It’s human nature
I was hangin’ in Gomorrah at Mandalay Bay, enjoying a glass of wine and some people-watching in the Orchid Lounge. My eye quickly found a most watchable person.
She was a total va-va-voom Vegas tomato, complete with bursting décolletage, glute-hugging short skirt and classic f.m. pumps. She stopped at the elevators and waited. To make these elevators operate, you had to have a room key, and she obviously did not. She didn’t even look for one. She just waited. Hmmm. After a minute, her “escort” stepped out of an elevator, saw her, tried like hell to keep his eyeballs above her collarbone while he shook her hand in greeting, and away they went. Game on. I decided to have another glass of wine and see how long it took for her to come back down. Sure enough, exactly 41 minutes later, she came striding out, alone, walking toward the valet, cell phone cocked to her ear. No doubt off to her next “date.” It was interesting to contemplate how many times the exact same scene was being repeated in this city now internationally famous for looking the other way when it comes to decadent behavior (still a completely illegal scene, but one that appears to be thriving with complete impunity). It became amusing to imagine these thousands of call girls as literally a flock of “birds,” part of a Nevada nature film narrated by PBS’s great David Attenborough. Take it away, Dave:
“At night in Las Vegas, two different species of closely related nightbirds emerge en masse, the double-breasted sapsucker and the Revlonated mattress-thrasher. Though they are often seen flitting about the city during the day, it’s during the dark hours they truly go to work. Members of these attractive species, many of whom have been thoracically engineered, exotically painted and alluringly dressed to ensure their desirability and success in this highly competitive field, spend the evening hours figuratively ‘flying’ up the elevator shafts of Las Vegas’ largest resorts, thereby gaining access to the males and their frightfully engorged glands and billfolds. These nightbirds quickly and skillfully relieve the males of their seething saps, in ways that bring about some of the most intense pleasures found in the animal kingdom. Oddly, the nectar itself is not at all desired by the sapsuckers and thrashers, so it’s discarded as quickly as possible. What these amorous strumpets want is the money they receive for their nectar-relieving contortions. For in the bizarre world of Las Vegas, where male reproductive fluids are next to worthless, it’s all about, as they say, the Benjamins, for it’s money that makes not only survival in this infernal desert possible, but a life of comforts that are lush, plush, even fancy.”