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| Breaking in on dice
Posted: 7/27/2009 2:00:40 PM | In the summer of 1988 I was out of work and living in Vegas. I was a certified in Clark County but I couldn't get a massage job.
I'm hanging out with a kid named Les Fabri. A featherweight from Seattle. I had met him at the Golden Gloves Gym and we started working together. Sparring.
He was a good little southpaw. 160 amateur fights and won about 140. Two time US national champion. Had lost out in the Olympic box offs. But it was close.
By rights I didn't belong in the same ring with him save for he couldn't break and egg and I was a puncher. So it worked out okay.
He was managed by Alex Freed, a Hungarian Jew who made jewelry and owned stores in the Imperial Palace and the big Hilton.
Freed had also managed a friend of mine from Vancouver. Alex had a lot of money. He also had a knack for ruining fighters. He could get you the wrong fight at the right time, the right fight at the wrong time or maybe the whole thing was wrong, wrong, wrong. For short money.
So Freed is sponsoring these guys and he stashes them at an apartment complex near Koval and Trop.
I'm hanging out there and an apartment downstairs, the door is open and there are a handful of people sharing a joint. I partake. The one girl, a pretty black lady, we start talking.
I'm telling her my recent history. In other words I'm out of work. She is a BJ dealer, also out of work. She says "why don't you go to dealers school, they will give you money and everything...!"
I start hanging around this girl. Plus she can help me get pot. I 'm helping her and her friends out with rides mostly. Because I had wheels.
I take her advice and look in the yellow pages. COS. Career Opportunities School.
The first one I spotted. I go. I take some rinky dink test. 6+7+8= ? 21 right?
They tell me "you're a man, you will deal craps." Because a monkey can deal black jack. So you better have a pretty face and a nice rack if you want the strip.
Or would you rather rot downtown?
There was a $1682.00 grant involved and a $2600.00 dollar loan, for three games.
My only question was "how soon can I get the money?"
"10 days." "Where do I sign?"
This school had recruiters and they were scraping guys right out of the gutter. The loans were federally insured. The school got their money regardless of default. Courtesy of the US taxpayer.
Every Thursday guys would show up for disbursement and that was the last of them for another week. They should have called it Crack Opportunities School.
The school eventually lost their federal funding. Too many defaults.
Naturally I''m going to school but believe me, you don't learn how to deal in school. You don't learn sh1t.
I got friendly with a guy there. A Vietnam vet. He had a milky left eye. A piece of shrapnel. He told me he loved Nam. "All the drugs you wanted..." But they wouldn't let him re up cause of his eye.
The school secretary was a morbidly obese chain smoker and her daughter was also pretty hefty.
This guy, the vet, goes over to the New Thunderbird Motel after school one day and has a drink with her.
Now he's telling me he's f**king her. I'm laughing "do you do 69 with her?" Now he's laughing. He tells me "shut upppppppppp!"
He says she bathes me and she'll do anything, "she licks my a-s-s-h-o-l-e."
Not that I needed to know that.
He tells me he wants to nail the daughter also.
The school money wasn't enough, so I got a job busing tables at the Paddle Wheel, a little off strip joint across from the Landmark, Howard Hughes white elephant. I ended up dealing dice at the Landmark two years later.
Shortly thereafter I got a job at the Tropicana, doing massage again. So two part time jobs and school.
The school provided apartments for some of the dealers and it became part of their loan package.
I give the vet a ride home one day. Out toward Nellis.
When I get there, there's like maybe 8 guys sitting around a table smoking crack.
It was my first time. They had a glass pipe, a good one. My turn comes. They are coaching me. I blow out and take it in very, very slowly. Long and deep.
Then they tell me to hold it. My heart is about to pop. They tell me to let it out slowwwwly. A millisecond and the rush hits me, crawling up from my spine and exploding in my head like an orgasm times ten.
I'm sitting down kneading my thighs and grinding my teeth and they are laughing because I am righteously lit and I understand instantly why people turn into hard core addicts off the first rush.
Because it is never again like the first time, and you chase and chase and chase.
