I took my leave from Colin at the same place where I first saw him—the world’s most poorly named airport, the Aerfort Bhaile Átha Cliath. He had convinced me to have a “goodbye nip” at the Jameson Bar. He got me so ripped that I almost missed my flight. As I staggered through the security checkpoint, Colin bid me farewell with a typical Irish saying: “May the Lord keep you in His hand, and never close His fist too tight.”
He smiled and waved. Then for a second it looked like he was going to throw up on a young Asian woman’s duffel bag, but he righted the ship and turned back to me. As I rushed off to my boarding gate, I could hear him yell, “You’ll be okay, Bobby! Just don’t forget to enjoy your craic!”
That Colin is a sweet, sweet man. I just wish that craic didn’t sound exactly like “crack” because before they let me on the plane, airport security strip-searched me and performed an extensive cavity probe.
Book Two
Las Vegas
or
“I can’t believe that God plays dice
with the universe.”
—Albert Einstein
or
12 Tales About Chasing the Dragon
13
It’s always nice to discover that those weird personality quirks you attempt to keep hidden because you always feared that they were sure signs of rapidly advancing schizophrenic delusion are actually shared by others. For example, you can’t imagine my relief when I came across this quotation from Fyodor Dostoyevsky:
Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions.
Me too, FyDo! I get the exact same jittery, sweaty, heart-pounding feeling like I want to run as fast as I can but I’m also about to black out when I’m still approaching the first of the six different sets of glass doors that lead to every Vegas casino. All I hear is the faintest hint of the cacophony generated within by slot machine payouts and shrieking hillbillies who just hit the hard eight and I start to get dizzy, anxious, and excited.
When I was little, all I cared about was playing basketball. After school I’d race out to the local YMCA to find a pickup game. And I’d get that same nervous, desperate feeling as I approached the gym and heard the first sounds of squeaking sneakers. Later, when I started fixating on golf, it was the smell of fresh-cut grass and the thwack of iron against Titleist that drove me bananas. But ever since my first visit to a real live, big boy casino, the distinctive melodic melange of money, kitsch, and heartbreak has trumped all other saliva-inducing sensations. It’s a comforting feeling to know that I suffer from the same crippling neurosis as one of the great Russian whack-jobs/geniuses of the nineteenth century.
As soon as I came up with the idea of taking a year off to try and inject some fun into my life, I knew that Vegas had to be the centerpiece of my journey. It’s not like I was some kind of Vegas junkie. I’d been there only a handful of times in my entire life—and never for more than a day or two. I had friends in Los Angeles who practically commuted. They used to brag about how they’d drive to Burbank airport, toss their car keys to the valet, hop on the next Southwest flight, and be gambling in an hour. Given the tremendous distances and the horrible traffic in LA, it actually took some of these guys less time to get to Vegas than it took them to drive to work every morning. Of course, at work they actually accumulated money.
But I’d always been too responsible and mature to burn my hard-earned cash away. I was saving for my family’s future. I had a wife to support. I assumed that children were around the corner as well. Not only did I hardly ever go to Vegas, but I literally never went to Atlantic City. Not once—and that’s only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Manhattan (two hours if you’re really desperate and have E-ZPass). Aside from the fact that I had always heard it was kind of gross, I just wasn’t “that kind of guy.” You know—the kind of guy who would call in sick, barrel down to A. City, and blow five grand at craps. I didn’t even know how to play craps.
But that was all going to change now. I was going to log some hard-core casino hours. Also, I was going to learn how to play craps. There were always several gaps in my knowledge that I feared meant I was less than a real man. First among these informational sinkholes was: I didn’t know how to play craps. I knew that it looked very cool and it involved the throwing of dice and the shouting of bizarre, incomprehensible sayings that everyone seemed to comprehend but me. I had kind of tried to figure it out once or twice when I was in Vegas, but the action went by way too fast. One time I asked for an explanation from a grizzled old man wearing a captain’s hat and a soiled Member’s Only jacket that advertised, “Tucson’s Only All-Nude Cabaret.” He completely ignored me up until the point where he rolled the dice. I don’t know what numbers came up, but they couldn’t have been good. Because Creepy Grampa started cursing me out like the sailor that he inevitably had been. He also called me a “mush,” a pronouncement with which everyone else seemed to agree. I left the table more perplexed than ever.
