane was going to spectate and ogle the cocktail waitress, but Devin, Justin and I tossed down a pile of cash that looked to be over $2,000. We also tossed in our VIP cards and the table came to a screeching halt. The box man (the guy who sits at the craps table and hangs over the house stack of chips) was going crazy over all the new money in play and called over a pit boss to help. The players at the table started making comments about us. Some were envious, some snotty. The basic bankroll at the table had been between $100-$300 per person and the three of us just bought in with triple that amount. We finally got all of our chips and the game resumed. Craps is a great game, but the action really doesn’t translate well into words, so excuse me if I leave out the boring details.
On a whole, the table was hit or miss… mostly miss for me. I was playing very aggressively and at one point had lost $400. I worked my way back to only being down less than $200 and left the table. Craps is a game about numbers and probability. There’s nothing else to it. Despite that fact, it is also the most superstitious game you’ll find in a casino. Justin, for instance, claimed to be a horrible roller or shooter and opted out of throwing the dice on his turn. Everyone gave him grief. On his next turn up, he gave in to peer pressure and tossed out the dice. First roll… 3. Craps. Loser. Second roll… 12. Boxcars. Loser. Third roll… 2. Snake Eyes. Loser. Fourth roll… 3. Craps. Loser. Four horrible rolls in a row. $40 out of my pocket. And Justin is standing there saying I told you so. And he did. I did find that anytime Justin made a “field” bet, it would hit. Anytime the point was 10 and I made a “field” bet, the shooter hit the point. Without exception. These are all mathematical improbabilities. It breeds superstition in the game. Luck is only defiance of probability over the short term. There’s no mojo or juju that makes it work. If there was, Microsoft would own it.
After I pulled my money off, the table ran hot and cold and finally very cold. We decided to grab a table at our favorite Tiki-esque bar and drink.
I was done drinking for the evening. My complementary $190 rum and coke that I received at the craps table was sitting as well with me as Michael Jackson sits with a little boy. So we sat around the table exchanging jokes, and laughs. By now it was after 2:00AM local time and I’d been up for almost 24 hours and was feeling it. We laughed very hard around that table that night over jokes that I’ve now forgotten. It’s pretty funny that five guys who haven’t seen each other in three years or more can come back together and instantly feels like a time that past almost 15 years ago. As happy as that was, it was also sad. Sad to know that this time, too, would pass. Duane would go back to Chicago. Devin and Justin to California, Mike to Atlanta, and me back to Washington. I was broken out of this depressing thought by the words “strip club”.
I have to back the mental truck up here a bit and discuss two previous bachelor parties, Duane’s and my own. Both involved going to a strip club in Washington called the Nexus Gold Club. They call it that, I’m guessing, because an evening there requires at least one gold ingot. I’ve never used the word ingot before, so I just wanted to use it. Anyway, the dealio in this joint is that a girl will come over and dance on your table for $20. That in and of itself isn’t a big deal, but once word gets around to the dancers that there’s a bachelor party in the house, you’ll have girls dancing 4 or 5 at a time. At $20 each for 5 girls is $100 for every three minute song. Multiply that times a couple of hours and watch the money go bye-bye. Even with 10-14 guys, that gets pricey. So both of our bachelor parties got extremely expensive. Because of that, folks were a little gun shy about heading off to a Las Vegas club.
Not me. Strippers are awesome. It’s like going on an expensive date with a hot girl, you don’t have to worry about being charming (but I am anyway), and you’re guaranteed to see her naked.
Because it was late, though, I advised against going to a club. Most Las Vegas clubs aren’t 24/7. The few that are get scarier after 2AM. By scarier, of course, I mean hepatitis. I just noticed that I use a lot of commas when I write. I hope I use them correctly. Oh yeah, so anyway, I was (more commas) tired and advised against going to the club. I’d been to clubs very late and very tired before and the experience wasn’t worth the expense. I might be the only person that can claim to have fallen asleep in a strip club. Not passed out, mind you, but fallen asleep. So when the idea came up, I advised we go immediately or not at all. We ended up doing the latter. We did promise each other (or maybe I just promised myself) that we’d go the next night.
After another round of drinks and jokes, we opted back to the craps table. By this point (comma) I was a zombie and didn’t really feel like doing anything that required a brain. Mike, Justin, and Devin threw down more piles of cash and threw the old bones while Duane and I hung back and talked about Floor Trash brand cigarettes.
Back in the old days, Duane, Devin and I (and Justin for about 15 minutes) worked at McDonald’s. We had a manager that could best be described as the fast food manager guy in the movie Better Off Dead (same guy that was “Porky” from Porky’s) even down to the detail of putting his false teeth in a soda cup. This guy also smoked those discount cigarettes that cost like ten cents a pack. I don’t remember the real brand name, but I dubbed them Floor Trash brand cigarettes since I imagined that they were produced with the crap tobacco that was lying around on the floor in the cigarette factory. I figured they often came with special bonus materials like lint, roach droppings, band aids, and perhaps the AIDS. That conversation kept Duane and I entertained for about an hour. After that though, we noticed Justin was gone. Duane and I were sitting at slot machines behind the craps table, but Justin thought we left and so he had decided to hit the sack. Since it was now 4am and I wouldn’t be the first one to sack out, I decided to do the same. Duane did as well.
I got back to my room and tried to get undressed. My knee was the size of a pumpkin and my toe was still bleeding. I felt old again, but even more so I felt tired. As I went to sit on the bed, my momentum kept me moving and I just kinda fell into it. My body said “close enough” and I closed my eyes to the first night in Las Vegas.
At 8AM (four hours later for the math impaired) my brain said, “Rise and Shine, Dum-Dum!” It’s a good thing I got a good night’s sleep because Day 2 was to be a much longer and much more active day.
They should create a sarcasm font.