Gone to America

Click to read Vegas Part I. I intended this to be a fairly even two parter, but this entry has bloated to an ungainly 2,685 words, so Part I is apparently really just more of an introduction. Here we go.

I woke surprisingly early on Saturday – not quite jet lag, but a three hour time shift isn’t nothing. I lazed for a while, then started rambling aimlessly. David, my aimless-ramble buddy, had headed out fairly early to an outlet store on the edge of town to buy himself a suit, so I was on my own. I had breakfast at the Aladdin buffet. I had always heard that Vegas was cheap – that the casinos were only interested in keeping you gambling, and so food was plentiful and virtually cost free.

This is not true – not any more. The buffet cost $24 – it’s the same in most of the casinos. True, it’s all you can eat, but frankly if I’m paying $24 for breakfast I’d want to be pretty full at the end of it whether it’s theoretically infinite or not. The small bottles they leave in your room cost $5 each if you open them. $5! There was a charge of $3.50 on all the ATMs I saw – in NYC it generally runs about $1.50. I didn’t take a taxi, but apparently they were outrageously costly too.

After I ate I ran into Liz again, this time accompanied by Nacha, who is currently living in Mexico City. I believe she’d spent eighteen hours on a bus to get to Vegas. A lot of people travelled a lot of miles to come to this wedding – a testament to the collective pull of Lisa and Julian’s friendship.

Liz and Nacha were just heading to check in, so I left them to it and gravitated back towards the craps tables. I checked my watch and saw that I had some time to kill. I also had a couple of $100 bills in my wallet, as that’s what the ATMs in the casinos dispense by default. I laid one of them down and got my twenty $5 chips. I wasn’t really expecting to use all of them – I just thought I’d play for a little while, then cash out whatever was left. I was prepared to take a loss. You’d need to be either a lot smarter or a lot stupider than I am to gamble in Vegas and expect to make a profit.

I put my initial bet on the line – $10. That was the minimum on this table. At the weekend, that’s as low as they go. At less peak times they go down to $5. Whoever rolled crapped out. $10 down – bad start, but no big deal. Another $10 on the line, another roll – this time the shooter made a point. I bet the odds for another $10 – fairly standard. Shooter rolls a seven – it’s all gone. I put another $10 down. Another point, another $10 on the odds, and now $10 on a place bet. A seven. $30 on the table. Another seven. It’s all gone. I now have $40 left, and it’s my turn to roll.

I fail to turn things around, and it doesn’t take long before my rack is entirely devoid of chips. I look at my watch again. I’ve been playing for fifteen minutes. I’ve lost one hundred dollars in fifteen minutes. I think of all the times I’ve agonised over $50 purchases – even $20 purchases. Do I need this? Can I afford it? Maybe I’ll wait until I get another job, another check for something. And now I’ve basically taken a hunk of money I can’t really afford to be trifling with and chucked it into a blender, one note at a time.

And it was easy. And that’s the thing about Vegas. It’s themed and cheesy, fun, a holiday. Cheerful. Purely recreational. It’s chips, it’s not money. I’d read about the way the casinos purposely blur the distinction between day and night – no clocks, no natural light, no acknowledgement whatsoever of any kind of diurnal rhythm beyond changing cuisine in the buffet. I’d read about the way they pump oxygen through the gambling floors to keep people stimulated and wakeful, the way they bring you free drinks so you never have a reason to leave the table. That stuff is easy to deal with – just wear a watch and know how many hours sleep you need. But I hadn’t grasped the real alchemy that they perform.

As I rode the bus from the airport, the driver told us that it had rained yesterday. This was noteworthy, because you are in the middle of a desert. This is obvious from the window of the plane, the view from the hotel – a sea of lights ringed by red rock as far as the eye can see. Apparently, for the last six years Vegas has been enduring the worst drought to hit the area for about a century. But you wouldn’t think that there was a problem with water – it’s plentiful. There are fountains, ponds. Every half hour outside the Bellagio there’s a spectacular display of aquatechnics, synchronised to Celine Dion. There are pools everywhere, jacuzzis, spas. Never a shortage of ice for the drinks. Vegas just buys the water. Mother Nature can be circumvented if you have the cash, and there’s no shortage of that.

