You Know What’s Crazy? I’ll Tell You What’s Crazy!
Real Life is crazy!
I’m back from Vegas a week now and I didn’t think it would hit me so hard.
The transition between fantasy and reality is so precisely defined I can tell you the moment I crossed over from exstatic to deflated.
It was Monday May 31st 8:37 am.
I stepped off the driveway of the Pallazo and into the yellow cab headed for the airport.
Suddenly the 60 hour Vegas Insanity Tour was over and Andy Cordan Life Tour 2010 was back on my shoulders like the weight of 12 million burning hot anvils.
I’m listening to the Saudi Arabian pop music, my cabbie, Osama Bin Laden Jones is listening to and it makes me wonder, WTF?
How can this be so difficult. I don’t want to leave. I still have money in my pockets. I still have friends in the suite. I still have lady luck circling me like a friendly rain cloud.
5 hours ago I was seated at a black jack table turning 25 dollars into 950 dollars.
The Asian dealer says to me “That good shoe for you. That good shoe.”
Yes, mam that was the best shoe of my entire gambling life.
You know what my wife said when I shared the greatest gambling moment of my life with her.
“Why didn’t you bet more?”
HUH?
Nobody on fantasy island would have said this. Not one member of the crazy crew would castigate a run of luck like this flicking it to the curb like a smoked up Marlboro.
When I walked into the suite at 3am and told the Crew I just turned 25 dollars into 950 dollars, I was a hero, not a guy who obviously doesn’t understand how to bet.
I Can’t believe how much I miss it. I can’t believe 60 hours has come and gone. It was like Disney World without the ears and a lot more cleavage.
From the moment I arrived, I only had one thought; pace yourself.
Don’t do too many shots and become a slobering-ass pirate. Don’t vomit in the pool so everyone throws bottles at your head when they shut the pool down. Don’t get in a fight in the elevator with a bunch of fellas from South Central who have gold grills for teeth.
Pace yourself. Like the story of the baby bull who wants to run down the hill and get himself a cow. And the daddy bull who says let’s walk down the hill and get them all.
PACING.
I didn’t care when I ate. I didn’t care when I slept. I didn’t care if I exited the room or ever came back to it. For 60 hours as long as I had a cold one in my hand, and buddies on my shoulder, I was king of all I surveyed.
After a full day of pool action on Saturday, we came back to the room. There was no plan. No expectations. Suddenly someone said, let’s go. We were all covered with sun tan lotion and shampoo.
Who cared? What did it matter? Out the door we went.
Pacing. New moment. New adventure. Where do I sign.
You might be laughing at my pacing philosophy, but after a lifetime of being me, I have learned one thing, the first guy to pass out at a party is always the loser. He’s the guy who hears about it the next day and perhaps forever. He’s the guy who gets left behind, or goes to jail.
I learned that you never passed out before Schultz, because if you did, he would do something to you.
We spent 3 hours crumpling up individual pages of the L.A. Times one night and throwing them on top of a guy who passed out first. We had tons of newspapers and we had plenty of time. We filled up the floor. Then we filled up his bed. Then we said, why stop now? We filled up the room with crumpled pages of the L.A. times till the entire room was filled with newspaper. Floor to ceiling. It was stuffed with balls of newspaper. The guy was in there somewhere, snoring. But we couldn’t see him.
We left giggling like thieves, our hands smeared with newsprint. I wish I could have seen that guy wake up. Imagine having to get up to go to the bathroom and you are covered by darkness, surrounded by an entire room full of newspaper balls.
I bet he freaked. Maybe he died? Who cares.
Pacing.
Which brings me back to Tao Beach.
Double-A brought a friend who is even bigger than Double-A. This guy’s name escapes me but it doesn’t even matter. He shows up at Tao Beach and the sun disappears as he stands over me, shaking my hand.
“This is the guy who writes that crazy blog,” Double-A says introducing me.
Cool, I think to myself. I’m finally the guy who writes. That is a distinct compliment in my mind.
The guy is easily 6’7″ and weighing 325 pounds. He looks like an offensive lineman in the NFL.
Like all big men, he believes his molecular structure and place in the universe is more vastly large and dense than mine. Being almost 200 pounds bigger than me, he doesn’t just meet girls and invite them to our corner, he actually carries some over. Yes, he literally carried a girl in a bikini to our cabana.
