Lucky Me

It sounded like the start of a letter to Penthouse Forum. My girlfriend Jenni’s 18-year-old twin sisters were coming to Vegas for the weekend. Eighteen isn’t old enough to drink or gamble, so I had to find something for them to do. Adam Ant was running through my head but instead I got them Ricky Martin tickets. For Jenni and her roommate I got VIP seats to the opening of the new Palms theater with Gwen Stefani. Me, I’d rather smoke a Cohiba out on the North Show Terrace at the Wynn or get in between the 400-thread-count Egyptian sheets with Jenni and watch Rounders for the 37^th time. Or just watch Jenni. But the girls weren’t in town yet so I went over to Caesars Palace to play a little video poker.

I had been asking the bosses at Caesars to put in one or two of my favorite machines: $100 video poker where you only needed to bet $300 to get the maximum payout on the Royal Flush rather than the usual $500. I strolled into the high-limit room and saw them right in the front, where a trio of Red, White, and Blue slot machines used to be. I drew a marker and had them set the machine for credit play, so it wouldn’t stop every time I hit a payout of $1200 or more. Instead a watcher would watch me and write down all the information to report to the IRS.

The marker lasted about as long as a lap dance from a 20-year-old stripper, and a second marker vanished just as quick. I texted Jenni to meet the limo driver when she arrived at McCarran, then stuck the Nokia back in the cell-phone pocket of my Lucky Brands. Jeans have had that pocket as long as I can recall, back even before cell phones were invented let alone small enough to fit there. What the hell was it originally for? I took out another marker.

It was one of those gambling sessions you always remember, and not in a good way. I got stuck fast. Then I dug the hole deeper and deeper. I wanted to get unstuck before Jenni arrived. But by the time her plane landed all I had to show for my gambling was a stack of markers big enough to plug up the toilet if you tried to flush them. I licked my wounds and took Jenni over to the Wynn where we ate at the only gourmet restaurant that was still open, Corsa. She had an eggplant parmesan that would make Julia Child swear off red meat. During dinner and after, we remembered all the things we enjoyed about each other.

I came back in the morning and played the same machine some more. I couldn’t hit anything so I went over to the Palms to play in the Ultimate Blackjack Tour tournament. I advanced all the way to the semifinals, where I got seated at top pro Anthony Curtis’s left. I decided my strategy would be to get one chip ahead of him and then copy him. Of course, we both busted.

I went back and played some more and kept losing. I thought I had to bottom out eventually but I finally gave up stuck a whopping $150k. I took Jenni to Okada for some Divine Droplets. Good sake drowns all sorrows.

The next day my parachute finally opened. I played and played on the same money and then held the queen and ten of clubs and in popped a royal flush for $240,000. Unstuck! I had been hammering on these $100 machines all over town for a couple years now and this was my first royal flush. I snapped a pic with my Nokia and sent it to Jenni. Then I hit the ducks, twice, for $60k a pop. It was the kind of day that makes you feel like you can walk on water in your black Bruno Maglis. The girls all went off to their concerts and we went for a smoke afterwards overlooking the Lake of Dreams.

I came back Sunday morning and started feeding the ducks again. At first, I wanted to get unstuck and stubbornly played the same machine till it hit. Now I was on a roll and wanted to play it while it was hot. There was something vaguely wrong with that logic but I couldn’t quite figure out what. I was stuck about $60k on the morning when it dealt me the ten through ace of diamonds.

A dealt royal flush, my first ever, and it was another $240k. Now I was playing on the house’s money, big time, and I decided to just keep riding my streak. I had clubs and diamonds; now I was going for hearts and spades. Royal for the cycle, yeah.

I had to wrap up at eight because the girls had spent the afternoon shopping for me at Nordstrom and wanted me to do a fashion show for them before they went home that night. They were the kind of clothes that would make Paris Hilton drop her cell phone. The girls went home and I had dinner at the Country Club with my friend Barry and the 2004 Justin Isosceles.

Monday morning I got up but my machine was being played by one of the local high-limit players. Bastard. He told me he’d be wrapping up around 9:30 if I wanted to play it then. Oh yeah, I did. I got coffee and came back around 9:30 and started playing. Around ten, a supervisor approached and asked me if the technicians could check something. I wasn’t surprised. When machines pay out like that they always check to make sure the chips are sealed and so on. I cashed out and watched as they opened up the machine. To my great surprise, though, they found something they didn’t like and told me they were going to have to shut it down and change the chip. Apparently it had been set looser than they had intended. They were going to tighten it up, which would take them about an hour. Since I was scheduled to fly out to Reno in the afternoon that seemed like a good place to stop for the weekend with a very, very nice win. The kind that dreams are made of.

