Niggling and Nettlesome

What visitor doesn’t arrive in Las Vegas believing its “What happens here, stays here!”© slogan? O.J. Simpson did. Where’s he now?

Those weighty limiting inhibitions out-of-towners have dragged along from Boise, Iowa City or Little Rock get stored at McCarran International upon arrival and are barely, or in some cases gratefully, retrieved just in time for the return trip to real life.

In between seeing slot machines and liquor stores at the airport, and later regretting busting the holiday budget at casino table games while developing monstrous hangovers through overpriced Strip drinks, the sober comportment which defined them at home dissolves. That probity probably winds up somewhere in the Mojave.

Likely in one of those San Berdoo meth oases across the border in California.

Residing in Las Vegas now, neither the locals’ nor the visitors’ conduct surprises any longer. For some strange reason the only inhabitants’ behavior which fails getting any sort of rises comes from those who’ve migrated and settled here. Years under relentless sun and residual nuclear fallout haven’t scrambled our outlooks, while taking diverse paths wider than Interstate 15 left us cosmopolitans, not just faking sophistication.

Biased as it might seem, the phonies back East and the Midwest are more real than those fronting in Las Vegas. Well, less desperate, calmer, and drier around the armpits and palms.

Descending from the Northeast, I remain burdened by propriety. Decades of meeting next morning questionable women who wore leopard-skin open-toed mules, downing brown or amber spirits preceded by lime slices, or chased by beer, or rue, and listening to while becoming one with plaintive country & western music haven’t doused ingrained senses of right and wrong.

Which other than a fat bank account is one swell constant to maintain.

Why, surprisingly, some of the best discussions I’ve ever had about sin have occurred here in Las Vegas. Hey, the place advertises itself “Sin City,” so why not?

Notice it’s not “Vice City.” After all, isn’t “sin” preferable to “vice”? The former is naughty indulgence. The latter kind of denotes all sorts of unsavoriness, right?

Once again semantics saves the day and spares nights from early morning shame.

Actually what’s described as “sin” simply allows our inhibitions to roam … within specified parameters. Public drunkenness? Absolutely! Lewd and lascivious behavior? Up to certain points. Unfettered carnal congress? Keep it behind the fig leaves of closed doors and among like-minded partners/participants, who’s the wiser?

And why should the uninvited, the excluded, care?

Early summer presented three examples of release doubtlessly common to Las Vegas.

The first instance took place just before a dawn erased that night.

Two club-hopping young men found a woman who’d service them as their third in a threesome. Nothing other than credit cards with five-figure limits and expensive clothing labels distinguished the junior execs. The lively blonde who’d serve as the sandwich’s meat was Cali toned lightened by a burbling manner.

Her baby blue baby doll dress seemed appropriate for the occasion.

Compared against the bucks, she exuded confidence. Apparently she’d twisted this way before. Her two prospective suitors exhibited straight dude about to stare at another’s live erection anxiety.

Evening, swiftly as it flowed, stumbled too slowly for the men’s ultimate purposes. If the woman was aware of their distress she may have purposely lengthened the discomfort through innocuous dawdling and detour.

Her every minute became their 75 seconds.

Before returning to a swank Strip hotel, one or all decided sustenance for their post-exertion recovery necessary. Takeout purchased, a little contention ensued. The conveyance engaged provided two choices: three crammed in the rear bench or two comfortably seated there while odd man out perched in the passenger seat.

Rock-scissors-paper settled the matter. The loser sat upfront holding the trio’s bagged food orders. Along the drive, either giving a foretaste of imminent delight or craving gratification this moment, the woman escaped from her panties, angled herself perpendicular to the piece of bread beside her, spread her legs and let him finger fuck her throughout the ride.

Had she thrown her legs open any wider one of her heels would’ve rested on the passenger’s shoulder. Yeah. She’d availed herself Lincoln Tunnel wide.

While satisfaction from the first man’s manipulation gradually filled an otherwise silent ride, the denied passenger slowly gripped their Styrofoam incased meals in increasingly tighter white-knuckle death grips.

The trio’s departure from the car wasn’t so much an exit as an emergency evacuation.

The second instance involved three men, a pair of locals and a Bronx visitor. The pair had treated the guest to an evening at a hotel-based club. There, a working girl spied the fresh meat and bee-lined somewhere against his wallet.

Pro as she was, the working girl was flattering and quite attentive. So rapt one hand rather quickly stroked his cock the instant he showed interest in her. However, her other hand just as speedily refocused him.