That's it! That's what I am. I will try anything. But this one time I really stepped through the portals of hell. I struggled with that sh1t off and on for the next 8 years.
The Trop turns into a full time gig. But it's a garbage job. No money, bad working conditions. The spa was not owned by the Tropicana. It was owned and run by Ken Mizuno a degenerate gambler who had baccarat markers for millions up and down the strip.
The only notable thing was that one evening Rodney Dangerfield came in. No one was around. I was just attending for the other kid. I gave him a towel and some juice. He stiffed me.
There was an assistant manger there. We got along okay at first. One evening there was an incident. Can't recall what about. I mean, I was fed up with that job and was anyway about to break in on dice somewhere.
Anyway, we had a verbal altercation and he fired me on the spot. He was behind the desk. Another masseur was there, a venomous little Cambodian dude who died of cancer a couple of years later.
I badly wanted to punch the manager in the head. I mean I had an internal conflict going. I'm thinking "I am going to jail..."
But the urge to lay hands on this f**king guy wins out and I reach over the desk and give him a shot in the head.
He comes out from behind the desk and we're trading. He's big, about six two, but he can't really punch.
I'm feeling inhibited on account of "I'm going to jail..."
Finally he sits on me. Tackles me and I'm on the floor and he starts slamming my head against the mirrored wall. I'm concerned about broken glass and also it is starting to hurt so I yell at him "THAT'S ENOUGH!"
Security arrives. They escort me to the basement. I got a slice over my right eye. He was wearing a diamond wedding ring. But it wasn't deep and they butterflied it for me.
They took my picture against a yardstick. "he's not pressing charges, but you're 86'd. If you come on the property you will be charged with trespassing."
I apologized but they showed me empathy. They said he must have done something to provoke you.
Shortly thereafter I auditioned at a break in joint called Little Caesars.
My first dice job. I'm going to put this out in instalments. I'm tired now. | |
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| Breaking in on dice
Posted: 7/27/2009 2:33:57 PM | | Thanks much pro, I'm just a visitor to LV, but I always wonder whats really happening beneath the surface, cool stories from someone who lived it....lots of angry cabbies these days.... | |
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| Breaking in on dice
Posted: 7/28/2009 4:20:48 AM | | I agree, I'm enjoying these little glimpses into the other side. I always suspected as much. It doesn't seem to be a happy place to be unless you have plenty of money. The atmosphere there, the people slumped over the machines, drinks, cigarettes, looking somehow defeated and hopeful at the same time. Waiting to read more, thanks! | |
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| Breaking in on dice
Posted: 8/3/2009 1:40:48 AM | In January of 1989 I made a lateral move to the Golden Gate, a Glitter Gulch bottom feeder located at Fremont and Main. I moved there from a tiny casino on LV blvd. It was so small and insignificant that it had no room base. It's only distinction was that it was the second biggest sport book in Nevada and it set the line for the other Vegas books.
Little Caesars would book any action. No limit. They had one dice table and three BJ games and some slots and video poker machines. Tokes ran about nine bucks a shift, plus a minimum hourly wage. I was working a graveyard shift.
It wasn't the money why I made my move, because you can expect to starve when you're breaking in. No, I went downtown because I wanted more action. I was in a hurry to improve my game so I could hit a middle level joint.
Anyway at the Gate tokes (tips) ran about 12 bucks a shift on an envelope job. All dealers share the same cut over twenty four hours, by the hour. In other words, an 8 hour shift earns you a full share. The toke committee brings it to you on your game and stuffs it in your back pocket. Little manila envelope.
I was a brutal lump of a dealer, of course. A boxman, the guy that sits on the game and stuffs the money in the box with a paddle, makes like 78 bucks a shift. These guys aren't there by choice. They f**ked up. Somewhere, somehow and they buy their suits at the thrift stores.
It was cheap to live in Vegas at the time. I had a tiny studio four blocks from downtown. 80 bucks a week. It was well located. I could have walked to work but I had a car. I didn't walk too much in Vegas, especially after about May. It was too hot.
