Questions in the dark

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As he strode through the streets on a hot, sweaty night seeking his home, Vegas Baby asked himself, "Do future millionaires actually walk the dark streets of ghetto Vegas cuz they're too poor to drive?"

Taking the Strip bus home

Crap! Vegas Baby thought to himself, his ride home fell through. His dealing buddy got called to get home to his baby fast.
He took another pull on his Bud Light as he sat at the bar at O'Sheas, the casino next to his. They had this midget dressed as a leprechaun who got up on the bar blasting this whistle and giving willing gamblers a free shot of some green concoction. He waved the little guy away as he stood over him in bright green shorts and a green bowler.
He didn't like waiting for a bus when it was 100` after dark. Dealer Buddy was a tamed hellion, who's hard drinking and gambling ways were brought to heel by the birth of his baby boy. Vegas Baby had never seen a soul so turned around so deeply. He could tell Dealer Buddy was totally committed to his new family.
He drained the last of his cold beer and left the leprechaun to his act. He had a bus to catch. He swam through the crowded sidewalk and made his way to the Deuce stop in front of the Flamingo. He almost argued with the bored bus driver over the cost of a transfer fare being $5 almost 2 1/2 times the normal fare. Instead he looked the bus driver in the eyes and paid the one way fare.
Dealer Buddy and he formed an instant friendship the first day they met during Orientation. He was half Vegas Baby's age yet there was a strong equanimity between them. He offered him a place to stay at a decent price. He even found a used car for sale. Except it was an old Bronco and if he was gonna pay $1200 ( and where the hell was he gonna fine that money?) on a car he wanted something Asian due to their durability.
Tomorrow was payday and he wanted to delay any money decisions until he saw the dough in his Acct. He often had to do things in simplified and segmented ways to better sort through the dizzying minutiae of detail which easily boggled his ADD brain.
He was driving his international lover to despair with his convoluted ways. She would go back and forth between romantic delight in his poetic ways and utter agony over his idiosyncracies. Weeks before meeting her a dear friend in Second Life once asked why he was lonely, given his looks and what she saw of his character, he was at a loss for words at the time but after witnessing Loverbabe's reactions he was once again reminded of the maddening reasons. One of his favorite ex's, Singerbabe, told him at the end of their love affair, "I love you but I can't live with you."
He leaned against the glass resting his forehead on his arm and looked at the wedding chapels pass by and listening to a tourist telling another about that chapel where Brittany Spears got married for a whole 23 hours. He looked at the cars on the darkened street and thought about how he was gonna have his one splurge once he made over $60,000 a year: a brand new red Corvette. And how he would install a very loud foghorn in it for the idiots on the road as well as a powerful loudspeaker also for the ever-present fool.
Almost the entire bus emptied at the Fremont Street stop. The tourists were on their way to more of the rougher glories of Vegas. He was left alone in the upper deck of the Deuce.






He looked at his watch and thought he might make the bus that goes closest to the Compound without running 6 miles out of the way first. He had 7 minutes.
He looked at all the different people at the DTC at 10 30 PM on a Wednesday night and wondered how many stories they had to tell.


How did the old man get crippled?



What was the drunk Indian's father like?

Life can be humuliating

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Vegas baby wakes up to realize he has no money for the bus.................

He calls a friend for a ride to work and she initially agrees then berates him for his lifestyle and retracts her offer.

He calls his daughter who hasn't the time.

He finally calls one of his sons who is on the way.

Vegas Baby knows one must suffer in this life, especially if one is trying to achieve a big win. Especially if one has bipolar and the deep impulsitivity of ADD.

Sometimes, when it is darkest, he wonders how much he can take.

He turned the car rental in last night. He got a message from the mechanic who charged him $2000 for overheating the past 6 weeks that he was incurring storage charges on the car that died of overheating problems.

He listened to his friend berate him for dropping the intense prayer lifestyle he led for the past couple years. "This is God telling you to get back right with him." Ugh.

He has to call the sods at Enterprise to tell them the car is still on the Stolen Vehicle list. And that it needs to be recovered by the police or the next driver can get stopped at gunpoint with them thinking he's the car thief.

He has good friends and he thanks God for them. But he sure has his dark moments....

Things will get better, he thought to himself, they have to, right?

This is Vegas, baby!

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I went to my old haunts tonight with my lovely 18 year old daughter and her beau for my birthday dinner. She mentioned she was low on money and I was dead broke so I decided to go to my old casino where I worked closely with the floormen and pit bosses as a lowly pit clerk.

