Vegas Vay-GAY-tion

IF YOU DON'T LIKE TO READ AND JUST WANT PICTURES - CLICK HERE. Thanksgiving weekend. Family dinner or Sin City getaway? Well, I think you know which one I chose. So Don and I woke up Thanksgiving morning and drove to Vegas. We started off by going to the Tropicana bar where I turned $20 into $30 while having our first drinks. Good omen. We then had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, steak, prime rib, crab legs... good stuff. Then we celebrate with a traditional family fare: Drag Queens and nearly naked Chorus Boys. Hot. We got to meet Cher and Liza, and then actually hung out with Liza after the show at the Fun Hog Ranch. Sometime around 3AM we poured ourselves into a taxi and hit our hotel beds with a quiet thud.

Wearing Liberace's Dress

And then it was Friday morning. We woke up, and made plans to visit the PES Studio in Vegas. We drove out that way, only to discover they had taken the weekend off. What now? Well, when you have your heart set on something really kinky and gay, and you can't have your first choice, you go with Plan B. The Liberace Museum. It doesn't get gayer than that. I will have to admit, I was really giddy to be there. The collection of uber-gay cars and sequined pianos was a blast. But the real fun was in the "Costume Wing" of the museum. But first, a drink at the Goodtimes Bar, situated cleverly between the two. Yes, a gay bar near the Liberace Museum. Who would have thunk it? There, we learned about something called a "liquor bust" - it works like a beer bust, but it's all-you-can-drink-vodka for $10. More on that later. Back to the second wing of the museum. There was craziness like you've never seen. And to think he probably wore each of the outfits one time? I mean, you can't walk into a second party wearing a pink feathered cape with genuine Swarovski crystals, can you? People would talk. Oh! And we got to try on his coat of many colors. No, it wasn't the super-fabulous pink one, but it was still a glee-inducing five minutes of life. Posing and swishing with 25 pounds of fabric and beads hanging from my shoulders. Are you for real?
After the museum, we spent some time on the strip. We had drinks at New York New York. We were trying to catch that same dueling pianos show from my last trip, but they wanted a $25 door charge. Fuggetaboudit. So we had a few at another bar, then bought some booze to drink on the strip as we toured the M&M Hotel (is that a hotel? Or just a casino?) and the new Arias community - condos and homes right on the strip. Finally, we ended up back at Goodtimes for their liquor bust. Best $10 I ever spent in my life. Sure the place was nearly dead, sure only about 30 people were there, but I drank vodka for 3 or 4 hours without paying for it! Actually, in retrospect that wasn't such a good idea. Don and I got so drunk that we didn't want to go anywhere or do anything else. No Fun Hog Ranch, no Buffalo, nothing. Just bar stools at Goodtimes until we just. couldn't. drink. no. more. And so ended our Friday night. The drive home was long, but we traded music along the way and got to se some neat storm clouds. I was sad the weekend was over, but kinda secretly glad to be sleeping in my own bed. Sober. For a change.

Clueless Deadly Drinking

Wednesday I got a short, but very pleasant email. In short, my brother wrote to tell me that James Harold Watkins, my birth fater and the man who had abused, tortured, and molested me for years, had died of a heart attack on Wednesday. I sat and stared. I had wondered for years how I would react when I heard that news. I grinned. My heart leaped. I was damned near giddy. So happy was I, in fact, that I had to go celebrate with some drinks. So I met up with Don and we went to the Bullet for a few drinks and a lot of chat and good times. Don also pointed out that the Bullet is near the liquor store where Cher gets ditched in Clueless.

One of the iPhone Cult

So, I did it. I gave in. I am one of them now. My old phone contract expired so I went ahead and bought the iPhone. It was hard to do. I'm a cheap son-of-a-bitch. The doubling of my cell phone bill was hard to take. But I gotta tell you - this toy is pretty fucking amazing. I love being plugged in more than I thought I would. But now it's going to make me one of those people who uses his cell phone to ignore friends over dinner and who stares at his cell phone in bars and at parties. Oh great. Shit.