My little neighbourhood had everything I needed. 24 hour liqueur store close by. Pornographic bookstore around the corner and crack on every corner and whores to go with it.
Food and booze was dirt cheap in Vegas. Gas was cheap. What the hell.
After about three months at the Gate I was on the stick and some old bast-ard called me an ass hole. Which, I didn't care. I agreed with him. But the shift boss intervened and told me "one more time and your fired!" A player watching said "that was really unnecessary. Which, I basically agreed and decided I had better beat that douche bag to the punch.
Our game was dead, we pulled up the lid and I got an early out. I walked across the street to the Union Plaza and asked for an audition. I was terrible but surprise, surprise, the shift boss offered me the extra board and promised four days a week minimum.
He asked me did I know why he hired me. I told him no. He told me it isn't cause you can deal, it's because you kept your face in the layout. You paid attention to the game and that's what I want.
The Plaza had 10 x odds on a quarter flat. A twenty five cent flat bet. And a quarter would move. If you don't understand my terminology, understand this: I pushed a lot of checks (chips). This was the toughest game in Nevada at the time.
The Horseshoe had ten times odds but on a five dollar flat bet. A flat bet is like a line bet. It pays even money.
I'm dealing and I hear a couple of floormen behing me. Talking softy: "what are we gonna do with him? This is embarrassing." So they hid me out on graveyard, the home of breakins and burnouts, till my game picked up.
I worked from four am till 12 noon. I'd step out of there into the blazing sun and go get a drink at the Shoe. I felt like I was on some alien landscape.
After about 2.5 months my game picked up enough and they put me on a day shift crew.
The Plaza was a big joint. Maybe 160 dealers per 24 hours. Seven dice tables, the biggest dice pit downtown. It had three seperate bars and a sports book. Big room base and convention rooms.
I kept saying "I can't believe I'm here!" A boxman told me " You better quit saying that."
Tokes at this joint were running at about 45 bucks a shift, which seemed like a fortune after six months of 9-12 dollar envelopes. However the dealers there were complaining that tokes used to run about double that. They suspected the toke committee was stealing and in fact they were. I found that out later and the shift boss was taking a cut.
I was able to get a regular pot connection. My boxman. Who got it from the, wait for it, shift boss, who apparently needed the extra money all around.
Well, I'm happy. I was working with some truly gifted dealers and they were rubbing off on me. I was improving fast and getting immersed in the sub culture.
One boxman, and Italian guy from Reno, advised me that "whatever you do, don't ever hit anybody in the dice pit!" He was a big guy and he broke a boxmans jaw in Reno and got exiled for seven years. He drove a limo instead. I think he had a felony card. A felony on his gaming card. Everything, your history, every joint you worked is on that card.
Your record is at metro. Felony cards can't handle cash. He must have had some second hand connections.
I'm going to see if this posts. Be right back. | |
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| Breaking in on dice
Posted: 8/8/2009 7:45:26 PM | What happened to 'Be right back'???
Still waiting... | |
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| Breaking in on dice
Posted: 8/10/2009 8:14:17 PM | What happened to 'Be right back'???
Still waiting...
^^^
Stay tuned. Watch this space. I don't have time right now.
Yeah. I'll be back. Thank you very much.  | |
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 9/1/2009 11:17:18 PM | A break-in joint hires dealers fresh out of school. Dice dealers fresh out of school are brutal. They're lumps. They can't deal. After about six months you are ready for a middle level joint. You can get around the layout and you are ready to learn.
A middle level house will have a mixture of experienced dealers and break-ins. You will rub up against some very talented dealers. Dealers who were at the top and screwed up someway and are on a downward trajectory. You look at these guys and you are looking at your future. You can tell yourself that it won't happen to you, but...
I was working at The Vegas Club, downtown. A guy comes in and auditions on my game. I was on second base. He takes the stick. He then comes around to third base. This guy was early thirties. Good looking guy. Average build. About six feet tall. A white guy. From AC.
I have never seen hands like this guy. Anywhere. Before or since. Mesmerizing. Hypnotic. Extremely fluid and deft. I was embarrassed to deal around this guy. I may as well have been dealing with boxing gloves on.
