Vegas Does Things to a Man...Well, a Boy.

So as most of you know, among my many other vices, I'm a gambling addict.  The things I do not only to make money to go gamble, but the choices I make once I am gambling are not only stupid, they're quite comical.  However, not many of you know that my very first Vegas experience trumps any other experience either I or anyone I know has ever experienced.  And it happened when I was only 12.  I figured that since I'm always talking about the "Just Give Up" book, I'd give you guys an excerpt...one that includes the most embarrassing story ever, and one that hardly anyone on this earth knows.  So here it is...from the "Gambling" Chapter of the book...Shaun's first trip to Vegas.  You may understand a bit more about me after reading this.  To catch you up to speed, my parents, my sister and I had gone to Las Vegas.  We stayed at Circus Circus because it was "kid friendly", but it only took two seconds of me seeing the casino floor to realize that it wasn't video games I wanted to play, it was the slots.  And the rest is history:

So soon after my brain processed all of the majesty down in the casino, I came to the conclusion that I needed to, check that…I HAD to figure out a way to get down to that casino and play the slots.  But how would I? You had to be 21 to even get in there, and as I said earlier, I'm, as NFL wide-receiver Plaxico Burris once called me when I was covering him in college, "SHORT AS HELL!!!"  Thanks Plax.  How'd that self-inflicted bullet wound and prison time treat you?  Anywho, so me not looking older than my age of 12 was already a problem.  So I'd have to figure out another way.

So the plan.  Right.  Well, one night I waited until it was time to go down for dinner.  I pretended to be sick to get the room to myself.  After my parents and sister left the room, my insane plan got underway.  The plan was built on the premise that  while I was growing up, everyone kept telling me how much I looked like my mother.  Figure it out yet?  No?  Well good because if you had, then you're as twisted as I was.  So.  I look like my mother.  Well, where do we go from here?  Well, how about this.  She and I are about the same height.  Good.  Well, what if I put on one of her dresses she brought?  Yeah, that'll work.  And oh, she left her makeup here too…good, good.  So we've acknowledged I look like her without the makeup and clothes…so all I have to do is put on a dress, put on makeup, and I'll be looking like her little sister in no time!  And then, it's on to the slots.  So I go to the bathroom and start putting on the makeup.  That's when I notice something that is a problem.  This was back in the mid-80's, so with Bobby Brown dominating the airwaves and movies like "Breakin'" doing well at the box office, boys modeled the stars we often saw on TV and in the movies.  At that time, the look of the day was the high-top fade.  And yes, this is exactly the hair cut I had.  Now, a more sane man would have wiped off the lipstick and killed the plan right there.  But as I said, there was a spell over me the likes of which I was unable to battle.  I looked in the mirror, and as soon as I saw the high-top fade, it took me all of 1/2 a second to justify it, telling myself, "Well, Grace Jones has a high-top fade.  I could look like Grace Jones."  Yeah, it was that kind of thought process.  

Fast forward 45 minutes.  Makeup on.  Dress on.  Glasses off.  Yes, I'm damn near legally blind, but since my glasses came from the "Boys" section of Sears Optical, I took them off because out of everything else I had going, it obviously would have been the glasses which would have blown my cover.  The rest of me, of course, was 100% pure woman. So I'm about to grab my mom's other purse and leave when I realize, shit.  Shoes.  Thankfully my mom had another pair of shoes in the closet.  There were a few problems here, but as we've already learned, I was clinically insane at this point.  One of the problems was that these were heals, and like most 12 year old boys who haven't grown up in San Francisco, I had never worn heals.  So what.  I'm an athlete, I thought.  I'll get the hang of it.  It would have been easier, however, to get the hang of it if it weren't for the second problem.  My mom's feet were two sizes too small.  Again, no problem.  I squeezed my feet in those shoes like I was getting ready to cross a field of scorpions and my life depended on it.

An hour goes by.  I have on the makeup, the dress, the purse, the shoes and the high-top fade.  My hand is on the door handle.  Last chance to be sane.  You open that door and there's no turning back.  Think about what you're doing.  Well, I did, Inner-monologue, so shut up. I'm out.  I turned the handle and started walking…well, stumbling is more like it.  A made-up 12-year old black drag queen with a dress that didn't fit, a purse that didn't match and a haircut out of "Beat Street".  And all-in-all, it wasn't too bad.  As I walked down the hallway towards the elevator, no one was there.  Got on the elevator.  No one was there.  This isn't too bad!  On the ride down to the casino I was thinking that this was going to be a piece of cake.  That was, until the doors opened and reality hit me square in the panty hose (of which I may or may not have been wearing.  Much of this memory has been erased by my brain's manual override division which destroys any content that could lead to future therapy or potential suicide.

The doors opened to the main lobby.  Now I'm not sure if any of you have been to Vegas, but at any given time the lobby of a casino's hotel is filled with approximately 1.7 million people.  On this day, there were twice that many.  I slowly walked out of the doors, and towards the machines.  I hear some guy say "Ooooh! Hey baby!!!"  and then he and his buddy start laughing.  I realized, shit, they know.  But I kept walking.  People are staring at me.  It seems like every single person on either side of me is looking at me with a combination of surprise and disgust.  And why wouldn't they be disgusted?  It looks like Rue Paul took a dump and out came this short black piece of adolescent transvestite stool with a high-top fade.  Well, after what seemed like hours, (but was probably only about 15 seconds of this humiliation), I could see the casino floor in front of me.  About 30 feet away.  All of this would be worth it.  As I picked up the pace I started slipping more in the heels and must have looked like a retarded chimp at the lab that simultaneously got into the amphetamines and the makeup.   I was almost there.  And here is the most unbelievable part of the story.

As I neared the casino, I saw some people who looked familiar to me.  The reason I said "looked" familiar is because I'm now blind.  Sears Optical glasses removed, remember?  As they got closer, my heart stopped, as they looked amazingly like my parents and my sister.  But how could that be?  They left for dinner only…….SHIT…it's been almost 1 1/2 hours.  And the smile on my sister's face confirmed it.  A smile that all at once said, "Holy shit" and "FINALLY.  After all the years of him being the golden boy, and me being second-tier…this is what I've been waiting for!"  My parents looked at me…at first thinking they knew me and that it was me but it couldn't be me…and then, realization.  My mom, I think, thought it was a joke.  My dad was not laughing.  I hadn't had a girlfriend up to this point, and I think in his head he's now seeing the reason why.  His son is a cross-dresser.  His worst nightmares are staring him right in the face in the form of a 4'6" boy with red lipstick and fake boobs.  I'm guessing at that moment he died a little inside.

I don't remember much more after that.  I remember being back up in the room, a lot of screaming going on, furious removing of the makeup, and me trying to explain what I was thinking.  The worst part is after all of that, disappointing my parents, embarrassing myself, ruining a good pair of heels…I never even got to pull the slot machine.  Oh, and I missed dinner, too…confined to the room for the rest of the trip.  A more ultimate FAIL you will be hard-pressed to find.  And if you do, please tell me.  I really need to know someone out there is dumber than I am.