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Photos: Vegas, pallies (Day 3, Part 1: Atomic Liquors)
I put off the final (and most eventful!) part of my Vegas adventure--and thus derailed my entire "Road Trippin'" series--because of two reasons.
1.) I wanted to actually do a vlog for one of the stories, but every attempt was just too messy and tense. I really needed someone else there to whom I could actually be telling the story, but that never happened.
And 2.) because what happened was still too emotionally raw. It still is, a bit.
That's not to scare any of you off. Trust me, this was a day of extremes, and the highlights were definitely special indeed. In fact, I'm gonna split it off into those two parts. So finally, after about ten months of procrastination, here's part one of my final day in Vegas:
The problem with Route 66 (or at least, starting there for an epic cross-country road trip) is that it's in no way indicative of what I'd see over the vast majority of this journey. The canyons and cliffs, the mountains and plains, the long stretches of desolate nothing and the forests packed with sky-scraping everything... starting with 66 was like having Johnny Cash as the opening act for a symphony. Yes, they're both music, just as yes, this is all America, but they scarcely seem to go together.
Because Route 66 is one of those avatars of the American Dream, but unlike a dream, it exists--however deteriorated--in reality. And yet, I have to figure that even in its heyday, Route 66 was a parody of Americana, as if someone who only heard stories about the US decided to use those as the basis for a new theme park. Americaland: a blatantly contrived celebration of kitsch and color, of zazz, pizazz, razzmatazz, and all that jazz. Today, that park is dilapidated, the rides rusted and hazardous, the neon signs broken or flickering. As the years go by, more and more of the old carnies simply give up, move on, or die off.
Now 66 is a ghost, but it's the ghost of an America that never existed. And it haunted me for the rest of the trip. There was only so much of the natural that I could take before it became overwhelming, alienating, or even outright bo-ring. I missed everything I'd seen that first week. I missed the faded colors and peeling signs. I missed the "World's Best _________" and the "World's Biggest _________," even if they seemed better in theory. I missed the ghost of dreams.
But then there was Vegas.
Not the Vegas that most people think about when they think of Vegas. I'm talking off the Strip we know today, and on the original Strip. The old Vegas, the Vegas that used to be of the tourists, now catering to the residents and working folk both low and... well, mid-level. I think it's a safe bet that the only high people out here are the ones on something.
It was as if someone took all of Route 66 and boiled it down the crack form. This wasn't a ghost, but more like a zombie, an undead creature falling apart and rotting before your eyes, yet hanging on by unnatural means beyond anyone's understanding.
Even the people shouldn't exist. It's like they walked out of Warren Ellis' TRANSMETROPOLITAN, spat out of the bitter imagination of a drunken cynic. The people of Vegas were characters of pure living satire.
I wish I had the nerve to photograph them, those wonderful weirdos and fabulous freaks. But regret is apparently the biggest theme of this trip. Regret that I didn't take enough photos, notes, or notice at the indescribable experiences all around me. But then, that's always been my problem. I live too much in my own head. And while I didn't want to get out, I had to try and actually see the world around me. But before I could take stock of the little things, I needed to dive into something big. I needed a feast of experience.
And I knew how to get it. First figuratively, then literally. I'll get to the "literally" in Part 2.
I already mentioned this in an earlier entry, but in case you missed it, my Virgil in this city was a handbook called THE UNDERGROUND GUIDE TO LAS VEGAS. Among the recommended bars in the guide, the editor included a place notable for being host to "the scariest dive bar experience I've had in Vegas," adding that going to such an establishment would earn one their "Tom Waits/Charles Bukowski Citation for Daring While in the Pursuit of Drunkenness."
They warn, "For the adventurous only. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid." And as a PS, they add that this is the kind of place where prostitutes will blow you in the supply room.
Really, they already had me "Tom Waits."
Pre-dating a Vegas where giant hotels blocked off the endless view of desert on all sides, Atomic Liquors is so called because the clientele could see mushroom clouds blooming in the distance from the nuclear testing range.
It serves a regular clientele of blue collar workers since it's about three blocks from where the tourists generally dare not venture any further. As such, I had choose between parking in the lot behind, or leaving the car inside the relative safety of a casino garage and getting there on foot.
I chose the latter, but I was smart enough to not take my large camera. Unlike Juarez, where I stood out like a sore, red-scarfed, bowler-hatted, camera-toting Yankee thumb, I took dubious comfort that I could blend in with the Vegas crowds.
