Sinergy

ADDENDUM: Aaron's Photobucket is the hookup. Pictures AND words; will technology never cease?
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It's the franchise, boy, I'm shinin' now...
--John Cena, "The Time Is Now"

It's been a while since I sat in this chair, in a blacked out room where this monitor I'm seeing my words on is the only light on in the joint. I feel oddly sleepy, and my body is more sore than anybody who believed Vince wasn't going to hold a grudge over Matt's head like the Sword of Damocles. Just the effort of leaning makes me groan out loud. The next couple weeks are going to be enamel-to-teeth tight.

But would I do it all again?

I better go back to the beginning and find out.

FRIDAY
If God is a DJ, life is a dance floor...
--Pink, "God Is A DJ"

So it's Friday afternoon. I'm buzzing hard and I haven't touched a drop of the sauce in days. My birthday is my birthday, and that's all well and good. Christmas lost its cache with me some years ago. I haven't been to Sin City in 10 years and not since I was legal. The plan is simple and yet faced with a deluge of possible problems: I want to make this the most fun I have all year. The. End.

Going into this alone would obviously leave me dead within hours, so along with are two of my best friends and better angels, Aaron & Ivan. I am relying on them to save me from myself when such a time comes. Whole paycheck out, off to the airport, plane go up, plane land safe.

Staying in the MGM Grand, and it took longer to cover from McCarron to there to check in. Friday traffic is bad everywhere; cabbies upping their fares with alleged shortcuts will make it worse, though I do amuse him with a couple "Viva Las Vegas" couplets and some of "Danke Shoen". We get asked for the first time if we have any reason for being here: 'cause Expedia's the hookup, holla if ya hear me. The MGM Grand is a class act, and if you think it's unusual I used the term class act, we pass a nice sized black and white picture of the Chairman of the Board Frankie S himself as we come to and from the escalators. Inside, Sofia Loren in her heyday and Bela Lugosi. Two beds, working TV, a completely out-of-place Bible, and a good view of the southernmost tip of the Strip. Excalibur, New Yorkx2, Rio in the distance and the Palms. None of these things capture our attention as much as the bathroom--not just because we're boys. Marble floors. Marble. I'm literally afraid to drip on the thing, and then something new captures our attention. The wall of the shower is marble except for this one square that has a big giant ugly metal bar in the middle. Why the fuck is this thing here--

--and that's when you realize your profanity's answered your question. It is easily conceivable, if one were of such a mind and so fortunate, that they could have their paramour hang on to the bar while they engage in intercourse under the shower.

The MGM Grand's thought of everything!

Bags handled, ESPN Zone for dinner (wasn't horrible, wasn't spectacular, no, Craig Kilborn was not my bartender), and back to the room.

I had intended to go to Studio 54 because I'm me and me not going to one of the best clubs in the world is like expecting mercy from a hungry pit bull while you hold a pack of ground meat. What surprises me is that Aaron & Ivan are also in; Ivan's virtual state of marriage and Aaron's almost-Footlooseian refusal to dance keeps me from hanging out with them a lot when it comes to the club. But we all change--I actually iron for the first time, no less. Downstairs, through the lobby.

No line.

No cover. (Remember that later.)

Was I suspicious? God, yes. Was I going to get all "Hey, wouldn't you rather take my money?"

...

Anyway, 54's nice. Plenty of disco retro sweetness early in the evening. Two-leveled, and plenty of seats, bars, and space. The dance floor's on the bottom floor and you almost walk right into it when you enter. It gets proceedingly packed. They head upstairs and why yes somehow I have found myself in the middle of the dance floor around a ludicrously hot blonde and some of her friends. They cheer me on from upstairs. People rappel from the upper level down, hanging from moons and a man and a woman doing a spectacular act with chains while hanging from the ceiling. Glitter falls seemingly on the hour. There's some acrobatics I capture on Natalie, and the thump keeps thumping.

And around 1, right as Ivan & Aaron remove themselves from the proceedings (AB, I was trying to get the blonde for you, I swear on a stack of Alba mags), 54 goes from the Best Club I've Ever Been In to The Best Club I've Ever Been In, Period, Underline, Exclamation Fucking Point!

