The Bet: Part 3

My Soul is an Empty Cigarette Machine

Don Gonzoni and The Crippling Realizations 

I don’t know. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken David Copperfield so lightly. He may be partially responsible for what happened to –D Gonzoni at the swimming pool. Maybe he heard some of those jokes I was making regarding the disparity between his marketing and his current appearance. He catfished us, so I said while zig-zaggedly making my way through the gift shop corridor. The Princess had fun, that was all that really mattered. We were talking over the illusions when I saw shiny vintage cigarette machines. It was bait. I was reeled in. My first piece of published poetry was about

these:

My Soul is A Cigarette Machine 

Sometimes I feel like an empty cigarette machine in a trendy bar where no one smokes and the drinkers sip on pretense. I’m not sure what the point of having me around is, either. 

Ambiance, maybe. 

Sometimes I feel like a menthol cigarette machine in a dive bar where the waitress is a celebrity and the drinkers write propositions on napkins. I’m not sure why he has to stand next to me all the time.

Opportunity, I guess. 

Sometimes I feel like a cigarette machine in the corner of a hotel lobby where the phone booth still works and drunks bring in waitresses. I’m not particular about who pulls my knob, either, as long as the money is deposited first. 

Capitalism, I suppose. 

Mostly I’ve felt like the mirror on a cigarette machine in a place where most people object to what I purvey, but they can’t help staring at me to check their image. I’m not here to reflect your assumptions back at you in a stylish framework—well…

Maybe…

I guess…

I suppose…

I am. 

This bait was set by a pizza restaurant. So I bought a $65 “New York Style” pizza to bring back to our room and hide our shame. I used quotation marks there because this “New York Style” pizza was as phony as the “Statue of Liberty” across the street. On my last pilgrimage to Vegas, I rode a roller coaster around Lady Liberty at the 36th hour of a 48-hour binge drunk with [Name Redacted]. 

But I digress. Yes, the pizza was large and flat, but there was no grease. None. The flavor was also absent from the equation, too. Some would argue that this was the case for Vegas altogether. Raul Duke would have been remiss. 

“It’s fucking old people food!” Don Gonzoni shouted from the bathroom. “This whole town has been geriatric-fied!”

This seemed like a legitimate statement on a multitude of levels. The casino engineers are brilliant. You can’t jam up the blood flow of the fat, rich, and fat while rich and all the other fools such as us who had thought pizza was the best food deal in the MGM kingdom. There was no grease because they [the casino engineers] didn’t want us totally incapacitated by food. They have played it safe with our intestines. 

[Unless you buy a shit load of junk food at the toll booth to your elevator, which will take as much money from you in a few moments as a slot machine can.]

Yes you can gamble drunk, high, horny, or three days away from death by natural causes. My late great grandmother can attest that final statement. Posthumously, of course. Yes you can lose money effectively while experiencing these conditions, but you can’t lose money while stuck on the shitter. Your stocks and retirement accounts are excluded here.

Ok yes you can, but if you’re gaming on your cell phone while taking a shit inside your casino…well…I hope you're not losing the inheritance you held over your family’s heads. My great grandmother lost the one she threatened us with. She also died of an intestinal blockage, the first pangs of which she felt while inside a casino. 

Anyway, just like Copperfield’s eternally charming face, and the alleged New Yorkness of our pizza, nothing in Vegas is as it seems. In regular life, we face the Grand Charade. In Vegas you are immersed in perpetual illusion disguised as entertainment. Much of it was designed with the collective genius of sinners who know how to please sinners. But those artists, like most artists, take their orders from people who specialize in exploiting the poor for cheap labor then taking back the money they were paid. However, there is one person who has the final say in how these blessed capitalists fuck us over–The Pope. 

No, not Leo. The Insurance company. Insurance companies are the real authority on what is allowable for both the peasants and the aristocrats. It is this Pope who decides how much fun can be had while living it up in Sin City. 