It's the kind of place where you have to be buzzed in at the bartender's discretion. From the look of the people who got in, I was curious to know what kind of people were refused entry. The bartender alone looked like Kris Kristopherson on a meth bender. He didn't have anything on tap, but they had dollar cans of ice-cold Busch beer. I only ordered one, but somehow, I ended up drinking three.
I wasn't really sure what I was going to do here, short of get lightly toasted before seeing a Rat Pack tribute show. But since I am shy and passive by nature, I hoped that the story would come to me. Which is a terrible and ineffectual method in pretty much every place on Earth.
"Ah'm Billy Bob. Ah'm from HhhhhHOUston! What's your name?"
Every place but a place like Atomic Liquors.
"I'm John."
"John!" he exclaimed, taking my hand. He was a middle-aged man with a reluctant chin and a pot belly jutting from an otherwise-lanky frame. "'S a pleasure to meet yew! Ah'm Billy Bob. I'm from HhhhhHOUston."
To emphasize this point, he directs my attention to his one-size-too-small football T-shirt. What struck me most was not his intended point, but rather the fact that it was a shirt for the Dallas Cowboys.
"See this?" he beamed. "HhhhhHOUston!"
"I... see?"
"Now, now, now, where're yew from, John?"
"Uh, Washington DC."
"Well, welcome t'Las Vegas! Ah'm sorta the welcoming committee here, wanna make evrrybuddy feel welcome."
"Well, I'm, uh, definitely feeling it!"
"Yew likin' Vegas so far?"
"It's... an experience, I'll give it that!"
At that, he seemed knocked off his feet for a second, as if swooning, then swung back around, bringing his open palm within three inches of my face.
"MAH MAN!" he said.
He froze in that position for a few seconds, until I realized I was actually leaving him hanging. I gave him five, and Billy Bob reanimated.
"Christ, Ah love it here. AH LUUUUUUVVEGAS!" he declared to the indifferent barflies, who were clearly used to this. "Ah mean, lemme ask yew somethin', John... how how how old how old d'yew think I am?"
"Ah, er, about--"
"FIFTY-THREE! Ah'm... fifty-three years OLD. Ah just got married, y'know."
"Con... grats?"
"An' mah wife--thankew, sir--mah wife, she's twenty-one. FUCK, AH LUVVEGAS. Ah mean, where else can a fifty-three-year old MAN marry a twenty-one-year-old GIRL???"
After a few seconds silence, I realized he wasn't asking rhetorically. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was probably legal pretty much everywhere.
"Yeah, Vegas is, uh, damn awesome! Go... you?"
"John, I wanna ask, how old are yew?"
"Uh, twenty-five."
He takes off his ball cap to run a hand along his sparse, shaved scalp.
"An' how old how old how old were yew when yew were okay with bein' bald?"
"Um... well, I'm not really bald yet, just thinning," I say, refraining from mentioning how my Mom got me using Rogaine (she uses the men's formula, and it saved her hair) but it's a losing battle. She's still seriously trying to get me to get a hair transplant. She thinks it's important. And while I'm not sure how important I think it is, the nature of Billy Bob's question led me to respond, "I'm not gonna let it go without a fight!"
"MAH MAN!" *PALM*
I followed through a bit faster this time.
"See these guys over here?" Billy Bob asks, directing my attention to two guys playing pool. "These're my best friends in the whole world, I luvvim to death."
One of them has a leathery face just on the other side of handsome, sporting slicked-back hair and a matching goatee. He wore the wrong kind of stylish suit, with iPod headphones in his ears. The other is your stereotypical biker: bandanna, chaps, denim vest and jeans, huge gut, white beard, bald eagle on a black T-shirt, etc. It's this one that Billy Bob waves over to the bar for introductions.
"John," Billy Bob said, slurring the next three worlds into one, "ThissisSnake."
I'm actually making that up, because I don't remember what his name was. When I was telling the story to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fiveseconddelay, he suggested that I call him Snake. "Not because you couldn't think of a better name, Heffie," he said, "but because he couldn't."
"Snake here," Billy Bob declared proudly, "is a VietNAM veteran."
"Oh!" I remarked in deference. "It's a pleasure, sir."
"Sean?" Snake asked, blinking. He seemed lost in a fog.
"Er, no, it's John."
Billy Bob put his arm around the much larger man, and said, "We're grew up an hour away from each other an' never knew it, innat wild? He's from Galveston. Ah'm from HhhhhHOUston."