My second embarrassing failure was: I couldn’t drive a stick shift. It’s not like I had tried for years and was unable to figure it out. I just never learned how. It seemed like all the “real” drivers were sophisticated Europeans doing something mysterious with their right hands and left feet, while I was stuck plodding along like a tacky American behind the wheel of a minivan. (Obviously this is a metaphor—I have never driven, nor will I ever drive, a minivan. I’ve always been partial to Volvos and I will not apologize for this to anyone. They’re damn fine cars and they have plenty of pep. I just always drove Volvos with automatic transmissions.)
So even though I have loved casinos from the start, I hardly ever visited them. But I was going to visit them all, I thought to myself as I winged my way through the night sky. I couldn’t find a direct flight from Dublin to Vegas so I purposely booked a connection through Atlanta. That way I wouldn’t be tempted to break up my trip for a quick sightseeing expedition. No offense to Atlanta, but I have never been there nor do I ever want to go there. For me, Atlanta is, like, the minivan of cities. I think I developed my anti-Atlanta bias as a youngster watching the Atlanta Hawks play in front of fifty people at the Omni. What the hell were all those Atlantans so busy doing that they couldn’t take a ten-minute drive to root on Dominique Wilkins and Spud Webb? Lazy Georgian bastards. Also, the whole “tomahawk chop” thing really annoys me.
Here’s one thing that doesn’t annoy me: they have gambling at McCarran Airport. You can sing the praises of other airports all you want. Sure, the Reykjavík Airport is so clean you could eat off the floor. And given the quality of Icelandic food, eating off the floor might be an improvement. And, yes, I’m aware that Paris’s Charles de Gaulle has an awesome Sheraton Hotel in the middle of it that’s shaped like a boat and has ultra-soundproof windows. But, people—at McCarran Airport THEY HAVE GAMBLING! I don’t care that it’s just slot machines and video poker—they have more than thirteen hundred machines. At most airports the most you can hope to achieve is to find a flexible book light at the Brookstone. At McCarran you could win a million dollars.
Here’s my first experience as an unfettered male hell-bent on gambling in Las Vegas: I spent an hour and twenty minutes playing the Wheel of Fortune slots and I ended up losing $300. At one point I was up to $580. My brain told me to quit. But my heart told my brain that $280 profit was meaningless and we should keep going. My brain was pretty adamant about cashing out. But my heart convinced it that we’d all be happier quitting when we hit $1,000. By the time we dipped below $40, my brain had my heart in a full nelson and was applying vigorous blows to its head and neck. By the time the last credit disappeared into the dark machine’s gaping maw, none of my internal organs were speaking to one another. I looked around me and, for the first time, noticed that quite a lot of time had passed. I was so tantalized and distracted by the slots that I almost forgot to retrieve my luggage.
When I got to the carousel the area was empty. Fort
unately, my bags were still making their lonely journey around the conveyer belt. As I loaded them onto my cart, I heard someone say: “First time in Vegas, huh?”
And that’s how I met Rick. For some reason, I tend to meet important people in my life in the baggage-claim area of major international airports. To my knowledge, most people usually meet only family members, limo drivers, or cheap hookers at baggage claim. Me—that’s where I met my guru.