“Las Vegas is The Vatican of Capitalism. It almost restored my faith in the system. Almost. You may also believe that an Instagram Influencer actually loves it if you look her in the eyes while getting a hand job. It’s your choice to believe.” –D Gonzoni

Me at “The Window”

Yes, I’m a practicing Catholic. As was Warhol, Capote, Rocky, The Blues Brothers, Mark Wahlberg, and Jack Kennedy, so that means I get to be offensive towards my own kind. Most of my fellow Papists are also completely ignorant of the business equation and the political side of things. Sometimes it pays to be the fun police. It helps people “cop out” of things they don’t want to do, or they want to do but shouldn’t d,o but don’t want to look lame for not doing. Get a scapegoat.  You blame someone else for your nonparticipation:

“Hey, hit his pipe.” 

“I can’t, gotta piss test.”

“We should get together after the show,” she said, 

“I can’t, I’m married.” 

“Here, try some of this grocery store Sushi!”

“I can’t, I’m vegan.” 

“Why are all the swimming pools here only three-and-a-half feet deep?” asked the guest. 

“Because the Pope said that’s the proper amount,” said the King of MGM. 

But let me break it down for you this way: Back in the olden times of feudalism and such, Kings agreed to concede a measure of moral authority to the Pope so that the peasants could be more effectively governed through YE OLDE CHARADE. The idea was to keep the surplus population of peasants ready to breed, work, kill, and be killed as befitted the upper classes. Politically corrupted religious authority figures were able to sell loyalty to the King from the altar while promising that all the horrors of their pitiful peasant lives would be amended in Heaven. Suppose they were good peasants and obeyed. And if the King had wronged any of them, well, God would handle it for you on Judgement Day. No need for rebellion, uprisings, and revolutions. All was well. 

For this great service from the church, the King agreed to tell the peasants that they needed to follow the Pope's rules as well as his. In exchange for the Pope's loyalty, the King agreed to ban any competing insurance companies from the kingdom by any means necessary. So, the King and his assorted royals also pretended to follow the Pope’s rules to prop up YE OLDE CHARADE, until they didn’t and were then forced to pay a penalty for their sins–The Selling Of Indulgences. Here began the idealism that you can only be as bad as you can afford to be. 

Suppose The King wants more money from peasants. The Pope says Give it to him. Two kings want to kill off a bunch of peasants and gamble for new territory, and the Pope agrees to stay out of it so long as the winner continues to pay the insurance company. Mongols, Moores, Huns, and other non-Catholic hordes threaten one King’s lands, the Pope tells all his other Kings to rally their peasants and help kill the invaders. Then, when the invaders come after the Pope's territory, the Kings agree to rally their peasants and get them killed in defense of the Pope.

The trade-off is protection [supplied by the Kings] in exchange for the authority [supplied by the Pope] to go against what Jesus Christ taught as The Way. Such as not killing, for example. Not exploiting servants, for example. YE OLD CHARADE was a joint effort to manage the potentially unruly population of peasants faithfully serving their corporate entity…er…country.  

Now let's reimagine this situation in the Kingdom of MGM in this foul year of His Trumpness, 2025. The King [CEO] of MGM wants to get more coins from the peasants and believes that a new addition to the kingdom will bring them in to pay tribute…so he commissions the building of many swimming pools. The King goes to the Pope [the insurance company] for permission to do this. 

“No fucking way am I paying money to every peasant who drowns in your Kingdom, pal. Those bastards are perpetually fucked up! Don’t do it,” says the Pope.

“Look man, the kingdom down the street has a swimming pool, because their Pope said they could, and now all the peasants are giving them the coins instead of us,” says the King. 

“Okay, you may have swimming pools. But they must not be more than four feet deep, you must have at least two life guards per pool, and there will be no slides or diving boards.” 

“What about a Lazy River? With inflatables, we can charge for?” asks the king.

“Fine, I suppose. If you float past someone drowning in a Lazy River, you deserve Hell. The peasants may have a Lazy River. But you will need to pay me more money.”

“Okay, if I pay you the money, will you agree to pay off the peasant families when assholes drown?”

“You will also need to close the pools at 7 pm. They are too shitfaced after that hour.”

“No problem. We don’t want them out there during prime gaming hours anyway. So you’ll cover our asses then? Pay off the peasants when needed?”

