On Thursday morning, I hit Vegas like a dust devil, spinning through the airport, which smells like a combination of old lady perfume, fried electronics and a Cinnabon. I step out into the blast furnace of a desert and am almost instantly blinded. The sun walks up to me, taps me on the shoulder and says, hey chica, you’re standing in my spot. My cab driver deposits me under the belly of a sphinx and I weave my way through tourists taking pictures of each other in front of giant plaster replicas of Official Egyptian Stuff. Instead of pointing out that these are not actually real Egyptian Stuff and that some of these ‘statues’ actually have URLs on them, I just resume my internal travel mantra of ‘I Hate Tourists’ and ‘Americans Are Stupid’ and end up taking pictures of entire groups of people reenacting a Bangles video.
I wander over to The Bellagio, have banana gelato sans guilt for dinner and follow it up with prime seats for O. O is so beautiful that I am overwhelmed. It is a dream with eyes open, a painting come to life. When it is done, 
I decide to walk back to the column of light in the sky, floating on an aesthetic high, but the high wilts like an orchid in the heat and by New York New York, I am dragging my feet on the skillet sidewalk and hallucinating about seeing strange creatures on the Strip. I limp back through the casino to my crazy inclinator (like an elevator, only it goes up and to the left, like a magic bullet) and then collapse onto my Masonic bedspread.
I wake up blinking in the morning sun that is irradiating the room through my crazy tilted hotel window. I put forth a Vegas plan involving a rather boring pair of ancient cropped jeans which are a sun-friendly faded light blue. Also, my cute flat sandals are eschewed for my fug-unctional pair of Birks. I look like a Soccer Mom, but refuse to care. When I grab my purse I realize that I’ve missed a call from Mopie who is there! Sweet lovely Mopie! I squee and race up to Selila’s sweet suite to meet them. Soon there are new people to meet and faces to put with online names and status reports and ETAs and clever witticisms flying and then I am alone in Vegas no more.
Mopie, Ian and I jump in a cab to Paris and we discuss our wild Vegas plans which involve games of Marry, Fuck, or Kill, Elvis sunglasses, drinking our weight in water and other liquids, and my hope to find a kind drag queen who will give me a makeover. This makes our cabdriver laugh and then she suggests Joan Collins could fix me up right. Later, when I pay the fare, she retrieves my change from her bra and I almost faint when I realize that I must take it from her. Making many French jokes, we wander around Paris, studiously on the look out for any mime situations, and wait for Maya and Jackie. Mopie and I break into a spontaneous rendition of ‘Le Poisson’ from The Little Mermaid while using les toilettes and we later learn from Ian that our song could be heard in l’urinals as well. Mopie declares that she doesn’t give la damn. Later we find a place where you can buy a gigantic drink in a plastic Eiffel Tower. We inquire about the possibility of getting a strap for the giant drink, so you can walk around with it hanging off your neck, but the bartender admonishes us that the REAL Eiffel Tower doesn’t have a strap on it, so they didn’t put a strap on theirs. Oh, because the real Eiffel Tower is clear plastic and filled with a red alcoholic beverage and we wouldn’t want to ruin the authenticity. Our friends arrive and we then eat our weight in goat cheese and then groan when we realize that we’ve got a group dinner planned in four hours.
Back at the pyramid, we find ourselves in front of a crazy camel race game that we then decide is the best game in all the land. It looks like time traveler from Coney Island circa 1953. Camel 2 has its rein hanging down and there’s an angry asp at the first turn and Camel 4’s Bedouin rider used to work for Compaq until his job got outsourced to a bunch of whirling dervishes. For a quarter, it’s the best show in town. Our winnings come out hot, as though they’d been unearthed from the Sahara. We each plan to make our millions there but it’s a camel market and soon we disperse to dinner, where we do not really eat anything. Except for shrimp o’clock. I realize that I still am dressed like a Soccer Mom.
