Pissing in Nevada

It was the three of us. I sat shotgun with Jesse in the back and Greg driving. We were in his car, Miss Maxi, and the whole trip was his idea. He had been 21 for five months, Jesse for two, and it was finally my turn. I was to be properly initiated in Reno.

We were supposed to leave town right after class, but Jesse hadn't packed, and when we got to his place, Sarah was there. She was all made up and looking good to try to get Jesse to stay. She didn't trust him. They fought, so Greg and I bailed for tacos down the street at Javier's. They were good. We got a few to go for Jesse and went back.

The couple was on the curb sharing a cigarette beside an old red backpack. Jesse kissed her quickly, tossed his pack in the back, and followed it in. After getting gas and a quick stop for pot, it was dark and we were finally on our way out of Sacramento. "What a cunt," said Jesse with a mouthful of taco. "We're finally all 21 and she wants me to stay home and what? Watch Lifetime and bitch about her period? Fuck that."

If I were him, I'd have stayed. The trip sounded fun, but only on account of my lack of anything at all at home. At least in Reno there was the chance of someone happening. My theory is that Jesse only feigned resentment for Sarah. I know he knew Greg didn't like her. He probably thought it was the same with me. He didn't hang out anymore, and rather than take the blame himself, he blamed her. But I've seen the two together when neither thought anyone else was looking. The kid would die without her.

"You know what would show her who's boss?" said Greg. "If you got herpes from a hooker and wiped it all over Sarah's face."

Jesse laughed so hard he choked on his taco.

The Javier's hit us all at once, and we had to stop in Auburn. The gas station only had one toilet, which Jesse got to first. When he was done, Greg and I wrestled for it. He threw me into a rack of chips and hurried in. The impact made me lose my clench, and a little came out – not much, but enough. I sprang up straight and stood totally still till Greg finished. The smell in there was awful and hot and thick. The bastards hadn't left me much paper, so I had to use those rough hand towels. It stung. My shorts went in the wastebasket. I covered them with some more towels, washed up, and went commando to the check stand. I watched the tiles as I went.

"A pack of P-funks, please."

"Can I see your I.D.?" The woman's voice was pretty, and when I looked up, she was pretty, too. Her hair was gold and curly. I gave her the card and five dollars. She looked it over.

"Oh! Happy Birthday!"

"Yeah… thanks."

"You got big plans for tonight?"

"My buddies and I are heading to Reno."

"That sounds fun. I wish I could go."

"Yeah…well, have a good night."

I hurried out as soon as I had my change.

"What did you fall in?" asked Jesse. He was sitting on the curb with a cigarette looking impatient. Greg sat on Maxi's hood, legs crossed like Buddha.

I lit up, too. "I swear, that shit was better than sex. I must've lost like twelve pounds."

"You could use it, fatty," said Greg. "I seen you talking to that cutie clerk. Did you get a number or what?"

"I wasn't really in the flirting mood."

"Yeah, I understand. I used to be a pussy, too."

"It's a little hard to spit game when you just pooed in your pants like a four year old. I don't know. It seemed like a bad omen."

"Man you're fucking disgusting."

"Well, your sister doesn't mind. Turns her on actually. That kid's a pervert."

"The key is in the ignition." The sweet and soothing sound of Maxi's voice.

The drive was fun. Greg had an ill mix on and Jesse was packing a pipe in the back. It had been too long since all three of us spent much time together. We passed the bowl around and suddenly it was just like high school. All the shitty adulthood in between was gone. No jobs. No serious girlfriends. No stress at all. I steered for Greg while he smoked, and he turned around to talk at Jesse, leaving me to navigate the Sierras from the passenger’s seat in the dark.

"You haven't been to the Casino's yet either, right?"

"No, man."

"Look at me about to bust two virgins at the same time. What a pimp."

"You just keep telling yourself that."

"I bet you're all nervous as hell. Just watch what I do and try not to lose all your money too quick."

