Coffeespoons

"You can't have those down here"

The air had already gone foul, and I could feel my chest tightening up.

"Christ!", I yelled at my attorney, "Is there cigar ash in the air conditioning??"  He stumbled to the window and peeled the curtains aside.  There she was, in all her dark majesty.  The Meadows.

"Looks like someone dumped a ash bucket over here", he muttered towards the floor.  Enough of this.  It was time to get downstairs.

Hacked swatches of film - that's how the memories play out to me now.  It rushes up not unlike acid flashbacks (and I can see why).  Like mental insanity, it has its triggers.  Talk of a line moving.  A flash of neon outside a bar on University.  The warm rush of a vodka-based drink.  A cig perched 'tween lips while conversation turns to Poker Hands.  And blammo!  We're back at The Luck.

"Play my hand for me.  I've got to go up to the room."
"Right now?"
"Yeah, like right this second."
"You want to color those up?"
"NOPE." (sprints away from table)

There were moments back then, wherein only by the grace of god did we not have a horrible incident and become a punchline in someone else's story.  How many times did I stumble on the worn carpet of the LV Club's sportsbook, only to catch myself a mere nanosecond from running into a waitress?  Try explaining that one... "Yeah, the thing is I had 6 white russians and then was trying to get up to bet race 7 at Del Mar, and all of a sudden, I'm wearing Maker's Mark..."  And, leave.

"I just wanna lose.  Just let me lose faster."

There are times, of course, when you want the moment to expand out into the horizon for all time.  I remember sitting at a table at the Nugget as the sun rose, just as all the freaks were being shuffled off into the blooming light to make room for the geriatrics drinking orange juice.  And I sat there at a 3 dollar table, shuffled my checks, and just observed this massive upturn of humanity.  It was like the shifting of a tide.  Trash out, clean water in.  I wondered what it would be like to linger there, on the bottom of that particular sea, but I was soon awoken by mermaid voices, and I sloughed off into that blinding light.

But other times - oh - other times I just want the game to end.  It's not even a game.  When you strip all the magic away from video games, it's simply a huge screen with a big button.  You press the button - labeled "GAMBLE" and the screen either flashes "WIN" OR "LOSE".  Essentially, that's what it all comes down to. Regardless of whether the "game" features penguins, or I Dream of Jeannie, or in this particular circumstance, a soccer game, you're always going to the same place.  LOSERVILLE.

So I mashed the button, trying harder to lose faster.  But I kept winning.  When it came time for the "bonus", I must've hit the correct button, because I slung a bicycle kick right by the overmatched goalie.  Hey, great.  Now I've got to stand in line to cash out.  THE MAGIC IS GONE.

"Hey man, you got any cigarettes?  I'm trying to quit."

And that pretty much just sums it up.  Hey man, you got a smoke?  Oh me?  I'm actually trying to quit.... you know, by smoking more.

I would rush to judgement here and state that that has to be the absolute lowest humanity can go - bumming cigarettes from strangers at the Plaza... but if Las Vegas teaches you one single life lesson (and oh boy, does it ever) it's that no matter WHERE you are, or HOW busted out you think you have become, there are 10 more guys just down the street who are WAY worse than you'll ever be.  Hey, at least that guy was still ALLOWED to come into the Plaza.  I'm sure a similar scene was playing out at that very moment down the street at the Gold Spike.  Except it wasn't a cigarette he was asking for... but it was on fire at one end.

"You mean to tell me we can't sit in these seats right here and drink these?"

And so I pulled on that jar of motor-oil-colored fluid, and my attorney did the same.  We were under strict orders to not return to the gaming floor until we saw the bottom of those buckets.  The long night just got longer.  And so we watched the moon come up, that spectrelight glimmering over the impossibly complex neon highways.  And I think we watched the Texas Rangers.  Hell, it didn't matter.  I smoked more cigarettes than I brought with me on the plane, and my attorney arranged the evenings bets in chronological order.  There's something about the air, that's for certain, how it makes you capable of anything.  The body can accept a gallon of beer with nary a whisper of protest, as long as the heart pumps faster from the adrenaline.  And we rode the third rail that night.  Post-jar, we smashed into the elevator with a loud scream, and tipped over an ashtray on the way to the lobby.  We made it down just in time to see Utah State go off... oh hell, there better be 2nd half betting.  Out into the night we roared, two jungle cats swerving through the ferns.  The air so hot, the mind so lifted.  Criss-crossing Fremont until dawn, running up good credit and bad stories at every stop.

Until morning came, and we drowned.