My first Vegas trip

In the summer after my junior year, I was working as a temp in a law firm. Most people had gone about getting important internships to set them up with a job after college, while I sat in a dorm room playing video games and ordering egg-based pizzas. By the time May rolled around, I realized that I couldn’t stay at school for the next 3 months and would have to find something to occupy my time. I ended up applying at a temp agency and getting placed in the mailroom of a Fox/Rothschild firm. I could not have hated the job more. The people, the commute, the hours, the pay, the boss, and the busy work. You know the guy in the mailroom who copies everyone’s files, fetches them notepads, and stands in line at court to get documents on record? I was that guy’s bitch. The only redeeming feature of the position was the pizza hut next door whose carryout buffet was abused to the tune of 2.79 every day.

After working there for about 2 months, I was on edge. All these fat cat lawyers fucking walked around like they owned the place. The only people who didn’t treat me like shit were my direct superior in the mail room, the summer intern, a couple of the secretaries and the one lawyer in the firm who hadn’t sold his soul. Most of the time they didn’t have shit for me to do, but rather than let me go on the internet or listen to the radio, they wanted me to just sit there and be ready when someone came a callin. Eventually, they allowed me to bring in a book to read.

Of all the pretentious bastards working in that building, by far the worst was Bill Renz. That old fat fuck was one of the head guys, and he didn’t even talk to any of his underlings. If I bet him a jelly donut he couldn’t tell me what my name was, he would probably not even be willing to guess, but instead demand that I drive across town to get him half a dozen such donuts and be back within the hour. He wouldn’t even look at me when we crossed in the halls, other people would give an obligatory nod or hello, his shit would stare straight ahead like he was mounted on a horse in a jousting contest. God damn, did I hate that man.

So one day, I’m sitting in the lunch room during my unpaid lunch hour and I’m halfway through my second slice of pizza when Renz comes bounding through the break room door, angrily searching for something. He looks up and sees me, “Hey, where is that Blundetti file?” he yells. My job had nothing to do with managing his fucking files, so I just replied simply “I don’t know”. He angrily filtered through the cabinets throwing folders in all directions, and turned as if to say “Aren’t you going to help me?” I picked up my slice of pizza, took a gigantic bite, and just stared right at him. I knew shit wasn’t going to stand for it, but I was on my fucking lunch break. He stormed out of the room, and the next day I was called into the office of one of the other lawyers.

The guy was a fairly nice guy compared to the rest of them, but he had clearly been told to come down hard on me by Renz. At this point I didn’t give a fuck about the job, so I acted like a complete jackass during the interrogation. When asked why I didn’t help Renz out, my reply was along the lines of “You weren’t there, you don’t know how good the pepperoni was that day. It was grilled just enough so that the middle was still soft but the ends were curling up and getting crunchy. I just couldn’t put it down.” The guy had no idea what to say, he followed up by saying that he had noticed me seeming angry with my job and that I was giving people attitude. I continued to make jokes out of all his questions and generally tell him that I was happy to do what I had been doing, but that they better learn to fear and respect my lunch break. Eventually we broke the meeting, and I figured nothing had changed.

Two days later on Friday, I went to call in to my temp service to let them know I would be going to Vegas in a few weeks, and that they would need to replace me. The lady on the other end said that wouldn’t be a problem because the position had actually been rescinded or some other such verbiage which essentially meant I had been fired but they weren’t going to tell me until the weekend. If I could have found Renz, I would have gone off on him in front of everyone and told him what an asshole we all thought he was, but he was in court that day, the lucky fuck. Instead, I just went home and went back to caddying on the weekends while waiting for my Vegas trip.

I had specifically avoided going to the state of Nevada until my 21st birthday which hit later that month. My buddy Chris was celebrating his the following week so he had invited me to come out to Vegas and stay at his parents timeshare to celebrate the occasion. Originally, I was just going to be out there for a long weekend, but after I got fired I decided to roll out to San Jose two weeks early and crash in his apartment there enjoying the California scenery. I went there the weekend after my 21st birthday, and I spent a majority of my time either drunk on his couch or demanding to be driven to Bay 101, the local poker hall, often both. I only knew of poker what I had learned from watching rounders, but the low limit games were pretty soft there, so I ended up staying around even on the week. Time came for us to fly out to Vegas and meet up with Chris’s friends from high school as well as one of our mutual friends from college, the iron foot.

