post-VEGAS

Bizarre. How over time the generational gap seems to lessen somehow and fade for short, but intense, stretches of time. It's like a dream for me. Being able to walk the lines with my closest male role models, and getting to see them in moments of their most base maleness.

(I shared my gameface too. In the dancing shadows, out on the edge of town.)

At first, both experiences progressed much along the same lines. Surreality and a sense of feeling sensorily overwhelmed. It's a vacation to drug-free fantasy. Well, to fantasy at least.

A whole night of sharing "the new k-knowledge" over the strains of the virtually living , almost certainly robotic, cover band at the tropical rain forest lounge out here on the back edge of this humongous casino and its automated gaming areas.

Drinking the drinks. Everything's a gamble here. A game of chance.

Do you dare order another drink? And then smile again at the exhausted, yet attractively overly-made-up, waitresses and subtly trolling prostitutes, who intermittently occupy the neighboring tables? Well, yes and no.

More fodder for excited, exciting and in-depth conversations. Yes, another Skyy-Driver and another Patron-- or was it Herradura?-- Silver Sunrise.

Horny but skittish girls out for a little gamble with guilty fun in the City of Sin.

All night long we follow each other's eyes across the faint outlines of lacy G-strings and to-the-point thongs framing luscious girl cheeks clingily wrapped in shear mini-skirts.

A lot of shallow exchanges; thinly veiled fundamental human needs. Fantasy fulfillment is only one more negotiation away. That, or one more drink and a couple more laughs at least.

Where else at 4 a.m. can you still have a chance at drunken sex with a hot stranger who, most likely, will stay for some breakfast? Or at least that's the fantasy we're sharing on our first night in town.

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Back out at the cinderblock warehouse, just out from under the overpass-- the one with the bas-relief stucco-sculpted temptresses painted bright colors on the front. Yeah, that place. Our last night in town, already.

The only place in Vegas-- well, other than your hotel suite's king-size bed with a sexy young pro, a bottle of Jack, a sixer of Cokes, an eightball of chizz-ill, a fat blueberry J and a four to five G to play with-- where every bet is a sure thing, assuming you have $20 to $100, an okay face and a little good rap for the topless crotch-grinding beauties.

Ah, yes. Vegas.