Fat Old Woman in Las Vegas: Gambling, Dieting and Wicked Fun (14 page)

My final destination was to be at a particular shop at the SLS casino, a mile and a half north on The Strip. It had taken me over six hours to reach the midway point of my journey. I debated on retreating into the food court at the mall for a respite. The only other option I considered won out.

I decided to gamble across the street at the Wynn for “only a few minutes” before continuing my quest for debauchery. Besides, I needed to say hello to my second favorite S man, casino mogul Steve Wynn.

I didn’t expect to see the man himself. But his image was plastered across both the property and the casino’s Megabucks slot machines. Nowhere else have I seen the owner of a casino’s image pop up on a game monitor, speaking to you as if you were his best friend.

Steve Wynn produces a strong reaction from the public and the press. He seems to be either loved or hated. I admired him for one reason. He banned Terrance Watanbe from gambling at his casinos.

∞

One of the biggest whales to flop around the gaming floors in Vegas was a novelty salesman from Omaha, Nebraska. Terrance Watanabe lost more than two hundred million dollars playing blackjack and twenty-five-dollar multi-line slot machines, badly. According to a few casino employees, Watanabe was laughingly bad in his skill set.

His ability at handling his liquor was no better and, according to Watanabe and his attorneys, Caesars and the Rio casinos supplied him with alcohol and pain killers to facilitate his gambling addiction.

But not Steve Wynn.

After Watanabe lost twenty-one million at The Wynn, he was called into Steve’s office to have a ‘chat’. Wynn told Watanabe he was a compulsive gambler and a drinker and that he was no longer welcomed at the Wynn properties. Nor was his money.

I still find myself shaking my head at Watanabe sometimes. Not that he had gambled away his family’s wealth. That happens. Period. Whether the family is worth twelve bucks or twelve million, when a compulsive gambler starts gambling, there is rarely a happy ending.

But what rattles me is the story behind the story. The family business that Watanabe owned, The Oriental Trading Company, made over three hundred million in sales a year selling plastic trinkets and gag gifts to the carnival market. A year! And that’s for merely importing a cargo shipload of whoopee cushions.

I’ve spent my life writing and have earned a piddling amount of money. If I had been wiser, my time would have been better spent
selling stuffed animals that farted.

∞

I finally arrived at the SLS, formerly known as the Sahara, the iconic Rat Pack’s hangout. It was located at the far north end of the strip, in an area often referred to as a wasteland because of the abandoned hotel projects, cheap motels and numerous tattoo parlors and pawn shops. Under new ownership, and a four hundred and fifteen million dollar makeover by famed designer and architect Phillipe Starck, the SLS was the must-see property in town.

The real reason I had wanted to visit SLS was a recently opened, small “hidden sex” shop inside the property. A few of the posters on trip forums had written descriptions of the shop’s inventory. Naughty lingerie, leather attire and accessories, and a multitude of sex toys.

However, the online chat that caught my eye concerned a certain piece of inventory on display that caught my attention—a special edition of a golden vibrator shaped like Queen Elizabeth.

When I came to my senses and decided not to waste any of my precious time on checking out a royal sex toy, I wondered if I was actually somewhat of a hypocrite. Call me a prude, but Queen Elizabeth just doesn’t do it for me.

So instead, I found myself waiting for the bus, my virtue still intact, when I saw a short, chubby man standing nearby, handing out handbills to anyone who’d take them. The man provided me an answer. I could still be wicked, after all. I eagerly approached him, holding out my hands like a demented Oliver Twist.

His uniform was a pair of worn jeans and an orange t-shirt with white lettering blazoned across the front, “Girls Direct To You in Twenty Minutes.” For convenience, a phone number was written in smaller letters underneath the promise of service to your hotel room within a matter of minutes.

Called ‘porn slappers’, the huskers are men or women who distribute handbills, the size of a postcard, for erotic services available throughout the city. Though the images on the cards are not pornographic, they certainly are erotic, if not downright filthy. Women of all ages are pictured naked with only stars or strips covering their naughty bits while their poses suggest they earned a master’s degree in contortionism.

Handing me a card, the gentle Hispanic man asked, “Lesbian?”