"You listen to this guy, Kevin. Remember, he's been to Vegas a whole once."
I was nervous, actually. I never gambled much except poker for quarters with the younger kids at the movie theater. I didn't want to do it actually. The whole thing seemed retarded. I just wanted to drink and try my luck with the ladies.
But this is what I said: "The way I see it, I'm due to win a mad stack of bills. They're fools if I don't. "

"Who's fools?"

"The casino fucks. If I lose, I'll hate gambling and never do it again. Best thing for them is to let me win a bunch right off, get me hooked, right? Then I'll be pissing money into Nevada for the rest of my life."

"It's not rigged, idiot. It's just luck."

"No man, it's fate."

"Haven't you guys ever seen a mafia flick? The mob's got Vegas on lock down. They probably give Reno to their kids for practice, and you know they've got those three fate bitches locked up in some back room fucking cutting threads and rigging dice throws."

"Yeah that makes sense."

We came into Reno on the 80 and drove straight past the beckoning yellow, green, pink, and purple lights to dark and ugly Sparks where Greg's friend Cathy lived. He had it all set up for us to crash at her place. Apparently she wanted Greg's nuts, but we got lost as hell trying to find her in some sketchy crackville. There wasn't a single street light. All the houses had fading paint and fenced in lots of dirt covered with random junk: pieces of bikes, broken washing machines, those cheap little kiddy pools. I was itching to drink and sure we'd get jacked if we kept driving in circles.

"We're close right? Let's just find a well lit parking lot with a bar and have her find us there."

That turned out to be a marvelous idea. We ended up at a working class hick pub. Greg was right at home.

"My good sir," he called to the barkeep. "We're lost and want to get drunk. How's about starting a tab with a pitcher of Fat Tire?"

"I don't want my first legal drink to be regular ass beer. I want something fancy, with an umbrella."

"You want some girly drink, so be it. I'll have a beer."

"What about long island ice teas?"

"Allright, that sounds Kosher. We'll have three of them."

The bartender was short and bald with hairy arms. He didn't look amused at all. I tapped my feet and drummed on the bar to the Stones while he mixed our teas. There was a row of slot machines with dancing lights against the far wall. Three fat forty-somethings loaded them with quarters. They were the only women in the bar. A group of likely tweakers argued over a game of pool, and next to me on a bar stool, a lonely old man hovered over a tall beer. He watched it bubble as if he and it were all there was. When the drinks were finally done, we snatched them up and Greg proposed a toast.

"To Kevin - finally a real man!"

"Cheers!"

I'd waited a long time for that drink. It was bitter, but I liked it, because it was bitter. Jesse sipped at his through two little red straws and shuddered and coughed a bit like he'd never had a drink before. Greg handled his just fine. "Proper bar etiquette," said Greg, "demands that you always tip the bar tender. It seems like you're throwing money away, but he'll make you harder drinks and you'll save in the end."

"Well, proper birthday etiquette demands that you tip. But hey thanks for the advice."

"So are you gonna call that girl or what?"

He did. Cathy knew the place and said she'd come on down to meet us. In the mean time, we got that pitcher and moved to a table. Then we got another one and possibly a third. Somewhere in the midst of a loud discussion on the benefits and methods of masturbation we apparently offended the tweakers.

"Fuck you boys talking about?" Standing over us was a lean man maybe forty in a sleeveless flannel shirt with a clenched jaw and funky, yellow teeth. He wasn't really scary or intimidating, but he looked awfully serious. I had no idea what to say, but Jesse did.

"Prostate tickling. It's when you shove a finger up your asshole right before you cum. It's fucking glorious. You haven't lived until you try it."

That was not at all what we were talking about. Jesse was obviously drunk and suddenly a fighter. In high school, almost all our parties ended with him belligerent and swinging. We all knew he wouldn't shut up until the tweaker threw a punch, and then the three of us together might beat the guy's ass enough to make a point before his other friends broke our skulls. We were ready. We had the element of surprise.

"This here's a warning, all right? You faggots better quiet the fuck down before y'all ruin our night out and get us angry."

