The Vegas Method

Where am I?



Kidneys? Check!



Eyes? Check!



Pants? Fuck…where ARE my pants?



Part of the fun of a Las Vegas drunken binge was the hangover. There was the headache, the nausea and all of these physical discomfort, but the true divine form of amusement was to try to piece up the previous night in the city where a good deal of what you do when intoxicated has no consequences whatsoever. I was in a hotel room, that I could gather. Maybe it was a motel, the cheap wallpaper with flamingo designs reeked of the seventies and the only places that weren’t reinventing themselves every three years in Vegas were the motels. They were the only ones not exploiting an addiction of mankind, so business was not as good as it is on the strip.



My mouth still tasted the thickness of Jack Daniels whiskey and the sourness of vomit. For a night that started with martinis around a black jack table, it sure ended up weird. The whiskey explained why I suffered from such a terrible blackout then. The stronger the alcohol, the farther you get. I looked out of the window, a tired, beat up parking, cracked by the years under the sun. I was almost out of town, if I looked far enough to my right, there was the desert. I was in one of these motels where penniless, desperate people were washed away after a few days of abuse.



A tourist? Could I have ended up in bed with a broken tourist?



I lumbered heavily to the balcony, where I could figure out I was on the first floor of the “Little Tuscany Motel”. A pair of trousers was hanging from a tree nearby. Were they mine? These looked like tuxedo pants, I remembered starting the night with a pair of color-washed jeans. Force was to admit, these Tuxedo pants were the only form of trousers around. So, once during that crazy evening, I must’ve changed up. But who did that tuxedo belonged to?



I came back inside, seeking something I could put on myself while trying to recover my pants outside. The room looked like a napalm missile fell right at the center. There was a big circular burn on the rug in front of the bed and everything in that radius seemed to have been projected outwards. Socks, pencils, underwear, Bible…there was even a crack in the TV screen. Figuring a quiet way out seemed to be a pretty good idea since someone would have to pay for all this damage. I put my underwear back on and searched for more layers of clothes. I found the tuxedo vest in a puddle of water in the bathroom and work boots thrown against the room door. I knew these boots. I started the night in them. Very comfortable and expensive work boots. They were the little ironic touch to my chic.



I decided I had enough clothes on to risk an exit without getting arrested for public nudity. I would get dismissed as another of these hungover bastards, droning his way back home. The escape through the balcony went pretty smoothly, but a detail kept bugging me. What happened during these hours I completely lost? I didn’t have my papers, my wallet, nothing. I wasn’t far from home, but I hailed a cab, just to make sure I wasn’t going to run into more troubles.



“2130 Conn Street”



“Hey man! Don’t you recognize me?”



The driver’s face wasn’t telling me anything. He seemed Indian or vaguely from this neck of the woods. Very dark skin and all. He seemed friendly enough to have been a part of my blackout, so maybe he could feed me in on that happened.



“No, but I feel you might have some information that would piece up my night together.”



“Oh man, I dropped you right here three hours ago.”



“Three hours…I’ve only been sleeping for three hours?”



“Man, you were fucking drunk.”



“Seem so, what’s your name…again?”



“I’m Ali, you’re Mr. Eastwood right?”



“Not really…Ali, would you tell me where my pants go?”



“Right here, in the trunk, you forgot them yesterday, you were getting pretty busy with these girls…”



“Oh and you still have them?”



“Yeah yeah…papers and all. I would’ve tried to call you before the end of my shift.”



“Thanks man, I’ll use it to pay you as soon as we get home.”



“No problem Mr. Eastwood.”



I barely ducked a huge thunderstorm of troubles. The phone number on my IDs was my home phone. I wasn’t supposed to go out drinking, I told my parents I was at a study group. I wouldn’t have particularly liked to have a round of explanations with my mother after she would’ve told me: “Son, why does a cab driver just called me to tell me he had your pants and your wallet in the trunk of his car”?