This guys problem was that he had a felony card. Every dealer has a gaming card. You are required to wear the card when you are on the floor. The card is bar coded and shows all the places you worked. Your prints are attached to your card. Your gaming history is on file at Metro.
A felony card can't handle money. They can work in the kitchen, for instance. There are places that will work you with a felony card. It takes juice to get around it.
This guy was kind of bitter. He had the kind of chip on his shoulder that addicts have and because he was gifted he had the whole fvcking tree up there.
The beef that showed up on his card was a court ordered rehab. The guy had a problem with crack. Which...so did I. So did a lot of people.
Anyhow, the guy was a pr1ck. He eventually got juiced into the Cal (Hotel California. Boyd Group) by a boxman at the Vegas Club.
It wasn't two months before he was sucking on that glass d1ck (crack pipe) and what became of him and his precious hands, who knows?
It wasn't too long after this guy, that another guy showed up at the Vegas Club. This guy had been around. I mean he was old Vegas. Although he was younger than me. He had been dealing a long time. He worked at the Silver Slipper and also the Stardust when it was a table for table joint. When it was still mobbed up.
This guy had fought pro as a featherweight. At five feet ten inches he was built like a wire. Strong and he could punch. I told him "you got a lot of connections, I am going to cultivate your friendship." Which I did.
I had amateur fights. We had the boxing in common. I happened to be clean at the time but this guy really liked his medicine. He lived with his sister and her son.
I started giving this guy rides and helping him out. He tried to fix me up with his sister. I couldn't get around the dime sized sores on her face however. She was a meth addict.
I bought his nephew school clothes. I bought him a cheap suit when they put him on the floor.
We started working out together. He had some pipe dream about fighting again.
Eventually he juiced me into the Sahara. He knew a floorman there. I auditioned there. The shift boss was about 5'6" in lifts. Shortest guy on the floor. So I had a good chance. Seeing as how he would like a guy even shorter than him around. I was 5'5". I think he was wearing lifts.
Well, I got the job. But I asked my boxing buddy how much they cut. He tells me a buck a day. I'm like "how do they do that?" Blackjack went separate. There wasn't enough action to cut a buck ($100.00) a day. (plus minimum wage.)
Well he got p1ssy: "Mike (the floorman) said it's a buck a day and that's it!"
I'm on my crew and a dealer asks "where did you come from?" "Vegas Club." "You should have stayed there!"
I worked there eight days. Eight days of listening to these guys b1tch and moan about where did all the money go.
My last shift there I cut 12 bucks for a 4 hour shift. I got on the phone and called State Line. I had auditioned there and I called "how bout it?"
They gave me Whisky Petes. 42 miles west of Vegas. Nevada/California state line.
Primaddona Corporation. Whisky Petes, Primaddona, Buffalo Bills. I ended up working all of them. There was no drug test out there. I was clean when I got there, but I got strung out on meth while I was working at Buffalo Bills. There were a lot of tweaker's out there. Including upper management.
So I start out at Whisky Petes. That was the first joint built there by Gary Primm. Before that it was a motel and some slots. He built that joint and funnelled them right off the freeway. And there was a truck stop there. I dealt to a lot of truckers.
It was a road house and a rough place. There were several notorious murders there just prior to my arrival.
Out front was a big neon sign advertising the Bonnie and Clyde death car. I would go look at the car on my breaks. Count the holes. "Where is this life taking me?"
On my game was a dealer who looked like a sawed off Burt Reynolds. He was part Cherokee. We became friendly. His truck got hit by a bus. While it was getting repaired I gave him rides out to State Line and back. He lived on the west side. He had a big dog that liked to chew your nuts when you came in the door. You had to push his head away.
So...he says " I can give you five bucks for gas or you can do a line." I go in the bedroom and look. "I'll take the line." He tells me "I haven't slept in nine months."