Lucky me.

Harrah’s Reno Blues

She was a dancer, a redhead. She went by Veronica, but last month it was Victoria. Who knows what it will be next month.

Gabe is my man in Reno. He’s an executive host at Harrah’s, where if you look me up in the computer tiny showgirls wearing pink feathers pop out of the USB ports and do fan dances on the monitor. In Vegas I’m a big player but in Reno, I’m a true whale. When I walk into a casino they quake with fear and drool with greed. This time they got the best of me, to the tune of a year or two’s Ivy League tuition. But Gabe was my man. He made sure I loved coming back to this dilapidated town, the alcoholism capital of the universe, Reno Nevada, the biggest shitty little city in the world. We caught up in the steakhouse over two bottles of 1997 Stag’s Leap SLV Cabernet. The big news was about the redhead. She was getting married.

I remembered very well the night last month we all went to the Keystone Cue and Cushion to shoot some pool and hang out with Kenny, the dying bartender. Kenny was best friends with Brian, the male dancer, who was dating Veronica, whom we kept calling Victoria but never got corrected. Veronica was very friendly and pleasant as I beat her at pool and when I called it a night, leaving the rest of the crew at the bar, she walked me to the door and lingered. I looked her up and down and then looked back inside at Brian and Kyle’s curious eyes. She had the kind of body that made you want to buy a trapeze just to see if you still had any acrobatics left in you. But redheads are bad luck, I thought, and decided to give it a pass as I turned and walked out the door alone. Besides, as tired as I was and as much as I had to drink, it would have taken an hour or more for the Cialis to kick in.

When I had woken the next morning, Kyle heard me making coffee and tiptoed out of his bedroom wrapped in a white towel. “Shh,” he said with a bashful grin. “Victoria’s still here.” Redheads are bad luck, I thought to myself. Kyle told me when I had left it got tense and awkward at the bar. Veronica wanted to play charades to break the tension. Something had to break, because she ended up in my suite with the kid.

I roused myself from my reverie and blinked at Gabe. “She’s getting married?” I said. “To Brian?”

“No,” said Gabe, “to Kenny.” The redhead had dumped Brian and was marrying his dying best friend. That made less sense to me than most nonsense in this crazy town. Why would a dame dump a guy and then marry his dying best friend two weeks later? I texted Kyle with the news but my subconscious was working overtime. Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller, had told me it only took seven seconds from the moment of the Challenger disaster to the time the first sick joke was posted on the Internet. I felt horrible but it jumped into my throat like a rabid bullfrog and banged on my vocal chords from the inside until I choked it out. “Gabe—” I slapped my hand over my mouth, trying not to say it, but Satan grabbed my arm with his clammy claw and pulled my hand away.

“I married a man in Reno, just…to…watch…him…die…”

Gabe recoiled in horror. I recoiled in horror. I blamed Jenni. She was a comedy writer and had warped my brain.

Gabe and I finished off the SLV and called it an early night.

I forgot all about the redhead the next night when Gabe and I went back to the FQ Men’s Club and partied with a hot 38-year-old Ukrainian named Elena who chain-sipped $10 Pinot Noirs while saying over and over again, “I am bad girl.” Gabe and I drank $7 waters and sat back and enjoyed the show while I smoked a Macanudo. “She’s getting married tomorrow,” Gabe said. “Veronica.” I took a deep puff on the Macanudo and let it out slowly.

The next evening I was ready to see the redhead. Gabe had told me the early, non-topless show “Let the Good Times Roll” was way better than the topless show (if only by virtue of not having a puppet) so we got a comp and went in. The house manager gave me a warm greeting but then sat us way in the back, at a booth where we had to look through people’s heads to see the stage. Gabe went to talk to him and we got moved to the front. I wasn’t sure if Veronica would be there but sure enough she came out smiling and dancing, a real pro. I texted back and forth with Kyle, who still wasn’t sure if I was making the whole thing up. You can’t make this stuff up.

The show was hot – hot enough to make a fat man drop a plate of nachos piled high with guacamole and jack. The girls, including the redhead, changed clothes on stage until you thought the lace on their white underwear would wear off. They started in pajamas, then stripped down to basics, then modeled a wardrobe that would have been on the cover of the catalog if Victoria’s Secret made cheerleading outfits.