“Yes,” the Pope laughs, “if they can prove that they didn’t violate the laws of the kingdom while dying!”

The King then also laughs his ass off as they clink champagne flutes over a pile of underaged prostitutes in the penthouse on the top floor of the kingdom. The laws of the land are posted clearly for all to see as they leave the quarter-mile gift shop and enter the far-flung corridor of the kingdom where the pools are located. The rules of the land are these: 

First: You must be a registered guest of the kingdom if you expect the Pope’s protection at the pools. 

Second: Don’t dare enter these pools while pregnant, sick, have a bad heart, or are intoxicated by anything other than a lust for life and procreation.  

Third: Don’t wear pool clothing while walking through the Casino. 

Don Gonzoni was in violation of all three of these conditions when the moment came. Therefore, there was nothing the Pope could do for him while he was nearly disassociated from reality by the hot beats and tracks woven together by Alesso at the cool kid pool. Yes it was Alesso’s fault! That and six or seven grams worth of fungus poisoning. 

“How many junkies and drunks died before they made these pools safe for American peasants!?” –D Gonzoni. 

When we woke the next day, with Alesso high above us with his celebrity omnipresence, I had goals. The overall objective is to not spend money by staying at the pool for as long as possible. When pool time finished, we would take the monorail to the other allied kingdom of the empire and have dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s burger joint. For dessert, we would take a trip to Trump Casino so I could look inside the center of madness with the highest journalistic integrity. Like it or not, this is an outrageous moment of history that we’re surviving. We should be taking pictures of it all. The main objective was to come between the pool and this final outing–my hauling $300 worth of quarters, nickels, and dimes down to the cashier cage in exchange for cash I could then take to the sports book. 

I would accomplish none of these goals except one. 

Outside for a moment

DISCLAIMER 

Once again dear audience, we’d like to take a moment and remind you that The Princess is neither the instigator of nor the necessarily willing participant of any of –D Gonzoni’s many improprieties. The opinions and art expressed by Cinemafia Productions, LTD are not necessarily hers.

She’s a good Christian peasant wife who must endure my lunacy before entering the kingdom of heaven. She didn’t know what the hell I was capable of when I stole her from her upstanding family back in twenty-ought-five.

“Jesus has assured all these captive Princesses that they don’t have to stay married to assholes like me for all eternity either. Read Matty twenty-two semicolon thirty. This is proof of divine mercy!” –D Gonzoni

I prepared for action like a veteran of various institutions, and placed my most essential items in a clear ziplock bag knowing I would be inspected by security. And, considering that they did sell booze at the pool, but not my drugs of choice, I smuggled in fun treats too. You see, the King's official didn’t give a shit so long as I wasn’t toting in my own bottle of Vodka to the party. The King requires tribute at his pools.

The Princess and I breezed in and selected a suitable pool. There were several to choose from so that we peasants may self-segregate according to ideology and class. There was the “Responsible Adults” pool, where children played and upstanding citizens swam while taking a break from their very moderate gambling, if any at all. 

Then there was the swimming pool with speakers pumping in music from the nearby Palm Tree Beach Club. We headed to this pool and walked past a trophy wife who was celebrating her fiftieth year by giving her young ladies in waiting a demonstration on how to shake one's ass to the music. They were in the private tents and cabanas you receive for giving proper tribute to the King. Our broke peasants asses continued to the rows of searing hot lounging chairs that were closely packed together enough so that Mr. Walrus would think twice about risking sitting down. They wanted his ass back at the Big Buck Hunter Slot Machine. We took the lounge chair on the end of the back row, immediately below the speakers, and next to the drinking water and bathroom. I’m sure the free water was required by the Pope, so thanks to him for not letting me die of dehydration. Remember, the Casino doesn’t want you at the pool, really. So if you survive the quarter mile walk through the gift shop to partake in this oasis themed playground, you’d better love the heat. Or book your rooms in the winter and pay more for the reservations!   

Being cheap will cost you. The Demon wants his pound of flesh, by golly, and this Demon is called The Love of Money. 

