For those of you who don’t know, Pure is one of the ‘premier’ clubs in Vegas, located in Caesar’s Palace. Spent the weekend in Vegas and went to Pure on Friday night. Notwithstanding the nine Ketel/Red Bulls I downed before hitting the club I was still knackered after driving for five hours in heavy traffic so all I did the entire night was stand by the bar. I was pretty impressed by the club, despite the fact its part owned by that horrendous extra from MIB, Celine Dion, but as usual for Vegas clubs it was just too damn crowded; going to the bathroom involved my personal space being violated by a number of different sizes and shapes of humanity and not in a good way.

 

Anyways as I said, I was so tired all I could do the whole night was stand by the bar, nurse a Long Island Iced tea and ogle this waitress, well all the waitresses in the club. There was this particular one though that really caught my eye, around 5’8”, brunette, big eyes (no really big eyes, I’m a big fan of big soulful eyes) and um..another pair of big eyes (OK so this time I mean her boobs), short black dress and some interesting dance moves. The only problem with the scenario was that the bouncers seemed to have a very ‘friendly’ relationship with all the waitresses at the club and I really hadn’t drunk enough to consider tangling with a six foot tall bouncer built like a banyan tree, especially considering I’m a short, brown guy who hasn’t been to the gym in oh about a month. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and headed home cursing my choice of career, the girls in the environmental field tend to be bucktoothed and have frizzy hair and hang out at animal shelters.

 

If Friday night was a bit of an anticlimax, Saturday was absolutely fucking horrendous. I followed my sister and a friend of hers to OPM, again in Caesar’s Palace, touted as the “#1 hip hop club in the world”, exactly the kind of claim that gets mind-numbingly common in the US. Note to self: always, always check the website of a club before going there to make sure what the crowd is like. In this case, everybody apart from me and a friend was black. Now my taste in girls tends to lean towards the slim, petite body type, so it was no surprise that I found all the girls at the club umm…lets just say unattractive. I couldn’t even bloody drink because I was trying to Vegas on $200 due to my current unemployed and broke status. All I can say is that I absolutely hate black clubs, the guys are usually around a foot taller than me and fairly menacing while the women have arses that would probably require a couple of satellite passovers to cover all that surface area. Not my idea of eye candy.

 

It was this weekend that also brought home to me the fact that I think I’m done partying, I actually found Vegas lame and boring and I doubt that had anything to do my budget. The lack of money was a real eye-opener though, I remember the good ol’ days of partying in Vegas when I was a mortgage consultant selling my soul to corporate America. Our minimum budget for a weekend was around $3000 to include rooms, clubs, alcohol, strip clubs and gambling. Ahh….those were the days! I can still remember one afternoon when it was around 40 ○C outside, sitting in air conditioned strip club with a double rum and coke, basketball on the big screen and a smokin’ hot Brazilian on my lap. The nights were wild, the early mornings were wilder, rolling into the casino at 4am pissed out of our minds trying to play Blackjack, sleeping for a few hours and then waking up to repeat the performance. I’m actually surprised none of ended up in jail or dead.

 

I guess everyone has to go through a crazy phase in life (though I seem to have gone through a few) but I definitely think I’m done now with that lifestyle. For one thing I’ve decided to stop selling my soul to corporate America and follow my heart in the environmental field. I’m actually considering jobs in the non-profit sector that pay less than half I made in my previous job. With that has come a realization that the endless partying, drinking, occasional drug sessions and womanizing has to wind down for me and my friends, I guess this last season in Sri Lanka was our collective last hurrah and now it is officially time to grow up (well at least be a bit more responsible). It was fun while it lasted but I really need to grow back some brain cells, if just for me retain the ability to tie my shoelaces in the morning.