by Nik Richie
Nik Richie birthday event at Vanity Nightclub, Las Vegas, Nevada. The never-ending drug-fueled night climaxing into a cocaine carousel.
It’s my birthday celebration—my 31st, actually, and Clinton Sparks is spinning some kind of hip-hop/Top 40 shit from the DJ booth as I fire off another text to this USC girl I met in the lobby earlier by the Peacock Lounge. Megan, a junior I think, she’s skinny and blonde with +2’s. I tried to get her to come out, playing “the birthday card,” but she and these two girls from Arizona State had already made plans to go to XS, so I took her number and mentioned that I’d be doing some kind of after-party in my room later that night since I got comped the Orange Suite 51 inside The Palms.
I’m texting this chick between drinks and all the short conversations that end with a photo or someone saying “Happy birthday,” asking Megan things like “how is XS?” and other bullshit to keep her on the hook. Jason Giambi (baseball player, club owner) keeps stopping by with shots of Patrón, so I’m doing those on top of Grey Goose and water, texting the USC chick that I might swing by XS even though that’s a blatant lie. The reality is that all the girls at Vanity are beat except for the bottle servers, but I’ve already fucked them before—maybe a year ago when they didn’t look so old and run-down from being out every night, drinking, doing drugs and constantly being underslept from fucking clients all night. It’s made them age in reverse dog years. This city will suck the life out of you if you let it.
AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” starts to play and one of the servers (brunette, +2’s) brings out a store-bought birthday cake with gold flares jammed into either side. Other servers wearing the same black corset uniform hold sparklers, cheering while a shady-looking photographer with a ponytail keeps shouting for me to look his way. Cameras flashing. Strobe lights flashing. Phones taking video. I pour Cristal on the cake, thinking that it will make it taste better, but that’s still a total mystery since I never actually eat any of it.
Megan and I keep texting, and eventually it gets to a point where we’re supposed to meet up but because it’s Vegas I’m assuming it’s bullshit and not happening. They’re probably already hanging out with a bunch of rich dudes at XS who are paying for all of their shit in junk bond money or whatever, and I can’t really blame them. Girls like that typically have their Saturday planned a couple days before their flight even takes off. Regardless, I tell her to meet up with me later on at my suite, which is inside the Fantasy Tower and requires a special key for the elevator. I’m still not completely sold at this point that she’s actually going to show, mostly because Vegas is a place to break commitments, not make them.
I text: It’s my birthday…please don’t flake because I need to have birthday sex LOL.
Make another vodka/water as I wait for a response, checking out J.T. Vegas flirting with some girls who are actually trying to get to me. Their phones are already pulled out, ready to do that thing where we awkwardly push shoulder-to-shoulder as an arm sticks out and up. Then flash. Then they say something about drugs or hooking up later. It’s just a couple of cakers 52 anyway, so I let J.T. do his thing. I’m drinking, starting to regret adding the “LOL” to the end of that last text because it’s so fucking forgy 53, but Megan hits me back after less than a minute with: Yum Yum!
Then: My friend really wants to fuck you so we’re really coming it looks like.
Since Megan was the best-looking one out of the three, I reply back: Well tell your friend she needs to wait in line because you’re mine tonight.
I finish my drink, telling a couple of the guys that I’m going to head back to my room even though it’s only 1:40 in the morning, which is early in Vegas time. Too early for anyone to want to leave the club with me, and that’s kind of the point. The girls at Vanity are starting to hit the right amount of drunkenness to make some bad decisions, dancing sluttier and flirting harder. Sweating their makeup off. Some of them are making out with random dudes already, and I text Megan again to let her know I’m leaving and to hit me up whenever.
I sneak out of my own party, alone, Yankees hat pulled low so I don’t have to do another photo, and Megan says they’re leaving right now. Megan, petite and blonde, a young USC girl that has probably been legal for a few months at most, asks me: Are there any party favors at your place??
And I’m thinking, Fuck.
I say: I don’t do that stuff. If you do it that’s fine I guess. I won’t judge but I don’t know anyone that can get you that stuff.