“Minnesotan,” I answered.

I took a gander and held up three more fingers. He looked embarrassed as he slipped me a small stack, perhaps a dozen in all. Poor guy. More than likely, he was a conservative family man just trying to earn a few extra bucks to feed his kids.

Walking back to the bus stop I clutched my proof of decadence. My book title was justified. I wouldn’t actually call the numbers on any of the cards. Just the fact that I didn’t tear them up in a feminist rage against the depravity of man, proved so sleazy that a few of the bus riders stepped back when they saw what I held in my hands.

A few of my conservative friends would call it sinful. I felt good. Elated, actually. So much so, I was caught off guard when, on the very next day, as I pleaded for my life, I decided it might be a good idea to abandoned vulgarity and focus on redemption.

At least until I was safe and not waiting to be killed.

The day I became the town fool started as a typical vacation day. Groggy after a fitful night’s sleep, I stumbled to the windows and yanked the royal blue curtains open. The Vegas skyline and half-sized Eiffel Tower was directly in my view. The sky was vast and clear. Below me, the waters of the Paris’s pool shimmered in the morning sun. The lush landscaping dotted with greenery and marble statues provided the illusion of a Parisian garden.

It was too early for sun-worshippers to be out, but lounge chairs were already placed around the octagon shaped concrete natatorium, private cabanas available for rent if you could afford it. Their prices, depending upon the season, ranged from the lower hundreds to one thousand dollars for the day. They were a not-so-gentle reminder that I would always be a peasant. There were people out there in the world with a staggering amount of money, a wealth I could not even begin to comprehend.

My daily penance, which oddly enough wasn’t associated with gambling, began with opening my laptop. For fifty some years writing had turned into a punishment rather than a joy — a direct result of all the “shoulds” that I shat upon my craft.

I should write that novel. I should write a thousand words a day. I know I should make as much money as James Patterson and treat my family members to a Mercedes. I should …

The creative process did give me joy, but only when my bruised ego and spirit stepped aside to let it flow. I zone out when I step into writing, just like I do when I gamble. When the writing is going well time whizzes by. When it is going badly I trudge through a river of muddy words wearing knee high waders and clichéd metaphors.

While traveling, being a member in an online writers’ group keeps me on track. After I made the daily word count, I’d report every morning to my peers. I’d post “did my five hundred words, time to hit The Strip.” I’d receive back a round of ”Atta girl!” or “Win a fortune!”

On day six, as soon as I finished my demiurgic gesture and hit “save”, my telephone rang.

“Hey there,” I said, not even bothering to look at the caller ID. No one else calls me on my pre-paid flip phone.

“Tomorrow, eh?” my husband asked. He was referring to the start of my two-and-a-half-day trek home. My husband was either missing me or sadly counting down his hours of freedom left.

“Yeah,” I answered. “It’s gone by quick.”

It always does.

“You can stay longer if you want to,” he informed me.

“Right,” I say, somewhat sarcastically.

If I did stay, we’d be homeless in a matter of months. I can stick to a budget of three hundred dollars a day for seven days. Not too financially devastating since I’d taken a year to save the money to squander. But, I’d spend the same amount daily in Vegas if I were there for one day, a month or a year. Once I find a comfort point, no matter how uncomfortable it becomes, I always return to it.

“What are you doing today?” he asked.

“I have a fifty percent off coupon for the Monte Carlo buffet. Then I’ll probably gamble at City Center, and afterwards take the bus to Circus Circus.”

“Going to get some exercise sometime today?”

He always asked that question.

“Sure.”

I always lied with my answer.

After we said our goodbyes, I scrambled to find the television remote. It was somewhere under the pile of clothes scattered about on the floor, bed and tabletop. Ten minutes later, I restrained from throwing it at the TV.

Though it was April, snow was still piled high in my yard at home. The Vegas TV weatherman warned, in all the seriousness someone with a degree in meteorology from a community college could muster, a low front was coming in the next day. It would be one-degree below normal. The high, a mere seventy-one degrees.