I was a bit anxious at exposing myself and mooching for dinner and wondered if it would take me an embarrassingly long time. But at my first stop in pit 10 I saw Nancy, the dual floorman and pit boss. She had always been excellent in her customer service to me as a boss and the day she discovered I got hired to deal at the Imperial Princess she confronted me and told me to see her after I dealt for a year and she would get me a job at one of a couple of Strip casinos (my guess is the tips at them average around $60k/yr) which honored me to no end.

Well, I told her it was my birthday and she asked me if I was hungry and then wrote a comp for the 3 of us and 2 rounds of drinks. What a fine boss!



So, we went to the casino coffee shop, which, folks, is quite a thing at a posh Strip casino, one of the largest in Las Vegas. Well, you can see from the pictures that it was a great meal. Steak and lobster (filet, that is), Rib Eye steak, chicken fajitas and 3, count em, 3 appetizers. The waiter kept trying to give us more and more food, all for a better tip, of course. Huge Scampi, chicken wings and the best Brushceta I've had in years.... The check was over $200. This joint knows how to treat you nice.

My daughter kept expressing guilt over the extravagance, and asked me how I knew the bosses here and all. I just explained to her that this how Vegas worked. We take care of each other.

I told her it's like we are building covens of followers whom we help along the way in the casino industry. I told her about Milo (true name since this is post-humous), the man I never met but who benefited my family economically for 20 years. Mom would always talk about how Milo did this for her and did that. As he prospered and went from a better casino to another better casino he always took my mom with him. And she made more and more money. One day she told us that Milo died. Our juice who had prospered our family for 2 decades was gone.

But by then she had widened her juice network and eventually landed jobs at the top casinos in town, earning almost six figures. Yes, folks, I said six figures. In fact, it was a six-figure amount she showed me that fateful day last summer when she took me out for lunch to compare our incomes and illustrate my need to jump on the Vegas money train.



Now, she has juice waiting for me when my dealing skills get to par, especially my roulette. But, she wisely suggested to take the pit clerk job at the famous casino I mentioned where I have generated my own juice.

You see, folks, if you have a commitment to excellent customer service and you work hard at it, which wasn't hard for me cuz I got joy out of giving it, and you learn the basic dealing skills casino bosses are going to go way out of their way to further your career.

So, Johnny Lee, the young chinese pit boss who earned my favor by deliberately learning the names of all his lowly pit clerks and just establishing a warm human connection with everybody, told me on my last day there that he would juice me in as a dealer. I was floored. I thought he was joking but he made it clear that he was dead serious.

Sometimes it floors me to think how easy it is to get a job earning $70,000 a year at merely 40 hours a week. It feels surreal, folks, like I'm cheating somehow.

In many circles such talk would be quickly labeled pipe dreams and boyish fantasy. "You think you're just gonna waltz in there and in a year be earning over $60 grand a year as a dealer? HA!”

But, my mom is doing it, my step-dad did it, and I see hundreds of dealers doing it every day here! I mean, you gotta be stupid to shun the job opportunities in Vegas! If you like people and can add to 21, are willing to give excellent customer service and give up holidays, it's a cinch.

Today's Vegas Baby's Birthday...

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He just turned 26 all over again.

The guys at PC Mechanic set up for Vegas Baby a hearty Happy Birthday thread.



His international lover sent him a QuickCam for international video messaging.




Because of his casino shift he's gonna miss his family's big birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant they have each year cuz several members of his family have birthdays in July. This is common for Vegas families, casino workers often don't celebrate Christmas and such on the proper day due to their inflexible work requirements.



But Vegas Mom called him this morning and wished him a happy birthday and said she'd take him out for sushi next week.

So even though Vegas Baby's still terribly broke, he's rather happy today.


.....................Happy Birthday, Mr. Dealer Extraordinaire..................

OMG, my ADD is gonna drive me crazy! False car alarm....

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Jeez, I go to work the next day and find my car. Now I have to get Metro, my favorite organization, to clear the car off of the Stolen Vehicles list and turn the damn thing in and somehow pay for it!

Aargh....

Vegas Baby screws himself once again

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Damn, It's Hot

Crap, either his rental car was stolen or they frickin repoed it! How rude is that?

They called twice today while he was at work, going on about how he was only supposed to have it for 3 days- which was a damn lie.

These new cars have those GPS chips n they may have located it that way. Either way it spelled trouble for Vegas Baby- just what he needed.