Halfway through the show the manager came down and leaned into me. The points on his lapels were sharp enough to spear a boiled shrimp and dip it in cocktail sauce. “Have you been taking pictures?” he yelled through “I can cook too” from Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town. “One of the dancers saw you taking pictures with your cell phone,” he yelled. I had finished texting with the kid and had put my cell phone back in my pocket so I just showed him my empty palms, thinking that would end the kafuffle. It didn’t. The guy persisted, now yelling at another big player we were sharing the table with. That guy was on the verge of tears. He wasn’t a small guy.

The manager turned to Gabe and yelled, “Make sure all photos are deleted.” We were all very confused. My cell-phone camera barely had the horsepower to snap Jimmy Durante’s nose from six inches and I was pretty sure the other guy didn’t even have a camera. They sure were afraid of someone taking grainy pictures of the kind of show you usually see for free on a cruise ship. It didn’t add up, but then not much did in this batty burg.

After the show the redhead didn’t make an appearance in the lobby with the other performers. I guess she was in a hurry to get to her wedding night. Gabe and I had dinner at the Italian restaurant. We tried the 1999 B.V. George Latour. I thought about taking a picture of the label but who knows, they might have called the cops. I thought I could hear the whistle blowing…

As nutty as all this seemed to me, Kyle, stuck back in Georgia going to classes, must have been even more confused. He had called Victoria/Veronica a few times after that magic night a month ago but lately the redhead hadn’t been answering his calls. I was back in my room writing when Kyle messaged me that she was on the phone with him. The hotel wanted her to fill out a security statement about the photo incident and she wanted to know if I had sent him any photos. He told her no and waited for her to bring up her marriage but she didn’t. Finally he asked about it but he didn’t get much of an answer. I guess that was to be expected.

I figure it all came down to the boyfriend, Brian. He was close to the redhead. Maybe even in love with her, who knows. And when you lose the one you love, you look for someone to blame. You can’t blame your best friend, dying of cancer. Maybe you blame the guy with glasses in the front row, the guy enjoying your performance and texting his buddy in Georgia to share the fun.

Or maybe you just hang your head and cry.

Steakhouses are for vegetarians

I tore myself away from Caesars Palace without getting up the nerve to try the new high-tech ubertoilet they had in my Augustus Tower suite (but only in the powder room). Rather than hop back to Seattle in between trips to Vegas and Reno, I jetted over to LA to spend a couple days with my uberhot new sweetie Jenni. I forgot it was the Grammy awards but I found a room at Le Meridien.

Jenni had sent me some old photos, including one I really liked of her taken some years ago in a plaid dress sipping a cosmopolitan. That inspired me to take her to Mastro’s steakhouse in Beverly Hills, one of my favorite restaurants and, to my surprise, one of hers since she has been a vegetarian her whole adult life. “Mmm…sides!” she said, and made the reservations. She surprised me by wearing the same plaid dress and looking fantastic. Well, that didn't surprise me.

We left the $30/day valet parking at Le Meridien and arrived at the $7 valet parking at Mastro's. I asked for the super-double VIP presidential table and they escorted us upstairs to a nice large table far away from the piano player, which is a good location. I got the Chilean sea bass, which I go in and out on loving but I seem to be in a loving phase. We shared a cornucopia of sides including the wasabi mashed potatoes and sugar snap peas.

The cocktails at Mastro’s are huge – I’m guessing about 10 oz. once you refill your glass with the extra they always bring. Jenni tried a “flirt,” a trendy new drink made with vodka, Chambord, pineapple juice, and Champagne. I got a Tanqueray 10 martini with blue-cheese-stuffed olives. The live music is a bit too loud upstairs and the tables are too close together downstairs, but other than that I love the place.

The next evening Jenni suggested we hit Sushi Roku with her roommate Christine, friend Diana, and one of her beautiful 18-year-old twin sisters, Alejandra. No, I’m not making that up. Diana picked us up at Le Meridien and drove us to the restaurant, but when I got there I realized it was only two blocks from the hotel. Welcome to LA! Ale and Jenni ordered veggie and the other girls let me order for them so I selected a bountiful fish feast and a bottle of cold Harushika sake since they didn’t have the Divine Droplets. Harushika used to be my favorite but D.D. ruins you for all other sakes.

Later, we smoked on the comfy sofa out front of Le Meriden and felt the cool Southern California air on our skin. Tomorrow I would fly into the heart of my favorite soap opera: Reno.