Pacing, remember that?
By the end of the day, when the Crazy Crew was on their 8th hour of Tao Beach, Mr. NFL was on his back, hat pulled low over the bridge of his nose. He was snoring that deep, alcohol induced snor that only patients being operated on snor.
The bouncers had to ask the Crew to leave a dozen times, and we finally did leave, we walked out. They had to carry Mr. NFL out of the joint.
I never saw him again, but as the story goes, he puked and rallied somwhere down the line, and then strolled the casino with 10 pink toes.
That’s right, when you are the first to go down, the rest of the group has carte blanche to take advantage of you. Mr. NFL’s buddies painted his toe nails bright pink.
6’7″ 325 pounds. Bright Pink Toe Nails. Open toed sandals.
Pacing!
As I get to the airport, the funk really hits me. Normally I like the SouthWest people.
On this morning of reality, I hate them. I hate their fuscia colored smocks and cheery disposition as they direct me to gate C-22.
F-Off I want to say, knowing that will get me detention time with the TSA idiots.
The problem is, reality sucks. Those 60 hours were fantasy camp. I was the sick kid at Make a Wish, and that was my wish. 60 hours of debauchery and insouciant insanity.
No time. No shirt. No worries.
Pacing.
Now pacing is different. It’s the pace of the bell in the airport that tells travelers it is 9am. It’s the pace of the fat women toting their carry on bags that will never fit in an over head bin. It’s the pace of one jet pulling out so another jet can pull in, so a bunch of glazed eyed zombies can get off from somewhere so another group of insignificant bags of flesh can board to go somewhere else equally as dull.
I look at my watch and it’s 10am.
I look around half hoping the Godfather will walk up from the Gift Shop and put a shot of Patron in my hand and say “it’s 10 O’Clock Buck-O. Time to catch up.”
Catch up to what? To the clock that ticks like a soft angel’s whisper in the fantasy universe I left.
And when that cab door shut. Like a smack in the head that wakes you from that falling dream we all have, it was over. I was awake. The dream gone. Only memories, that now seem less real.
Just being fastened in my seat belt for 4 hours was torture. 24 hours earlier I was moving easily across the pool deck of Tau Beach being touched and touching back. Staring, talking, laughing.
Now I just want to kill the guy in the middle seat because his elbow is slighly touching my elbow and all I can think about is how much I hate him and his elbow.
24 hours earlier. That elbow would have been so socially acceptable, I might have asked it out on a date. I might have said, I love your elbow where did you get it. Haven’t I seen your elbow before? But now, in the reality of confined space and real life, that elbow represented all that was bad with the world.
Sure I missed my kids. But my brain asked, Couldn’t I make new kids? Surely I have some funcitonal DNA left?
Now that’s crazy! I shook my head wiping the notion from my frontal lobe like you erase a picture on a etcha-sktech.
Suddenly there are more reminders that I’m flying in a death tube with stink bags.
The flight attendant’s monotous voice crackles through my ceiling vent like a squadron of uncut fingernails on a black board.
“The pilot has signaled we are making our descent into Nashville. Please turn off all electronic devices with an on / off button.”
I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs: “Would the owner of the dead baby, please come to the back of the plane!” That would shake things up, I think.
Nobody asked me turn off anything in the Palazzo. The only rule was don’t throw your wallet at the Piano Player’s head. Oh wait, we broke that rule too!
So what I am saying is pacing is everything. In Vegas, I drank a water for every shot of Patron. It served me well. At least I fared better than Mr. NFL.
But in real life pacing is different. It’s a cup of coffee to jump start your heart. It’s a tap of the steering wheel to keep from killing the guy who just cut you off in traffic. It’s a roll of the eyes to keep from coming over the conference table and biting your bosses adam’s apple out of his neck. It’s saying excuse me when you turn the corner and accidentally bump into the hot receptionist in sales.
It’s watching the clock, TICK TOCK TICK TOCK. It’s calling home and speaking in mundane gerbil talk about things that in real life, might matter.
Pacing.
It’s about circling a date on the calendar and counting the days till the next time you can get out of that cab and not worry about anything for another 60 hours.
And that is crazy!