And it struck me as I walked away from the table that that’s really what they do – they turn money into water, to be spent as freely. They strip it of any value except as a means to playing. It seems like I’ve often heard Vegas reffered to as “Disneyland for adults” or somesuch, and that’s the trick. All the theming and carnivalesque excess is to make you forget that this money is the same money you pay rent with, buy food with. The change in your pocket doesn’t feel like currency that can be exchanged for goods and services – it’s slot fodder.

So I called Andras to see what he was up to, as I clearly shouldn’t be allowed to wander around unsupervised. He was having lunch nearby with all the other German speakers – Julian’s family. I went along to meet them, and to see Julian. I’d seen Lisa the night before, but Julian had been feeling under the weather and I wanted to see how he was.

He seemed a lot better – dosed, I believe, with various over the counter medicaments – and a lot less stressed now that his family was fairly settled. His father and grandmother don’t speak much English, although more than I speak German. They were just finishing up, so I joined them briefly. I spoke to his Grandmother’s boyfriend, Josef, from Estonia (I believe). He didn’t speak much English either, but we managed to communicate dimly.

Afterwards, I went back out to the casino floor. It had occurred to me that I had been a victim of unbelievably bad luck earlier, a statistical blip. After all, if craps really was that difficult to beat in general then nobody would play it, and I had managed to play for quite a while the previous night on not much money – even coming out slightly ahead. Surely it couldn’t hurt to have another go? Why, I might even make back some of my $100!

I went to a different table and ran into David – he’s been bitten by the craps bug too. I put down another $100 bill, and got another twenty $5 chips. It didn’t go so badly this time – I won a few bets, I was even up initially. But there were still a lot of sevens being rolled at inopportune moments. This time my hundred dollars lasted twenty five minutes. David was losing too, but he was betting even less than I was. I found myself walking towards the nearest ATM. It was out of order. I decided to take this as a hint, and retire for a spell. I left David at the table, still doing no better.

I went to my room. I had about three or four hours to kill before the rehearsal dinner, so I decided to read a little and take a nap. I had wanted to play poker while I was in Vegas, but I was now taking myself out of the running for any further gambling. It was time to draw a line. And I was tired – my involuntary early waking had left me feeling slightly short of sleep.

Rested, showered, changed and feeling much fresher – albeit much poorer – I headed to Cheesburger at the Oasis for dinner. Most of the guests had arrived, and now we were all gathered together in one place. I was introduced to Lisa’s parents, and I met or re-met many of Lisa’s and Julian’s friends: Doug, Daniel, Max, Lauren, Laura, Ellery, and others. Anne and Mike, who were neighbours when I lived in Greenpoint, were there, and I found out that they had just recently got engaged. Congratulations!

It was a fine time. After dinner, we went our separate ways for a while, arranging to meet up at the club upstairs in the hotel later. I went for coffee with David, and he introduced me to Julian’s workmates who had just been sitting with – Rebecca, Marcie and a different Rebecca. I don’t really know why Julian didn’t invite any of his male colleagues, but I wasn’t really bothered – there is a part of me now that, with all due respect, will always think of The Museum of Jewish Heritage as The Museum of Jewish Heritage: Repository of Hot Jewish Chicks.

We went to the club (free admission!) and drank and danced. I didn’t like the music much, but I danced anyway. Apparently, if I had turned around at just the right moment I could have seen Paris Hilton. She’s opening a club to be imaginatively named “Club Paris” in the Aladdin soon. I don’t know if this is going to be a rechristened Curve or an entirely new spot, but I’m not sure the name, however obvious, is wise. The Aladdin is actually right next door to the Paris casino, and this will surely only cause confusion.

