We Were Rhyming Things WIth Things: All Good Things...

Before I being, I must confess that some of these events were fuzzy when they were happening, let alone after they've had almost 4 months to fade from conscious memory. In the name of truth in reporting, I'll try to label the ambiguous moments as such and completely omit things that are just beyond the reach of recall. I'm making this explicitly clear because I can't impress upon you strongly enough that things were even dumber than they'll be presented here. Much, much dumber. And with that out of the way, I can continue this sordid tale.

I couldn't have been asleep for more than 4 hours when what I can only assume was a full bladder brought me back to reality. We'll peg the time as being just around noon, Vegas standard time, perhaps a little before. Catherine's already awake and we take a few moments to survey the damage, which all considered wasn't terrible. I felt slightly like a hydrocephalic from the constant drinking and Catherine has a bandage covering a tattoo whose design she can only vaguely recall. We'll call day 1 a rousing success despite our morning after sluggishness.

At this point, we were starting to notice our wallets were a lot lighter and our stamina was wavering a bit. Like all good pilots, we decided it was time for a slight course correction. We've still got big ideas don't forget, and it would be a tragic shame to burn out too quickly. Catherine thinks quick and calls an audible:

"Bobbo. You know what we should do? Let's get some drinks and take it easy by the pool today."
"Kiddo, I'm still kinda drunk. Not sure I can do that right now."
"Yeah, but it's almost 4 in NY. And we'll just take it easy. We can recover today and then go out a bit tonight. Nice and easy."
"This is a terrible idea. You need beer money?"

And here's the point in the story where Alice can finally make out the bottom of the rabbit hole. Catherine's idea seemed fairly innocuous right? Nothing could possibly happen with an idea like that that. What could make fuck of things that badly, right? (I realize that sentence is grammatically horrible, but I like the ring of it. Plus it accurately describes my thought process at that point. Go figure). Frankly, this didn't occur to me until just now but if you scroll down to the previous blog entry and reread the description of the motel we were staying at, well, had we been in a more lucid frame of mind, alarm bells would have been going off.

As it was, no alarm bells went off. Catherine went to the deli up the block and I attempted to shower. She comes back to the room with a 12 pack, a bottle of wine and a look of concern. "Bobbo, it says no open containers by the pool. What are you gonna do with your beer?" For a moment I was wondering why she was more concerned with me than with her own predicament until I watched as she poured an entire bottle of wine into the barbell shaped sippy cup she purchased the day before. Clearly, she had no problem.

"Well, I'm gonna walk to the pool - with the beer mind you - and I'm gonna sit down. Then I'm gonna open a beer and drink it. If they yell at me, it'll be a Vegas first. I think we'll be fine."

We make our way to the pool and proceed to have breakfast (by breakfast, I mean drinks). The first couple beers go down like nails but things level off after that. We're shooting the breeze a bit and begin to notice a fella sitting maybe 10 feet from us trying to pretend he's not eavesdropping. He's in his mid-20s, give or take and seems harmless enough. So we start chatting him up, I give him a few beers, a few smokes and a new friend is made. He's a Mexican fella who used to live in Cali but now lives in Vegas. He hasn't done meth in a few months but still enjoys a bump of coke when he goes out to the clubs. I know this because apparently people will tell you damn near anything if they decide early on that you (as a stranger from a strange land) are too lazy/don't care enough to judge them. At least, that's the only way I can figure it.

His name is Oscar or Arthur (I can't remember which one I made up and which one was really his name) but we wound up calling him Don Juan because he was as close to a swarthy latin charmer as Catherine will likely know. Don Juan informs us that he's meeting a friend of his shortly and if it was OK if the fella came to meet up with us by the pool. Sure, I says. A friend of the seemingly harmless Don Juan can't be a big deal. Turns out, I was wrong.

Have you ever watched an episode of cops and they have the scrawny but feral looking white guy with the blurred out face? His name is Robert. I've got his card around here somewhere.

So his friend Robert shows up and you can tell this dude is waaaay off right from the get go. I'm not one to listen to my inner Jiminy Cricket so I offer this fella a beer and start chatting him up as well. I'm guessing he picked up on the same kind of thing that Don Juan did, but the shit that this guy was willing to tell complete strangers was fucking staggering. Here's the abridged list of things I learned about this guy in the first hour of talking to him.