So, yeah. I got strung out. | |
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 9/2/2009 9:37:31 AM | | Bravo, that last line was like an ace kicker on a straight draw......everytime I enter/exit LV, I wonder why people go to Whisky Petes, or places off the strip, is the action better there? | |
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 9/2/2009 3:20:32 PM | It takes about 4.5 to 5.5 hours to make the drive from LA to Vegas. If you boot it. In the mid nineties when I was dealing at the State Line properties, there were roughly 10 million cars driving by there annually. The last town on the Cali side is Baker. Then you start to climb a steep hill to the Nevada side. Gnarled and stunted Jack Pines appear.
The Primm properties are a destination for some. People pull off for a drink. To play a little. It has a big truck stop on both sides of the highway.
Some never make it to Vegas. Every joint has it's "play." The casinos find a market and cater to it. Unlike Atlantic City, Vegas has lots of bottom feeder casinos.
Every casino uses the usual inducements to retain loyalty. Comps are what come to most peoples minds. Some high end players have penthouse suites built for them (the big Hilton built one for Packer the Australian, he's dead now.)
There are a lot of joints that cater largely to locals. Locals don't want the strip except maybe for a show.
Dice odds are somewhat more equitable downtown on proposition bets. One roll bets.
Strip odds/downtown odds. You should stay away from the prop box anyway. As a matter of fact, don't fvcking gamble at all.
I always heard that gambling is like a drug. That a compulsive gambler is experiencing biochemical changes. I never gambled. Not really. It didn't turn me on. I didn't want something like a drug, I wanted drugs. | |
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 9/28/2009 9:38:54 PM | I read the first set. It's good. Gotta used to some of the slang because I know most of it is regional dialect.
When I get there, there's like maybe 8 guys sitting around a table smoking crack.
It was my first time....
Then they tell me to hold it. My heart is about to pop.... A millisecond and the rush hits me, crawling up from my spine and exploding in my head like an orgasm times ten.
... I am righteously lit and I understand instantly why people turn into hard core addicts off the first rush.
Because it is never again like the first time, and you chase and chase and chase.
...I will try anything.... I struggled with that sh1t off and on for the next 8 years.
I got high for the first time last year, August 2008. It was great. I was floating, geekin, problem-free for a moment. I've tried to get high 2 times since this year and have not gotten the same feelings as the first time. The weed was good, I think I just develop a what do they call it? - immunity to it that quick.
I thought about trying trying crack also. I'm pretty much open to anything you can smoke, and I'm curious about what type of high it is.
Good story. Thanks for inviting me to read. | |
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 9/29/2009 10:19:59 AM | Thank you. About crack: it's touch and go if you do. I would rather you NOT try it. Crack put me in places that I wouldn't wish on anybody. And I didn't even go all the way down.
It sounds hypocritical for me to preach abstinence. I did what I wanted. All my life. I had my fun. And then it wasn't fun.
Alcohol and "soft" drugs are one thing. Food can be addictive. The thing about crack is this: it can bring you to the precipice very, very quickly. And it will ruin you financially very quickly. It destroys your body. You will lose muscle tone right away. Your judgement is warped. You may do degrading things. Women who get addicted to crack end up on their backs. You can get an STD.
If you develop a full blown crack addiction, and you don't know that you won't, you will look twenty years older after two years on the street.
In fact it's prison or death inside of two years as a hard core crack addict.
I don't think about crack much anymore. I haven't done it for over 14 years and in fact I have not drank or used any street drugs for 68 months. But when I do think about it, I think about the above. The horror of that life. | |
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 9/29/2009 3:06:33 PM | from the precipice can be the fall into the abyss. So very glad you didn't go there, BP.
K | |
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| We should all be kind to each other
Posted: 10/17/2009 8:58:56 AM | In 1993 I landed a dice job at the Las Vegas Club. I asked the casino manager if they had an extra board. He said "Yes we do, and you're it."
So I pulled three weeks of variable shifts without a day off. But that was okay because I needed the money.
The Vegas Club is a lower middle level house. With tokes and minimum wage you would clear about $370.00 per week. You could live on that in Vegas at the time. I mean I was eking out a living.
These joints feed you a meal a day and that was enough for me. Pretty much. I wasn't a big eater. I got most of my calories from hard liquor.