The universe gangs up against Chauffi to make it very difficult for him to traverse the desert, but he finally arrives. And there is much rejoicing. Or specifically, much vodka. Chauffi devises a plan involving a bottle of Grey Goose and two 16 ounce bottles of Dole orange juice and within seconds we are being obnoxious in the suite, so along with the lovely Ms. Fu and Nick, we embark to the food court area of the pyramid while Chauffi runs to replenish our vodka supply (I say ‘our’ but really, it was just Chauffi‘s and mine). We proceed to have a 
bizarre meal while Fu and I help the boys eat their food, and laugh and laugh and laugh. Chauffi the decides that he wants desperately to ride the rug cleaning machine and formulates a plan wherein I will distract the rug cleaning employee by showing him my boobs while Chauffi will jump on the Rug Zamboni and make his getaway by puttering off at 2 mph. Seeing the elemental problems of this plan, he resorts to bribery, but the Zamboni driver scoffs at the proffered Hamilton and demands two thousand dollars. Later, we find one that is unattended and Chauffi ‘ well, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And probably should, since it’s certainly not going anywhere at 2 mph.
And then things inexplicably got a little blurry, but from bystanders, I’ve been able to piece together the following:
* * * * * * *
Weetabix : (spying a fountain) I wonder what that water tastes like.
Chauffi : Want me to find out?
Weetabix : Yeah.
Jenfu : You are evil! You totally manipulated him!
Weetabix : Yeah, I know.
Chauffi : (wiping his mouth on my sleeve) Blech, blech, blech, it tastes like the water from Paris Hilton’s douche bag! Gah!
* * * * * * *
Weetabix : EEEE! You are SUCH a bad influence on me!
Chauffi : I could teach you, but I’d have to charge.
Weetabix : Shut up!!!
Chauffi : Heh heh heh.
* * * * * * *
Weetabix : (interrupting a psuedo-serious drunken discussion) Look up. We’re sitting under a camel.
Chauffi : It’s a girl camel.
Weetabix : No it isn’t. It’s a neutral camel. It doesn’t have a camel vagina either.
* * * * * * * *
Chauffi : Oh my god! This is the best game EVER!
Weetabix : I know! Come on Camel 4 you pissy little bitch! Show some initiative!
* * * * * * * *
Later, Chauffi plays a random nickel slot machine and wins back the $60 he had spent on drinks and then some. Apparently he had worked off his karmic debt on the drive to Vegas and now the universe was giving a cash back bonus award. I put him into a cab and then traverse yet again the casino to my inclinator, stumble into my room, pound a bunch of melted ice from the ice bucket and a couple of Advil and collapse, to be woken an hour later from a phone call from Chauffi, where he announced that I was now sober and he was still drunk and it was very unfair and I must have totally Hectored him. And I suppose I probably did. Because I would teach you, but I’d have to charge.
On Saturday morning, I lay in bed wrapped in my robe post-shower, watching one of the eleven channels on the television which were not about the Luxor and were not MTV (because my GOD, the last five hotels I’ve stayed in did not have MTV! Have I been cursed by gypsies? Perhaps ineffective slacker gypsies? The very second that I admit to my guilty vacation pleasure of watching videos in the morning and bam’ no videos from now until forever! But they had some kind of family channel. Oh yes! Bring your kids to the great pyramid of tacky sin!) when they announce that Reagan has passed away and in that brief moment, I realize that something has changed forever. I actually remembered Ronald Reagan as president. In fact, I voted for him in our mock presidential election in 1980 (in which John Anderson got triple the percentage of votes than in the real election’ let us live in fear of a world run by fourth graders), a year I remember for three events’the death of John Lennon, deciding for myself to stop going to parochial school, and the decade odometer flipping over and feeling like I had just gotten totally gypped. I remember having an opinion about Reagan. In fifth grade (ok, sixth) I wrote a song called Reaganenomics, or actually, wrote new words to ‘Go Tell Aunt Rhode’. And played it on the flute, except that I couldn’t sing and also play the flute, so had to enlist the help of my sister Mo who was in first grade and couldn’t pronounce ‘Reaganenomics’ and kept singing ‘Reagan and phonics’.