Frowning like a punchy ex-champ, Snake corrected him, "No, no, you're from Houston, I'm from Galveston."
Billy Bob facepalmed a bit harder than was necessary and cursed himself, "Shit, yeah, yeah, thass right."
Snake nodded distantly and wandered back to the pool table, where the leathery man waited on a stool. Billy Bob said, "Yessir, those're my best friends. Ah luvvim to death." And after watching Snake play resume the game, Billy Bob added, "Next game, Ah'm gonna kick their fuckin' asses. You wanna play?"
"Nah, I'm cool just watching."
"Ah, c'mon, c'mon, it'd be fun."
"Nah thanks, I'm cool."
"Okay, okay," he said, crestfallen. Then reinvigorated with an idea, he asked, "Well, hey, lemme ask yew this, then: d'yew know where I can score some drugs?"
Before I can answer, Kris Kristopherson On A Meth Bender grumbled, "Billy Bob." For a second, I almost expect him to say, "Leave the kid be," but instead, he arrives holding an entire bushel of Busch, six cans, which he places before Billy Bob.
The man from HhhhhHOUston looks at Kris, then at me as if walking into a surprise party.
"John, did yew buy these???"
For a split-second, I wonder what drunken accolades I'd have been met with if I said yes.
"No, not me."
"Well here," he hands me a can, with the rest nestled in his arm like a baby, "have one anyway!"
That's can # 2.
Billy Bob then introduces me to the leathery man, still sitting there on the stool in the corner.
"John, thissisVito. Vito, John."
I smile and wave. Vito, hunched over his pool cue, pushes past the the dourness and gives me a wan smile and thumbs-up.
Billy Bob takes over in the game against Snake, with Vito and I as the silent spectators. I start to think maybe I'd have fared better against Billy Bob and Snake than I thought. Every time Billy Bob misses, he grabs the table by both hands, holding on as he throws his body backward in an angushed, "AWWWWW!" And yet, for all his histrionics, he wasn't doing that badly. He was winning.
"AWWWWW!"
Mostly.
Vito snorted, shaking his head as he gave a humorless smile in resignation. Then he muttered something. Sounded like "Blocksaballs."
I asked, "What's that?"
Vito pulled away from his thoughts, realizing he was heard thinking aloud. Ruefully, he said, "Snake. Look how he does it. He plays up the part, acting slow, acting dumb. He lets you think you're winning for awhile. Lets you get cocky. All so you don't see what he's doing. You think he keeps missing the pockets, but he's not missing. He's blocking the balls. He's putting the other balls in the way so you can't make a clean shot. So by the second half, he just takes over and picks 'em off one by one."
Vito shook his head, lost in the bitter wonder of the hustled.
"That's what he does, man. He blocks the balls."
"AWWWWW!"
Billy Bob gave up, throwing the cue onto the table with disgust. Snake seemed to display no signs of outward celebration. If he was playing up to character, he's a method actor.
"Vito's a cool guy, eh?" Billy Bob asks, then turns to a whisper, "Hey John. Hey. Hey. Hey. John, hey. Lissen. If yew need drugs, Vito's the guy to talk to. Ah can't. Ah'm cut off. But if yew wanna get 'em..."
He was distracted by the buzzing in his pocket. A pager. Whenever I heard theatre announcements requesting, "Please turn off all cell phones and pagers," I wondered, "Who the hell still uses pagers?" Now I had my answer.
"Shit, Ah gotta get outta here. I gotta pick my wife up from Drivin' School. You enjoy the rest of your stay, y'hear, John?"
"Same to you, Billy Bob," I said. As if attempting to show a traditional greeting to the natives, I raise my hand, palm outward. "... My man?"
Billy Bob doesn't give me give, but instead slaps the palm and seizes it, and our gripped hands waver between us. He smiled, and a weird gleam of lucidity pierced through the glaze.
"Mah man," he said.
I watched Billy Bob, Snake, and Vito all exit together, then split off their separate ways. It occurred to me that I really should have been going too, since the show was about to start in an hour. But I didn't want to risk running into Billy Bob again. You'd hate to ruin a goodbye like that.
So I sat at the bar, alone again, wondering how I was going to kill another fifteen minutes. And that's when Kris walked past me from behind the bar. He walked from my left to my right--passing by without stopping or even acknowledging my presence--as he popped open a new can of Busch and silently thunked it down, right before me.