She asks me: Well is it cool if we make a few calls and then come over?
One of the first things you learn about Vegas is you can’t trust it, and I don’t know if I fucked over one of these girls in the past or if this is all some kind of setup. You can’t trust random hot chicks asking you for drugs, and you especially can’t trust them in Vegas, so I cool off with the responses and head back to the room: an oversized suite with a skyline view that Clooney or Brad Pitt stayed in, so says one of the help who might’ve been trying to stroke my ego for a bigger tip.
It’s about 2:30 in the morning and the buzz from Vanity is slipping; fading over to the bed is seeming like a more viable option than Megan and the ASU girls. Their little hunt for blow could take all night, and it’s completely possible that if and when they find it, the guy—the dealer—he’ll size these girls up for what they are and take advantage of the situation. They’re young and stupid and looking for the wrong thing, so I’ve already written them off as no-shows right up until I get the text saying that they’re downstairs. Five of them are waiting in the lobby. All girls. No dudes. Two of them are already rolling, touching each other, touching me (jokingly, flirting), on the elevator ride up. Hands smooth down each other’s arms, around the ribcage and waistline, and for about a second I think about jumping on the bandwagon. Thinking: maybe I could dabble, but it’s short-lived and I decide to stick with alcohol even though they keep pushing for me to take something, snort something.
Back in the suite I try to play host, but entertaining five girls (even if they’re moderately sober) is a fucking shit show. It’s almost impossible: girls running around, maybe stealing my shit, pocketing anything that’s left out on a counter or a nightstand, and there’s no clear line of conversation. It’s mostly drug chatter and saying whatever pops into their head at that particular moment, but the constant between the five of them is that they’re all young and out of control and wanting to get obliterated. We’re sitting on a semi-circle orange couch in the living room, and I had just assumed that these girls had got what they needed to get (their coke or E or whatever) and did it beforehand. Then one of them reaches into her purse—a white Louis Vuitton that an ex or current boyfriend probably paid for—and pulls out a quart-sized Ziplock bag packed with blow. Two pounds of the stuff.
She drops it on the table and I ask, “Is this fucking Colombia? Where the fuck did you get that?”
These five girls edge forward on the couch, taking out credit cards and rolling up dollar bills, winding them tight. “All you girls are doing this?” I ask.
One of them shrugs, chopping up a line for herself and saying, “Well, this lasts us about a week.” She says this like they’ve been doing this for years, and maybe they have. If it’s because coke is a social drug or they’re a little weirded out that all I’m going to do is watch, I’m not sure, but they keep begging, pressuring me to join them, saying, “Try it. Just try a little,” as Visa Platinum cards go chop-chop-chop on the table. They bow their heads, a manicured finger plugging one nostril while the other sucks white lines off the table.
Chop. Snort. Repeat.
Sometimes they’ll lick a finger and dab it into the pile, rubbing it like a toothbrush across their teeth and gums. Another one says, “C’mon, just do one with us,” and I play the age card again, telling her I’m too fucking old for that shit but they can do whatever the hell they want. I’m not judging. But I’m not participating either.
Chop. Snort. Repeat. I’m 31.
&nbs
p; The girls go through half the bag in about an hour, snorting five or six lines apiece, hocking up coke-spit (the drip) from the back of their throat and swallowing. Swishing vodka around in their mouth and swallowing. Snorting seven…eight…nine lines—I’m waiting for one of them to overdose and die inside my suite, and they’re still asking me, “Won’t you try just one? Try one, and if you don’t like it then you can stop.”
Chop. Snort. I’m older.
Repeat. I’m 31 and I’m going to get busted with an ant farm of coke.
The jets in the balcony spa are firing up, and every girl has a pair of sunburned nostrils from the drugs, and there’s a lot of casual touching and flirting—especially from the ones on E who I notice keep clenching their jaws, grinding their teeth between smiles or coke chatter. There’s no conversation, just words that don’t add up to anything other than them being high and unaware of their own future. Then one of them asks me, “So, what do you want for your birthday?” in this timid way I didn’t even think was possible when you’re on the amount of drugs that they’re on.
