PART 5 - Naked Ladies! STINKY'S STORY After John won hands down, we offered the curious security guard the opportunity to present him with the grand prize, a T-shirt. He jumped at the chance, and even posed for pictures holding John's hand in the air like the winner of a boxing title. A couple of other guards gathered around, jealous of their colleague's position as presenter of the award, so we appeased them all with more of Mike's cigars. (Note to criminals - it is really easy to distract the guards at the Golden Gate casino. While we don't advocate ripping the joint off, we just thought you'd like to know.) With just about everybody's breath stinking from cocktail sauce, a bunch of us piled into assorted cars and headed for the
The appeal of strip clubs alludes me, but we were on a special mission. Phil, the man behind the Encyclopedia Vegasana at the Big Empire, had challenged the rest of us while compiling his great work. He said he would submit to ten spankings for every term we could come up with that he had forgotten to include in the encyclopedia. After much wrangling, we finally settled on 20 spanks. Since none of us wanted to touch Phil's butt, we elected to have the task completed by professionals. MATT'S STORY Our friend John had recommended Larry's Villa at the corner of Bonanza and Western to us after we asked what the cheapest strip club in town was. At Larry's there is no cover and no minimum. You could come in and watch the dancers without spending a dime. Only a masochist would want to do this, though. I'd never been to a strip club before. I am not a prude. In fact, I enjoy naked ladies as much as the next guy, maybe even 10% more, and one of my all-time favorite paintings is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Not the Mona Lisa that everyone else gets to see, but the hot and nasty full-body shot that the Louvre only lets a select few view. But, no matter how many naked ladies I had seen before in magazines, movies and real life, nothing could prepare me for the assault on my senses mounted by Larry's Villa. As seedy as people say the Gold spike and the Western are, they're Playboy Mansions compared to the scummy interior of this stucco dump. My understanding has always been that strip clubs want to have an air of pretension. They're called "Gentleman's clubs" to suggest that us horny guys are in the company of diplomats and former presidents so we better not jerk-off right then and there. The truck mud-flap naked girl silhouette's on Larry's Villa's sign made it clear there was less pretension here than in an Alabama trailer park. Our group of 20 or so, including several women, cautiously stepped in. We came around the barrier set up to keep kids in the parking lot from sneaking peeks and into the main room. It stunk and it was filthy. The walls, floor and ceiling were entirely black. The lighting came from the blue glow of video poker machines at the bar and the twinkling lights hung from the runway. Dingy, decaying party streamers and deflated balloons hung from the ceiling. Scattered about in the dark were single men, sitting alone, drinking beer and fighting to stay awake. We made our way across the room and found four empty booths. We filed into them, sinking into the sticky vinyl cushions. I felt somewhat responsible for dragging some of the people into this den of iniquity. That included one of my bosses, who is a woman and obviously a very good sport. It also included Carol and Michael, who sat at my table and to whom I kept repeating, "I didn't make you come here." But, oddly enough, they were enjoying themselves. I also felt responsible for some of the people who shied away from this spectacle and felt that playing craps at the Plaza would be a far more respectable thing to do. This included Jerry, who slippery as a live squid, slithered out of the bear hug I slapped on him after the shrimp cocktail eating contest. DAN'S STORY It was about time to teach Phil a lesson. Having lost a bet, he was owed 20 spankings by the group of us, but since none of us had the proper professional punishment experience, we decided to take Phil to the specialists at Larry's Villa. Jerry, a married man, did not wish to go to the "gentleman's club," and said he'd meet us later at the Plaza. In spite of the fact that one can only experience the real Las Vegas by taking in its every aspect from the slots that make you lose to the scummy dives that make you doubt the goodness of the human soul, Jerry could not be persuaded to join us out. I give him credit for standing by his principles, provincial as they might be. Now, in case you have never been to a superlatively scummy "gentleman's club," allow me to tell you that fortune has smiled upon you. The 20 of us took up four tables, while "Cocktail" John and I scoped the dancers for the one who would be the best candidate for Phil spankage. The first was frowsy and angry. The second was nondescript and pissy. But the third was, among this crop, the cream. And so we chose her, not because of her smile or her personality, but because of her tits. Meanwhile, I had formed a deep bond with our waitress, a fresh-looking young lady who stripped on Sunday nights, but not tonight. It was love, I tell you! Love! I wanted-needed-to see her shake her upper torso while it was unclothed and unfettered by material! "Maybe you can switch with one of these girls," I said pointing at the stage, and putting on my cutest little pout. "No, I really cain't" she said, her twang harmonizing with the ping of my heartstrings. MATT'S STORY A waitress came to the table and took our orders. There were