"Aww… why'd you have to go and call us a mean name like that? I was hoping we could be friends, you know, really get to know each other."

I swear he didn't just wink. He actually licked his lips at that asshole. That did it. The guy slammed a heavy fist right into Jesse's stomach. Before Greg and I could do a thing, Jesse opened his mouth, spewed frothy beer all over the guy, and fell to the floor. Greg busted up laughing. The tweaker stepped backwards, trying to avoid what was already on him, and tripped over one of the slot-machine ladies. They both fell, yelling and cussing. The bartender rushed out with towels and orders no one heeded.

It was pretty chaotic, so I figured I might as well steal some shit. I loaded my jacket with three shot glasses, a wallet one of the tweaker's buddies had left on the bar mid-payment, and the fire extinguisher. At some point Greg had pulled Jesse from the floor and the three of us were all outside and running. We never paid. Around the corner, we literally ran right into Cathy. What luck.

Greg formally introduced everyone. This Cathy wasn't near what Greg had led us to expect. She wasn't ugly, I guess, but she was far from hot. Just plain. Boring looking. Straight hair, flat clothes, not my kind of chick at all. Jesse's neither. He was too drunk to hide his disappointment. We hurried through an explanation of the bar incident and gave Cathy the keys to Maxi so she could get her and pick us up. Cigarettes were in order.

"I can't believe you puked on that guy. That was amazing."

"Yeah, it just came to me."

"So how 'bout that Cathy? You guys saw it, right? The lust in her eyes?"

"Sure, man. I got protection if you need it."

"You think I'd come all the way out here for ass and forget condoms?"

"I was talking about a paper bag, but yeah you should probably wear a few condoms, too."

"For real," said Jesse. He was puking again.

Cathy's house wasn't half as bad as it looked from the outside. She lived with two other girls, who were out unfortunately, and they all decorated the place with girly, glittery things and kept it pretty clean. There were flowers and little glass horses and mirrors studded with rhine stones. I think we all felt a little out of our element. I did anyway, until Cathy pulled a bottle of So Co from the freezer and poured a round of shots.

"No, no more for me," said Jesse.

"Well shit, I already poured it," said Cathy. "I guess the birthday boy'll have to take two. Don't say I never got you nothing."

"Mazle Tov!"

Greg followed the poor girl all over her house. He laughed at all her jokes, told her lies, and made a general ass of himself. I watched cartoons with Jesse on a girly pink couch with fluffy hair. It was awkward to see Greg so desperate and polite. He used to do just fine with girls. He lost his virginity years before I did, and didn't have to act any differently to do it. I didn't see why this Cathy was worth the effort and to be honest, didn't care much. I was bored with the whole situation.

"Cathy! Can we blaze in here?"

"Not without me, bitches!"

She hopped over the couch and landed in between Jesse and me. Greg slumped into a chair across a coffee table from us. He looked pissed but smoked anyway. Ren whizzed on the electric fence, and Cathy made some sort of sex sandwich joke. When the bowl was cashed, Jesse passed out and Cathy wanted to go to bed, too. It was twelve. My birthday had come and gone.

Greg went with her to her room, leaving me alone. I prayed for Cathy's roommates to come home. We strike up some clever conversation and have some drinks and then an awesome threesome. It turns out one of them is moving to Sacramento for some reason. The hot blond one. She's fun and understanding and saves me from my wretched life. There are quiet, tender moments shared, after sex while my fingers skim up and down her thigh. There are fights with tears and screaming. I finally care enough for something to know that I'm alive.

"You still awake? Let's get the fuck out of this piece!" It was Greg. He didn't have that post-coital glow.

"Wow. I always figured you'd suck in bed, but I never thought you'd shoot that fast."

"She's tired or whatever. I'll see about tomorrow. Anywho, it's still your birthday and who gives a shit if this fuck's passed out? We should still hit up a casino."

"Word is bound, son!"