In Part 2, I encounter the best Thai food outside of Thailand (not kidding), witness a Rat Pack tribute concert, and receive some devastating news that literally changes the course of my entire return home.
1.) I wanted to actually do a vlog for one of the stories, but every attempt was just too messy and tense. I really needed someone else there to whom I could actually be telling the story, but that never happened.
And 2.) because what happened was still too emotionally raw. It still is, a bit.
That's not to scare any of you off. Trust me, this was a day of extremes, and the highlights were definitely special indeed. In fact, I'm gonna split it off into those two parts. So finally, after about ten months of procrastination, here's part one of my final day in Vegas:
The problem with Route 66 (or at least, starting there for an epic cross-country road trip) is that it's in no way indicative of what I'd see over the vast majority of this journey. The canyons and cliffs, the mountains and plains, the long stretches of desolate nothing and the forests packed with sky-scraping everything... starting with 66 was like having Johnny Cash as the opening act for a symphony. Yes, they're both music, just as yes, this is all America, but they scarcely seem to go together.
Because Route 66 is one of those avatars of the American Dream, but unlike a dream, it exists--however deteriorated--in reality. And yet, I have to figure that even in its heyday, Route 66 was a parody of Americana, as if someone who only heard stories about the US decided to use those as the basis for a new theme park. Americaland: a blatantly contrived celebration of kitsch and color, of zazz, pizazz, razzmatazz, and all that jazz. Today, that park is dilapidated, the rides rusted and hazardous, the neon signs broken or flickering. As the years go by, more and more of the old carnies simply give up, move on, or die off.
Now 66 is a ghost, but it's the ghost of an America that never existed. And it haunted me for the rest of the trip. There was only so much of the natural that I could take before it became overwhelming, alienating, or even outright bo-ring. I missed everything I'd seen that first week. I missed the faded colors and peeling signs. I missed the "World's Best _________" and the "World's Biggest _________," even if they seemed better in theory. I missed the ghost of dreams.
But then there was Vegas.
Not the Vegas that most people think about when they think of Vegas. I'm talking off the Strip we know today, and on the original Strip. The old Vegas, the Vegas that used to be of the tourists, now catering to the residents and working folk both low and... well, mid-level. I think it's a safe bet that the only high people out here are the ones on something.
It was as if someone took all of Route 66 and boiled it down the crack form. This wasn't a ghost, but more like a zombie, an undead creature falling apart and rotting before your eyes, yet hanging on by unnatural means beyond anyone's understanding.
Even the people shouldn't exist. It's like they walked out of Warren Ellis' TRANSMETROPOLITAN, spat out of the bitter imagination of a drunken cynic. The people of Vegas were characters of pure living satire.
I wish I had the nerve to photograph them, those wonderful weirdos and fabulous freaks. But regret is apparently the biggest theme of this trip. Regret that I didn't take enough photos, notes, or notice at the indescribable experiences all around me. But then, that's always been my problem. I live too much in my own head. And while I didn't want to get out, I had to try and actually see the world around me. But before I could take stock of the little things, I needed to dive into something big. I needed a feast of experience.
And I knew how to get it. First figuratively, then literally. I'll get to the "literally" in Part 2.
I already mentioned this in an earlier entry, but in case you missed it, my Virgil in this city was a handbook called THE UNDERGROUND GUIDE TO LAS VEGAS. Among the recommended bars in the guide, the editor included a place notable for being host to "the scariest dive bar experience I've had in Vegas," adding that going to such an establishment would earn one their "Tom Waits/Charles Bukowski Citation for Daring While in the Pursuit of Drunkenness."
They warn, "For the adventurous only. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid." And as a PS, they add that this is the kind of place where prostitutes will blow you in the supply room.
Really, they already had me "Tom Waits."
Pre-dating a Vegas where giant hotels blocked off the endless view of desert on all sides, Atomic Liquors is so called because the clientele could see mushroom clouds blooming in the distance from the nuclear testing range.
It serves a regular clientele of blue collar workers since it's about three blocks from where the tourists generally dare not venture any further. As such, I had choose between parking in the lot behind, or leaving the car inside the relative safety of a casino garage and getting there on foot.
I chose the latter, but I was smart enough to not take my large camera. Unlike Juarez, where I stood out like a sore, red-scarfed, bowler-hatted, camera-toting Yankee thumb, I took dubious comfort that I could blend in with the Vegas crowds.