DJ P does this. He opens for Snoop Dogg on Saturday but since that's in the evening and this is just barely morning he decides he'd rather open up a spot in my heart, my ears, and my head for the rest of the decade.

He played "Tipsy". Over Spandau Ballet's "True."

He played "Shout". Yes, by Tears For Fears. But Biggie's "Hypnotize" in the Brit's place.

He played "Africa". Yes, by Toto. Nobody moved. He put "Change The Game" over it.

He played "Jack And Diane". Except with the lyrics to "Planet Rock".

He played, in sequential order--prepare yourself--"Whole Lotta Love", "Back In Black" interspliced with "99 Problems", "Crazy Train", and "Let's Go".

That wasn't the highlight of the night. No, really.

The backbeat of "Eye Of The Tiger"...with the words for "Hollaback Girl".

I love all music, and I only stop for drinks and cuties. But on four seperate occassions when only the luckiest DJs get one, I actually stop and look at the booth. Is this happening? Am I actually listening to "Sad But True" with "In Da Club"? Is this only the second time in my short life, and the first back-to-front, that the Beastie's "Hey Ladies" comingles with "Ladies Night" by Kool and the Gang?

Needless to say, his shit is harder to get than Howard Hughes in daylight. That's why they've invented eBay. Find something, buy it, clear your schedule and listen. I--me--do not have the words to describe this. It was a mindfuck of the highest order, and if it'd been a concert it would be brawling with A Tribe Called Quest from last year for #1. Without speech.

That takes me to about 3 a.m., because that's as much as I can handle without my heart exploding. I find out the guys are still up and we hit the Strip. It's nice and cold, by which I mean "about 80 but the warm breeze is gone". We wander around aimlessly, because this is what happens when guys don't have rules. We get all the way up to the Wynn and tire out. We want to take the tram back. Got to wait until 6. It's 5:15. My offhand "we should stay up to see the sun rise" comment is up there with me taunting Suge Knight at this point. We can still bisect some of the distance and go to Bally's to catch the monorail.

We make it.

5:40.

Monrail begins operations at 7.

So it is. We make the 2...5...19...274 mile walk back to the MGM Grand as the sun breaks through, and it's really a sight to see other than the fact we're all about to fall over and die. We cap off at the Walgreen's down the block: I get a chocolate iced cream filled and a chocomilk.

Bed time is 6:45.

SATURDAY
Been dazed and confused for so long, it ain't true...
--Led Zeppelin, "Dazed And Confused"

As to be expected when one goes to sleep around 7 in the morning, it makes you sort of want to stay passed the fuck out until about the crack of 3.

We end up having breakfast around 5.

That sentence is never, e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eVER going to get old. Everything's a little off in the in-between time after that and going back to MGM, because I order a yard-long margarita. Cost less than 3 beers in the club, that's for sure. I drink contentedly, as more and more tequila gets in the closer I get to the bottom.

There's such a severe disorientation when you wake up smack dab in the middle of the day, especially given the nights that we had. That and the fact my blood type switches over to Sauza. Even at dinner, I have to have it between my legs and slurp it up (filth!) because to put it on the table keeps me from drinking it. I debate whether I want to go to Rain or not (I choose 54 again after the Mother-of-Holy-Fuck that'd happened) and the guys decide to go chop it up at the poker tables. The same poker tables right across from Studio 54.

It's night and day.

The line goes out, down to the entrance doors, and the same way in reverse on the other side of the doors up almost to the poker tables. Paid cover, waited an hour. A lot of the same music from last night. I move towards the floor. I run into a hot brunette named Jen, who introduces me to her friends Portia and Mona. It's going pretty well: we're all dancing and not really self-conscious, just out having fun and marvelling at the floor show when it happens. The music switches into the late 80s and early 90s groove, and into "Everybody Dance Now".

Everybody does. I wait and watch. And then I jump in with the Running Man.

Why? Because everybody loves the Running Man. Just typing Running Man makes me smile.

