April 8
I hennaed my hair yesterday. The stuff looked like mountains of goose shit and did not do one single thing to my hair other than make it smell like moldy grass. From this point forward, I'll stick to dye, thanks.
The Mormon Guy was JOSEPH Smith. John Smith, I Made Up:
So, when I ended the story on Friday, I'd begged my mother to leave Utah and go back to Vegas. It didn't take MUCH begging, really, so we did our laundry and hit the open road without saying goodbye to the Corn People. The trip was unremarkable, but pulling into Vegas for the first time was incredible. It was Las Vegas, and I was 17.
My mother and I find a motel in the not so luxurious downtown area, about a block or two away from the Four Roses Hotel and directly across the street from a prison. A prison! See? Vegas is already VASTLY more entertaining than Utah, and we've only been there for 10 minutes! A prison! We throw our things down on the bed, and decide that we need to get in touch with the family. There's a payphone in front of the motel and we ring up my grandparents. As she answers and I scream "GUESS WHERE WE ARE?!!?!" Someone in the prison yells "LET'S HAVE SEX!!!!!!" out the window. I assumed he were talking to us, but now, looking back on it, he may well have been talking to another inmate. I lowered my voice. My grandmother, I remember, laughed and gave me advice which was to be crucial: "Keep an eye on your mother!"
Our first casino, no one proofed me, but I stayed away from the machines. My mother THREW 20 dollars at me, a weird gleam in her eye, said "Meet me back here in FOUR HOURS and DON'T TALK TO ANYONE!" --and just dissapeared. Literally. I blinked, and she was GONE. I decided that my first order of business would be the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum. Crushed heads, people impaled on poles, your standard fare. It wasted at least an hour.
The next 2 hours, I wandered around the streets of downtown Las Vegas alone. I went into a lot of casinos. I didn't gamble, but I remember not being proofed anywhere. I did some shopping (but with 15 dollars, not a lot of buying). I bought a beverage. I sweat a lot. Finally, I realized that I'd had enough and went to look for my mother. I found her in the same casino as I left her, clutching a bucket of quarters and chainsmoking. She looked up at me: "We need to go to American Express". "Um, why?" "I spent all our money". I take the bucket of quarters from her and we walk to the nearest bank.
That's right. My mom gambled and lost all of our money in three hours. Heh. At American Express, she restocks on cash, so that we've got money to pay for our palatial room and food.
The rest of the time in Vegas was spent walking and driving from Casino to T shirt store. Elvis wedding chapel to nudie book store. We went to the Las Vegas Museum of Natural History, where all of the dinosaurs were anamotronic, all the pre-historic birds flapped and squalked, all of the information talked back to us, rather than having us read. Wherever we went, however, that was not a casino, I sensed a certain itch in my mom. When I asked if we could eat, she'd answer "I'll bet we can eat in a casino buffet!" When I said I wanted to shop "I'll bet you can buy good stuff at a CASINO!"
We wound up at Circus Circus. In all the years leading up to me being in Las Vegas, Angelo and Eleanor were frequent visitors--twice, sometimes three or even four times a year. They'd show me photographs of themselves and some similarly gussied up friends in front of these places. Back when they went, people dressed to go to casinos. They wore heels and gowns, they fluffed their hair and drank cool coctails. Imagine, then, my surprise and confusion to see that these places, for the most part, were DIVES. Certainly, Circus Circus and all of the out of downtown hotels were a little bit fancier than the ones near the area of our beautiful motel, but still. Legal prostitution? I had no idea.
The prostitution thing was strange. I remember that the women, the dancers and strippers weren't so much out on the street. If you wanted some hot woman action, there were these booklets on the streets. You'd leaf through them, and find the woman you wanted and call her up. The prostitutes we saw actually hustling out on the street were primarily male, and the concept was so foreign to me that my mother had to explain what they were up to, and even so, I didn't really believe her until I saw one cute young thing get into a car. Ugh, I think I was scarred from the experience.
The next thing we did, perhaps, was not acceptable for a 17 year old lass, but I begged and pleaded and whined. I implored and insisted that it would be an experience I ought NOT MISS, EVER, because missing it would STUNT MY GROWTH. Finally, after much, much, trepidation, my mother forked over the money to go see "Nudes on Ice". That's right! NUDES ON ICE!!! I can not imagine why I was so bent about going to see it. I have no feelings one way or another towards boobs, other than my own pair, but by god, I wanted to see Nude people skating around!
And so we did. At about 11:30, the show began. It is truly sad, how the passing of time blurs memory, but I recall their being different sets of women. Some, the actual GOOD skaters, who did not bare their boobs, and some, the Nudes promised, who did. They were not good skaters. They kind of stumbled off to a corner where they stood, in all their titular beauty. There were several lame stories being told, the one I remember the most vividly was loosely based on Dr. Zhivago, if Dr. Zhivago had been written to include ALL NUDE SHOWGIRLS! It was touching. Then, some unfunny comedian came out and regaled us with jokes about gay people, wife beating and hookers. Man, that was a hoot. There are several more hooter shaking numbers, all of which are a blur. Not that the bosoms were not lovely, because, oh, they were. Not that my mother and I didn't laugh our ASSES off, because we definitely did.
The closing of the show was heart stopping. I may be wrong, but I seem to think it was some "Let Me Entertain You/Crappy Show Tune Medley". A giant sign lowered over the stage, and everyone filed out, in near silence. Aroused speechless? Holding back guffaws? A little of both sprinkled the audience. My mother and I got outside (The Mirage? I think that's where it was) and paused. "Someday, Dana, this will seem ever funnier than it is right now. Let's go gamble" and so we did.
The rest of the trip was a blur. I finally got booted out of a casino, without my mother knowing it, so was forced to wait in the lobby for what seemed like an eternity, watching people. The only real gambling I did was in the airport. We saw a famous person! Well, a semi-famous person. Then, we saw another famous person! (again, at best a semi-famous person) My mother lost MORE money. I won a little.
What I'm leaving out of this part of the trip is how surreal Las Vegas was. Again, this is years before the really fancy hotels started springing up. Vegas was past it's Sintra-Rat Pack prime and not quite as clean as it was. It was gritty and dirty and hookerful and there were pawnshops and naked girl playing cards. Remember that U2 video? The one for Desire, where they're driving around in the car? We were there. There exists, somewhere, a photograph of me, burned blue purple fromthe Utah sun, under all of those lights, grinning like a fool, wearing suede moccasins I'd bought for 5 dollars at a pawn shop. Someone pawned their shoes!
The lights make it beautiful. They are exactly why no other gambling place will ever compare, not Atlantic City and certainly not the Indian Casinos in Connecticut. They obliterate the filth and the crime going on in the darkened alleys. They shine so brightly, they drown out the men yelling obscene things from the prison. When I look back on the trip, even now, they are what I remember. When I see Las Vegas on television or in the movies now, it's utterly foreign. It's glossy, it's made for kids, and I'm happy to say that I went and experienced it long before it became PG.