It's the kind of place where you have to be buzzed in at the bartender's discretion. From the look of the people who got in, I was curious to know what kind of people were refused entry. The bartender alone looked like Kris Kristopherson on a meth bender. He didn't have anything on tap, but they had dollar cans of ice-cold Busch beer. I only ordered one, but somehow, I ended up drinking three.
I wasn't really sure what I was going to do here, short of get lightly toasted before seeing a Rat Pack tribute show. But since I am shy and passive by nature, I hoped that the story would come to me. Which is a terrible and ineffectual method in pretty much every place on Earth.
"Ah'm Billy Bob. Ah'm from HhhhhHOUston! What's your name?"
Every place but a place like Atomic Liquors.
"I'm John."
"John!" he exclaimed, taking my hand. He was a middle-aged man with a reluctant chin and a pot belly jutting from an otherwise-lanky frame. "'S a pleasure to meet yew! Ah'm Billy Bob. I'm from HhhhhHOUston."
To emphasize this point, he directs my attention to his one-size-too-small football T-shirt. What struck me most was not his intended point, but rather the fact that it was a shirt for the Dallas Cowboys.
"See this?" he beamed. "HhhhhHOUston!"
"I... see?"
"Now, now, now, where're yew from, John?"
"Uh, Washington DC."
"Well, welcome t'Las Vegas! Ah'm sorta the welcoming committee here, wanna make evrrybuddy feel welcome."
"Well, I'm, uh, definitely feeling it!"
"Yew likin' Vegas so far?"
"It's... an experience, I'll give it that!"
At that, he seemed knocked off his feet for a second, as if swooning, then swung back around, bringing his open palm within three inches of my face.
"MAH MAN!" he said.
He froze in that position for a few seconds, until I realized I was actually leaving him hanging. I gave him five, and Billy Bob reanimated.
"Christ, Ah love it here. AH LUUUUUUVVEGAS!" he declared to the indifferent barflies, who were clearly used to this. "Ah mean, lemme ask yew somethin', John... how how how old how old d'yew think I am?"
"Ah, er, about--"
"FIFTY-THREE! Ah'm... fifty-three years OLD. Ah just got married, y'know."
"Con... grats?"
"An' mah wife--thankew, sir--mah wife, she's twenty-one. FUCK, AH LUVVEGAS. Ah mean, where else can a fifty-three-year old MAN marry a twenty-one-year-old GIRL???"
After a few seconds silence, I realized he wasn't asking rhetorically. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was probably legal pretty much everywhere.
"Yeah, Vegas is, uh, damn awesome! Go... you?"
"John, I wanna ask, how old are yew?"
"Uh, twenty-five."
He takes off his ball cap to run a hand along his sparse, shaved scalp.
"An' how old how old how old were yew when yew were okay with bein' bald?"
"Um... well, I'm not really bald yet, just thinning," I say, refraining from mentioning how my Mom got me using Rogaine (she uses the men's formula, and it saved her hair) but it's a losing battle. She's still seriously trying to get me to get a hair transplant. She thinks it's important. And while I'm not sure how important I think it is, the nature of Billy Bob's question led me to respond, "I'm not gonna let it go without a fight!"
"MAH MAN!" *PALM*
I followed through a bit faster this time.
"See these guys over here?" Billy Bob asks, directing my attention to two guys playing pool. "These're my best friends in the whole world, I luvvim to death."
One of them has a leathery face just on the other side of handsome, sporting slicked-back hair and a matching goatee. He wore the wrong kind of stylish suit, with iPod headphones in his ears. The other is your stereotypical biker: bandanna, chaps, denim vest and jeans, huge gut, white beard, bald eagle on a black T-shirt, etc. It's this one that Billy Bob waves over to the bar for introductions.
"John," Billy Bob said, slurring the next three worlds into one, "ThissisSnake."
I'm actually making that up, because I don't remember what his name was. When I was telling the story to
fiveseconddelay, he suggested that I call him Snake. "Not because you couldn't think of a better name, Heffie," he said, "but because he couldn't.""Snake here," Billy Bob declared proudly, "is a VietNAM veteran."
"Oh!" I remarked in deference. "It's a pleasure, sir."
"Sean?" Snake asked, blinking. He seemed lost in a fog.
"Er, no, it's John."
Billy Bob put his arm around the much larger man, and said, "We're grew up an hour away from each other an' never knew it, innat wild? He's from Galveston. Ah'm from HhhhhHOUston."
Frowning like a punchy ex-champ, Snake corrected him, "No, no, you're from Houston, I'm from Galveston."
