Star Trek Convention, Las Vegas: August 2010 Part II

photo © 2010 David Shankbone | more info (via: Wylio)

Saturday night.

"Are you going to get Patrick Stewart's autograph tomorrow?" she asked me.

"No," I replied. "I get too embarrassed with the whole autograph-asking thing."

"Well, I am," she stated, with a tone that told me she's been itching to share that with anybody she came in contact with. "I'm going to get his autograph," she continued, "and then I'm going to ask him out on a date. I hear he's single again. And that he likes younger women..."

(This woman was in her early 40s, Caucasian, rail-thin, brown-haired, but still had her looks, and most important of all, she didn't have a crazy glint in her eye. I know crazy: I've worked with crazy, I've talked to crazy, I've loved crazy, so I'm a bit of an expert on crazy, and this woman didn't seem looney-tunes. And yet.)

This conversation between her and I was taking place at the Space Quest Bar, located inside the Hilton Hotel, and near to where Star Trek: The Experience used to be. There was a wall covering the gaping hole where it once stood, and my friends and I were tipsily scrawling our names on it.

We weren't the first.

Earring

photo © 2009 Spotlight Forest | more info (via: Wylio)

Hello, you little Earring, you! How are you? Look at you, so damned cute and tiny! A little diamond stud, with a "butterfly" back (even though you don't have wings), rolling around in my vanity's drawer for almost four years. My, my, my. I must confess, Earring, that you weren't a welcome surprise for these tired eyes of mine. I know, I know, I'm sorry, but it's true. Am I being rude? I don't think I am, but if you'd let me finish, perhaps you'll see my point.

It took me a minute, Earring, but I finally puzzled out who your owner was: her name was Florence, and she was a nurse who liked to drink a lot of white wine, and she didn't care if it was from the finest French château, or just good old-fashioned swill. Indeed, one afternoon, on a day that had many secrets, she and I were laying around nude, passing a bottle back and forth, and, after taking a long, sensual swallow, she said something to the effect that "if it had the kick, then (she) was in it."

An oenologist she most certainly was not!

Amoeba Records, Los Angeles, California, 2004

photo © 2010 Fred Rockwood | more info (via: Wylio)
Spring.

The cashier was wondering when she was going to be able to take her lunch break. Lately, she has been noticing that a red-headed girl that has only been there for a couple of weeks, a shameless trollop who is always talking (or, to be more precise, flirting) to the floor managers of the male persuasion, seems to be the first pick for lunch breaks - even when cashiers with seniority *ahem* were waiting patiently, and Hello?, they have errands to run - and is always invited to the hangouts after work. Whatever. The cashier wasn't focusing on the inequality of her not getting the big invites to the big parties at night (Whatever!), she just needed to go on break NOW. It's late afternoon, and her sister is supposed to show up soon with the money she owed her, and then she needs to dash to the bank and deposit it: Rent was due, and more importantly, her roots were starting to show, and that requires calling that salon for an appointment, which requires more cash, and it never ends, does it? She kept trying to shoot glances at her supervisor (another one ensnared by "The Red-headed Slut"), to let him know that she needed to go on break, but it seemed as if he were purposely trying to ignore her. She was about to start waving her arms, stupid bird-like, to get his attention, and if that didn't work, well, then she --

Damn, a customer was walking up to her counter, and she had to go into cashier-mode.

He was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt; he looked as if he were in his 30s, kind of tall, dark haired, and would probably be good-looking, if he weren't so unsteady on his feet. Yeah, he looked...off.

The Foothills of Southern California, 1996.

Winter.

For the last few months, or more specifically, since he started dating The Harpy, every time we'd enter my friend Jeff's vintage Jaguar, he'd always say the same thing: I can't afford this thing anymore. To which I'd respond with something like, Why in Hades did you buy it?

My friend Jeff: A world-class boozer, fluent in Blarney, but a little too worried about how he was perceived. He started leasing the Jaguar to give him a green-colored chariot of respectability as he parked his car on the parking lots of prospective customers. He was a pharmaceutical supply salesman whose career was now on shaky ground; he talked a good game, but lately hasn't been able to seal the deal, and he figured that the car would grease the wheels of wealth. But his car-tactic was a failure— his debts were suddenly starting to grow like hyperactive-mold on rotten fruit, and now his girlfriend, The Harpy, was demanding he buy Christmas gifts for her two kids because their dad was a deadbeat.

Now, this particular night was to be our Pre-Christmas Drinking Night, consisting of Chivas Regal on the rocks, beer chasers, and Elvis Presley Christmas cassette tapes, but now we had to shop for, and then drop off, the oodles and oodles of gifts for The Harpy, her kids, and, to cover all the angles, her mother.

Star Trek Convention, Las Vegas: August 2010

Wednesday.

I decided that after the long drive, I'd unwind for a moment in my hotel room and perhaps take a look at the view I was promised (it faced their emerald-green golf course), but the thing I most wanted to do was swim in the hotel's pool.

I can't remember the last time I swam in a pool. We didn't have a swimming pool at our house growing up, but I had a cousin who did, and in those days being a welcome house guest, I'd visit him frequently and, consequently, would swim often.

I was a pretty good swimmer in my youth. I wasn't bulky enough for football, and while I had some skill at basketball, I frankly didn't much care for organized sports. Swimming was an invigorating, solitary experience: being an astute fellow who paid attention to science class, and filled with the knowledge of the human body's relation to it, I felt as if I was conquering the very element of water itself.

In my adult years, most of the pool parties I was invited to were instances of me indulging in the "party" part of the event, and I have since left the "pool" aspect of it for the brave and the fool-hardy.

[Things I purchased for this trip: extra toothbrush, travel-sized deodorant, "medicinal" tea bags, and swim trunks]

But of course, planning on making the first evening in Vegas a serene and calm one was an exercise in futility.