five of us and we all ordered some beer or booze. The bill was a ridiculously low $16. Bob Black, who was sitting at a booth closer to the stage, stopped by our booth on his way back from the bathroom. "You've got to see the can," he said with a grin. "Why?" I asked. "You just have to," he insisted. Never one to ignore a man who says "You just have to," I got up and went to the john. As I left, Bob slid into my seat and said, "I'll just sit here and keep this seat next to your wife warm." I've never seen a bathroom so foul, malodorous and filthy in my life. This is even after living for two years with a man appropriately nicknamed "Supercrapper." I've never been afraid to sit on a public toilet seat. In fact, I am a firm believer in antibiotics and usually trust their ability to kill anything I can contract from a warm seat. In the Larry's Villa bathroom, however, I was afraid to even approach the molding urinal flush handle. Patrons had covered every square inch of wall with graffiti, smeared feces, piss and blood. Chunks of plaster had been knocked out by angry men, and a stall door hung cockeyed from its lower hinge. The floor was stickier than a fly strip, and the smell of one thousand half-digested buffets hung heavily in the air. I quickly exited and took a deep breath. Then I went back in to explore some more. DAN'S STORY "Cocktail" John, Swain of Shrimp, pooled the donations, and wound up getting not only "Dancer #3" but a second stripper
STINKY'S STORY Phil had no idea what was in store, but was enjoying himself anyway, as a connoisseur of shimmying, topless girls. I found myself at the "uncomfortable with being in a strip club" table, where most of us spent more time watching golf on the big screen TV than looking at the girls on stage. One past-her-prime dancer even reprimanded us for being bored with the goings on. We found her scorn somewhat misplaced, for if she were more entertaining, perhaps we would not have been so uninterested. I was on the verge of suggesting she take a look in the grimy mirror if she wanted to see who was really at fault. John, a regular at Larry's, arranged the spankings with a couple of the girls. We all pitched in five bucks, and sat back waiting for the beatings to begin. One of the girls borrowed Feldy's belt, and he worried a little about getting it back, or, worse, getting it back with Phil cooties. When the dancers finally got around to pulling Phil onto the stage, all our awkward sitting around came to fruition. We cheered loudly for our friend, who kept the whole room in stitches with his wide eyes and goofy looks while the girls danced around him. They brought out the belt and coerced Phil to stand up and bend over. The first girl proceeded to give him ten extremely solid whacks. When Phil turned around and grimaced, rubbing his sore butt, he was not hamming it up. She had really pummeled him. The second girl went a little easier, but not much, and we were all quite satisfied that Phil had got what was coming to him. In retrospect, the event was not much of a punishment for Phil, who loves topless women and being the center of attention more than anything in the world, and we had somehow come up with a way to combine the two. MATT'S STORY As our crew made its way out of Larry's, Phil accepted high fives from the club's regulars as though he had just scored the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl. Actually, for Phil, a sports non-enthusiast, this was better. Before we even made it to the parking lot he was scheming how to receive more spankings next year. My watch read one a.m.; the night was still so young that it should have been in bed. Still, I felt exhausted by the non-stop activity of the day, starting sixteen hours earlier with Dan's accordion wake-up call. To compensate, I took a few tokes off a cheap tobacco of a Swisher Sweet. Soon enough, the sticky black smoke swirled through my lungs and the nicotine hit my brain. Most of us returned to the Plaza while a few decided that they could take no more and turned in for the night. At the Plaza, most everyone hit the craps tables and met back up with the cowards who had avoided the spanking spectacle. To get away from the action for a moment, I took my wife to the Omaha Lounge for the uninspired song stylings and tacky wardrobes of the Lara Ash Band. My wife is not used to drinking much, and the powerful gin and tonic the Plaza served had her twitching in her seat. When Lara Ash started up a mummified version of Kool and the Gang's "Celebration," Amy rose from her seat to shake her rump. I jerked her back down. "What?" she demanded snippily. "Read the signs," I said. Surrounding the stage and stapled to the bar were "No Dancing" bills. Amy laughed, "They don't mean it." "Oh, yes they do," I countered, "why do you think they hire the Lara Ash Band?" DAN'S STORY Returning to the Union Plaza was the best investment I ever made. The tables were hot enough to bake a meatloaf and my