“What do you mean?”
I play the game. I’m 31.
Chop. Snort. Repeat. They giggle, laugh the way young girls laugh, telling me, “Well, this is going to be the best night of your life.”
“Girls,” I smile. “There’s nothing you can do that I haven’t done before,” and they pause for a minute. No chopping or snorting. I explain that I get this kind of suite just for coming into town, that I’ve had fifteen supermodels at one time (Maxim and FHM girls, vodka models, Playmates, porn girls, pay-for-play girls, any girl that’s ever been paid to get their photograph taken), so this, these five twenty-somethings on daddy’s credit card from USC or ASU or whatever—they’re rookies. Amateurs. A bunch of coke doesn’t change that. This is nothing.
“It may look like Colombia in here but I’m used to Brazil,” I say, and this either makes them feel like they’re competing with every other girl I’ve ever partied with, or triggers some kind of unadulterated freedom. Either way, when I advise Megan to tell her friends to take their clothes off and jump in the hot tub on the balcony, she says “okay” with zero resistance.
Within ten minutes we are, all of us, naked and wet, kissing each other. Me kissing them, girls kissing girls and then I go down on Megan underwater, sucking on hot chlorine and cunt. Fingernails dig into either side of my skull, her palms pushing me down and in between her legs—she screams, kissing one of her friends between breaths, and then I start to see white lights. Sucking. Carving her out with my tongue. The lights get brighter as my air runs out, and when I try to surface Megan pushes all of her weight on my head and clamps me in with her legs. I’m suffocating. I’m 31.
I tap the side of Megan’s ass, but not in a sexual way because I’m a few seconds from drowning in a pool of coke-whores. She finally lets me up and I’m gasping, smiling, breathing deep and bringing my lips to hers. Then I kiss one of her friends, and even though we’re all naked I’m not fucking any of them. Kissing and touching is enough. It’s enough to not feel alone on a night like this, but the girls don’t understand that concept. They are young and fearless and living for the moment, the one in which they’re high and ready to be fucked by someone famous. They’re ready to make a story, a Vegas memory, and so the game has to keep escalating into something bigger.
It’s later now, closer to five or six in the morning and I’m taking a shower while Audrey or Amber sucks me off, jacking my cock, saying, “You can’t go to bed. I’m high. You have to fuck me,” and even though I’m not really into her, I’m hard and in a position to make whatever demands I want.
I tell her, “If you want me to fuck you, you need to get all of your friends into the bed so they can watch.”
We escalate again. I’m 31.
I finish my shower, dry off and walk into the bedroom, a circular bed covered with young, wet girls. Laughing girls, high and warm and unable to say “no” to anything that pops into my head, so I hold up a finger and tell them I’ll be right back. Turning, walking to the living room where a pound of coke is on the table next to curled dollars and designer clutches. My prick and balls are still a little wet from the shower so I put them in the coke, dipping, using a credit card to shovel cocaine on my prick until Greg is a ghost.
I return to the bedroom and flip a switch on the wall. The bed starts to slowly rotate and I step onto the mattress so that I’m standing with the five girls around me, saying, “You can either snort or suck. Doesn’t matter to me.”
They lick. Inhale. Mouths go numb. They snort. Repeat. I’m 31, spinning like a cocaine carousel. They’re giggling, getting high. Acting playful. Being young and reckless: the very thing you’re supposed to do in Vegas and now there’s natural light entering the room. I’m fried. Exhausted because I’ve been drinking all night but in a casual way that leaves a person feeling sleepy, not drunk. Then one girl, God bless her fucking heart, she mentions something about taking an Ambien and we all grab one. We lie on the bed, all of us touching and waiting for the comedown. Slivers of sunlight invade further, and somehow we manage to sleep through it.
I’m 31 but I’ve done this before. It’s just another night.
As I said, there’s nothing Nik Richie hasn’t done.
But it’s starting to take its toll.