I was able to keep a beater on the road and I had enough to pay weekly rent at a motel and drink and stay high.
There was a dealer there. Rudy. I started hanging out with this guy even though I really didn't like him too much. He was a good dealer. Fast, good hands. His favourite topic of conversation was himself and how bright he was.
This guy was from Hawaii. He was mixed race of something or other. Lilted eyes and a permanent tan. He had a full head of silver hair. His face was heavily pockmarked, otherwise he would have been good looking.
He lived in the Downtowner Motel across from the Western. It was near the El Cortez. It was a decent place to live and I ended up living there myself. Half a block away was a bar. I started drinking there with this guy. It was favoured by dealers because there were no gaming devices whatsoever in there. It was quiet. No ringing, no bells. We would drink and play billiards.
I was on his crew on day shift. One evening after work we strolled across the street to the Italian Cultural Festival. It was on an empty lot across from the Hotel California and near the underpass on Main St.
It was kind of a carnival with games and booths and eat an Italian sausage, drink a beer and pant over teenage eyetalian girls. And the men could show pride in their illustrious Italian heritage and pretend they were mobbed up.
We did about an hour of that and then I'm going to give Rudy a ride home but he starts going on about wanting milk and cookies. Which...isn't that special!
So we go down Fremont to the 7 Eleven. About 14th and Fremont.
He grabs a gallon of milk and his fvcking cookies and I'm waiting near the door. He's in line and something happens, he's having a beef with some guy and he throws the milk and milk is all over the goddamn place and I am inexplicably being a peace maker and trying to chill things out between Rudy and this other guy.
I felt a light shine on me. The Dali Lama would have been proud. I was waiting to ascend to heaven.
But really it was out of character for me. This guy suddenly turns on me and starts up with me and asking do I want to fight and my head exploded and I went right hand crazy and backed him up into the middle aisle.
I have to say I regret hitting him like that. I really should have used two hands. I would have been far more effective.
Anyway this guy looked shocked. I don't think he expected me to fight. See? Try to be nice and they think you're weak.
Anyway, we, all three of us, are in the middle aisle across from the counter. The store was actually busy.
He turns from me and tackles Rudy and now he's on Rudy on the floor and Rudy is bleating "get him off of me, get him off of me!"
I was sick of this whole drama already. I reached down and grabbed this guys left pinky and started bending it backwards but the guy seemed impervious to pain.
I kept bending. I felt a little queasy. I bent it back all the way till it touched the back of his hand. The pain finally started to register in his dinosaur brain and he got off Rudy and stood up.
We all disengaged and the guy went back in line to buy his smokes. I looked at this guys left hand and his pinky was still bent back. It was kind of fascinating. I wondered if it was broken although I didn't hear any cracking noises.
I'm telling Rudy "come on man! Let's go!" I was surprised that metro hadn't arrived yet. It must have been a busy night. Regardless, I really didn't care to talk to the police.
Not that I did anything wrong.
So...we leave. Rudy alternately whining about his motherfvcking cookies and milk and talking tough. What a punk.
The next day I'm on another crew and I tell the story about last night and everybody had a good laugh at Rudy's expense, because he was a tough talking jackass and everybody knew he couldn't fight.
Later on this guy Rudy got the Maxim, got juiced into that joint. The Maxim was across from Ballys on Flamingo. The Maxim catered to locals. It was a hard core sleeper and dice cut tokes table for table. A table job and Rudy was cutting five hundred bucks a night.
I was working at either the Sahara or State Line but either way I was making d1ck. So, the world belongs to phony ass bullsh1ters and I am pathologically anti social and that's gotta cost me. | |
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| We should all be kind to each other
Posted: 10/17/2009 1:51:12 PM |
So, the world belongs to phony ass bullsh1ters and I am pathologically anti social and that's gotta cost me
Probably why you needed the grog and dope, BP. They just help you ignore the injustice. And the bullsh1tters.
You've got to be one of the top writers here. Don't lose the train of thought; keep going... | |
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 10/17/2009 7:33:31 PM |
I'm telling Rudy "come on man! Let's go!" I was surprised that metro hadn't arrived yet. It must have been a busy night. Regardless, I really didn't care to talk to the police.