And now, there it is. We Gen-Xer’s are now old enough to have had a president who died of old age. I keep thinking about the fact that it is a gateway for other authority figures that will eventually die for the rest of the day but instead of being delicate about it, I spring it on Chauffi in a breezy offhanded way and then feel somewhat less like a freak when I see the realization sink into his psyche as well. We must change how we think about ourselves; figure out where this puts us in the hierarchy of young and old. The truth is we are the filler generation now. The truth is that I thought I’d had more figured out by now.
That evening, I wander over to the fancy suite where I collapse (a theme for the weekend) onto the giant four poster bed with Sasha and later Shannonk (who was a delightful surprise guest and sashayed in looking like a movie star) and watch Jenfu make pin up poses on the television cabinet. Later, Jenfu makes plans to marry John, so Shannon agrees to take my hand in marriage as well and we are now betrothed. And now I have to figure out how I’m going to break that to Esteban as well as my legion of potential Husband #2s. Alphabetically, I’m guessing.
I attempt to make reservations at the two restaurants I want to try (Aureole and Red Square) but they are booked, so Chauffi and I decide to bunt. We put ourselves on the waiting list at the intriguing China Grill and then set ourselves in the lounge of the Rum Jungle where we sip drinks and chat about everything in the world. Then we wander back to the restaurant and order everything in the world because by then, we were quite hungry and it is one of those ‘share everything’ kind of restaurants. Proving that he is the best spoon in the whole world, Chauffi orders lobster mashed potatoes, even though he wasn’t all that interested in them. And they are heaven, along with everything else, from the chicken salad to the seared ahi tuna to the chicken two ways to the banana caramel brulee tower. We each order a blue drink that sounds like the Gulliver’s Dreams that I used to order when I was sixteen, except that they are nothing like the maraschino alky goodness of a Gulliver’s. We drink it anyway, even though it looks like coagulated smurf and then soon we are giggling across the table, talking about inappropriate dinner topics, gossiping, having mouth orgasms (‘My mouth is rock hard and spewing like a volcano!’) and driving patrons to ask for another table, far far away. And I didn’t Hector him this time.
After the best dinner either of us had ever had, we wander up the Strip to various casinos, getting strikingly sober. Finally at the Venetian we both admit that we are beat and instead of partying like rock stars, we can only party like Norah Jones. We say goodnight, make plans for brunch and gospel music, and then go back to our respective hotels and collapse.
In the morning, which comes entirely too soon, I am late late late, as I must pack up and stow away my luggage with the bellhop. While waiting for me, Chauffi gets to witness a bitch fight on the casino floor (‘No, it’s fine, it’s FINE! We’re going to be late for church! It’s fine!’) which I am very sorry I missed. Finally we make it to brunch but we are too late for the gospel, so we settle for pancakes, grits, and libations, then embark on a very quick shopping trip and Chauffi manages to pry my New Balance tennis shoes from my stubborn grip. Also, while Chauffi is looking at business card holders, I spy a very snazzy red leather wallet which seems very Jackie O in that it snaps open and closed and is far less bulky than normal wallets. Also, you don’t have to fold your money. Needless to say, I fall in love, but it but it seems far too expensive. But Chauffi says, ‘Get it’ and apparently, that is all I need. I am very happy with it, and switch wallets only hours later. Squee! Love extravagance!
Then I go to The Bathhouse for a massage (no, not THAT kind of massage, sheesh) in their lovely spa. I had been panicking about robes, because you had to be naked and 
I didn’t want a wardrobe malfunction if their robes were not of the generous type, so I hauled my robe to Vegas for just this reason, but when I get to the spa, they have a lovely robe that makes mine look like it is made from burlap. So all is well. After my lovely massage, I am so blissed out that I even have the fortitude to swim in their gigantic 50-foot long whirlpool with the entire wall devoted to rain striking imported slate. And I do this naked. With other naked women. Who are naked. And can see my naked. You’ve come a long way, baby.
