"Oy Vegas!"

SoHo Crush was headed to the West Coast for a couple of weeks, and he drunkenly suggested on a Monday that I meet him in Vegas the following Sunday. He was serious.

I landed around 5 PST, and I took a shuttle to the Four Seasons, which shares a (gold) building with Mandalay Bay on the strip. The shuttle dropped me off 2^nd to last (making a good 5 stops before me), and when I got to the hotel room, I realized that you could see the airport from our window. Awesome.

But before I went up, I stopped by the front desk to pick up the key SoHo Crush had left me. I seriously considered saying, “Hi, my husband left me a key,” just to see what kind of reaction I’d get, but I decided against it.

“And what is the name of the person you will be joining?” . o O (Wow, that was quite the calculated statement.)  I told the woman his name and my name. “I don’t see you on the reservation…”

Picture this: I’m a black guy in a sleeveless shirt and my jeans tucked into cowboy boots. And I’m meeting a guy in his 40s in his hotel room. And prostitution is legal in Nevada. All I wanted was to spend as little time getting to the room as possible.

“Are you sure? He specifically told me he’d be leaving me a key. Let me try to call him.”

“I can call the room for you.”

She called him, and it turned out that he had put my first two names on the reservation. “There must not have been enough blanks on the online reservation, and I guess they cut off your last name,” SoHo Crush explained. For the rest of the weekend when we called any number in the hotel, it was, “Certainly, Mr. Kareem” and “Right away, Mr. Kareem.”

 

I had a little less than an hour to get settled and changed before we headed to Caesar’s Palace for Bette Midler’s show (SoHo Crush's idea since Cirque's Zumanity was sold out... plus he refused to see Wayne Brady's show). Of course, we stopped by the bar for a drink, and I was tickled pink by the bartender's name tag.

Bette’s show was spectacular, and she was hilarious ("Oy Vegas!"). She had show girls! One series of numbers involved 22 pimped-out electric scooters! But I think my favorite part was the Harlettes, her 3 black background singers. They were slightly big girls, but they pulled off their showgirl costumes amazingly well, not to mention that they were all excellent and well-trained dancers (and sang while the danced excellently!). 

I had to check my camera before the show (but not my iPhone?), so to pass the time while everyone else from the packed house was getting their cameras, we grabbed a drink from one of the bars in the casino. The walls behind the bar had moving images of girls dancing, which I figured were from a projector.

But when we got closer, I saw that these were live dancers behind a screen! “That’s how ugly strippers get work! Don’t turn profile, honey!” The bartender, who had a Growing-Up-Gotti blowout that was way too long, tried to do a trick with a lime as he was making our cosmos. The lime hit a woman sitting at the bar next to us.

SoHo Crush and I took our drinks to a $15 blackjack table. He gave me $100 and said, “Follow my lead.” I proceeded to not only lose that $100, but an additional $100 he gave me. I didn’t feel too bad, though, because in the time it took me to lose the money, he'd lost $20 more than I had.

 

After retrieving my camera, we were ready to hit up the gay bars. 

"How do we get to the Strip from here."

"Just cut through The Forum, and you'll be there."

Yeah, too bad The Forum is a whole mall! Do you know how weird it is to be walking in a mall at night with a cocktail in your hand?!

The first stop on our gay tour was Fun Hog Ranch. For real, that was the name of the bar.

Obviously, you can still smoke in bars in Nevada (I haven't seen a cigarette vending machine since I was a kid! They remind me of Waffle House). The drinks were huge, and I think wells were $3 (which turned out to be more or less the usual price at the gay bars). We talked to a friendly but lonely and sexually frustrated bear for a while before getting advice from the patrons on what to do the rest of the night.

The next stop was The Buffalo. 

Which was in a strip mall.

Absolutely nothing was going on there, so we headed over to the Fruit Loop to check out a club called Gypsy. They had fun music and an awesome platform near the stage, but no one was dancing on it!

Fuck it, I’m on vacation.

A few songs after I jumped back down (and put my shirt back on), the drag queen performances started.

In case you couldn't see what the last performer was wearing:

The first thing I said when she came from behind the curtain was, "Shut the fuck up!" Click to enlarge. They said something about her being from RuPaul's Drag Race, but I couldn’t figure out which one she was. It was just like the drag performances down South in that the drag queens accepted tips as they performed (I came to the conclusion that Las Vegas outside of the Strip was basically Western Texas). 

After the show (maybe 1ish?), the entire place cleared out. I asked some (cute) local guys where the place to be was after this, and they directed me to the Cat House in the Luxor (the Pyramid) on the Strip. CameraObsessedMichael had taken some great pictures there from his recent Vegas trip, so I was excited. Plus, it was on the way back to our hotel.

I only saw female go-gos, but I was in a jolly mood (and they were hot), so I climbed up to one on the platform and asked, “So, are there rules as to where I can stick the tip?” She laughed and said, “The don’t allow touching, sorry!” So I handed her the dollar with a wink. 

I wonder if that was what Flo Rida meant when he said, “boots with the fur”.

There was more shirtless dancing, but after about 5 minutes, security said I had to put my shirt back on. 

Stupid gay night at straight club.

 

On the way out, we were treated to a little girl-on-girl show.

Did I mention that robes and room service are like the best things ever at 4am (much better than the corner-store selection I'm used to)?

Yeah.

Underwear fashion show?! I'm so there! Click here.

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