Heckling Vegas Timeshare Sales

A year or so ago, Katie and I took a trip to Las Vegas to meet up with a friend on leave from Afghanistan.  Inevitably, as we explored Old Town we were approached by a well groomed chubby girl in a violet blazer who invited us to attend a timeshare presentation, and offered a plethora of gifts if we'd just give them an hour or so of our time.  What they were offering was actually fairly substantial; tickets to Blue Man Group, gambling tokens, a free night at the Golden Nugget, and a meal voucher.  Basically it amounted to a good day in Vegas, and because I'm in grad school we can't live quite as large as we'd like these days.  I understood it was a well-orchestrated and highly optimized scam to get us to purchase a condo in tandem with 52 other suckers, and that the sales staff would be ruthless, unabashed and shameless in the social and emotional pressures they'd put on me to "invest"  But, I also knew they HAD to give me the gifts no matter what decision I came to.  As a kind of borderline sociopath, I am always interested in the activities of other sociopaths; what are THEY up to, how are THEY doing things?  So naturally I was inclined to attend if only to test my mettle.

The sales gal was slicker than buttered shit, essentially posing as one of the hotel staff and using a lot of the same phrases and gestures that I do to gain people's confidence quickly.  It was completely transparent to me, but I was nevertheless impressed.  This was shaping up to be a fun little bit of completely ethical social sport for me, dodging and parrying attempts to pressure me into buying something I could not and should not afford while maintaining a smile - and forcing them to reward me for wasting their time.  In my mind, the game was afoot.

On the other hand, Katie seemed euphoric, both at the prospects of the gifts and the looming potential of owning a "Little Piece of Vegas."  I felt a twinge of frustration in anticipation of having to disappoint her later on that day.  Katie is a warm, kind, fun and trusting person - attributes which have both secured my eternal affection and caused me to underestimate her on multiple occasions.  This was one of them.

So after paying them 50$ (as a "down payment" on the gifts should we blow them off,) and hopping on the chartered bus, we were whisked away to a remote patch of Mohave just outside the Vegas city limits, to an unremarkable three story condo complex right near what looked like a shitty part of town.  I was asked my profession and Katie (not me,) told them I was a cop which was at this point completely untrue,  (I was an unemployed student.)  They did this ostensibly to match me up to a salesperson.  The "cop" lie yielded an 80 year old woman wearing a plunging V-neck blouse that revealed an open heart surgery scar.  Her voice and mannerisms were kind, withering, and slightly weak. I realize I was supposed to feel sorry for her, and out in the world I would.  But given the context, I was the one who was ostensibly the prey and she the predator.  Any compassion between us would have to occur another time and place.

They sat us down at a small table with our sales rep, whose proper name I had already forgotten, though I had assigned her the moniker "zipper." (I "name" people immediately upon meeting them so I can remember things they do later.)  We watched a stupid video, which I laughed at openly.  The presentation itself was made by a lispy, fat, young southern man who explained his father had been an earnest country doctor before dying unexpectedly in an accident, and the only thing that kept his lovely mother sane afterwards was the timeshare vacation his father, Dr. Slippinfall, had the foresight to purchase.

As he laid the story out, Katie and I guffawed loudly and heartlessly like a booze hound and his bar hag at a comedy club.  At one point, Slippinfall Jr. went around the room and directed each of us to kiss their partner.  When he arrived at our table, Katie snapped "This is my brother!" and Slippinfall's piggy little eyes got narrower and piggier for a split second.  His irritation piercing through his veneer made me laugh so hard I could barely stay in my chair, and the presentation concluded soon after.

Were were led to a small cubicle, and  Katie excused herself to go use the restroom.  Zipper sat down at the desk across from me, square shouldered, brow lowered with a slight scowl, her voice no longer withering and weak.  "You're busting my balls here, kid." She said flatly.  It was no longer kind, but it was incredibly honest and quite refreshing actually.

"You're wasting your time with me." I replied, not bothering to conceal my smirk. "You should take the rest of the afternoon off."

She leaned back in her chair.  "I'm going to.  You tell my boss you make less than $30,000 per year and your wife is a homemaker.  And I am going to go home and watch my soaps."  As we exited the room her posture went from strong and swaggering to hunched over with tiny steps.  She had put her "little old lady" mask back on. She brought us to a desk near the exit and told the man in a three-piece suit "These two were not able to complete the tour."  We were handed our gifts and promptly put back on the bus.  As we waited to depart, the other attendees were loudly complaining they had been there for up to four hours having their arms twisted.  We had arrived less than 40 minutes prior, and I suspected the people who had come on our bus had a long afternoon in front of them.  The last thing I saw before we pulled away was Zipper getting into her Mercedes.  She waived and winked at me through the window.

Blue Man Group was awesome, and we saw The Rat Pack with some of the other vouchers we received.  I kept the tokens as a prize, and we spent an extra night in Vegas.  More than worth it.  I also learned that my sweet wife is only without guile when it comes to me.  She can dish it out every bit as well as I can given the right forum.

