I've been struggling to write this since I got back. For those who have been to the Promised Land and back, you know how taxing it is, both mentally and physically. But then as I was thinking about all the shenanigans, I realized my three nights in Vegas loosely resembled the original Star Wars trilogy. This realization, along with some persistent prodding from multiple people, who both politely and not-so-politely encouraged me to hurry up and write about Vegas already, inspired me. So instead of giving you my weekend in one 58,000 word post, I'm breaking it up into three posts, one for each day, so you can fully digest every single high and low that I did over the course of the weekend.
FRIDAY, 10 AM CST
I am beginning my 3-hour layover in Denver, and I make the (questionable) decision that I would like to be drunk by the time I arrive in Vegas. So I belly up to the bar at the Cantina Grill and begin my quest. Shortly after, a pretty decent looking girl, dare I say hot even, probably around 28-30 years old or so, saddles up next to me and orders an Absolut OJ. As I am pondering how to begin talking to her, and what my fake name and fake backstory is going to be, I hear a loud slurping of a straw, and a request for another Absolut OJ. This broad just took down her drink in about 7 seconds. Window of opportunity open. I ask her, "I don't mean to be rude, and excuse my asking, but that was impressive. What are you doing over there?" She goes on to tell me that she was in mid-air during 9/11, and when she deboarded her plane and subsequently heard about everything that went down, she was instantly traumatized, and since then, she's been deathly afraid of flying. Since she travels for work rather often, she has to get bombed in order to get herself to make it through a flight. After I asked her exactly how bad it was, her quote was, "One time, right before take-off, I freaked out so bad I made a baby cry. After that I started getting hammered before flights."
So she asks me my story, and even though I have decided that she's cool enough to get the real deal, I immediately launch into a fake persona. I tell her my name is Tom Chambers, and I am a junior partner at the law firm Marjele, Ainge & Dumas. About a minute into my spiel, she stops me, gives me a wink, and says, "How about you start over from the beginning, and this time don't make every word out of your mouth a lie." As I scramble to pick my jaw up off the bar (never, ever in my life had I been busted so quickly and thoroughly, and I've been doing the fake name thing for years) she laughs and tells me not to worry, she isn't offended, but that her favorite basketball team growing up was the Phoenix Suns, and "That shit isn't going to fly with me. Start again." I recover and we go on to have a nice airport bar conversation, as she plows through 5 or 6 Absolut OJ's in half and hour, bids me adieu, and boards her plane.
Alone again and slightly buzzed, I turn my attention to the National Spelling Bee on TV and a businessman in a sharp suit sitting to my right. As a kid makes his way to the microphone, I tell him half-jokingly, "5 bucks this kid blows it right here." Mildly amused, he looks up and says, "You're on." Flash forward an hour later, and I'm up 25 bucks, and we're cheering and taunting after every speller, much to the delight of the other patrons, who have begun choosing sides as well. The man tells me he has to board his plane soon, and says we need to finish with a big one. My tab is about 47 bucks, his is around 28, and so we go all or nothing for our tabs. One correctly spelled word from my boy later, and I just got my layover bar tab picked up. Holler at your boy. Let's go to Vegas.
I slam 5 Bacardi Cokes on my otherwise uneventful flight. Things are starting to roll downhill rather quickly. Vegas, baby.
FRIDAY, 2 PM
I meet St. Aubyn, who arrived an hour earlier and has been slamming beers at an airport bar in Vegas. No one else is arrving until 8 pm, and check-in isn't until 4, so my friends and Vegas residents Jen and Buckley are picking us up and taking us to Jen's place to swim. We pick up a case of beer and hit the pool. It's about 98 degrees outside, so Jen, St. Aubyn and I finish the case (plus all the straggler beers in her fridge) in roughly an hour or so. So far today, I've consumed 4 tall beers, 3 white russians, an Absolut OJ, 5 Bacardi Cokes, and roughly 10 cans of beer. Welcome to Bad Decisionville. Population: Me.
It begins with the girls making fun of St. Aubyn's chest hair. He only has it in one spot in the middle of his chest, and it's long and gross. Buckley offers to wax it off for him, and he accepts. After he screams and cries like Steve Carell in The 40-year-old Virgin, I begin mercilessly taunting him. He tells me to either wax something myself or shut the hell up, since I don't know how bad it hurts. In an drunken act of obscene machoism, I announce that I'll wax a strip of hair off my leg, and if I don't utter a sound or make a facial expression, I get a case of beer. Not surprisingly, this escalates, and soon I am waxing my legs all the way up to mid-thigh for three 30-packs of beer. Half an hour and many anxious and painful moments later, my legs are shiny and smooth, I'm 90 beers richer, and the reality of my decision is fighting a losing battle with the amount of alcohol in my system. Fuck it, let's go to Caesar's Palace.
FRIDAY, 8 PM
The cavalry has arrived, and now we're rolling 12 deep. The afternoon's shenanigans earn the proper amount of ridicule/respect from everybody, and we hit the strip. I slog through some blackjack at New York, New York (my favorite gambling casino on the strip, I always seem to make a killing there) and nurse one of those giant Eiffel Tower drinks from Paris for about 4 hours. I am close to hitting my drinking ceiling. People slowly break off and we gradually get separated.
SATURDAY, 1 AM
The rest of the crew is at the strip club (Seamless maybe? I can't remember what it was called, and to be honest by that point it was irrelevant.) Bergman, Ike, ADawg and I take a somewhat sketchy limo ride over there. There is a stripper on board with us, and despite both Ike and ADawg being present, when she asks who the lucky bachelor is, I am quick to tell her that I am. I don't remember this, but ADawg informed me the next day that he was rolling in laughter at me, as apparently during my lap dance, the stripper began aggressively slapping my freshly waxed legs, and I was screaming in pain, but refused to tell her to stop doing it because I didn't want to sound like a pussy. I guess just screaming and crying is better. Alcohol's a hell of a drug.
Once at the club, I hit my alcohol ceiling. My normal good-natured banter I have with strangers quickly dissolves into me just being a straight up frat-boy asshole. One stripper, flirting with me in hopes of me purchasing a dance, playfully steals my Elvis-style sunglasses and tries them on. My response? "Those look TERRIBLE on you! Give them back. Now." Another stripper asks me to buy a dance. "Nope, I'm holding out for a black girl." (I've never made out with a black girl, so I have a weird obsession with black strippers when I'm crushed.) After that girl introduces me to a black stripper and tells me to put my money where my mouth is, I tell her I'd rather put her breasts where my mouth is. She seems unimpressed. I ask how much a dance is. She tells me 70 bucks. I bust out laughing and tell her to her face, "You aren't even close to good looking enough to pay that much!" Yeah. Not cool. Time to wrap this day up.
SATURDAY, 4 AM PST
I've been drinking for 20 hours, made an idiot of myself too many times to count, and I'm sleeping in the same bed as St. Aubyn. Did I time warp back to 2002? Time for bed.
Our saga continues tomorrow.
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