- He's three months out of jail after a nine month stint (for car theft, if memory serves)
- Recovering alcoholic
- Converted to Judaism in prison(!?!?)
- Was shot several times when someone tried to put a hit on him. He shot his attacker in the ass as he ran off.
- Was raised to love and respect women by his mother
- Former pimp, drug dealer, gun runner and mob enforcer type at various points during his life
- Was charged with four attempted murders on two policemen (wasn't why he was in jail, he beat that wrap)
- Was contracted to kill a dude who raped a stripper's sister (don't know how that one ended, just know he didn't kill the family next door even though they were prospective witnesses)
- He pays women to dominate him but doesn't have sex with them because his mother taught him to respect women

There's more in there that I'd rather not recall. How much was true, how much was bullshit, I'll never know. Once he started talking about his guns tho, I had to interrupt him and made sure he wasn't carrying any weapons on him at the time. This made him alarmingly suspicious so I had to reassure him it was only because I didn't want to keep feeding beers to a dude who was carrying firearms. Nothing personal, wasn't gonna rat, just was gonna take my beer and wish him a good day. He assured me he got rid of his guns and didn't have anything on him. And who am I to argue?

Honestly, I could probably write a doctoral psych paper on this guy. He more or less told me his entire life in the few hours I sat there and talked to him. He really didn't seem like a bad guy, just more of a poster child for "Nurture" in the nurture vs. nature debate. We parted company when 2 women arrived to beat the shit out of him for the evening.

Meeting Robert was, for me, like going to Ireland and having drinks with the drunkest guy in the country on your first day there. You hear about all the fucked up people that Vegas just chews up and destroys and you realize that there are probably some really fucked up people floating around out there. And there are, believe me. I was just astounded that I might have met the most fucked up guy in Vegas during my second day there. I was and am a little proud of that. I'll miss you, Bob.

In order to prevent people from missing the whole picture, the whole time I'm talking to and drinking with Crazy McGee, Catherine is sitting by the pool with Don Juan and pounding drinks. If you're remembering that Catherine has a brand new tattoo at this point of the story and sitting out in the sun with a new tattoo exposed is terrible for new tattoos (she had the sense to not actually go in the pool at least)...well, you're remembering better than Catherine did. Fortunately, nothing permanent came of that mistake; just excessive pain in the days that followed. Catherine and tattoo are currently doing fine.

The hours are starting to bunch up and blur in the story as I think back on it, so I'll just fast forward to the next point that is fairly discernible. Catherine, Don Juan and myself head back to the motel room as the pool officially closed. Catherine and Don Juan made me a little uncomfortable so I seem to have blocked out that part of the story, you'll have to ask Catherine for it.

Finally Don Juan leaves and Catherine passes out. It's about 12:30AM at this point. If my math hasn't completely failed me, I figure to have subjected myself to 44 out of 48 hours of straight drinking. I think there was maybe 1 meal in there that I couldn't bring myself to finish. Throw in a couple packs of smokes for good measure. I finally nod off for sleep after a few moments of debating whether or not I was ready to call it a night at just 12:30. Ladies and gentlemen, we have bottomed out.

The next day we woke up and realized that we had partied too hard for too long. Money was in short supply and if past behavior was indicative of future trends, we had best cut our loses and shorten our trip by a few days. Whatever money we spent rebooking the flight back was surely going to be a smaller number than what we would have potentially spent had we stayed out west. It's a sad thing to admit you did it wrong, but it's not until you recognize a deficiency that you can begin to correct it.

Our western journey was nearing it's end. We packed up our supplies and drove back to Phoenix. A quiet night followed and by Tuesday afternoon, we were airborne and heading back to the familiar vices of NYC.

I'd like to think we learned something from our trip out there. I'd like to think we learned to pace ourselves. I'd like to think we've moved past the point of trying to destroy ourselves one night at a time. I'd like to think that if we did it again, we would enjoy the majestic beauty of the Grand Canyon without losing interest and finding a campsite to get hammered at. Realistically though, all I fear we've learned is that if you're going to do something completely retarded, you need to have a budget before you start. It's not one of those things you can improvise as you go along. I suppose that's better than nothing.

So there you have it friends -My Life As A Cautionary Tale: Told in Four Parts. I hope you've enjoyed reading it almost as much as I enjoyed doing it (which more or less means you'll recall bits and pieces of it in fits and starts, and chuckle a little).

Stay stiff and rock hard,

Rob