We took a taxi to the El Dorado and found it full of old folks, so we moved on to the Silver Legacy without gambling a dime. The Legacy was more of the same so we stayed. I followed Greg first to a roulette table and then to Black Jack. Apparently it's bad luck to gamble with stolen money, because I lost like hell. I burned through the tweaker money quick and well into my own. Greg wasn't doing much better.

The free drink service was slow enough for me to sober some, and the quiet, dying people with sagging skin that pulled their faces into scowls and my dwindling chip-stack and the absence of ladies and the mechanical music of slot machines depressed me. It was a terrible experience. Only the dealer spoke. The rest of us looked on, weary-eyed in a cloud of our own smoke and wished we were someplace else.

Greg got up to pee. I wandered through endless rows of slot machines in search of someone worth sitting next to. I found a woman in a low-cut, white halter. She was probably thirty-five and all emaciated looking. Her hair was curled and greasy with hair spray, and there was a bit of tattooed flower visible on her chest. She made obnoxious smacking sounds with her gum.

"Having any luck here?" I asked.

"My luck just got a whole lot better, handsome."

There was no doubt that she was hot in her day. She was dumb enough to spout cheesy pick up lines and desperate enough to spout them at twenty-one year olds. Her beauty was all she ever had and that was gone.

We talked for a while. She flirted pretty aggressively and I played along. Worse come to worse, I figured she was good for a BJ in a bathroom. Sex was her only solace. You could tell. She escaped then, on her back oblivious to life and its misery, but all sex really gave her was two kids she didn't love, each from a different husband - one a drunkard who worked construction, the other a drunkard who moved furniture. Both kids were with their dads that night. The woman was taking full advantage of her freedom.

"And what do you do?" she asked.

"I'm a drunkard."

She laughed and I gave her a cigarette. She took it and smoked it without spitting out her gum which disgusted me. Throughout the rest of our encounter I couldn't stop imagining the gum absorbing the smoke and her smacking and chewing it and tasting it over and over. Thank Christ Greg showed up then and pulled me away with a giant grin.

"Where're you boys going?" the desperate woman called after us.

The fuck had won three grand.

"You know I think slots are gay, but on my way back from the bathroom, this machine just called to me. You were right, man. It was Fate."

Somehow the money made everything better. The depression was gone. It didn't matter that Greg won the money and not I. It was practically mine and it made me giddy. The money, won through sin, was due to be spent on more of the same. But what exactly?

Drinking and drugs hadn't fixed me, and even after winning big, I still hated gambling. It didn't take us long to decide in favor of boobies.
We had to ask some bum for directions to a strip club. He helped us out, nice guy really, led us right to it. We tipped him a hundred bucks. The hand he thrust out to take the money held a crack pipe.

Inside, the place was somehow dark despite the bright lights on the stages and behind the bar and all the walls made of mirrors. There were two stages, one in the middle of where a crowd would be if there were more than a dozen people and a main stage against the back. A pretty naked girl strutted and danced on each. We went to the bar first for beers and took a seat by the main stage. I always pictured strip clubs packed full of frat boys laughing and shouting at the girls. The lack of patrons there made it feel dirty and perverted, which I liked.

The first two strippers were good: they pulled our faces into their breasts and rubbed their asses on our erections and made a lot of money off us, but the third stripper wasn't a stripper at all. She was prettier than the others, younger with dark black hair, but she couldn't work the pole at all. Her tall platform shoes kept clunking against the stage. Her eyes never once met ours, though I watched them in the mirror. It was well into her second song before she finally peeled her bra away and let it fall like a leaf from a tree. She danced with her hands over her tits until Greg offered her dollar. She had to let go to take it. It was obviously her first night. They put her on when it was slow to test her out, and things weren't going well. I loved her, though. The timid eyes, the blatant shame. Who knows what brought her to the pole, but I’ll be damned if I let my baby stay there.

"I want a lap dance!" I yelled, waving a shiny twenty.

