5-16-00 12:07 PM Tu

My golf game pretty much sucked. I cut stinky farts. The guys in my group gagged. “That’s the Stardust buffet,” I said. When we finished, we lay up at the 18^th green and waited for the other groups to come in while we drank beer. We went back to the Luxor and showered and changed. Peach talked about our Dominant Male Baboon days. We took cabs to Harrah’s and went to The Range for our steak dinner. Reagan passed out at the table during the soup, and when the main course arrived, Peachtree sat next to him and held his head up by his neck, and tried to get him to eat. Reagan puked on the floor. After dinner, Josh, Garth, Scott—who I had called Rob all weekend before he corrected me—and I walked along the strip past the pussy peddlers to Mandalay Bay where I took out a hundred bucks. I lost it in about ten minutes of ten-dollar blackjack hands. I split off from the guys and went up to the suite. Jerry seemed to think that I owed him for a share of the suite, even thought I hadn’t stayed there. I should have told him to fuck off, but it didn’t seem worth the hassle. A prick is a prick is a prick; telling him doesn’t make it any different. I took a cab back with a pervert cabbie who seemed to think I would be interested in the ways he mistreats prostitutes he hires. He said he was a UNLV student studying computer business and that he operated a pornography/prostitution website. “Oh, you’re a cyber pimp,” I said in mock admiration.

“I prefer the term ‘entrepreneur’” he said, “but, yeah, basically.” I paid him and walked up to the room. It disgusted me that guys like that are getting rich. I, then, am a chump, a sucker, a rube. I collapsed onto the bed without taking off so much as my shoes. The air conditioner was pumping out the accumulated second-hand smoke of the decades. Dino, Frank, and Sammy’s stale smoke. I tried to breathe and tried not to hate life. Thing staggered in. “You want to go downstairs for a drink?”

“No,” I said. Boy, did I mean it. The curtains were open. The strip blinked on and off below. I slept.