Gone with the Whim

Plays Well with Bunnies
Had I known the night would end up like that, I would have worn different shoes.
Something a little less vintage and a lot more user-friendly. A pair with actual ambulatory abilities, not just conversational ones. A set of three-inch heels that don’t even look sexy sitting beside me on any surface because of their age. So old, I’ve just repeatedly plied whatever-color-available Dr. Scholl’s cushion or gel inserts onto the disintegrating insoles. What’s worse, I bought them with birthday money twenty-some years ago a half size too big anyway. I had to have them, even if they flopped off like bedroom slippers when my sodium was low or it wasn’t humid enough for my feet to inflate. And now, glaring into them is like to peering down the throat of someone with a bunch of discordant tongues that have been dragging the floors of Circle K stores since Clinton announced his candidacy.
Just days before my designer shoe kerflooey, we watched a special featuring the glitziest Vegas accommodations on and around the Strip. As usual, the semi-informative Sofa Saturday of sloth involved all quadrupedal domestic animals, an IV drip of aspartame, Orville Redenbacher, and an impressive exhibit inspired by Hershey wrappers. With nominal energy, we guffawed at the exaggerated extravagance of Sin City’s endowments, wondering why anyone or any company would pay anywhere from ten to forty thousand dollars per night. That’s basically a Lexus.
That’s also why I’m glad it wasn’t our money.
Thanks to Driver’s largest annual business (geek) convention, we got up to one of the illustrious Sky Villas in the Fantasy Tower at the Palms. Six thousand seductive square feet enclosed in solid glass with a can’t-avoid view of the omni-twinkling town, it was everything that show host promised it would be. A heated pool dangled over the side of the building like a balcony, balancing on cantilevers and shamrocks. It was an overgrown hot tub that could house thirty not-too-fat people like civilized sardines. Of the multiple suites within, one chamber even included a round, rotating bunk that I spun around on with Driver’s biggest client. No one even noticed.
On the way up to the Villa in the elevator, my passel decided that if anyone asked, I was “in Marketing.” Got it. They punted me through the double doors and I landed smack dab in the middle of someone’s high school reunion with the mathematics team. Or maybe the people who write crossword puzzles. It was a tiny baby microcosm where everyone was so excited about Red Bull, may have well been the cast of Victoria’s Secret. Things only escalated when some new guy finally arrived with vodka. I’m sure the same guy from Accounting they never talk to, but knew he’d be more than happy to pay good money for liquor and the chance to meet all of three ladies in the Villa. Or given his indifference to my questions, he could have been another butler. Didn’t matter. I heard cherubs howling and bells clanking when he dished out a very holy grail of Grey Goose. I could now narrow the wide discrepancy between tee-totaling me and a pageant of flushed engineers.
All I could imagine in my peculiar future were curly-haired and balding, bespectacled men slipping into Red Bull comas and I would have to make copious calls to wives on phones I didn’t know how to use as the lone vodka leader with an able tolerance. From Marketing. The only survivor who elected not to mix perfectly good alcohol with a hyped-up heart attack in a can. Well, besides Driver and Tim. They were guzzling beer and laughing at me and my masculine audience from behind their slender brown bottles.
I swear, it felt like a Camaro in there. Or a Trans Am.
Something with red, waterproof furniture and lots of easy-wipe leatherette. And definitely a T-Top. A cocky sports car I should have been washing slowly with real soapy water in faded cut-off jean shorts and a studded biker jacket while Alannah Myles’ “Black Velvet” fed the acoustics. I’d ignore everything beyond my wash-n-wax, only flopping over a hand wide enough for someone to set an icy drink and I would sip without it even touching my mouth. Those same person would collect my beverage until I needed it again, as signaled by me swinging my hair around, also in slow motion, and tossing it out of my face with the upper part of my forearm. All the while, I’d never get wet and it would be the sexiest thing, ever.
But as an alternative, I was bookended by two very large men, sitting with my black slacks rolled up over my unshaven kneecaps while my pale white calves splashed against the surging jets of the big pendulant sink populated by a haphazard caboodle of delegates from the field of mobile technology. It could have been any prearranged visit to a swingers lounge with your all-male book club, but no bother with trapezes or reading material. And there I was, holding my own in discussions I never knew I could, seated next to my black-and-white spectator pumps carefully stacked on a perilous tiled surface. I’d smile when I couldn’t understand a foreign accent or hear over people plunging into the bubbling bath, altogether incapable of concentrating on more than the courteous chap who kept surfing the slick surface with his forehead while getting in and out of the warm basin for reasons that somehow pertained to me and my vital marketing impedimenta.
The Palms Resort and Casino salutes Las Vegas Boulevard from its high-class hutch on Flamingo Road, courting a wide range of concerts, conferences, and confessions. The Fantasy Tower was once recognized by its legendary Playboy bunny ears situated for illumination halfway up its midriff, but the establishment’s image overhaul recently sent the iconic trademark into the sunset. The two main towers favor shiny, reflective PEZ dispensers minus any characters, which means they look like enormous cigarette lighters poking holes into the desert sky. Though if you ask me (and my Four Ps), these high-rises should be topped with humongous Hugh Hefner heads to demonstrate real Vegas chutzpah and a consistent branding regime. Just a minor upgrade to the existing façade that would exude the apt promotion for a hedonistic holy land where dilapidated high heels are optional and smoking jackets should be required.
Long live the perfect destination for thirsty marketing liaisons and traveling tribes of all kinds, where the accommodations wouldn’t be complete without cascading rapids of Red Bull, mechanical beds, and some Armor All.
And Black Velvet, if you please.