And it appears this is the move that tips the evening in my favor, as we all decide to break. They go upstairs, I hit the bathroom and follow them up after that drink in hand. Yes, I have heard I'm a good dancer. Yes, I came alone--my friends went to the poker tables. You're from San Diego, too? Get the fuck outta here! Everybody drinks. I hang out with them (and get hit on by a guy, but we won't count that) for the rest of the night, and hand them VIP passes to Tabu, another ultra lounge in the MGM grand on my way out around 3:30. (Luckily enough with the long wait in line, I got some for us guys too.) Inexplicably, I'm starting to crash, and the memories of the Strip Death March that was getting underway a day ago aren't far off.

Beginning to sober up, but upbeat, I close out a 12-hour day.

SUNDAY
They got that Southern cookin' that got them fellas lookin'...
--Ciara, "Oh"

We gon to elope to Mexico
Called up my mama said "I'm in love with this stripper, yo"...
--Wyclef, "Perfect Gentlemen"


Up around 1 this time around, and watch the Chargers actually slap around the Rams for a little bit. Like Las Vegas wanted to adopt the Cardinals as their team; nobody likes the Cardinals before this year maybe.

Off to Denny's, which takes too goddamn long to serve us and I skip out on getting an Oreo sundae I'm so disgusted. We had planned to go to the Hard Rock pool (should've, as it turned out, but hours earlier) but since it's so far off the path, we opt to hit our pool.

Pleasantly, it's only 3½ deep so I can't drown to death. I grab an inner tube and swim around the lagoon area. The MGM pool is like a bootleg Grotto and there are a few cute girls around, but as I feel both heated and cooled, the words of a wise Virginian come to mind: celebrate we will, 'cause life is short but sweet for certain. Sure, I can't always keep myself from running into some of the other occupants or hitting the walls, and I don't have a swimming technique down per se, but it just felt perfect. It was almost as relaxing as the Yard-Long Liver Destroyer Saturday, and sort of helped me work off the excess I'd built up. That's my diet plan: eat what you want, then dance for long periods of time like there's nobody watching.

Earlier on, Ivan had beaten us up to the punch and since he was doing well last night went back down to the poker room. While we were at the pool he chilled at the room, and he decides to head back down after I shower. I don't have a set plan because I'm thinking about Tabu later. Aaron's been scared off, and the buy-ins are too much for me with what I have planned for later on, so I'm out. We decide we'll root Ivan on, as I yell out "Terible! Terible!" and give off a mariachi yell. At least twice, then I figure between him texting us the pit bosses might think we're telling him his cards are terrible instead of referencing one of his poker nicknames and run the lot of us. Ivan gets a couple hands of luck but otherwise his small-stackedness keeps him from comping us all to Emeril's.

We go to Quizno's and mock Ivan for getting wheat bread that turns out darker than I am, and sure enough he starts feeling ill within half an hour. I get Amanda on the phone, who is staying at the MGM this weekend to come. How fortuitous for the both of us, as I'm almost positive I would've impregnated her at some point if we'd been in the same Vegas hotel at the same time. As Aaron & I bicker about which one of us would be making the drunken mistake (and I mean that in the best way possible, Amanda!) Ivan cops out, and we go downstairs. It's about 10:30 because we stop to watch the end of My Cousin Vinny. I'd told Jen & Mona around 10 to 10:30.

We wait.

More waiting.

That guy with a goatee--that's Tom Jones!

WHO!?

TOM JONES!?

WHO!?

Damn it, I just don't care who it is as long as the last name is Jones, do I? Anyway, we wait an hour and they don't show up.

It is at this moment I'd like to thank them.

Because Aaron's Plan B--taken from some sarcastic comments I'd made earlier in the week--is "What better day than Sunday to hit a strip club?" We taunt Ivan from downstairs until he coalesces to come down.

Sadly for us, or luckily depending on how hard we want to chase a life history of heart problems, we have to ditch our cameras.

Outside. We can take a cab.

Or, for $20, we can take a limo.

So, we're riding along in the limo when the driver mentions that despite what the doorguy said, we're going to Sapphire's.

Which, it should be noted on my taxes next year, is a restaurant. I have the receipts and the satisfied meal feeling and everything.

"Yeah," she says through the partition, "it's the biggest strip club in the world."

I make the Chandler Bing this-cannot-be face. And yes...

"In the world?"

"In the world."