Chris and I flew in together and met up with his parents as soon as we got there. We all headed to the Fairfield, or whatever the place was called, and got ready to go out to dinner. One of Chris’s high school friends joined us, I was told to call him “en selmo”. He looked a lot like the rapper Fat Joe would if you shrunk him to the height of five four. He talked in this giggly high-pitched tone, and was constantly throwing out one liners with a low hit percentage. That said, he was a big pot head, and he busted out an ounce of incredible shit he had wrapped inside of a dirty sock and then shoved in the bottom of a cheese-its box before takeoff. After a quick session, his one liners suddenly became infinitely funnier.

We ended up eating the fire pit Brazilian steakhouse at the Rum Jungle, and I could not recommend it more highly. They brought course after course of meat served from long swords, and me and en selmo tore through the shit despite having doubled down on baskets of cheese bread as the meal began. We then headed off to see the blue man group which was equally spectacular. All in all, it was a real good night highlighted by the fact that I had come up about 200 dollars when I snuck in my black jack fix between dinner and the show.

We headed back to our suite and welcomed in a couple more of Chris’s friends from California as well as the iron foot. I hadn’t seen him since our confrontation in a Washington DC Days Inn, and there was an immediate animosity which surfaced alongside of a desire to retake my spot atop the balance of power. He immediately made friends with En Selmo, and the three of us went about smoking ourselves stupid and gambling for the rest of the night while the other guys hit a club we didn’t want to pay to go to.

By the end of the night, the iron foot revealed to me that he had smuggled 4 tabs of acid in with him and believed that we should go toe to toe again. I knew it was a terrible idea, particularly because of how nice Chris’s parents had been and how rude it would have been to wage war in the accommodations they provided. That said, I was pretty sure I was going to give in when it came time the following evening. We passed out and woke up in time for lunch the next morning, where everyone recounted their tales of the previous nights debauchery.

As we shot the shit back and forth, the iron foot repeatedly elbowed me in the ribs to ask “In or out dude, in or fucking out?” Eventually, I got so sick of his prodding that I told him I wouldn’t touch the shit if he asked me one more time. He responded, “That’s cool dude, I can respect that. I just need to know one thing. Are you fucking in, or is your shit out?” When I told him there was no fucking way I would be in now, he said fine, marched up to the room and took all four tabs himself. I was too busy smoking with En Selmo to notice he had done the shit. When we went to leave the room for the casino, I noticed En Selmo’s stack of chips on the counter, and picked it up to see how much he had won the previous night. En Selmo moved with the quickness of a jungle cat despite his burgeoning exterior, he threw me in a vicious headlock and demanded that I put the chips down. When I did as told he broke the headlock, and said “Don’t fuck with my money”. The iron foot sat in the corner laughing maniacally for about 10 minutes until he lost his train of thought, then another 10 minutes when he remembered about En Selmo throwing me in a headlock.

Initially, he didn’t tell me that he had dropped the acid, but about half an hour after we left the hotel for the mirage, it was clear he was on more than pot. When I asked what the fuck was up with him, he told me “I took them down dude, all of them.” I told Chris about it, and he was furious, he didn’t even like pot and he didn’t want anything to do with that shit so I knew I was relegated to the iron foot’s babysitter for the next 6 hours. After playing some break-even dice with Chris’s crew, I told the iron foot that I wanted to go play some poker, still thirst from my stints at Bay 101. The iron foot immediately claimed that he was going to take me down, and demanded that we sit at the same table. The floor man was able to comply, and the two of us took our places at the opposite ends of a 3/6 table with 100 dollar each.

After a feeling out period, where the table realized we were well out classed, the iron foot and I started going toe to toe on every hand. We would raise back and forth with absolutely nothing and the other players would usually fold, biding their time. There was a cowboy looking guy we nicknamed mullet man sitting between us who was really enjoying the iron foots antics. The iron foot was out of his mind, calling everyone at the table son, even the old women. “My shit is about to shine, son.” “You drinking a Shirley temple over there, son?” “Pair of sixes in your eye, son.” We had worked our way down to about 50 dollars each after a half hour of sitting there. I got a big hand like A-J and bet it the whole way, hitting my jack on the flop. The iron foot called the whole time, but when I turned over my pair of jacks at the end, he said “Fuck” and mucked his cards face up in the middle. As the dealer was pushing me a sizable pot mullet man stopped her. He slammed his fist on the table with outstretched index and middle finger aligned in perfect harmony pointing at the iron foots cards, “He’s got a straight” he said. Followed by the most exaggerated “sooooooooooooooooooooooooon” ever, revealing that the iron foot had, in fact, made a gut shot straight to go with his pair of sevens on the river. The iron foot gleefully mimicked the two-finger point while pounding on the table as the pot was pushed from me to him.