14
Like I said before, I am not very comfortable with using the word “guru.” Frankly, it’s the kind of word that my wife would use. A lot. Without any sense of irony, or self-deprecation, or recognition of the preposterousness and pomposity of a middle-class New Yorker announcing that they suddenly have a guru. And yet, the word works. What’s a better word for someone who changes your life and helps make the bad things good? Friend? Father? Lover? Rick isn’t just another friend. I have a bunch of friends, and none of them could have shown me the way to what I was searching for like Rick did. I already had a father figure (he happened to be my father) and Rick was nothing like him. For starters, he didn’t wear sweater vests all the time or drink three martinis at lunch while insisting, “That’s the way business was conducted in my day—drinks, cigarettes, and a firm handshake between white men!” And, while I can honestly say that Rick and I have love for each other, it’s a purely platonic love. We’re just a couple of decent straight guys trying to have some fun and make it through the day—despite the fact that, for a second over by the McCarran baggage carousel, I thought Rick might be a gay hooker trying to pick me up.
I mean, let’s face it—when a good-looking, well-muscled young man in flip-flops, a sleeveless T-shirt, and cargo shorts asks you, “First time in Vegas, huh?” in a deserted airport baggage-claim area, what are you supposed to think? He clearly wasn’t working for the mayor’s office welcoming new arrivals. My first reaction was that I thought maybe I had accidentally used some kind of secret Larry Craig gay airport code. Like, everybody knows that if you wait until the place is empty to pick up your bags from carousel three, it means you’re looking to party. And maybe if you use a luggage cart it means you want to “receive.” What the hell do I know? Just because I spent most of my life as a New York liberal doesn’t mean I can’t experience the occasional bout of homosexual panic.
But Rick was way ahead of me (a situation that I would rapidly grow accustomed to). “Take it easy, bro. I’m not a gay hooker. I’m just waiting for my golf clubs.”
I will always give a fellow golfer the benefit of the doubt, so I explained to Rick that I had been in Vegas a couple of times before. I asked him why he thought I was a first-timer.
“Well, you have the look of a man who just spent a few hours playing the slots at the airport. And the only people who play the slots at the airport are airport employees—who wouldn’t be retrieving luggage. Or first-timers.”
The man is like Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock Holmes had picked the winning Super Bowl team seven years in a row and spent his junior year of college living out of the back of a Chevy Impala.
I told him that he was basically on the money. While I had been to Vegas before, it was only a few times and for brief stays. And I admitted that I had been bewitched and beguiled by the slots.
“You want to know the secret to a lifetime of successful gambling?” Rick asked. Slightly wary of being sold some kind of surefire system, I replied that I would like to know that secret.
“You gotta pace yourself, guy. If the Good Lord had wanted us to chase the dragon twenty-four–seven, he wouldn’t have created golf courses.”
Just then Rick’s clubs showed up. He asked if I wanted to share a cab, and I agreed. I don’t know why I agreed. If I was still in my New York mind-set I would have been profoundly suspicious of this slacker dude who chatted up strangers in the airport. But maybe my time in Ireland had tempered my cynicism and opened me up to meeting new people. Or maybe I was too tired and jet-lagged to worry about it. But the truth is that there’s something about Rick that just makes you want to hang out with him. So I pointed my cart toward the blinding desert sun streaming through the exit doors and we headed outside.
Those of you who have never been to Las Vegas will not understand what I mean when I say that it is hot there. “What are you talking about?” you’ll protest. “I know what ‘hot’ means. I live in Chicago (or Miami, or Caracas, or New Delhi)!” I don’t care where you live. I don’t care if you live on the surface of Mercury when it’s at its closest point to the sun. Nothing and nowhere is as hot as Las Vegas in summer.
The reason that Las Vegas in summer is the hottest place in the universe is twofold. It’s extremely hot. It’s routinely 110 degrees. But far hotter than its mere hotness is the fact that the heat is exacerbated by the most staggeringly efficient air-conditioning system known to man. Most hot places have hot places, then some pretty hot places, then some warm places, then some coolish places, then a couple of cool areas, and maybe one really cold spot. Las Vegas is blazing hot every-where except for everywhere else where it’s fricking freezing. A hundred and ten degrees is always toasty. But after you’ve been playing blackjack in a meat locker for eight hours, 110 degrees suddenly feels like 910 degrees.