Within a half-hour, dressed in a flowing cheetah tunic top, brown Capri leggings and dangling zebra earrings, I waited in line at the ATM. Another three hundred dollars would be withdrawn from my account, and if things kept going the same way, it would vanish by the end of the day. Still, there was always a chance that a single jackpot would eliminate any loss on the trip.

Hope and stupidity spring eternal.

At least with wagering, optimism was something I’d yet to discard. I’d pretty much given up on any other lifelong dream materializing. As hokey as it sounded, only by losing was there any chance for me to become a winner.

∞

On the sidewalk, I performed my annual curse-a-thon at the
labyrinth
known as the entrance to Planet Hollywood. The sidewalk disappeared in front of the casino. Instead, I had no choice but to climb steep concrete steps to the landing in front of the casino doors. The elevated walkway was out of order, and this time no elevator was provided for the handicapped.

I decided to cross the street and take the free City Center tram to the Monte Carlo instead. To do that, I had to cross the street and head to the back of the Bellagio. Distance wise, it would be the same. But my feet would enjoy taking a breather from being slammed repeatedly into a concrete sidewalk. Plus, I’d get to take in the impeccable ostentatiousness and beauty that is the Bellagio.

There is nothing subtle about the B. It is all glitz, glam and gaudiness starting with the exterior’s eight-acre man-made lake with lighted, dancing fountains. Inside, the ceilings are high, the accompaniments European in flavor, the aisles wide and easy to navigate. Gleaming marble, brass and multi-colored glass dominate the scene. A one-story high Chihuly glass flower sculpture and
two thousand smaller ones covered two thousand square feet of the lobby ceiling. The ever-changing conservatory and botanical gardens are exquisitely jaw dropping in splendor.

Yet, instead of being mesmerized by the colors and pomp, I ended up sitting at the edge of Bellagio’s high limit slot room, watching a very unhappy woman wait for her six thousand dollars to be delivered by an attendant.

The ultra thin, and gold dripping female seemed irritated she had to wait until the win was validated before she could continue to gamble on the same machine. Her bird-leg like arms stretched out to the machine next to her and she slipped five one hundred dollar bills into the slot. The five bills didn’t last long, not at the rate of fifty dollars a spin. Within a minute’s time, she replaced the five hundred with another.

As I stood up to leave, I noticed a man being paid a thirty-four thousand dollar jackpot from playing a hundred dollar slot. I mouthed the word, “Congratulations”. He smirked back at me like I was an idiot. Thirty-four grand was nothing to be congratulated about, not in his world.

I enjoyed a bit of
schadenfreude
on my way to the tram, noting that he and I would more than likely end up at the same place at the end of the day … not a penny ahead and our money lost forever.

∞

It was late in the afternoon when I left the Monte Carlo. At one point my three hundred dollar stash for the day turned into seven hundred dollars. It took only a half hour of bad luck for my stack of bills to dwindle down to the original starting point. It was time to head to the Aria.

Straddling Las Vegas Boulevard and Harmon Avenue is the sixty-nine-acre City Center complex. The six gleaming glass high-rise towers present a dazzling and confusing site from the tram window. The size of the city within a city alone was perhaps the reason I would later become, as my grandmother would have said,
discombobulated.

Two hours into gambling at the Aria, I still had money in my pocket, three hundred and twenty-two dollars to be exact. I was playing directly across from the
Jean Philippe Patisserie, situated next to the North Valet station
. Crème brule, rose macaroons, chocolate cheesecake, crepes covered with a mango and coconut sauce and an almond brioche called to me. The voices were so strong, I couldn’t risk sitting near the shop another minute. It was time to leave by the nearest exit.

As soon as I stepped into the sunlight, I peered across an acre or more of elevated concrete, sitting high above Harmon Avenue. The elevated roundabout allowed for cars to be dropped off at the Aria’s valet and traffic to pass underneath. The Vdara Hotel and Spa, sat on the other side.

In the center of the roundabout was Nancy Rubin’s gigantic sculpture made of two hundred canoes and flat boats, held together by industrial strength guy-wire. The multi-colored watercraft were piled high and tilted upwards or sideways. The result was a vast bouquet of gleaming watercraft with not a lake in sight.