Her jaw dropped and her eyes opened wide with fear. She looked past me, to a manager I think, nodded dimly at some unseen signal, and then stepped off stage and took my hand. Avoiding all eye contact, she led me to a little booth where I broke every lap-dance rule I've ever heard existed. I groped her. I said unrepeatable things. I pulled her underwear away and peeked at the one thing I wasn't supposed to see. I offered her more money for sexual favors. I called her a whore, a slut, a bitch, a worthless object. She didn't respond at all to any of it. She just sat on my lap with her back to me and moved out of time to the music. I still wasn't wearing any underwear (remember I shat them), and my hard-on was pressed against the inside of my zipper. Her rocking rubbed it raw and made it sting.

It felt good to be a hero.

When it was over, I tipped her again and slapped her ass. She was crying, but not in any way dramatic, just pathetic. There was no wailing. She stood and sniffled with two mascara –blackened tears running down her cheeks. Beautiful. She disappeared into a dressing room, and I knew she’d never dance again. I strode out toward Greg and the stage and gave him a cheesy, eighties-style high-five.

"Look at this shit!" he said. "The last chick took my shirt off and like dry humped my chest." He held up a curly pube.

I didn't tell him what I did with my stripper. I didn't have to. She was pointing at me saying, "It was that guy," to two large bouncers. I was scared. Greg was confused. We stood to leave, but they were already upon us. They were ready to pound us, or at least me, and we wouldn't have been able to do much to stop them, except that I had a plan in my pocket. And by plan, I mean fire extinguisher. I unleashed the thing from my coat, sprayed the hell out of the bouncers, and ran out the door before anyone knew what was happening.

We ran for two blocks. It was late by then, like three, but I was in too good a mood to sleep, and Greg was pretty jacked from our escape.

"Let's get fucking wasted."

We did. I only remember bits and pieces after that. At one point we were taking shots with a group of hotties. I believe I could have nailed one until I told her my dick still hurt from the stripper. I guess the girl missed the point of that story entirely. Then I remember Greg blathering about how great Cathy was, that she was different than other girls, that he loved her. Then we were pissing together in the street, stumbling and laughing with our arms around each other's shoulders. I think we went back to a casino, because when I woke up later, I had four black chips with the letters “N.C.V.” in my pocket. We must have had fun. I don't know how we got back to Cathy's house, but there I was, on the hairy pink couch, alone.
Cathy was yelling like a crazy person. It made my head hurt. I tried to shut her up by closing my eyes, but when that didn't work, I rolled off the couch and hobbled down the hall to find Jesse in her room with a bottle of blue Powerade in his hands. Cathy looked pissed. So did her roommates, who weren't so hot after all.

"Fuck you bitches. I'll puke wherever I want."

He meant it.

"Get this asshole out of here!" screamed Cathy.

"What time is it?" None of this situation made any sense. I needed some concrete facts.

"It's four in the afternoon. You and Greg have been asleep all day, while this PRICK! has been rampaging all over my house. Now get him out of here! I'm waking Greg up, and you guys are leaving." That was good enough for me. I picked him up and dragged him to the car where I threw him in the backseat with a window rolled down just in case. I didn't want to go back inside. I figured I'd let Greg try and smooth things over with this girl he loved so much and probably blew it with. Sitting shotgun, I closed my eyes.

"Hey happy birthday, Kevin," Jesse mumbled. "I think I puked a little in there. That…that's your present. Did I ever tell I love you? Cause I do, man. I really do. You're a good guy. The both of you. You're both good guys and I love you. And I love Sarah…" He was quiet for a minute, then, "Hey, can you keep a secret?"
I told him I could.

"Shhh… I had sex with what's-her-face last night. Don't tell nobody. It's a secret."

Greg got in and started the car and changed the CD and drove off without saying anything. I couldn't tell if he knew about Cathy and Jesse, or if he were just pissed about the puke and forced exile. I wasn't about to tell him. It was a secret. We got coffee and gas, and Greg spoke, but only business.

"We'll be home about six."

"Yeah."

"Fucking Jesse."

"Yeah."

And that was my twenty first birthday. We drove home in silence. Jesse got laid, Greg won three thousand dollars, and all I had to show for it was a sore penis and four black chips. I didn't even know what they were worth.