“If you wish to enjoy luxury, you’d better get with the program and either slave harder, manage slaves, or become a slave owner! If a gold bricking artist wants a cabana, he’d better start selling his ass!” –D Gonzoni

There’s only one thing to do when you are standing waist deep in chlorinated pool water while the blazing Nevada sun is directly above you…

Put on a hat and sunglasses, maybe wear a tough-guy looking shirt, buy expensive booze from the pool waitress, and huddle around your boys and talk shit about that guy dancing like a madman with his trophy wife.

I am that mad man. If there is anything new this old dog has learned, it is that he loves dancing as much as his wife does. It may be a significant reason why we’re continuing to celebrate anniversaries rather than squabble over child support these twenty years later. 

One thing that I’ve always known…I absolutely despise the “Dad-Bro” polo shirt-wearing corporate disciple who believes that men like me can’t beat the shit out of them. I’ve also known that their women have a strong attraction to me. So our hatred is mutual, of course. The Dad-Bros and I, that is. 

Mr. Walrus and much of his pod were also at this pool, and for the same reason, all of us men were in this kiddy pool. We wanted to be around the trophy wives. And listen, just because Mr. Walrus can’t spin around on his tippy toes like I can, it doesn’t mean he can’t have a trophy wife as hot as mine. It’s just that the Peterbilt he owns and operates costs more than a trophy wife and is much more demanding of his time. But Mr. Walrus can certainly rent a trophy wife for around $1,200 an hour or a day, depending on your tastes and budget. 

So I’m sure he wondered how much mine cost as I spun her around and took her for jet-ski rides around the pool. I was the jet-ski, of course, and I made the sound effects too. Many onlookers were joining us in the water. 

Alesso was high above us with his posse of DJs looking down from the shimmering green castle, up where I could see my room–but not inside, thankfully. Alesso was pleased by my performance, indeed, the cool kid swimming pool was becoming quite the scene. I had upstaged many people with the same vanity issues as I, and now it would become a competition for who was having the most fun. The scene had become so animated that folks decided to start videoing for their social media. This is not the first time I’ve been the background for someone's selfie. 

Here’s the moment that we’ve been waiting for. Almost. Because pride must always precede any fall of mine. 

Feeling quite the winner, holding my beautiful wife, and being the envy or desire of some, as well as entertainment to all, is my desired intoxicant. It’s a similar feeling I have at times while dancing at Rhythm Sanctuary. You get the sense that people actually are cheering or clapping or whistling or gawking at you because you are that good. I live with the day-to-day crippling sensation that people are doing all those things because I’m a fool or a freak. So, yes, feeling good about myself is an incredible thing that I cherish. 

But, like Merlin sang in The Sword in The Stone, “For every high, there is a low.” 

Don Gonzoni was lurking in the background. I am only a mere mortal, so I took the quarter-mile trip back to our hotel three times to fetch needed items and keep us at the pool without spending money. Drinks. Snacks. Sun Block. Alesso watched it through the window as I snuck into the art box, again too. I needed inspiration. When I returned to the pool the first two times, I took The Princess out for more water sports and dancing. 

But on the third trip, when I went to his art box again, –D Gonzoni savagely ambushed me and locked me in the bathroom. He pranced out of Room 2125, descended the elevator, and breezed through the casino and quarter-mile gift shop like a dragon swirling down the mountain from his lair. He wanted The Princess. 

Security had a chance to stop him as he strolled through the checkpoint with his ziplock bag. His room key hadn’t touched the entry pad. Security asked him back, which he did exactly with long, lunging backward steps. He swiped the key fully and was let loose to the pools. The lifeguards, walruses, Dad-Bros, and trophy wives cleared the way for another spectacle. The Princess took his hand and followed him in, completely beguiled by his dragon spell, and they put on one last show. 

Like David Copperfield had done the night before, the finale was to be an out-of-this-world experience. If Alesso had not intervened, Don Gonzoni might have finally snagged the celebrity status he coveted so badly.  

