Recipe For a Conscience

Me: “My friend thinks you look like the high maintenance type. Is he right?” 

Her: (laughing) “No, I work here.”

Club Prive at Planet Hollywood (PH) was a major bust. The club was packed with 6s, 5s, and cows. The high-maintenance chick was the only hot girl in sight. After our brief exchange she scurried over to the bar to talk to a bouncer. Punchline and I had been in Vegas just three hours and we’d already lost money at the tables, paid to get into a half-ass club, and accumulated $60 tabs for four drinks. When Punchline informed me that Aubrey O’Day—who apparently was the star of something called “Peep Show” at PH—invited him up to her suite, I considered that a much better option.

The three of us had all gone to college together: Punchline and Aubrey even had shared history. Since Aubrey and I had mutual friends, she was always nice to me. I could tell, however, that she secretly thought I was weird.

Punchline told me it was just Aubrey in the suite—no slutty friends—and I said it was fine with me as long as she had alcohol. Due to my amazing luck, the ex-Danity Kane star had absolutely nothing, not even white wine. While she and Punchline played footsie on the couch, I was stuck playing with her tiny white dog, who had his tail and limbs dyed pink. I had to get out of there. After a half hour of listening to updates on friends and Perez Hilton crap, I reminded Punchline of our growing problem: “Dude, we need to get booze.” We left ninety seconds later.

It was already past two when we hit the craps table. McBride and Deruki loudly stumbled up to the tables shortly after, having just come from our buddy Devioso’s bachelor party festivities at a strip club. Since Punchline and I were sober, we instantly became jealous of their probable BACs.

Fun at craps tables deserves more than just this paragraph, but there’s only so much I can put into writing. To sum everything up, the four of us became so obnoxious that we scared everyone away from our table. Embracing our independence, we got crazier, and drunker. The shots came in bundles. Punchline hit the last remaining player, an old man, in the face with the dice at super fast speed (the poor guy mumbled some angry words under his breath and left the table immediately following the incident); McBride began head-butting Deruki repeatedly; the pit boss reminded me seven times to stop throwing the dice so high; Deruki was warned to keep his voice down after saying “Oh man!” repeatedly, and way too loud; and we each won five hundred bucks. The “night” ended in a distorted flicker of reality at 8 a.m.   

Punchline and I awoke sometime after two and spent the day losing all the money we had won. Miserably. That night Devioso had hooked up a table at Club Moon at The Palms because his best friend was the DJ. Around nine, Baba picked Punchline and me up from our hotel, Tropicana, and we headed over to Palms an hour too early, which was enough time to lose another hundred. 

We got into to the club just before midnight and set up camp at Devioso’s table, which was situated next to the public table-dancing area. Of the ten girls on the table, only two of them weren’t concerned about their skirt riding up. As for the other eight, every four seconds they’d interrupt their “fun” and tug down on their skirts, all the while looking down at their bodies to watch themselves dance. I have many wishes I doubt will ever come true: I’d like to witness a housecat’s reaction if he encountered a tiger in the backyard; I’d like to time travel to the year 1955; I’d like to go through a black hole and live for a year on another planet, and party with aliens on a tropical island with purple palm trees; I’d like to meet the man who invented “Garbage Pail Kids”; and I’d like to wingman a 30,000 B.C. caveman at a 2009 A.D. Vegas nightclub. I too would understand his confusion. Sex appeal has devolved into glitter, silicone, and bad dancing. 

I wandered off and found a drunk McBride at the bar ordering drinks. I squeezed my way in, and we began a forgettable conversation about things that had happened since Friday. Across the bar, I caught a pair of blue eyes staring at me. The eyes immediately looked away. She was fairly hot—a tall blonde, about an 8. I continued to stare while she put her credit card back in her purse. She looked at me again, looked away. I held my stare. I’ve always been a person who stares. Whether she looks back at me is my way of testing if a girl likes me. One stare could be nothing. Two stares could be something. But three stares always means she wants me. After the blonde looked at me a third, and then a fourth time, I stopped my conversation with McBride mid-sentence and explained the situation. I slithered over to her, stealthily.

I sneaked up from behind, because that’s how I roll.

Me: “So who are you?”

Her: “Hi! Uh, I’m uh…I’m just ordering a drink.”

Her body language—the flushed cheeks, the turn of her body, the endless smile, the jittery hands, the dilated pupils—reminded me of some of my female students who develop crushes on me in the first two weeks of school. She had an accent, too. Her name was Anna, visiting from Germany. After just two minutes of conversation, a giant blond German dude with a bowl cut interrupted us and tried to drag her onto the dance floor. She refused, nervously glancing back at me every five seconds. 

The dude finally left, which led to another interruption: her hot sister. Luckily, her sister was all over a douchy New Yorker who looked like Ross from Friends, so Anna had good reason to party on her own. While the sisters chatted, Ross approached me, introduced himself and asked, “What do you think?”

            “Just keep ‘em away from each other, and we should be okay,” I responded and looked away, faking a long sip from my beer because I wasn’t looking to befriend this guy.

            “For sure,” said Ross. Moments later the two of them ebbed into the shadowy mass. 