We get there--by the way, a stone's throw behind Circus Circus...why?....why!?-- and I'm thinking I have exactly enough for a round of fun. We get a table about a row away from the floor and begin to sit down. We all get non-alcoholic beverages on the round I end up buying (Aaron a teetotaler, Ivan abstaining).

This is the point where you want to get the squeamish and holy out of the room and onto a lesser blog. G'head.


So a stripper sidles up to me (sidles, nice) and starts talking to me. But I have had this dream in mind since the trip first took birth and it's this: Aaron gets a lapdance before I do anything. Why? Because a lot of it's the fact he's my friend, and the rest of it is he's just a big nice guy and the dichotomy of suddenly having a woman getting naked on his person would just amuse me too much to not watch. Sure enough, as I talk, he comes back, and the cute black girl starts on him. Then a brunette starts on me.

The affirmative action programs get more strenuous by the day.

We get our lapdances and it's pretty good--well, Aaron didn't like his so much but I think what happened next and the fact it just sprung on him when he got out of the bathroom about 10 minutes into the trip sort of has coloured his view. I was perfectly satisified.

And about broke.

But that all flies out the window, along with the concept of linear time as it relates to a person having a past and a future, when Kelli (I changed that to an I so as to disguise her real name) alights next to us.

It must be said partially in vain and partially to explain that our table combined is younger than some of the guys in there. A lot of the old guys are up by the stage, and we're sort of lying back in the cut, obviously appreciative but not ostentacious. We're all pretty-decent looking, with the exception of me--that's right, I said it, I'm hotter than the Strip at 3 p.m. So in retrospect it seems a pretty obvious choice, but at the time we didn't realize we were about to make ourselves a new friend.

Figuring with the sort of live-one-die-fast-leave-a-beautiful-highly-marketable-corpse mentality I usually have steroided up by the fact I'm in Vegas, cream and cleared by me being in the World's Largest Strip Club, I decide we only have one chance to use the psuedonyms we've been working on all week. So I become Ron Mexico, Ivan turns into Raoul, and Aaron into...I want to say Steve. We all hail from San Obispo as part of a church group here to examine the level of depravity in such a house of sin.

Stripper: "Getting a lapdance isn't a sin."
Me: "Let us pray."

But we end up talking and talking, and eventually I end up going with our real names and our real story. I just wanted to be somebody else for a while. And that's about when it happens. We're sitting there talking about her being from Georgia, and me having relations with Georgia Tech connections, and up comes the waitress. Should I keep my tab open and throw a lapdance on there?

Sure.

But I have to be in for $60. Three lapdances. Way over budget. I know this.

I mean, I have a mid-140s I.Q.! I cook, I write so well I've won awards, I speak some Spanish, I know a little something about the power and the struggle and the love and the glory that is American history. I'm a connoisseur of fine music and books.

But I look at Kelli with the I and I can't see the future, hard. I have a dim sense of overage charges and cell bills. But so very dim. Kelli's really pretty; I think if I'm remembering earlier correctly Aaron said she had a Cameron Diazy thing going on. I'm sure if not, he'll correct me.

What happens?

Three guys. Three lapdances.

You only live once, I say to myself.

Things degenerate quickly and markedly from that, as Ivan and I have started drinking. I, being me, have decided things will go Aaron-Ivan-me lapdance wise. A greedier man would've gotten his first; a smarter man knows he gets the best stuff last. Aaron somehow gets the "Sexual Healing" update which is quite nice, as Marvin would've made me cry and/or try to elope. Ivan gets his dance and I watch absent-mindedly diverting between that and the stage. You have to keep in mind, this is why I didn't party weeks beforehand--the sense of delayed gratification to prolong the actual moment. You can't appreciate a good meal unless you've been starving, et al.

I got "American Idiot", incongrously. (We actually heard "Beverly Hills", "Du Hast" (no really), and "D'Yer Maker earlier.)

Here are things I thought about:
Baseball
Football
Chewbacca
Barney
London bombings
9/11

It was the most surreal moment of my life. I felt like I was living it and somehow watching it on HBO. What to say? What to do? How much can I touch (damn this town and the no-touch rule)? Wow, it's dark in here. I'll take it. How much is the rent? I'm not drooling on them, am I? Should I have quit smiling when she shoved me in there? Should I be trying conversation? Shouldn't I've taken Chris Elliot's advice and flogged the dolphin before this? Dear holy GOD, how is she that flexible?!