This is no fiction: at some point Alesso graced the turn table inside the Palm Tree Beach Club and caused a ruckus matching mine. This is what they paid him for, in fact. It was his job to get people to come in from the scorching hot desert oasis and shake their asses inside while buying drinks. Maybe the King and Pope had seen that Don Gonzoni’s antics were keeping people in the sun and not spending money, so they sent out their music man to Pied Piper everyone out of the kiddie pools with pleasant tunes. 

This magic poured out of the speakers above the pool and pulled in many from the crowd, but Don Gonzoni continued to spin and twirl the captured princess to the horror or delight of all the travelers gathered round the oasis. 

Alesso was displeased by this. He cast a new spell.BZZZZZZTT! –D Gonzoni was hit by an electric beam glinting off the simmering blue water. It pierced through his eyes and skull. He shut his lids tightly and continued to spin. Then the bastard started speaking chants:

“Come on everybody! Dance for Alesso! Let’s go, people!” 

Said the demented mage. Don Gonzoni felt the crushing pain of being told what to do by others and let loose of his Princess. He began to lose his balance and get vertigo. 

“I can’t go on. I’m out of the power! Damn you, Alesso!” cried our hero.

Twice more he attempted the grand finale of the dragon dance, but now the eyes of all the Walrus People, Dad-Bro’s, and Beta Males were shooting forth pillars of fire. It was the sort of flames that have set crosses ablaze. 

“You bastard, Alesso! I’ve gotta get out of this mess. I’m sorry. I can’t do it anymore. Go on without me!” Don Gonzoni said to The Princess. 

He waded his way through the 3 ½ foot sea holding his head like a man being bombarded by stones, as must happen to everyone, said some other asshole. He made it to the lounging chair and was completely debilitated by the relentless beats of Alesso. The mage sang taunts now. 

“What’s that shit you’re on! That funky shit!” Alesso chanted. 

Don Gonzoni murmured and groaned in agony as the world fractured before him. He felt even the laser beams of people watching from their balconies at the swanky apartments across the road. The life guards and walruses stalked him. The Dad-Bro’s laughed and talked more shit while posing with their arms crossed in tough-guy stoicness. 

“It ain’t a good look for you man!” Alesso taunted. “What shit are you on!”

Now, perhaps it was the help of David Copperfield, or perhaps Alesso was this powerful, but he had no way of seeing the dragon Don Gonzoni crumpled like tin foil on the lounge chair. The Palm Beach Tree Club was on the other side of the oasis and enclosed in shady partitions. 

Well, no way to see except through those gigantic eyes on the side of the emerald building looming in the background. They shot down lightning bolts that made our hero writhe in panic as his body faded from reality. 

“This is it. You’re dying with an audience. The last thing you will see are those bastard eyes, or maybe a life guard if you’re lucky. Please God, don’t let the puppies starve.” –D Gonzoni.

He was disassociated from his body parts. His pounding heart still existed, caught on the tail coats of his [hopefully]  upwardbound soul. 

The Pope would not help this man. He had not heeded any of the warnings. 

The King of MGM would help, but he was too busy fornicating. 

The Dad Bro’s and Walrus’s were all too glad to make literal what Phil Collins said figuratively about watching someone drowning and not lending a hand. 

My Princess

Don Gonzoni prepared his last breath, when The Princess descended from the clouds of heaven and let down her hair over him. Her hand reached for his. She pulled him from the coal pit he’d lain down on and guided his floating soul and malfunctioning body through the quarter-mile gift shop. 

“You’re okay. You’re just fine,” she sang to them. 

“IKNOW” blurted back –D Gonzoni through his wordhole.

She instructed his body on how to retrieve the room key before the guards let them to the elevators after they passed the royal convenience store. He did so. 

I escaped the bathroom as they had entered it. As we passed, I saw his face in the mirror. He was shattered. She brought him to the shower and washed his sunblock- and chlorine-saturated hair while singing the calming charm. 

“IKNOW” he would say.

“Your eyes have turned bloodshot red. I got soap in your eyes.”

“IKNOW”

“Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

“IKNOW.”

And he did know. He knew that the Princess truly loved and cared for him after all. She helped him into the towel. 

I was waiting at the chairs facing the window. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. I’d been trapped for at least an hour or more. The Princess brought –D Gonzoni to the empty chair beside the little table, and I sat there looking out the window with him, and we both marveled at the view. He began to tell me things. 