Anyway, I didn’t see her. The next day was the day of the wedding – we had to be dressed up and ready to get on the bus to the Red Rock Country Club at 4:30pm. I wasn’t going to be doing any gambling, and what else was there to do? I basically stayed in my room, leaving only to get some breakfast, and then when the maid came I went for a wander into the Bellagio, just to have a look. Classy. And no gambling. As the hour approached, I started to get ready. I put on my suit. I realised I needed a belt. Thank God for the Gap.

And so to the wedding, the entire reason for the trip. Julian had given me a yarmulke to practice with, so I was fairly confident in my ability to keep it more or less on my head. According to Julian and Andras, the Catholicism of my Irish upbringing was so pervasive that wearing a Yarmulke just made me look like the pope.

After a short period of drinking and admiring each others in our finery, we filed outside. It was a lovely setting, but the clouds were gathering, and I was worried that, however unlikely, it would start to rain. But it didn’t, and in the event the gathering clouds only served to make the sunset more beautiful as the ceremony got under way.

Everything was perfect. Nothing could have been better, as far as I could tell. Julian has blogged about it here (Dodgy english translation here), and the joy he expresses there was clearly written on his face for all to see. As part of the ceremony, the Rabbi read out seven blessings in Hebrew. After each blessing, somebody nominated by Julian would read it out in German, and then someone chosen by Lisa in English. I was the third on Julian’s side. He’d coached me in pronunciation, and apparently I got it more or less right.

Julian had provided me with a translation, but I thought that knowing what I was saying would distract me from pronouncing it correctly, so I hadn’t paid it much mind. I didn’t really understand what I’d said until I heard Ellery read out the English version, and I was struck very strongly by the thought that two years ago I had no thought of being anywhere but Dublin, and now I was speaking a Jewish blessing in German in a wedding ceremony in Las Vegas. Life is a strange journey.

I got a Green Card in the lottery, moved into Lisa’s old room in Greenpoint thanks to an ad on Craigslist. Julian, her fiancee, didn’t have internet access in their new apartment, and my modem was volunteered. Julian came over a few times – we were both new, unemployed immigrants, and we started hanging out. And here I am a year later, in Vegas, speaking German. Thank you, Julian, for befriending me, and doing me the honour of allowing me to part of your wedding. And introducing me to your hot co-workers. And you too, Lisa – you also have many hot friends.

And so we ate, drank, listened to speeches, and danced, danced, danced. Eventually, the party moved back to the hotel, and Lisa’s and Julian’s suite. Big room. More drink. Bed eventually. It was an amazing day, and even though I had come out maybe losing more at the casino than I was entirely comfortable with, I had no regrets. A treasured memory.

The next morning there was a wedding buffet brunch, so we all came together again, and said goodbye. David and Marcie were going to go and have a look at a few more casinos, so I said I’d go too. We went to the Bellagio, and I decided that since I’d been good on Sunday I could allow myself to lose another fifty dollars – what the hell. Note that I didn’t say I could afford to lose another fifty dollars – hell, I couldn’t afford to lose the $285 odd I’d already seen vanish down the drain. Come to that, I couldn’t afford to go to Vegas – I couldn’t even afford to move to New York, and that’s something about which I have no regrets. I have a Shakespeare quote that I like to take out of context to justify any random, irrational actions I feel like taking. It’s from King Lear, Act II, Scene IV:

O! Reason not the need!

So I gambled again, in the Bellagio. Craps, obviously. I put down my fifty dollars, got my ten $5 chips, with pictures of Celine Dion on them. $10 minimum bet. Marcie didn’t want to gamble, but myself and David asked the stickman if she could roll anyway, so she did. And I won. The fifty dollars turned into one hundred and twenty. We went to Caesar’s Palace. Marcie rolled. I won again. The same fifty, but this time it became one eighty. We went to the Flamingo. Marcie rolled again…

In short, I ended up only about $15 down on the weekend, which wouldn’t even have paid for the free drinks I’d been given at the table. But poor Marcie – whenever David and myself gave her some chips out of gratitude to bet with, she invariably lost them instantly. She seemed to enjoy herself anyway. I headed to the airport with a smile on my face.

As weekends go, this was definitely one of the better ones.