Rubin’s work was fascinating to look at, but it didn’t help me to head where I wanted to go. All I saw in front of me were buildings, and not a way down to the lower level which would lead me to Las Vegas Boulevard.

A bellman stopped in front of me for a breather as he struggled with a brass cart filled with Louis Vuitton luggage.

I asked him mid-grunt, “Can you tell me how to get to down to The Strip?”

He glanced me up and down before saying, “You want to go to the Bellagio?”

My ego got the best of me.
Wow, this guy thinks I’m classy!

I nodded yes, though Bellagio was not on my radar. The polar opposite of an upscale casino, was my real destination, Circus Circus. The rest of my day was suppose to be spent with annoying clowns, trapeze artists who swung overhead, while I ate two-dollar hotdogs without the buns.

The bellman pointed toward Vdara. He said, “Go into the entrance directly across from us. Follow the signs and you’ll end up at the back of Bellagio, right near the chocolate fountain.”

Ah, ha!
I didn’t look like an elegant rich bitch after all. The bellman summed me up correctly. I was nothing more than a dedicated lover of all things chocolate.

Heading across the lot, I peered over the railing of the skywalk and watched cars and trucks whiz by underneath, delivering people and goods to the various buildings of the City Center Complex.

Reaching Vdara’s doors, I made my first mistake. To the immediate right of the entrance, was an elevator with a plaque stating Harmon Avenue. An arrow pointed downward.

In the near distance to my east, I could see cars zipping along Las Vegas Boulevard. It would be so much closer to walk along Harmon Avenue. Plus, I could avoid walking by what I knew to be the world’s largest chocolate fountain. I’d already had enough temptation for one day.

Instead of continuing on the recommended route, I decided to ride the elevator down to the lower level. When I reached the street, I noticed a sign featuring a stick figure man in full stride with a slant marked through him. The legendary “no pedestrian” sign. The next sign, right behind it, demanded a U-Turn be made immediately. Then there was yet another sign behind the second one, warning no access to Las Vegas Boulevard.

What do they mean, no access? I can see The Strip in front of me
, I ranted. Two blocks away, max. The powers that be obviously wanted me to turn around, but that seemed silly and overly protective. And more than likely, they weren’t as concerned about my safety as they were to urge me to walk through one casino after another, in hopes of my succumbing to gambling’s spell.

I
certainly
wasn’t going to fall for that old trick.

I bravely continued on, noticing the sidewalk getting slimmer, but it was still walk worthy, even when I could only manage to stay on it by placing one foot in front of the other. The only truly uncomfortable part was the cars whizzing by me, anxious to pull into the Cosmopolitan underground parking. The autos were only a few feet away, and getting closer by the minute as the sidewalk continued to narrow, and then, suddenly, the sidewalk ended.

Completely. Gone. Disappeared. History. The only remnant remaining was a five-inch concrete curb, resting against the steep elevated incline of rocks, earth, sand and cacti leaning against the building’s vast wall.

Cars were beginning to honk non-stop, the drivers seeming unaware of my precarious situation. Streams of speeding motorists on one side of me, and an incline that I would not navigate on the other.

Las Vegas Boulevard was still a block away.

The smart thing to do would have been to turn around, but I couldn’t. Every cell in my body revolted at turning my back to the traffic. Nor could I walk backwards, not with this body and my tendency to stumble even on the flattest and widest of surfaces. I had no choice but to move forward and plow ahead. Besides, there had to be some sort of an entry into the building along the way, I thought. There had to be.

There was, but every metal door was locked. I knew it would be useless to pound on them. There didn’t appear to be a buzzer I could press either. Instead, I continued on, grabbing onto bushes and fauna to steady myself until finally, I was a mere twenty feet from The Strip.

But, there was no crosswalk, no stop sign, no way to cross The Strip. The traffic that turned on to the side street did it without benefit of a street signal.

I had no choice but to pull myself further up the incline, until I was finally at the top, standing behind a guardrail, on the opposite side of where I needed to be.

The sidewalk that runs across the front of the Cosmopolitan is elevated and is an estimated four feet off the ground. The chest high guardrail protects pedestrians from tumbling down the elevated slope, and into the traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard where they could easily be killed.