Later, Chauffi and I split an apple buckle and a caramel ‘clair (‘It just prematurely spooged.’ ‘Shut up, it happens to everyone sometimes.’) over coffee in THE Hotel’s little Starbucks. He then left for the wilds of Utah and I wandered back to the Luxor and returned phone messages, attempting to hook up once more with Pie and Fu, but it was not to be. I make dinner plans with Pie and Ian, but then must pike on them minutes later when I realize that I had tickets to see the Blue Man Group that evening. Since I no longer had a hotel room and had lost my phone number list, I wander over to a relatively empty roulette table and watch. The dealer, a sweet grandmotherly type, asks if I want to sit down and watch, since she only has one person at the table. She then gives me an impromptu lesson in roulette and invites me to just watch as long as I wanted. Finally, I feel comfortable enough to try it so I buy $20 worth of chips and promptly win in the first round (session? Inning? Frame?). I then play until I get down to four chips (which she let me play, even though the minimum was 5) and then play one on the cross hatch near 13 (my lucky number) and then one right on top of 13. And lo and behold, 13 comes up and I win $9 for the cross hatch chip and $43 for the one directly on it. I know I should walk away then, but I don’t, because hey, I turned $20 into almost $60 and then watch as it goes back down to $11. I cash out, tip my dealer, and walk over to the camel races, where $10 lasts forever. There I meet up with the lovely Karen D and Mr. Karen D and then also Lynda and Michael. We declare loudly again that the Camel Race is the best race in all the land. A guy who looks like he’d be wearing too much cologne looks up at us from across the table and says, ‘I agree. You know, this is the only place in Vegas where you can get a camel.’ I almost answer ‘Oh, not if you have enough money and have connections’ but I keep it to myself, as not everyone appreciates a good camel/sodomy joke.
We all wander into Blue Man Group and take our seats in and around the Pancho area (so named because you get to wear a plastic garbage bag to protect you from vomited Twinkies and whatnot) and ushers hand us crepe paper to construct something creative. My camp counselor mode takes over and soon I am absent-mindedly creating a white halo of flowers. The guy sitting next to me with white hastily tied armbands, looks at me and says ‘Wow, you’re really talented.’ Except that he’s not being sarcastic, he really means it. I try to keep from rolling my eyes, and hastily finish my hair wreath and plop it on my head, feeling like a mental patient who just got overly involved in her occupational therapy. The wreath gets swept away in an enormous cloud of paper in the middle of the show.
Afterwards, I wander with the Karen D’s up to the front of the Luxor, where I see Maya and Heather, who agree to share a cab to the airport. I grab my luggage from the bellhop and in a flash, we are back out into the blast furnace of a night and then at the airport, buying travel pillows, and declaring how we were all three incredibly stupid to have taken red eye flights. But at least we get to be airport buddies together. When it is Shawn’s turn to get on the plane, we both wish we could be flying together like we did out of Austin, but it is not to be this time. Then Heather and I wait by our gate, which still smells like old lady perfume, burnt electronics and Cinnabon, and I receive a phone call from Chauffi and I tell him about the guy who thinks that the Camel Race was the only place to get a camel in Vegas and how I disagreed and we laughed. Then he tells me that he is at that moment driving through a town called ‘Beaver’ and the next town was called ‘Fillmore’ and we both snicker for five minutes because when it comes down to it, we are both ten-year-olds, posing as responsible adults.
And that’s the happy right there, with a cherry on top. It’s not about the casinos or the plane flights or the shitty hotel rooms or about how many suitcases you had to pack, it’s about hanging out with people that God had the wisdom to space out around the world so that you don’t all get yourselves killed. But sometimes, oh yes, sometimes you manage to be in the same place at the same time, and that it makes it all worthwhile.