            I turned to Anna. “I have to pee. Come with me.”

            “I’ll wait here. Meet me at this spot,” she said, still nervous.

            I frowned.

            “Okay, let’s go.” She grabbed my hand. Her pupils were now so dilated that her blue irises looked like miniature hoola-hoops.

Some of my more panicky friends have asked me how I “achieve the first kiss” (Yes, one of them actually used the word achieve). In my younger days, I’d literally ask girls if I could kiss them with questions like, “Can I kiss you?” It worked ten percent of the time and rarely led to sex. I’ve adjusted since those days. One strategy that has yet to fail me is the post-bathroom kiss. After a bathroom break, either she’ll be waiting or I’ll be waiting. If I’m waiting, I’ll lean mysteriously against a wall, and when she exits the bathroom, I’ll grab her hand, pull her face in close, smile, remain silent, and start kissing her. If she’s waiting, I’ll exit the bathroom, walk up to her, smile, remain silent, and start kissing her. One hundred percent success rate so far.

I exited the bathroom; Anna was waiting for me. I attempted my foolproof plan. Perfection. We left the club ten minutes later, hitching a ride with Baba and Punchline back to Tropicana. Punchline awarded me with an hour in the room for bringing home a girl. He mingled around the casino and played blackjack. He also later admitted that he masturbated to iPhone porn in a public restroom to kill some time.

I don’t care too much about where I sleep in Vegas. Often I’ll just crash at Baba’s house twenty minutes off the strip. I’m not big on ritzy hotels or luxurious suites. I rarely spend much time in the room anyway. As long I’m drunk enough, I can sleep anywhere. What irritates me are confusing signs, four different hotel towers, and fifteen-minute walks through a maze of casino, lobby, and shops just to get to a damn room. The Tropicana has the longest walk to the rooms out of any hotel. First, you walk through the casino, then it’s up an escalator and a trudge through a quarter mile of shopping stands; including, of course, the elevator ride at the end.

Anna and I had made it past all that. When we arrived at my room, I put my key card in. Click-beep-beep. We opened the door, threw each other on the bed, and fucked each other’s brains out.

Back to reality- I put the key card in and nothing happened. I put it in again. Nothing. Five more times: nothing. I tried my best not to show frustration, but couldn’t stop yelling, “Fucking shit!” I grabbed Anna’s hand and led her back the way we came: down the elevator, past the light years of shops, down the escalator, through the casino, up the lobby stairs, and then power walked my way to the front desk.

            “Oh, I think the system was down,” the hotel employee said, unhelpfully. She took my card, my ID, and scanned a new card. Three minutes later, Anna and I were walking down the lobby stairs and through the casino. I could sense a conscience forming in Anna’s head. It had been close to thirty minutes since we arrived at the casino. Excitement and horniness had mutated into anxiety and ethics. When we got to the escalator, Anna stopped short. “I’m just going to go home.” 

            I nearly threw my hands up in frustration, like a crazed sports fan might after his team blew a twenty-point lead in the fourth quarter. I stayed composed, sort of. “What?” I said, feigning confusion.

            “I don’t know,” she said. “I just can’t do this.” Anna appeared disappointed in herself. She was smiling and making quick glances back to the escalator. Her white angel and red devil were obviously arguing.

            “We’re just gonna have a drink.” I made a motion to the escalator. She didn’t budge.

            “No. I need to go home.”

             There had to be a way to save this. I continued with my desperate attempts. “Just walk with me, then.”

            “I have a boyfriend.”

            “What! But you don’t even like him,” I scoffed.

            “I know,” she muttered, embarrassed. “But I can’t do this.”

            The small window of comfort I’d built had crumbled like a giant stack of casino chips. An idea hit me. “Okay, have a drink with me at the bar.” We walked.

I had a beer; she had a green thing. We downed them in ten minutes while chatting about her home life and her future travel plans in the states. I paid for the drinks, and we headed back to the escalator. She stopped short. “No. I ca—“

            “—Let’s go.” I gave a quick yank to her wrist. She went with it. That’s the good thing about escalators. Once you’re up, you’d be an idiot to go immediately back down. We walked past the shops, hopped on an elevator, arrived at my room. With the exception of an elevator make-out, we were silent the whole way. I slipped the keycard in. Click-beep-beep. First try.

I opened the door, threw her on the bed, and fifteen minutes later, we fucked. The sex was beautiful, complete with violent passion, good smells, and happy endings. The bed even had a mirror on the ceiling, which I used ecstatically while she was riding me. When I’d woken up twelve hours earlier, I remembered being horny, staring at myself in the mirror, and fantasizing a girl bouncing on my cock. In light of my triumphant fruition, I gave myself a few imaginary high fives into the mirror as she bounced up and down on me, her moans resonating like waves on a summer night.

The drive home the next day was delayed three hours due to traffic. Punchline and I could barely keep our eyes open (I still don’t agree with my friends who fly to Vegas when it’s just a four-hour drive). We switched driving duties halfway through, and I passed the time sexting chicks and fiddling through songs on my outdated ipod, my mind drifting back to my fabulous night with Anna. It felt good to finally…not blow it.