Jason Giambi (left), Nik Richie (center), Richard Wilk (right) celebrating in Las Vegas, Nevada.
49Girls that do lots of cocaine.
50Girls that attend clubs and mooch liquor off of people getting bottle service.
51“Orange Suite” was how it was informally referred to due to the fact that most of the furniture was orange.
52A girl that wears way too much makeup.
53Translates to: for the gays.
Colors
Jason Strauss invites me out to Tao to meet Jay-Z, but I’m too busy picking myself apart in front of the bathroom vanity in my hotel room.
You’re getting fatter.
You’re balding.
Nik Richie should show up and sit next to Jay-Z and party and get photographed and look really important by association. Nik Richie should fuck a hot blonde that was in Playboy or Maxim, a platinum blonde with + 2’s, no refund gap, weighs no more than 102 pounds, and has extremely blue eyes. Deep water blue. The kind I can drown in. The kind that makes me forget.
Your nose is too big.
Your skin is terrible.
Nik Richie should meet up with Strauss, then go have bottle service with Jay-Z, and the three of us will drink Cristal and maybe talk about Beyoncé or the new album. We’ll do it like gentlemen. So I need to pick out something cool to wear in front of Jay-Z, but nothing that would make it look like I’m trying too hard. Then I need to look Jay-Z up online so I have some idea of what he’s been up to recently before I meet him. Nik Richie is a fan of no one, but he’s aware of what’s going on. I’m still in front of the mirror though. Shaking. Seeing colors.
You’re disgusting.
You’re a joke, Nik.
We live in Pleasantville 54. Everything is black-and-white, happy, and simple. Our world lacks drama. It’s when things get too real, too overwhelming, involve too many emotions—that’s when the colors kick in. Skin prickles, and spiders crawl up your arms and chest and neck. In the bathroom vanity everything looks completely normal, but you can still feel them. The spiders. Crawling. Biting. It’s like you’ve been drugged, and then you start to ask yourself fucked-up questions and think things that are very un-Nik Richie.
What is my life becoming?
What am I doing?
I’m dating girls and fucking their best friends. I’m running around, cheating, partying, fucking, drinking too much, not sleeping enough. I affect the lives of people I’ll never meet, change the way they look at themselves without guilt or consequence. I’m doing everything that normal people don’t do. Now it’s backfiring, and all the flaws that I routinely point out are my own. For some reason, tonight, Nik Richie decides to
bag on Nik Richie. I try to outthink it, to rationalize it in a way that’s logical.
This is simply a moment of self-doubt. It’ll pass.
No, you’re just a delusional fuck realizing the truth.
Seeing colors. Feeling spiders. Spiders crawling up my bare legs and the back of my skull. Spiders crawling under my skin, prickling like little needles. Cold. Painful. My arms and neck shake uncontrollably. My guts twist.
I take a Xanax and try to relax, looking online for either a rental car or a flight home. Not my apartment in Scottsdale. Home home—like, to my parents’ house where things are normal and we don’t talk about Nik Richie or what the papers are saying or celebrities. They probably don’t even know who the fuck Jay-Z is, and that’s okay. I want boring. Something real. Quiet and simple. I want my old life back, if only for a little while. Just long enough for the colors to go away and the spiders to die off. It’s late though. Midnight. Nothing’s flying out. I’m stuck here alone in a Vegas hotel room with myself and a bottle of Xanax. Dr. Segal told me to take these “as needed” so I take another one, then eight more. Nothing happens. After five or ten minutes, the spiders are still there chewing on my skin. Marching. Biting. I take the rest of the bottle. Twenty-three Xanax are in my system now, and it actually makes perfect sense that I would die here when you think about it. Vegas made me. It should unmake me. I’m lying down in the bed, and all of those little blue pills that did nothing before are turning on at once. The spiders die and my blood stops moving. Skin goes numb. And everything is quiet now. Quiet and peaceful, and I’m thinking how wonderful this is to go out like this. Everyone will remember me and my name. Dying has always been the best way to insert yourself into a conversation.