“We have gone back to being a people of symbols and pictures rather than words again. In the beginning it was because our ancestors lacked the luxury of time to devote themselves to developing large body works of fiction. Today, it is because culture has convinced us that we don’t have a moment to waste sitting and reading books.” –D Gonzoni. 

I agreed. First the atomic bomb. Now FOMO, YOLO, and MAGA. 

“Las Vegas is the Vatican of Capitalism. Once it dazzled us into the belief that we could share in the glory of the wealthy if we worked hard and asked for vacation days at least two weeks in advance and never on blackout days. We may even be blessed with treasure. We’d leave that unholy pilgrimage more inspired than ever to spend our lives in corporate servitude until God brought us to the big casino in the sky. Nowadays, this destination seems urbane compared to the modern world’s nonstop party cycle. Vegas is passé. It’s making its remaining devotees pay more for the lack of new pilgrims.” –D Gonzoni.

“Yes, but instead of feeling inspired to go home and drive a cab for a living, I will go home and feel guilty for accumulating more debt and not having a Dad-Bro job while I drive a cab.” 

He reminded me that this is the pound of flesh the demon wants. It wants me to feel bad for not having enough money to spend weeks by the pool, if not every day of my life. Money justifies much in a system where productivity is the true virtue. You seem to only become a troublesome addict when your money runs out and you beg for things. Perhaps I am a degenerate addict gambling with the future of my family because I won’t join the Dad-Bros chilling in the corner. I wrote a whole satirical pamphlet about that possibility, but instead of an answer, I only felt more confused by how I’m treated by my extended family and old friends. My companion and I discussed it all in detail. He got me with this statement: 

“You’ve never been able to recognize when people are being affectionate towards you. You’re hardwired to watch for threats. Your perception is geared to prevent your being trapped and controlled by deceitful or enraged people.” 

I sighed on the crippling realization. “I really can’t tell if someone likes me, really. But I do know when I’m being rescued or healed.” 

“Yes, that’s been useful to you staying alive this far despite your self-destructive attitudes.”

“I suppose so.”

I slouched in the seat and smiled. Then, he foretold my future. 

“You’re not going to bet all those quarters and dimes on Terrance Crawford. You’re going to take a nap with The Princess. Then you will get up and get a reasonably priced meal inside this hotel, buy overpriced junk at the convenience store, put back forty-five dollars worth of special edition Kit-Kats, eat in the hotel bed, go to sleep, wake up, and drive home and enjoy the ride with your girl. When you get home, you will study film on both Crawford and Alvarez before logging on to BetMGM instead of DraftKings and placing the winning bet.”

“But I have to go to the Trump casino and cause a scene! I need to bet on Crawford here and now then tag him in an instagram story with my prediction so he knows I believe in him! I must hype my politically charged novel!”

“No! Terrance doesn’t need you to believe in him. He believes in himself regardless of what the odds say. And forget His Trumpness, you’re not equipped to do anything against his power. You’ll be just another person speaking his name and feeding his monster. Your book has already proven your predictions about him. It is enough to be right. For now, you must survive his dark reign.”

Las Vegas of My Future

I agreed with Don Gonzoni and relaxed in my chair again. We looked out the window together for a while, musing that I had arrived in the Las Vegas of the Future. Beyond the Sphere’s dancing disco cats and other gigantic virtual billboards, I could see the places I had been as a young man right before me. I was doing okay. I was doing better than I was then. 

My trips to Las Vegas were far less disastrous than my father’s.

While I was musing over a dog fight I saw in this town, when I was a child, Don Gonzoni gave his seat up to The Princess. He slunk out of our hotel like a wanted man. I didn’t have time to give him the wisdom I had for him. 

“Most of the people who were looking at you were only looking to see if you were watching them,” I said. I looked over and saw my beautiful Princess in his place.

Once, she saved me from being arrested by a Federal Police Officer outside the Court of Appeals. At the time, she was pregnant with our youngest son. I’ve been on a lucky streak for twenty years.

I left Las Vegas with a dime.