(for Sammie, Ray, Nima and the rest)
Just after eleven we left the quiet privacy of the VIP bar and headed out into the hazy mist of stale-cigarette smells and the incessant pockets of lights and sound that littered the casino floor like tiny minefields. The girls were already changing upstairs; the room that they were sharing up there on the 29th floor had become like the busy floor of a clothing factory, littered with shirts and dresses and skirts with straps and clips and buckles. I imagined that my cousin probably had the music pumping already, as her and her small army of friends began the final stage of the pre-gaming ceremony that we had all collectively started together at atound 6m that afternoon.
Goose had managed to secure for us a private balcony table that overlooked the glorified DJ booth in the casino's award-winning club, The Midnight Lounge. Instead of each paying a 35 dollar door charge, as well as ten-to-fifteen dollars a drink, we would all instead pay sixty bucks for the pivate table, three on-the-house bottle and the stature of being VIP in a place that already catered almost exclusively to VIPs. As I followed Goose and Mike and the others through the busy intersections of black-jack-tables and large crowds of security guards and onlookers, I realized that I was wearing the smug little smile of the most cockiest asshole on my face, and that I had no plans or reservations to remove it. Ryan Frane put his huge hands on my shoulders as we all walked like the secondary defensive line-up of a playoff football team; heads held high and our strides giant and confident.
"I can't wait to put my effing suit on," he said, practically shouting in my ear over the busy commotion of the casino floor. I looked back at him, grinning as I obnoxiously chewed my gum, and caught the eyes of Perry, Natalee's boyfriend, who walked behind the rest of us. I gave him a questioning thumbs up, and he nodded slowly and winked.
I had come up earlier that day with Ryan Frane and Mike, Mike maintaining an average speed of about 75 while Ryan and I crushed a twelve pack of Pabst. We met Goose near the All-Star Bar -- a private, members-only room that only served the most expensive alcohol possible -- and went up to the room on the 30th floor, where our four man crew began alternating back and forth from station to station; gambling at the Roulette or Craps tables; chugging beers in the room while we shaved and showered; or lounging with free cocktails in the private bar as we conversed with retired Marine Corps majors and Iranian oil company presidents. By six o'clock, when my cousin Selena arrived with two of her friends, the four of us were already started to slip down the steep slopes of early-stage drunkenness.
Selena shouted excitedly when she met us up in the room, her Spanish friend Jenn and another girl named Leah standing on either side of her like protective sentries. They immediatley wanted shots, and as Mike poured that deadly poison into the plastic red cups, Goose told my cousin the good news.
"I've worked it out, since it's your birthday ... we got a private booth at the club tonight."
Selena shrieked, her eyes closed and her arms turned slightly inwards like a tyrannasaurus rex. She started jumping up and down, wrapping Goose up in her arms as she repeatedly told him that she loved him.
Soon the others started to trickle in; first Hollie and Rachel, from New York; Natalee; and finally her boyfriend Perry. We crowded into the elevators and attacked the blackjack tables together like an assault squadron of bomber planes, our cash the shrapnel-filled tools of the death we were hoping to deliver.
Perry used the four hundred dollars he won to buy everyone dinner, and as we sat behind the sliding glass doors of the private backroom in the seafood place we all toasted him before singing happy birthday to Selena in a totally tone-def montage of slurs and dragged sentances.
"Man," cried Ryan. "I'mmmmmm drunk as hellll!!!"
Everyone shouted their approval, each of us instinctively holding up our glasses for another toast.
Upstairs we traded our nikes and dark levi bluejeans for black suits and dress shoes, our t-shirts for ties and our cigarette smell for cologne and old spice. An argument between Goose and Mike over who deserved to wear black on black quickly turned into landslide of sarcastic compliments and hysterically untasteful dick jokes, as Ryan stood in front of the floor to ceiling windows as he quietly quoted lines from Wall Street to himself.
"You really gonna go down there with that wife beater on," said Mike, looking at Perry with a raised eyebrow. Perry took a huge swig of his drink and exhaled.
"You really go down there with that dick in between your ears?" We laughed as he stood up and put on a button-down as a wave of muffled giggles and knocks came from the door.
Selena led the procession of prettiness, her friends seeming to follow her in single file as they entered the room and started pouring drinks, laughing loudly as we all complimented each other and got ready to go down.
By the time we reached the side door of the Midnight Lounge, it was half past midnight and the regular line stretched all the way around the crowded casino floor. Enormous black bouncers led us upstairs through the chaotic maze of drunken twenty-somethings who danced frenetically to the blasting bass beats that caused them all to pack in as tight as they could. Strobe lights searched and combed, as if they belonged to a rescue helicopter looking for anyone who wasn't wasted and having a great time.
Our booth was directly above the DJ's nest, and we settled into it as a cocktail waitress came over carrying two bottle of vodka with streamers stuck in them, emitting a trail of bright orange sparks that made a haunting yellowish glowing ring around her. It was so loud in there that I couldn't even hear my own celebratory screams, as the waitress spun the spark-weilding bottles and fancily poured mixed drinks for out entire crew. Almost immediatley, Jenn was up on the table, her hands holding her skirt down to secure her privacy as she danced wildly and fist pumped the fog-covered air. Lights flashed and silhouetted the hundreds participants on the floor who all seemed to move together to the music that blared from every direction.
