The sun broke over the horizon just as the 737's wheels hit the runway at McCarran. It had been over a year since I was here last, and it's one of the few places other than home that I miss when I'm not there. I had really come to love this town, and as much work as the trade shows were, it never really felt like work when it was in Vegas. Plus, there was a big NHRA drag racing event out at the speedway...and I was arriving Halloween morning...
Surreal. I remember that not too long I'd get this sick feeling just seeing those signs along the highway coming into town, warning potential marijuana users of the draconian punishments they'd face for the tiniest infraction. Now there's signs in the terminal letting you know where you can pick up your weed cards. It was one of those signs I was looking at when I spotted her.
Fucking stunning. Tall, a perfect, modern Betty Page, even though she was just dressed in jeans and a jacket. I tried to keep an eye on her as the nice old couple I was chatting with on the plane asked if I'd like to share a cab up to Fremont Street. I'd made arrangements to have my rental car waiting at the hotel, so I was up for the offer...but in the second I'd glanced away the black haired Goddess had vanished.
I had a list a mile long of the things I had to do, but when those things are to be done in Vegas, priorities change quickly. I checked into The Four Queens, and headed across the casino to the elevator to my room. I really started to feel my lack of sleep, and foregoing the drag races that day for a few hours of shuteye started to make a lot of sense. I stared out at the flashing lights of the casino as the elevator doors began to close...and there she was.
I could have bumped the door open and headed back out there...like a tourist with all my baggage and crap, but the instant I spotted her, I knew she was probably staying on Fremont, if not The Four Queens. I headed upstairs. A couple of guys in the elevator were talking about how fast the cars were running out at the track, records were being shattered and the competition was fierce. As much as it appealed to me, I suspected that Halloween on Fremont would the real entertainment...
I wound up sleeping the entire day, and came down around nine thirty that evening, refreshed, anxious, strangely energized...the crowd already building as the spectacle began to unfold...wild costumes, incredible women, music...fucking insanity. I thought about that woman...and realized the best way to spot her if she was anywhere was to just take it all in...
I can't imagine not staying on Fremont Street when in Vegas. The first few times I visited, I wound up on the Strip, and it was everything I hate..fake everything, in vulgar, pointless excess. Fremont, it feels like home somehow, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that when I was a kid I was morbidly obsessed with nuclear weapons, and had {among many others}, a photo on the wall of my room of Fremont street with a mushroom cloud off in the distance. Somehow, that image became an inviolable reality...unfakeable as Sinatra.
The crowd thickened, the costumes and characters becoming more outrageous to the point where the onlookers became the obvious...lots of folks here for the drags, wearing their race fan clothes, the tribes wearing colors supporting their favorite teams and drivers...Vegas..races...out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the best costume I've seen all night; a spot on Hunter S. Thompson, aviators, cheap Las Vegas see-thru green visor, his mannerisms perfect, garishly incongruous with the small group of identically dressed race fans who seem to be his compadres...I walk by him and give him the big thumbs up, just as the black haired Goddess comes out of nowhere and takes his arm. Across the airport terminal, or the casino, she was gorgeous. Face to face, literally breathtaking...Hunter S. Thompson, you lucky fuck...still getting laid from beyond the grave.
The mass swirled, more than thirty thousand people crammed down on the street. The crowd became prettier as the night progressed, hipsters, off duty showgirls and working girls replacing tired race fans, visitors staying on the strip cabbing it down to Fremont once word spread of the chaos in old Vegas. A killer Marilyn Monroe flashes by...half baked Japanese Elvis...then another...I spot Hunter S. and Betty Bombshell through the crowds...she does not seem to be shy about being touched by strangers...or flashing a pair of amazing fucking tits to other Betties...I get close to her, turn to look at an evil mechanical carnivore, the crowd churns around me...I can smell her, but she's vaporized...it's getting late, and I know I have not seen the last of her...best head back towards the hotel..
I always forget about the bells, not that they bother me. Actually, I find the sound of church bells at the core of Vegas in the morning proper and civilized. Not in the sense of God calling to sinners, or where the hell are you going to go when you've blown every dime, but simply as a public temporal reminder. Wake the fuck up. Get on with your day.
In my opinion,the best restaurant in the world is at Number One Fremont Street. Du-Par's is so good that I have stood up rich, important customers who wanted to go for overpriced sushi or to Gordon Ramsey's so I could go to Du-Par's and have the chicken pot pie. Or, the corned beef hash. Which is exactly what I planned on ordering for breakfast, along with a slice of peach pie. This was something on the Vegas priority list not to be meddled with.
"Good Morning, honey, jus' fo' one?"
"Yeah..."
"'ju OK at the lunch counter?"
"That would be great, thanks."
"OK, follow me...poor baby, gonna have to have breakfast sitting next to a PRETTY lady..."
Fuck Me. There's Betty. T-shirt, jeans, no makeup...and even more devastating unadorned. I try to keep my cool, reminding myself to not think about the fact that I'd gotten myself off in the shower thinking about her last night, and again this morning when intellectualizing church bells did nothing to relieve the raging fucking hardon I woke up with...
Her food arrived as I sat down, giving me a chance to take a deep breath and take stock of this insane adolescent rush...
"Wow...Eggs Benedict.. that looks incredible..and I thought I knew coming in here what I was going to order..."