Billy Bob facepalmed a bit harder than was necessary and cursed himself, "Shit, yeah, yeah, thass right."
Snake nodded distantly and wandered back to the pool table, where the leathery man waited on a stool. Billy Bob said, "Yessir, those're my best friends. Ah luvvim to death." And after watching Snake play resume the game, Billy Bob added, "Next game, Ah'm gonna kick their fuckin' asses. You wanna play?"
"Nah, I'm cool just watching."
"Ah, c'mon, c'mon, it'd be fun."
"Nah thanks, I'm cool."
"Okay, okay," he said, crestfallen. Then reinvigorated with an idea, he asked, "Well, hey, lemme ask yew this, then: d'yew know where I can score some drugs?"
Before I can answer, Kris Kristopherson On A Meth Bender grumbled, "Billy Bob." For a second, I almost expect him to say, "Leave the kid be," but instead, he arrives holding an entire bushel of Busch, six cans, which he places before Billy Bob.
The man from HhhhhHOUston looks at Kris, then at me as if walking into a surprise party.
"John, did yew buy these???"
For a split-second, I wonder what drunken accolades I'd have been met with if I said yes.
"No, not me."
"Well here," he hands me a can, with the rest nestled in his arm like a baby, "have one anyway!"
That's can # 2.
Billy Bob then introduces me to the leathery man, still sitting there on the stool in the corner.
"John, thissisVito. Vito, John."
I smile and wave. Vito, hunched over his pool cue, pushes past the the dourness and gives me a wan smile and thumbs-up.
Billy Bob takes over in the game against Snake, with Vito and I as the silent spectators. I start to think maybe I'd have fared better against Billy Bob and Snake than I thought. Every time Billy Bob misses, he grabs the table by both hands, holding on as he throws his body backward in an angushed, "AWWWWW!" And yet, for all his histrionics, he wasn't doing that badly. He was winning.
"AWWWWW!"
Mostly.
Vito snorted, shaking his head as he gave a humorless smile in resignation. Then he muttered something. Sounded like "Blocksaballs."
I asked, "What's that?"
Vito pulled away from his thoughts, realizing he was heard thinking aloud. Ruefully, he said, "Snake. Look how he does it. He plays up the part, acting slow, acting dumb. He lets you think you're winning for awhile. Lets you get cocky. All so you don't see what he's doing. You think he keeps missing the pockets, but he's not missing. He's blocking the balls. He's putting the other balls in the way so you can't make a clean shot. So by the second half, he just takes over and picks 'em off one by one."
Vito shook his head, lost in the bitter wonder of the hustled.
"That's what he does, man. He blocks the balls."
"AWWWWW!"
Billy Bob gave up, throwing the cue onto the table with disgust. Snake seemed to display no signs of outward celebration. If he was playing up to character, he's a method actor.
"Vito's a cool guy, eh?" Billy Bob asks, then turns to a whisper, "Hey John. Hey. Hey. Hey. John, hey. Lissen. If yew need drugs, Vito's the guy to talk to. Ah can't. Ah'm cut off. But if yew wanna get 'em..."
He was distracted by the buzzing in his pocket. A pager. Whenever I heard theatre announcements requesting, "Please turn off all cell phones and pagers," I wondered, "Who the hell still uses pagers?" Now I had my answer.
"Shit, Ah gotta get outta here. I gotta pick my wife up from Drivin' School. You enjoy the rest of your stay, y'hear, John?"
"Same to you, Billy Bob," I said. As if attempting to show a traditional greeting to the natives, I raise my hand, palm outward. "... My man?"
Billy Bob doesn't give me give, but instead slaps the palm and seizes it, and our gripped hands waver between us. He smiled, and a weird gleam of lucidity pierced through the glaze.
"Mah man," he said.
I watched Billy Bob, Snake, and Vito all exit together, then split off their separate ways. It occurred to me that I really should have been going too, since the show was about to start in an hour. But I didn't want to risk running into Billy Bob again. You'd hate to ruin a goodbye like that.
So I sat at the bar, alone again, wondering how I was going to kill another fifteen minutes. And that's when Kris walked past me from behind the bar. He walked from my left to my right--passing by without stopping or even acknowledging my presence--as he popped open a new can of Busch and silently thunked it down, right before me.
In Part 2, I encounter the best Thai food outside of Thailand (not kidding), witness a Rat Pack tribute concert, and receive some devastating news that literally changes the course of my entire return home.
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An epic tale! I hang on the promise of the second half.