She gets her legs around her head. And my head. She wasn't facing me.

And I being me, choose this moment to snake my hand through and grab my Heineken and have a pull. THERE'S your fucking commercial, you crazy Dutch bastards.

So Kelli laughs and once she's done takes the one empty seat at the table as we wait for my card to come back. We're being oddly witty and funny, I think mostly to detract from the fact that you could've fried an egg off our heads. I know this is going to be my Most Rock Star Moment of the year. It's all going according to plan. So we actually talk about Ivan's relationship and how it shouldn't be affected by this, how hip-hop makes better stripping music (yes, that was my end of the conversation), how good she smells, her remarkable boob job (seriously, one of the best I've ever seen, would've raised pre-flop they were real...) and then she drops a new nickname on Ivan when I admit I wasn't sure how much grazing my hand could do:

Kelli: I mean, he tweaked my nipples hard before I started on you...
Me (turning to Ivan, aghast): You did WHAT?!

Now, I did catch a little bit of it at the end. I had made a "tuning in the station" joke that she laughed at right away, but I had no idea that the better angels of my nature could in fact be corrupted by my nature.

I think his stomach's all right now.

Eventually, we get her her money. And then Ivan pulls out his credit card. Kelli goes for another round. This is a one of the rare sequels that doesn't suck. I was hoping for a good song, and I get "Don't Ya". She loves it too.

These pants are going into a ziplock bag.

This shirt is going into a ziplock bag.

We're both singing along. In response to the chorus, before I can even stop myself (let's blame the firewater), I say I don't have a girlfriend. But when she looks up at me and says "Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?" my response is an immediate, heartfelt "GOD, yes."

And for being a good boy, it's Aaron who buys the next round.

It's this damn town, it gets e v e r y b o d y.

I can no longer listen to "Oh" without taking me to a special place smelling of citrus and triple-ply soft to the touch, but it's a tradeoff I'll suffer through. We talk a bit about Ciara and I throw down the Atlanta sign. "Georgia peaches", she says.

Georgia peaches.

Me: Before you start, I'd just like to say something. I'm RICK JAMES, BITCH! All right, go ahead.
Kelli (laughing): I love that sketch! Just don't do anything to mess up our couch.
Ivan (drunk, immediately): FUCK yo couch, nigga!

This is what I've learned with this weekend:
1) Therapy is bullshit. A yard of tequila? A good swim in the light of day? A lapdance? If it doesn't make you feel a little bit better about yourself when they're done, you might as well off yourself. Worse comes to worse, take 3 lapdances and call me in the morning.
2) I want Kelli, but in someone else's body with the same range of flexibility. And isn't that what I should want, a girl I can talk hip-hop to who's titties I can play with? Someone I can goof around with and slap her ass like I've caught her stealing from the cookie jar?

Oh, the last part: she kept shaking it at me. I didn't want to hurt her after what Ivan did, I knew her boobs were sensitive. And there are the peaches, begging to be sampled. What am I supposed to do, deny her a little fun with work? Out of the corner of my eye during the "Stairway" solo I find Aaron looking at me as if he's never seen me before.

After my crisis of faith, I found/find myself believing heaven is a state of mind rather than a final destination. And all I know is listening to Jazze pop the bottles 'cause we've got another hit, hit, hit as I swatted Kelli's ass and she salt shakered that baby at me, surrounded by my friends--that, to me, was heaven.

But we have to check out at 11. And it's 20 to 3.

Two and a half hours, gone.

I mention that if we don't leave here now, we're never going to get out. That's bad somehow, I just don't know how. My card gets eaten by the system or just says "Goddamnit, enough!" and Aaron covers my tab and we stagger out into the night.

Sleep didn't come easily. Just kept thinking about it. Just kept thinking about it.

This morning...yesterday morning at the checkout. No Spectravision. No movies. No room service. No extra charges.

The woman behind the counter says "You didn't do anything!"

And I just laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

4-Card Straight and Pinchy: we're taking Amanda to see Kelli next year.

Vegas, baby?

Damn right, Vegas, baby.

This post brought to you BAH: "Cannonball" by the Breeders