Kyle called a few times on saturday morning. I heard the phone ring but slapped at it like a snooze alarm until it was silenced. After two attempts at my cell, the house line rang, obviously still Kyle.

His brother Jay was getting married in a week and Kyle was best-man-ing it up, and had organized a trip to Atlantic City so Jay could throw away some money right before an expensive wedding.

Kyle had asked me to come along, I'm sure partially for some company, while his brother and friends were 5 or 6 years older and had been to AC more than ten thousand times more than me and Kyle combined. This figure is not an exaggeration, as me and Kyle had never been to AC before and ten thousand times zero is still zero.

The ride down and back was cramped and uncomfortable, five of us: Kyle, Jay, Mike, Andrew and me squished in Kyle's Altima.

The rooms that we barely used were damned expensive, even though they had been booked a month in advance, as their were no vacancies anywhere, because there was a rather mammoth boxing match between Floyd Mayweather jr and arturo gatti and serveral big concerts in town, as well as a maxim party with p diddy and the opening of a new club, something about liquid.

we spent a lot of time at the Trump Taj Mahal, where the Gatti/Mayweather fight was.

Mike had recently gotten in a pretty serious motorcycle accident and was still in a wheelchair, and his handicapped parking pass really came in handy. All of the hotels and casinos were handicap accessible, but sometimes it took a few minutes for the drunken group of us to find the ramps and elevators.

Andrew was a little oblivious to his surroundings and would just wander off, sometimes while pushing the wheelchair, absconding with Mike. He seemed to live his life according to cravings. Before we had left Mike and Jay grilled up some burgers and dogs and had made one for Andrew but he refused saying that he couldn't eat a burger right now.

Not five minutes after turning off the grill, Andrew was saying how he could really go for some pizza, and an iced caramel coffee before we could leave for AC. So Jay and Mike, who were accustomed to Andrew's MO, satiated his desires and stopped at a Pizzeria and Dunkin Donuts.

By the same token, we were on the boardwalk about to go into the Hard Rock for dinner, and Andrew told us to wait because he had a craving for boardwalk fries, despite the long line and the fact that we were about to sit down to dinner.

trump taj

at the hard rock we sat next to this guy who took his hooker out for dinner. she guzzled glass after glass of wine and he ate an ice cream sundae, and they didn't say a word to each other.

I tried to play it as cool as possible, because this was my first night in town, and I looked at it as fact finding mission. I didn't want to gamble big money like I knew what I was doing before I actually had a clue. I stuck to simple stuff like slots and video poker, and soaked in some roulette and craps as well as the endless flow of free drinks.

I was sure I had only thrown away 45 bucks gambling, but after counting my cash the next day, I only lost 25, which with my dollar per drink tips, rounds out to a normal night of heavy drinking anyway.

trump taj

We ended the night at the Sands and when walking back this bus took out a light post.

AC was a great place to just be wasted and introspectively people-watch, it's a sensory explosion as the endless noise and flashing lights compound with the extreme highs of big wins and extreme lows of big losses all around you. There's so much to take in and if you're like me and you can focus on something and process it ten different ways, then you can spend a month there in one night.

i've never been to the vegas, and I'm sure AC is no match in most glitz and glittery respects, but it's got enough of the good stuff plus everything great about jersey, the shore, the boardwalk and the close proximtiy to me. I had a great time, but I kept thinking to myself how cool this would be with a large group of close friends, which sounds like a repeat-trip as soon as possible.

danwho kissed you on the nose on 06.27.05 @ 11:22 PM [link]