Voy Por Ustedes

So it's not too long now until Vegas and I think it's time I reflected on my only previous trip to the meadows. Perhaps bringing this out in the open will have a cathartic effect on my conscience and help draw a line under a period in my life where to be fair to myself, I was a totally inconsiderate reckless cunt.

I have matured since of course, but a four or five year period from my late teens and early twenties saw me leave a trail of destruction where ever I went, but astonishingly without a scratch on my person and without registering with my conscience.

And so it went, I'm 22 it's the summer of 1997. I'm cohabiting with an emotionally souped up Italian woman, let's call her Karen, in Tucson Arizona. To give you some idea of how completely ignorant and uncaring I was of cause and effect, actions and consequences and so on, let me just offer up one or two details about this woman: she was twelve years older than me as I had a thirst for the older woman at the time; she had a six year old daughter whom I'm still convinced was the devil and a strange and estranged husband, let's call him Tony, who made Joe Pesci's character in Casino seem like Cliff Richard.

I won't go into too much detail about their family history, suffice is to say though, they were originally from New York, but were given 48 hours to leave the city after Tony punched an old mafia guy!! I know I know..but I just thought it all sounded cool.

So anyway, between the four of us, it's an interesting dynamic and it's fair to say we all had one or two secrets from each other. A recipe for disaster of cordon bleu quality and what better melting pot than Vegas to bring it all to the boil?

It didn't take long once we'd got to Vegas for things to progress to the unnerving stage of disaster. I'd left Karen to play the slots which she claimed to have a casual interest in while I went for a mooch around the vastness of Caesers Palace.

Not 45 minutes later I returned to find her ashen faced and staring blankly into an empty plastic coin pot. "We have to go home," she said. "Say what?" I said. "I've lost $1000, I've got no money left."

I was gone for 45 fucking minutes. How fast can you put one thousand coins in a damn machine?? That's 23 coins a fucking minute! Over a few shots of Wild Turkey she went on to explain how she had a slight gambling addiction, but didn't want to tell me in case it put me off seeing Vegas.

We then drove back to our Hotel and while she sloped off to bed I went for a stroll around the Luxor and weighed up how much it would cost me in lost luggage which was still in her house in Tucson and travel expenses to pop over to McCarren airport and high tail it the fuck out of there.

$500 I estimated. I had about $60. In hindsight I should have whored out my body to the nearest wealthy gayer. Pound for pound I would have subjected myself to a far less humiliating and painful ordeal than what was to lie ahead over the next three days.

It's fair to say I got a bit drunk that night. I'm still not prepared to accept Karen's claims that I tried to drown her in the jacuzzi though. I'm sure I was just playing and there would have been no profit in such a slaying.

The rest of the weekend passed by in a haze of whiskey fueled incoherence and rabid Italian diatribes about things I may or may not have been getting up to while she slept. Not only was she emotional with an addictive personality, she was supremely paranoid. Possibly because I was so fine, she expected me, with my suave English charm, to be off trollop galloping whenever her back was turned. For the record I wasn't.

The interrogation I received on the eight hour journey home was proportionally more arduous than a four month stay at Guantanamo Bay. By the time we got home at about midnight and I had a moment to myself I started to wonder if indeed I had fucked my way through the entire waitressing staff of the Excalibur after all.

The thing about angry Italian women though, or at least this angry Italian woman, is that the mood swings are quite violent and forgiveness can come as quickly as the indictments. And so the reconciling love making is as furious and passionate as the violence and mindless nonsensical volleys of accusations and insults.

Now then, I'm not too good with names. It's just something I've always struggled with. Someone tells me their name, I forget. I've been known to call people I've known for years by the wrong name. It's what I do. So anyway, as I pummeled away at Karen doggy style thanking the lord the ordeal of the last few days was over, I accidentally addressed Karen by the wrong name.

I know women don't like this, Katie, Fiona, I mean Karen really didn't like it. It was all I could do to cling to the back of her without tearing a hamstring. "I fucking knew it, I knew it I fucking knew it...BASTARDO! etc etc.

Naturally and disastrously she was furious, I had no defense apart from innocence, but I was a wooden house in the path of a tornado and as the good people of Little Rock, Atlanta and Jackson, Mississippi have recently discovered, innocence is no defense for natural disasters.

I was out on my ear. It was quite comical really. A little past midnight and I'm on the front lawn of a crazy woman's house two clicks from the Arizona desert with my belonging scattered around me some of which were drifting off down the street in the hot summer breeze.

What I could have done was just walk a few blocks east and stayed the night at her cousins house. But sure as eggs is eggs I had been scrambled and I knew when to quit. So I made my way to the nearest greyhound station with the intention of heading over to the only other person I knew in America at the time, a 'friendly' if you will, in the shape of my own cousin. He lived in Denver though. A 26 hour coach journey away. He was also to look upon me as cunt though. Fair do's.

The thing about Greyhound stations is that they're always located in the scariest poorest most dangerous parts of the city because it's only the poor folks who use them. Everyone else flies. So I arrive at about 2am dressed in my jeans and a fucking Arsenal shirt. I case the joint and it's a scene from the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Nothing but Mexican bandits, drunks and drug dealers. Splendid I thought. I'm gonna get shot, puked on or raped. I sat down looking as tough yet innocuous as possible and a security dude approached from the west.

I assumed he was going to ask me if I was fucking crazy and to go home quickly, but he actually started talking to me about Arsenal! They were just here he told me. Huh? As it turned out the youth team were indeed on a tour of the USA and had stopped in Arizona.

This was one of the few times when I've wondered if indeed I do have a guardian angel as this guy sat with me and talked about football the entire time I was waiting, while various Mexicans stood around me in the shadows sharpening their knives and making the throat cutting gesture with their finger whenever I looked up. They may not have really done this really..I imagine they did though.

So anyway, with stops in El Paso, Alberqueque and ironically a very quite Las Vegas in New Mexico I was safely in Denver 26 hours later. The great escape only without being recaptured and executed. Surely a series of events that could have happened to any old Tom, Dick or Harry, but I'm hoping Vegas in May this year will be less eventful.