Hollie and Mike grinded against the railing of the balcony, her hands reached back around his neck, rubbing his face. Leah and Rachel and Selena took picture after picture, posing in every position seemingly possible, while Ryan and I sat back on one of the comfortable black leather couches in our booth and pointed at people who walked past, making fun of them in our drunken state of mind.
Goose had dissapeared with some red-headed girl wearing silver heels and a tiny black and white mini-skirt. Every few minutes one of the muscle-bound bouncers told Jenn to get off of the table please, please ma'am you have to get off of the table. She would step down awkwardly, pour another drink, down it, and then step right back up. Ryan Frane and I laughed hysterically as we tried to get girls from the packed, soaking wet-hot dance floor to come up to the booth using only the rudest body-language possible.
Bass heavy remixes of radio hits shook the very foundations. The crowd roared its approval with every intro to a new song, the new beat growing out of fading slicer sounds and cut-up DJ phrases. One moment the whole place flashed blue; then red; then white; then black; back and forth like we were all stuck in a world that existed inside a spinning kaleidescope.
By the time the house-lights lit up the sweaty mist of the room, I was seeing triple and couldn't remember what casino I was in. Goose had returned, sitting next to me on the black leather couch, desperately struggling to re-button the black dress shirt that was totally open underneath the pinstriped jacket. Ryan and Mike and Selena crouched down, their backs against the steel patterned railing of the second floor hallway that led to our little balcony table. Amongst them they passed the remnants of one the tables bottles, giggling and chuckling with neither words nor reason.
Perry and Natalee clutched each other romantically as they slowly swayed side to side, trying to kiss but in reality being too drunk to stand. Security came over as the place started to clear out, they smiled like a pack of wild dogs, eager to finish off the kill, take the meat from it's bones.
"You all got to go," they shouted. "We closed, you all got to go."
Jenn grabbed my hand and pulled me up away from the leather couch, the two of us stumbling and wall-leaning as we followed Mike and Hollie and the others down the wide, spiral staircase and through the jungle heat of the now-almost-empty dancefloor. Jenn almost tripped, and one of the security guards stepped forward from his place in front of one of the doors.
"She ok? She ok?" he said, flashing a light on us. Jenn laughed and put her other arm around my shoulder. I looked at the guard, trying to be serious.
"She's alright, man," I said. I turned to her as we became sandwiched in between crowds of equally drunk clubbers. I felt Perry's hand on my shoulder, trying to make sure that we all didnt get seperated. "You have to just walk," I said, whispering into Jenn's ear, my nose pressed against her hair. "I need you to just walk."
"I 'on't galla walking," she stuttered.
"What?" I shouted into her ear. She titlted her head back and laughed, leaning her body back.
"Jenn!" shouted Natalee.
"Get her shit together man," said Perry in my ear. "Security is eyeing the fuck outta you guys,"
We made it through the main doors of the club and followed the crowd masses through a section of the casino, where police and security eyed everyone suspiciously. By the time Jenn and I made it to the hotel lobby, we had lost everybody but Ryan Frane, and he helped me hold her up convincingly in the crowded elevator while she laughed hysterically at the sounds she made when she snorted.
"Sorry, she's drunk," declared Ryan. "Nobody touch her or she'll throw up, probably."
Finally we arrived to the 29th floor, where we found our collection of friends doing several different things. Hollie and Mike stood near the window, quickly changing out of their first class attire and putting on sweatpants and t shirts.
"Going to Gamble," proclaimed Mike. "Aw baby, yeah baby, oh oh give it to me," Hollie giggled. Selena and Perry and Natalee poured more shots from a half empty Captain's bottle, while they discussed whether or not they should head down to the all-night bowling alley. Ryan Frane immediatley shouted that he wanted to go, and so the four of them dissapeared out the door.
I looked over, seeing Jenn's crumpled body on the hotel bed. Goose came stumbling into the room, burping, still trying to button up his black dress shirt. His head rolled wildly from side to side.
"Whats up," he said, barely whispering. He pulled a can of red bull out of his pocket and snapped it open, finishing half of it in one gigantic gulp. "Ohhhhh yeah."
"Wanna find a party?"
"Where?" he drained the can and threw it against the wall; Jenn stirred briefly in her sleep.
"I don't know," I said. "Somewhere."
"Wanna just go floor to floor?"
"It's a full moon tonight," I said, rebuttoning up my suit jacket. I pointed at his open shirt. "gotta be something."
"Yeah can you help me with this?" he swayed lightly and had to sit on the edge of the bed for a moment before standing back up."My ... goddamn fingers wont work,"
I helped him rebutton his suit and cracked two beers. I handed him one and grinned.
"Lets go find a party," I said. Goose sat back down on the dge of the bed, staring out the huge floor to ceiling window.
"Look how the moon is," he said. "Man, it makes you think." He stood up.
"What does it make you think about," I said sarcastically.
"That I wanna find some pussy."
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