You know that tacky but ubiquitous Hollywood image of the supersexy femme fatale who is buck naked under her fur coat? Well, in Las Vegas that’s actually a sensible outfit. Outside you’ll wish you were naked. But you’re gonna need the fur coat at every casino, strip club, steak joint, courthouse, and bowling alley in town.
As Rick and I cruised along in the taxi (approximate exterior temperature, 102 degrees; approximate interior temperature, 65 degrees), he told me a little about himself. He was a personal trainer based in New York. At least that was the job that paid for his health insurance, and provided a simple answer when people asked him what he did for a living. He made far more money gambling—primarily on sports, but he also played poker, blackjack, and craps. Roulette was for fun, special occasions, and whenever he was “really feeling it.”
Far more than a personal trainer, or a gambler, Rick saw himself as a professional human being. It was a pretty short cab ride, but he was able to briefly sketch out his personal philosophy—and it sounded extremely appealing. He believed that most people just wanted to live a fun life. If they had a chance to do it again, they would prefer to live an interesting life. And if they got a final crack at it, they would choose to live a good life. But Rick was committed to doing all three at once.
I wanted to hear more about this bold plan. What exactly did it mean? What were the differences between “good,” “interesting,” and “fun” lives? Had he always lived this way, or was he—like me—trying out something new? Most importantly, I wanted to know if he had any success in implementing his philosophy? Lots of people talk the talk. But how was walking the walk working out?
Before he could answer any of these probing, and probably annoying, questions, Rick hopped out of the cab. We were at a red light on East Harmon, and he told me that he had $40,000 worth of winning tickets at the Planet Hollywood sports book.
“I gotta run, Bobby. Time to wake Vegas up and put her to work. See you around!”
He grabbed his golf clubs out of the trunk and jogged through the blistering heat toward a waiting bellboy. At the time it seemed odd that the only luggage with which he had come to Vegas was a set of golf clubs. But as I got to know Rick better, I stopped noticing little things like that.
We headed down Harmon and made a right. Suddenly, there in front of me, and behind me, and all around me was the Las Vegas Strip.
Okay, look—I know that as a New York–based, college-educated, pseudosophisticated, upwardly mobile urban professional (at least until a few months ago) I should view the Las Vegas Strip with scorn, condescension, and derision. It’s tacky—I get it. It’s shrill, and garish, and manipulative, and depressing, and it celebrates the worst qualities of capitalism and free-market economics. Yeah, whatever. All I really
know is that when I made that right turn onto the Strip, and I saw that orgiastic explosion of neon and the seemingly endless row of massive, glitzy casinos, I was so damned thrilled that I had to sit on my hands to avoid clapping like a trained seal.
All that other stuff—the snobbishness and embarrassment—that’s all learned behavior. We pick that up from the outside world like our teachers, or the New York Times op-ed page, or our (ex-)wives. But my stupid, shit-eating grin that simply would not leave my face for even a moment—that was real. That came from deep within my brain/heart/soul. And I was sick and tired of acting as if the things I just naturally liked (Vegas, beer, Dodger dogs, golf, Michael Bay movies) weren’t “good” enough to really like. I was through with pretending that I preferred Twyla Tharp to Saturday Night Fever. As we pulled into the Bellagio’s porte cochere, I gave up the fight altogether and actually started clapping like a trained seal.
The valet had clearly seen this kind of behavior many times before.
“Welcome to the Bellagio, sir. Will you be staying with us at the hotel?”
I nodded yes, gave him my last name, and arranged for the bags to meet me at check-in. Then I realized that a tip was probably in order. I have never been a good, natural tipper. I’m not cheap. I’m only too pleased to reward fine service generously. It’s the actual handing over of the tip that I suck at. I always fumble for the money. Or I don’t have the right bills and I’m embarrassed to ask for change. Or I don’t know how to present the offer. Do I hold it out to him? Should I tuck it into his shirt pocket and then give it a pat like they would in Goodfellas? It’s just something that never has come naturally to me.
Drink, Play, F@#k Page 5