Beautiful, I loved this. Your writing is kind of Bukowski meets Hemingway.
I read the first set. It's good. Gotta used to some of the slang because I know most of it is regional dialect.
Regional dialect with Canadian spelling...
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 10/17/2009 8:12:03 PM | Thank you very much, you two. I was stuck. I didn't write. Not for over a month. And I needed to. When I write I feel satisfied.
I get caught up in my head that I got to write something great. But this stuff is the worms eye view anyway. A microcosm of the human condition.
The grubby stuff, no doubt about it.
The first time I hit Vegas I was consumed with an intense fascination for it's sleazy glamour.
The miasma of gutter sexuality turned me on and filled me with energy.
There seemed to be something pornographic about the whole state.
In the words of Hunter Thomson: I had found the main nerve.
Anyway, I don't have to write War and Peace. It doesn't have to be great literature.
I'll just write. I got things to say. | |
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| Bits and pieces
Posted: 10/17/2009 9:34:53 PM |
I felt a light shine on me. The Dali Lama would have been proud. I was waiting to ascend to heaven.
^^^love it^^^ | |
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| Crack addicted prostitutes and me
Posted: 10/19/2009 8:31:40 AM | I had a day off and about a hundred and eighty bucks in my pocket and I decided to head down Fremont to where it bisects Maryland Parkway. Down near the Showboat. I had lived around there and I knew the bars.
I was looking for drugs and women. I went in a little bar down around 21 st. I got a drink and looked around. Pretty soon I was hooked up with a slender, dark haired, crack head. She was maybe early twenties. My guess is that she hadn't been using too long because she looked fairly fresh.
In this bar the bartender was selling rocks right over the bar. There was some kind of password which I don't remember. I gave this girl money and we took turns going into the can and lighting up. (Metro busted this bar about three weeks later)
She had a friend and I was hanging out with the two of them. They were hinting around about having sex and the thought of having two women had my nose wide open, but they were just working me.
I ran through most of my cash and they blew off. I was still sitting in the bar drinking.
I was sitting next to a heavyset black lady, maybe early forties. She told me she gets lonely too.
I gave her some money and she scored a rock off the bartender and we went back to my little crib which was just a few blocks from the Golden Nugget, downtown Vegas.
I had my massage table there. I told her that I worked at Caesars as a masseur and she wanted a rub. She got naked and I worked on her but I was concentrating on her big black butt.
Then after we were smoking crack and she was in the bathroom with the door open. Fussing in the mirror. I was sitting on the couch and gazing at her ass. She turned around and looked and me and then knelt on the rug and stuck her cheeks in the air.
Well that got me going and we had sex. So, anyway, we are hanging out and having sex and smoking rock. I had a bindle of meth and I offered her some. She tried it but she had an allergic reaction. Her lip swelled up. She wanted an antihistamine. I t0ok her to a supermarket on Sahara near my place.
I'm a little white guy with this plus sized black lady and I was amused but not embarrassed because even today I just don't care. If people figured I was fvcking her...good. I had fun.
Now this lady was going on about how I don't have gumption, which basically I was ignoring her.
I had a next door neighbour. A black guy. He smells drugs and he sits outside his apartment in view of this lady. She starts to give him hits off the tube, which I'm getting pissed off. That's my fvcking money there.
She breaks of a piece of crack and takes a hit and there was some of it under her fingernail. She wipes it off on the back of the couch which is when I blew up and told her to get the fvck out and I put her in my car and shes saying "I knew you shouldn't have been drinking!" I'm thinking "it ain't the booze, you b1tch."
I'm taking her back to the bar where I got her and shes telling me she loves me and...
But I'm ignoring her. So I dumped her off there and that was that. Maybe just friends, right? | |
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| Crack addicted prostitutes and me
Posted: 10/19/2009 2:21:10 PM | I really hope this isn't autobiographical.
^^^
Word for word my dear. I hope this posts. Nope too short. Look. What can I say?