Drunk as I was, I couldn't help but yell at Jerry that he was wrong and that it would hinder his karma, but I did not listen, though shooter after shooter rolled hot enough to make the right bettors a few dollars a turn. STINKY'S STORY At the Plaza we joined up with the soiree attendees who had elected out of watching the dancing honeys. Mike and I hoped to win some of our money back from the previous night. Instead, the crap table did another number on us. I personally lost forty bones quicker than I like to, and my poor brother lost about 70. I considered myself partly responsible for his poor performance, but not so much that I would pay him back. Mike had to leave early in the morning, so I walked back with him to the Gold Spike, where he would attempt to sleep for a few hours. On my way back to the Plaza, I ran into a couple of stragglers from our group, headed to their various hotels and homes. I was outwardly pleasant towards them, but inside could not help feeling they were being awful sissies for leaving so early. Just as I sauntered up to the remainder of the soiree attendees, they announced that it was time to leave the Plaza behind. Some folks wanted to sleep. I harrumphed at the very notion, and gathered up a few hardy souls. Jerry, Bob, Dan and I split from the crowd at the future site of Neonopolis. They headed for the Spike, while we kept straight on, ready to challenge the quarter crap game at El Cortez. DAN'S STORY Clearly, my noogie had worn off; so when people began to let their drowsy eyes lead them away toward a few hours of shut-eye, I knew it was time to refresh the noogie and give Jerry another lesson. Stinky and I, Jerry and Bob lifted our noses at the droopy Gold Spike and continued straight on to El Cortez, an experience which I can summarize in a quatrain:
STINKY'S STORY I tried to convince Jerry to rip off the stock car in the middle of the sidewalk. He was about to go for it, when a couple of bicycle cops rode by and glared him into submission. At the ElCo, the table yielded up a number of empty spots right in a row. Dan took up my left, and Jerry bought in on my right. He eventually moved across the table, as his rat biscuits kept disappearing, and not to the dealers. I played innocent, pretending that my ever-growing pile of quarters was due to a hot streak. Bob stepped into Jerry's space and introduced Dan and I to a new saying, or at least a new pronunciation of an old saying. We were all thirsty, but the cocktail waitresses were having a pow-wow next to the bar, and showed no interest in serving drinks to anybody. So Bob called out, in his best worn-out cocktail waitress voice, "Cocktaaaaaails. Sumthin' ta driiiink?" He explained that the pronunciation came from one of the servers at Binion's Horseshoe, where he had played earlier in the day. We all took up the saying with gusto, hoping to entice a waitress our way. The table was split into crusty old ElCo regulars and us. We didn't mind their company, but they were clearly underwhelmed with ours. Every time we cracked each other up with another round of "Cocktaaaaaails..." they rolled their eyes, indicating they'd seen the likes of us come and go before and weren't impressed in the slightest. The animosity grew as first Bob, then me, and finally Dan sent the dice flying off the table repeatedly during our respective rolls. Bob raised the ire of the pit with his high-flying dice. The stickman said, for the first but definitely not only time, "We spend $10,000 on a craps table and you guys want to play on the floor." I chucked the bones off the table a couple of times before crapping out and giving them up to Dan. Although he could barely keep his eyes open and was about as close to falling asleep standing up as one can get, Dan still managed to hurl the dice with all the force of Hercules on that one TV show. The dealers warned him at least three times to take it easy, but had no intention of kicking us out, so Dan kept it up. One of the old-timers across from me rested his head on the edge of the table, dozing contentedly. Dan reared back and threw, and the dice bounced up, smacking the old-timer square in the face. He started awake and growled at Dan, while Bob and I unsuccessfully stifled our laughter. We would find out later that he had said something about how the Caesars medallions Dan wore around his neck must not have been medals for playing craps, but rather earned for outstanding performance in jerking off. Even though the dice had only landed on the table about one out of every three times any of us rolled, we had all managed to build up a little pile of winnings. Of course, a little pile of winnings at a quarter table doesn't come anywhere near making up for sixty bucks lost playing dollars. Dan finally gave up the dice, and, probably out of spite, a couple of old-timers chipped away at our good fortune. Jerry got his turn, and again the stickman could be heard complaining about our penchant for playing craps on the floor. As the dice continued around the table, something magical happened. First one, and then another, and finally a third of the grumbly old veteran craps men threw too hard or too bouncy or just plain wrong, and ended up with dice on the floor. We had infected the whole table with our amateurish shenanigans! Delirious from lack of sleep, we hooted and hollered, because they could no longer grumble at us for our antics. The cocktail waitresses had been by a few times, and upon
realizing that we planned on tipping them every time they brought
us a drink, were relatively attentive. Bob ordered up a water,
and seemed about ready to turn in. He mentioned something about
being hungry, and particularly in the mood for French Fries.
I waited for him to raise the bottle of water to his lips before
calling out, "French Friiiiiiies.... sumthin' ta eaaaaaaat?"
He burst into delirious laughter, and came tantalizingly close
to spitting water out his nose and onto the table. I made it
my personal mission to see to it that I said something funny
enough to accomplish that goal. He was on his guard, though,
and I didn't even get close. I took heart, however, knowing he
would not always be so wary, and that some time in the future,
I will make him sneeze a drink onto some felt somewhere. |