He went on to raise every single time the betting was to him for the next 10 hands and win every single one. People folded down to him maybe 3 of the ten times, but every other one he showed some ridiculous two pair or a third 8 to go with the two on the board. In the process, I busted out and people at the table were starting to get agitated with his luck. He was up a few hundred and I told him we should get up and head back realizing that his head full of acid was destined to lose all that money. The iron foot leaned away from the table, pretending to be secretive but knowing full well that everyone could hear him, “Dude, I’ve got these guys fucking cased, I’m gonna take them for all they’re worth.” When I again told him we should go, people at the table spoke up for him to stay, putting in that with all his money he could just catch a cab when he needed to. I finally convinced him to get up by telling him that we should head back to the suite to smoke a bowl, which did not make the people who had gotten their money taken at the table happy.

We cashed out his chips, and the iron foot smacked me in the face with the fistful of bills. He was still angry for not being allowed to “finish those sittin ducks off”, so he marched at a staggering pace towards the elevators so we could get up to the room and smoke. Perhaps it was the rush from winning, or perhaps it was the rush of chemicals to his frontal lobe, whatever the case, he completely ignored the fact that we were not even staying at this casino. When he got into the elevator he pushed a random hotel floor and then spaced out standing in the direct middle of the elevator. I informed him that we had no reason to be in the elevator which made him angrily question “then where the fuck is the weed?” Somehow I was able to make him grasp that we had to go get a taxicab, so he pushed the button to go back down to the bottom floor.

Midway through our decent, the doors opened on an intermediary floor and two elderly couples got in. I was leaning against the railing on the right hand side of the elevator, but the iron foot was standing in the dead middle, and did not move at all to compensate for the presence of our guests. They maneuvered their way around him to the left side of the elevator, and though they thought it was strange, they went back to talking amongst themselves. After they had passed by him, the iron foot turned and gave me a look that was at the same time both fearful and mischievous. He then closed his eyes and started concentrating real hard on something. His face began to grow red and he made audible groans of pain until he released one of the loudest and most dominant farts ever produced. He then turned to Senior Citizen number 3 and with a straight face simply asked him, “What the fuck dude?” as though he had been the one who was currently assaulting our nasal passages.

Those people probably hadn’t moved as fast in 30 years as they did getting out of the elevator when it hit the ground floor. I collapsed in the corner laughing while the iron foot waved goodbye to them. We rode the same elevator up and down for about half an hour as he accosted each new patron in a different manner. Eventually we decided to achieve our original goal and went back to the hotel to smoke. Now he wanted nothing more than to gamble again. Rather than head back to the strip we decided to go to a smaller off strip casino aptly named “Terrible’s” which my new apartment is actually next door to. We sat down at a blackjack table and played with his winnings which just kept piling up. We each won about two hundred dollars and when we went to leave we hit the pit boss up for a buffet. The iron foot demanded that we utilize our comps immediately so we headed up the stairs to the spread.

At most, there were about 20 items on the buffet menu. Many of them would have been better produced out of a microwave, but we were stoned enough to give it a go. We both piled a sampling of all the items onto our plates so that we could try them out. The iron foot got back to the table and immediately tried the mac and cheese. Upon the first taste, he declared it the best mac and cheese he had ever eaten and threw the rest of his plate away in disgust, deciding that instead of trying other items he should concentrate on his bread and butter. He then went back to the hot trays and made a plate so full of only mac and cheese that each step he took from buffet to table, he dripped copious amounts of noodles and sauce onto the poorly carpeted floors. He destroyed the entire plate then started complaining of stomach pains. We went back to the room so he could lie down, each richer for the terribles experience.

We ended up meeting en selmo, smoking with him, then riding out the rest of the night walking around seeing the different sites on the strip. I flew home the following day with the best possible impression of the city I always knew I was destined to destroy. I was up money, had an incredible adventure, and had forgotten all about that fat fuck lawyer who started the whole ball rolling.

My first Vegas trip

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