Around the World in 150 Days, Day 13, The Best Cure
April 19th, Las Vegas: I'm standing in the room of a friend at 'Panorama Tower', wearing casual clothes for once, and feeling very hung over. I woke up at 11am after being out until God knows when and my stomach feels awful. I came over intending to grind the entire Sunday away, but when I arrived he posed a question to me
"Alright Tony, we could grind here, or we could go over to a couple of girls house I know and grind the day away over there and smoke weed."
"Jesus Christ dude, why do you insult me by asking such an absurd question?"
We depart immediately as valuable grinding time is wasting away.
It is quite a drive out to their house in the suburbs of Vegas and I am increasingly regretting last night. I am doing the driving because my friend is grinding on his laptop and I don't want him to kill any of us. Luckily we have a GPS, and it is quite accurate and has the voice of a woman I'd like to chat to in real life.
When we finally get there I am introduced to the two girls (whose names will have to remain anonymous considering the following content) and a piece is immediately produced. My friend says that if I smoke weed it will cure my hangover. I tell him "There's no fucking way treating the after affects of one drug with another can be a good idea." He assures me that this will indeed be a good idea and that his roommate tried it and it worked beautifully. I decide 'fuck it' and take the piece and grab the lighter.
Just 10 minutes later I feel vastly better
"My God dude, what a great idea, even the stomach pain is gone. I feel way better now, thank you sir. What a good decision."
"I told you dude."
And so the four of us spend our day registering for every tournament under the sun and passing around the piece, speaking only in short bursts because we are playing a billion tables and have the intense focus of someone who is totally blazed. Both girls seem very cool and one of them is grinding quite a few tournaments and seems to play really well. I spend my time talking to the other about the poker sponsorship game and her experiences in it. At the high point of my multi tabling I have about 18 tables up, all minimized but still seeable thanks to the high resolution on the screen.
I pretty much blank off my tournaments, cashing numerous times but going deep in basically nothing. Obviously my friend mega crushes like he always does and makes me look bad. I swear at him quite a lot about this. After I bust all my tournaments I decide to go for a run. Running high is strange. My throat gets parched.
We leave well past midnight, after the date had crosses over to 4/20. On our drive back we obviously get caught up in strip traffic. I look over to the car next to us, which is a cab full of girls. One of them smiles at me and I smile back. Then her and her friends smile and wave to me and mine. The light changes and we move up again, and again are side by side with them. Now the girl sitting in the front opens her door and vomits on to the street. My friend and I start laughing, but when I look down at the half drank water bottle at my feet I have an idea
"Dude, I should go give this to her. That'd be a sick pick up and she could definitely use it."
"Yea go for it man."
I grab the bottle, jump out of the car while the lights still red, then walk over with it in hand and give it to her
"Oh my God that's so sweet! Thank you sooooo much!" she says excitedly. I smile and wave to the other girls in the cab and say hi, then sprint back to my car because the light has been red on the strip for an awful long time now. It changes over as I'm getting into the car, but at the next light we are obviously side by side again. We roll down the window
"What are you boys doing tonight?" one shouts
"We're going to eat, what are you girls doing?"
"We're gonna go to 'The Bank' (a club at the Bellagio), you should totally come meet us there honey!"
"Yea maybe we'll meet you there afterwards okay?"
"K!"
The light changes over and we continue on to our destination, which is Korean BBQ, obviously. We discuss whether we should go to 'The Bank', particularly since we need to play tomorrow. I tell him we should stop in briefly and look around to see if they're there and try to pull a very fast pick up. If they're not we'll just bail out and get to sleep.
Back at the Bellagio my friend gets changed into some clothes I lend him to get into the club. We make our way down to 'The Bank' which thankfully has no line on Sunday night. When we enter the club we realize thinking we would ever find them here is a retarded idea. We give up after 10 minutes and call it a night. At least I'll get over eight hours sleep.