Storytime

In 1999, the St. Louis Rams- the football team of the town that I call home- made it to the Superbowl.  It was the first time a St. Louis team had reached the superbowl and I was unable to attend.  Neither could I get back to St. Louis to watch the game with family and friends because at this time I lived in Los Angeles.  So, I thought it might be nice to go to Las Vegas and watch the game at a Casino.  It will be lively, I thought, and people will naturally be very into the game because they will have moneys riding upon its outcome.

I went online to look for a hotel and found a suite at Amerisuites for 50 dollars.  Surely, I thought, this is omen for great things to come.  I paid for the hotel room and convinced my friend Shelley to come with me to Las Vegas and watch the game.  Shelley was not big on football or superbowls, but she did very much enjoy gambling, smoking and drinking and Las Vegas allowed her the chance to do all three of these things at once.  So she agreed and we drove to Las Vegas.
My car's headlight fell off on the drive down.  I had it affixed to the car with packing tape after a fenderbender and at 90 miles an hour the tape did not hold up.

Las Vegas was the way Las Vegas has always been for me.  Unremitting.  Cruel.  The kind of place that makes me yell things at my money.  And to be honest, it wasn't my first trip with Shelley to Las Vegas.  It was our sixth or seventh inside of two years and actually our last.  Shelley and I- or rather I near Shelley- had an absolute gambling problem.  I've lost at least 3000 dollars in my life gambling.  Which maybe sounds like a big scary number or an insignificant number depending upon your point of view but I think when you compare it to the fact that I've made maybe a total of 60000 dollars in my entire life (I'm turning 30 in less than a month) you have to figure it's an embarassing sum. 

We were so psyched to gamble that we pulled over at the Nevada Border and gambled at one of those podunk places that smells like a high school cafeteria.  Shelley immediately won 800 dollars.  Another omen.  I'm down like 80 but I'm riding Shelley's good omen and we zoom further up Highway 15.

We get to our suite and it's sort of a skanky suite off the strip in a business hotel with no casino.  This is not a bad thing as it keeps me from waking in the middle of the night to feed slot machines and my continue my assault on my general feelings of self-worth. 

We're a little slammed from the drive down so rather than going out we decide we'll pick up a twelve pack of Corona and order a pizza.  The pizza is disgusting, the beer warmish, and the cable Television (neither of us have cable in L.A.) is less than astonishing.  We turn in early and wake up twelve hours later at around 11 in the morning. 

I'm psyched the morning of the game.  I immediately begin slamming beers.  They're colder now.  Not as cold as the pizza which I also slam because I can't stand the thought of wasted food.  So I sort of beerbrunch the pizza and we hop in the car and head to the Sahara.

At this time the Sahara hotel has 1 dollar blackjack.  This allows for maximal drinks for the minimum possible investment of dollars. I've already had five beers and the blackjack suits me fine.  I'm down no more than fifty dollars but I'm playing blackjack and getting increasingly busy with the Coronae.

Do you know how long it takes them to start the Superbowl?  I mean- they don't start that game till nearly five o'clock.  That means I had six hours of drinking and blackjack.  Money meant nothing to me.  I was having a great, great time.  And I was betting like a drunk so the whole gambling community embraced me.  Before the game started I waddled as best I could over to the sports book and placed a twenty dollar bet on the Rams to cover the point spread (7pts.)

I watched the opening ceremony.  I sang the national anthem. I made friends with the people around me and we were all quite drunk and excited at the prospect of a superbowl in Las Vegas.  The game began and I was so drunk I was having difficulty following it.  The basic plays, the lateral movements of the tiny men on the screen, the endless jargon from the announcers- I have seen hundreds of football games, high school, college, pro- so I know that I am impaired. 
Someone hands me another beer.

It's not a corona.  It's a coors light.  It is the warmest beer of them all.  Someone has smuggled a can of beer into the casino probably against their warm belly flesh so that the beer is a staggering 90 plus degrees as I pour into my mouth.

That was the tipping point. 

I tell Shelley, who I realize has been near me all the while, that I must do something.  I must eat something.  Anything.  I must countermand the near poisoning I am presently fighting.  We go to a sandwich kiosk in the casino and I order a pair of turkey sandwiches.  With cranberry sauce.  They come that way- I wasn't being cute.  I rip into one of them and am suddenly overcome by a need to urinate.  I tell Shelley to wait here while I find the bathroom.

I stagger to the bathroom.  Casino bathrooms are designed to be semi-elegant affairs.  Marble.  High ceilings.  Reflective surfaces.  Brightly colored paints.  I piss. As I turn to wash my hands I stop dead in my tracks.  An impossibly long, impossibly black turd sits in the middle of the floor of the restroom.  Under normal circumstances this sight would disturb but in my present stupor the excrement harrows me.  I gag.  I reel.  I cannot understand how this movement made its way the several yards from the stalls to such an auspicious location in the middle of the lavatory.  I stagger out of the bathroom and nearly run into a man with a mop.  I berate him.

"You have to do something," I slur.  "Because there is a crap- a piece of crap- on the floor.  That's not good customer service!" 

It wasn't a strong argument but I was unhinged.  I decided it would be best to simply go to sleep now.  I walked as upright as I could in the direction of the parking lot, found my car, and went to sleep.

There came a tapping on the glass of my Corolla.  There were police officers.  I thought they were coming because I had accosted a janitor.  I was already to explain to them about the doo doo on the ground when they began speaking.

"Sir?  Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Sir, we don't have any problem with you sleeping in your car, however you will have to close the door."

"Thank you officers."

I had the door wide open and my legs hanging out of the car.  I had made it to the car and like the runner of the original marathon collapsed with a smile upon my face.  I stood up, in a show of fitness to the police officers, who drove away upon seeing my recovery.  I walked over to a different spot in the parking garage and vomited many times.  I then walked back to the car, laid down in the back seat, and carefully closed the door behind me.

There came another tapping.

It was Shelley.  The game was over.  And she was rightfully ripshit with me.  She had searched the casino for me concerned for my wellbeing.  I tried to tell her about the turd but she was too angry with me to understand. 

"Who won?"

"The rams."

The shame washed over me.  I had missed one of the great moments in St. Louis sports history.  Shelley wanted to leave but I wanted to collect my winnings.  As I walked into the hotel, two reasonably drunk men walked past me.

"Best superbowl I've ever seen."

"No doubt."

I went to the sports book with my ticket.  I handed the man the ticket and he handed me twenty dollars.  I protested.

"But they won."

"They did.  You pushed.  You get your money back."

I immediately put my twenty dollar bill in a slot machine and pulled levers until it was gone.  I had to punish my money for being so stupid.

Shelley and I drove home pretty much in silence.  Shelley had to drive.  I ate saltines and drank water and occasionally cried because I felt so horrible. 

Shelley, to her lasting credit, has never once brought up this trip in anger.