Apparently the mercantile part of her mind thought she could relieve him of his watch. While diddling his short arm, she also attempted unbinding his watch band with the clear intention of slipping the prize off his wrist and squirrelling it, well, wherever.

Unfortunately, the mark she tried boosting carried a badge from the Bronx County District Attorney’s office. Her impertinence offended him. He told her so. In Bronx terms. Accent and all. Loud enough over the music.

Being a Vegas hooker, though, she didn’t miss a beat. After he’d finished erupting, she resumed stroking his cock. Although he was having no more of her then, she slipped him her phone number. For “just in case” and “later.”

The incident continued making the Bronx guest boil further into night. His hosts laughed it off and told him to ignore the brazenness of a stupid Vegas whore. Their guest agreed with their “stupid Vegas whore” assessment yet the incident gnawed without end. Not that she’d tried boosting his goods but from an unnamable something. An affront perhaps? Fortunately, the Bronxite ran into a fellow New Yorker elsewhere.

Hearing the tale, the second New Yorker sussed out the first’s bogle. As explained, the Bronx guy wasn’t upset that some dumbass skeezer whore tried yanking his watch. He was still pissed some dumbass skeezer whore thought she could yank his timepiece without him noticing like he was some kind of chump.

That was it. His simple diagnosis solved the Bronxite’s inexpressible anger. He looked upon his hosts disdainfully. They were dummies. A local problem, one whose severity they downplayed, one they should’ve nailed immediately needed somebody from 2400 miles distant to fix.

Instead of getting rightfully indignant, the Bronxite spotted the Nevadans and the New Yorker several rounds while righteously bitching out locals in general.

Thanks to rap’s influence, the slur “nigger” and all its permutations have infected and degraded our discourse. Once, speaking it generally meant inflicting a grievous harm. Now our modern society has transformed “nigger” into a term of endearment. That and a fairly flexible adjective.

I’m glad the adults who imprinted me are dead. Hearing “nigger” as it’s commonly uttered now would kill them. They exhibited the utmost dignity in order to limit that word scorching their ears. And here the present generation gleefully throws all that striving on its back.

Sigh. Two steps forward, five steps back.

Hearing “nigger” often causes me a start. Not as frequently as earlier, yet …

Young ignorant blacks spouting it is bad enough. Spewed from gawps of overserved, overentitled same-aged Anglos, though, particularly boils.

Millennial ladies and gentlemen, your dearest friend isn’t your “nigga”; your closest associates aren’t your “niggaz.”

Has migrating West improved my hearing? I don’t recall hearing the term slung as loosely back in New York. And there are 20-30 million more people in that region.

Anyway, coming to Las Vegas generally means pushing one’s inhibitions aside. Be it from drunkenly jaywalking, doing [u-name-it] to excess, into flouting conventions publicly. Behavior an individual pretty much wouldn’t tolerate or perform wherever he or she calls home discovers license here.

Taken to scatological extremes, Las Vegas is the place where Americans feel free to shit openly. Visitors don’t worry about any adverse reaction because who isn’t also squatting down and doing the same?

If there is a transgression which disturbs me without fail it’s lack of sotto voce; of vocal/verbal circumspection. Some of the discourse heard here, I wonder if it’s spoken at the same volume, with the same vehemence as in Duluth, Mobile or Kerrville?

Um, not highly fucking likely.

The most recent incident deserving of a Danny Thomas spit-take: a bachelorette party.

The bride presumptive and two of her BFFs have separated from the main body. These three sit in a lounge. They settle into colorful cocktails. Although the bride’s fiancé is nowhere near Las Vegas, somehow her ex, the man who couldn’t pull the trigger, is somehow in residence.

What a coincidence!

The consensus is the lover who spurned the bride has realized too late he passed on a great deal. That somehow he hopes to regain her even at this few ticks to midnight hour. Fat chance, buddy.

A whole litany of why that cat won’t be walking this chick down any aisle cascades from the bride. Just listening to her bile should make one wonder how those two lasted as long as they did.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

The bride’s final comment on the lover who spurned her ought have made a record skip somewhere. It sure made me double-clutch.

According to the bride, the ex-lover sniffing around seeking redemption and return to her grace, that fellow, why, “he’s hung like a nigger.”

After she spoke there wasn’t even an awkward moment of silence. The fact was acknowledged, accepted then the conversational caravan rolled on.

On one hand, the succinct description offered lengthy praise. On the other, there’s something about its abject brusqueness which rather demeaned.