He searched the parking garage for several hot, stuffy minutes before concluding it was stolen or repoed. So he walked up to the Flamingo bus stop drenched in sweat with the above 100 degree night air.

He caught the gargantuan Deuce, the double Decker bus that ran up and down the Strip. It was full of tourists and whatnot. He eventually worked his way to the upper level, amazed at the coolness of the air conditioning in this behemoth.

He passed his mother's casino where she makes triple his income which late last year inspired him to starve for a year to earn the same. And it looked like he would indeed starve, well, not literally, since he got free food, as employees in all Vegas casinos do.

But no car, having to move behind his casino, which may mean an apt.with hot air conditioning, and other deprivations came to visit him. Like tonight, he was sick earlier at work and felt very fatigued and worn out. So naturally this would be the night he would have no ride home.

He dreaded the last part of the ride home from the Downtown Transportation Center to his ghetto house. The bus went way out of his neighborhood before it swung back to his area which was usually inhabited by a sundry and varied dark denizens of the night, whose nerve-wracking habit of approaching him for money for sexual favors or drugs or just simple pan-handling he didn't look forward to.

He would have to rely on the kindness of his co-workers for rides to his casino or leave 3 hours early to catch the bus or risk failing probation, until he could move into a new hovel with new rude vagaries he'd have to tolerate. Man, becoming a casino maven sure was taking a toll on his person!

He was exhausted and wanted to lay his head down but this buxom babe in front of him might take offense to his proximity. Besides he needed both hands to type this text into his smartphone. Otherwise, how would his readers hear about the plight of Vegas Baby?

The Deuce belched Vegas Baby out onto the dark, heated concrete of the Downtown Transportation Center and he quickly discovered another late night bus route that will take him directly to his hovel, well, a couple of blocks away anyways. And it leaves in only 15 minutes. So he parks himself on a hot brick wall waiting for the 403 Northbound with all sorts of black people around him. One super-short white girl who is at least in her twenties though she is the size of a 12 year old, walks by him carrying a tiny black chihuahua in her arms.

Vegas Baby is getting thirsty and he's sure he's gonna have to wash his sweat-drenched uniform shirt. A guy is sitting on the brick wall with a bottle of red Gatorade only to remind him of his thirst.

The 403 is nowhere to be seen and it's due to depart in 3 mins. Fuck, the last thing he needs is a canceled bus!

Dammit! He misread the route times and he had already missed the last 403 No. Now he has to take the 208 W at 1031 pm which would make him have to walk at least 15 mins.

Crap- he may as well have walked this whole last leg. His head was starting to hurt. What he would give right now for a cold drink of water.

A fat, bearded black man next to him fanned himself vainly with his hand in a pathetic gesture. Vegas Baby was tired and grouchy and just wanted to get home into his cool bed.

He felt guilty about how cool his room was when he barely paid any rent and the landlord asked him to make it warmer because the electric bill was over $300 last month and he thought it would be a great idea to pay a couple hundred more in rent to compensate especially since his rent has been so very low for the past 7 months. Only problem with that bright idea was he couldn't even pay his normal rent this month. In fact, he was over $700 in the hole. He had no idea how he was gonna cover that. His car payment got covered thanks to the charitable contribution of a good friend, who turned out to be a real mensch.

But not so his cc bill or cable or 6 others on his never-ending list. He felt he was really gonna sink this time....

The bus was only 8 minutes late. A homeless guy was on their that he
recognized. He used to own a motor scooter and would come early on 'stew day' to get extra portions, telling Becky, volunteer worker that it was better than sex.

He gave his seat up for an elderly Philippino woman who thanked him and sat down. He could almost taste the cold water sitting in his fridge.

The bus let him off at Washington and D street. Now, to walk the gauntlet, Vegas baby thinks to himself, as he turned the corner to E street....


...............................Vegas Baby's E street shadow...................

He found E Street to be almost deserted, much better than F Street, which he took the other night. Only one soul came near to crossing his path. He took some pics of the desolate neighborhood.


..............................Ye Ole Cycle Shoppe....................




...................................The Compound at Night..........................

He finally came to the Compound relieved at how fast and uneventful the walk was.

When he got home and fired up his computer he found out that there were more fraudulent transactions that got to his bank account via Second Life. Another fucking $500 + with $198 more in overlimit fees! Omg, when does it ever end?

Then after the police representative came over the next morning and took his stolen car report, he realized that he had canceled his car insurance policy when he found out his car was dead, forgetting that the car rental was covered by this policy....

Vegas Baby sure managed to screw himself this time....