I got worse sh1t coming up.
Addendum: I'm no angel. | |
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| Crack addicted prostitutes and me
Posted: 10/19/2009 8:38:50 PM | I'm getting a kick out of this story. Pretty good writing--reminds me of Bukowski. If you haven't read any of Charles Bukowski's stories, you should. You'd like them.
You look like someone I remember hanging out at the Ram's Head, across from Vegas World, years ago. Maybe not. I use to hang out in all those old dives. Many of them are gone, now--the good one are. To bad. Vegas was once fun...well, still is. Just not as much fun. | |
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| Naked City
Posted: 10/20/2009 9:23:09 AM | I lived in a dangerous area of town across from Stupak's Vegas World. This was in August of 1987. I was working as a masseur at Bally's. I'd been warned not to live there. There had been a lot of stabbings there.
This area was glamorous real estate in the 60's when it was populated by showgirls, co-cktail waitresses and dealers.
The women would sunbathe on the sun decks topless, hence naked city. Anyway I lived in a tiny little studio fourplex. It had a little half fridge. The building was to the front of the area, behind a McDonalds and close to Vegas Blvd.
It was safe. If I drove back into the thicket of buildings behind the drive around I would pick up hostility and danger vibes. Guys stopping and staring at me, cursing me.
I don't recall a joint called the Rams Head, but I DO recall a tiny casino called Foxy's Firehouse Casino. Maybe three black Jack tables and this I recall: a one man dice tub and the dealer was a sawed off Elvis imitator. He was standing there on a dead game.
The place had slots and video poker machines. And a bar of course, which was what drew me there.
Shortly after I saw the Elvis at Stupaks working a giant wheel of fortune. He'd moved up.
Years later I was offered the extra board at Vegas World. Vegas World had crapless craps. Sounds great right? YOU CAN'T LOSE! But you could. You did. Faster.
When I was auditioning the dealer I had pushed off was telling me how to pay a pass line twelve that hit. He says "pay it like a nine. Time and a half."
I didn't take the extra board at Stupak's, I went to the Nevada Palace instead.
Vegas World had a kind of space ship theme. Dark. Strange lighting. Just a weird place.
Slightly before I moved to Vegas a co-ckail waitress got off her graveyard shift at the Circus Circus, a young lady, early 20's. She got off, had a few drinks, Greyhounds, a mixture of Vodka and grapefruit juice and she got in her car and not too far along she rounded a corner and when she hit the young man and the boy her car had hit the curb and was airborne. Her car came to rest upside down and she was unhurt.
The young man, a maintenance worker in a hotel had his legs sheared off. There was flesh clinging to the windshield. The boy, 14, was dead. They both were both dead instantly, of course.
This story haunted me and I was following it. There is something about the relentless cheeriness of an incandescent sun that makes horror stories like that all the more shocking and sublime.
I was in Foxy's one afternoon and I was reading the paper. Reading the story. This girl, Corrina King got five years of state time. I turned to a lady sitting next to me to tell her. I was excited. I mean I was still new to Vegas and not so hardened. You don't talk to strangers in Vegas unless you are negotiating something.
At any rate, she ignored me and I was stung. When her man came back she told him "this guy's bothering me." I glared at him and he decided to leave it alone. | |
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| Naked City
Posted: 10/20/2009 10:17:06 AM | Come to think of it, a high side hit, aces or twelve, should pay two for one on a pass line payout. I mean at Stupaks. The same as ten or four. Double time.
A low side hit, ace deuce, would pay time and a half. Three for two, in other words.
I can't recall, but I don't know if yo eleven became a point on the crapless craps game, which should have been called winless craps. How about eat sh1t and die craps? | |
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| Naked City
Posted: 10/20/2009 10:22:49 AM | | I lived at the Holiday Motel, just across from Vegas World, for two years--1986 through 1988. Vegas World was very tacky with all the space ship themes, but I though it was great. I played a lot of poker there, made just enough to not have to work a job--didn't get rich. I probably couldn't get the work cards, anyways. Foxy's was a block or so down the street. Not a bad place to go. | |
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