We exploded my little brother...

In our teens, I but especially Gabe were rather enamored of firearms.  For me it was a passing interest as I sagely considered Tae-Kwon-Do to be an equally potent means of combat.  For Gabe, it was better described as a way of life.  At 15, he owned multiple high velocity air rifles capable of killing a large rat, and even had a black-powder muzzle-loader carbine which he had made himself, albeit from a kit.

The preceding paragraph is not there to brag or convey some kind long held bad-assery purchased at retail.  I actually consider such discussions about as gauche as boasting about your annual income. No, the paragraph is there only to explain why there was a pound of frontier-style black powder in my house in the first place.  Our parents had forbid us from using it, my mother had concealed it behind several books in the living room bookshelf and then entrusted the care of our home to me at 17 years of age while she and my father worked long weekend shifts.

Being the responsible older brother, I had insisted Gabe and Bri aid me in tearing apart the house to find our black powder on a sunny summer Sunday.  It took roughly 45 seconds to ferret it out.  We then brought the tin out to the concrete patio and started pouring small piles on the ground and ingniting them with a welder's spark lighter.  It would erupt into a huge amount of smoke and a little bit of fire.  Safe enough, innocent fun, and quite easy to clean up before mom and dad came home.

After a few rounds of this, one of Gabe's friends came pedaling into our driveway looking like a malnourished, emaciated, midget love-child of Alfred E. Newman and Uncle Fester (really.) This particular little shit was otherwise completely useless, but very well adapted to goading others to do his dirty work.  I stood inside while he, Gabe, and my sister proceeded to experiment with larger and larger piles at Alfred's behest.  At some point, Alfred insisted via a series of especially high pitched whines that an especially large pile be ignited.    Gabe kindly obliged and began pouring the pile.

Not being a ding-dong, Gabe knew he'd need some distance between himself and the pile if he wanted to keep his eyebrows.  So he poured the pile of black powder at his feet, and then very carefully poured a thin "fuse" line about three feet away from himself, squatting over the pile the whole time.  I mentally checked off that Gabe was doing it right, then turned my attention to Alfred, who was doing this idiotic clown dance in excited anticipation of - who the fuck knows - LOTS of smoke?  The sound of the spark igniter turned my attention back towards Gabe, who I realized hadn't moved since he poured the pile and was about to ignite several dozen grams of black powder directly beneath his belly.  He may not be a commensurate ding-dong, but at 15 years of age mistakes should be expected.

It took him three strikes to detonate it.  As soon as I noticed, time slowed. The first strike I was inhaling to speak.  The second I said the words "Dude, you better - " (this was Bothell in the 1990's, where there seemed to be some kind of decree that every male between 11-25 preface each sentence with the unword "Dude.") The third strike was immediately followed by a hissing burst of flame as my brother disappeared under a plume of grey smoke, with Alfred doing excited and flamboyant little cartwheel flips-kicks in the background, his plaque frosted tongue limply hanging over his mossy, amber teeth  like a caricature of every immature idiot who ever lived, but meaning it.

I don't know how long it was before I could see him again because my perception of time had slowed down (that's an actual physiological response to extreme stress, Google it - I can do it at will.) but when he came out of the plume he was on fire in a few places and he was doing a pain dance that made Alfred look slightly less flamboyant and quite grown-up.  I observed him until I knew what he would need, which took maybe three seconds but felt like 30.  He looked down at his hands while the color drained away from his face (which I could see under the soot covering it,) as he went into shock.  His hands were flash-fried.  His eyebrows were gone. There were holes burned in his clothes, especially his pants. His bangs were shorter than I had remembered from earlier that minute.  The wind carried the remainder of the smoke away....

At this point I see (still in slow-mo,) my ten year old sister Brianna not comprehending the gravity of the situation and eager to score points with the big boys. She struts up to Gabe with her finger pointed at his face laughing her most exaggerated man laugh.  "HA HA HA!!" she guffawed, and I saw the corners of Gabe's lips go back and his jaw clench as his eyes glaringly chose a target.

I could tell what was about to follow would hurt, and I was afraid she was about to be genuinely injured.  Gabe rocked his left hand back and up, forming a solid fist and slamming it with adrenaline and terror fueled power squarely into her shoulder.  The gross disparity in their two sizes and Gabe's temporary inability to gauge his own strength launched poor Bri up and back a good two feet, and I watched her face twist into crying before she hit the ground.

Alfred made a sanctimonious show of comforting Bri, and it occurred to me to to twist off his ugly little head of his chicken neck by his teacup ears.  Instead I went inside to get Gabe some cold water and to think of the best lie in the world that would explain the burns without incriminating us.  What crystallized was a lie about steam burns, and the scrubbing of concrete with a wire brush while Gabe slept off the shock with his hand in a bucket of water.  I collected the blackened remains of his clothes and put them in the outside trash underneath some other trash.

For all intents, we got away with this one.  My Dad was very suspicious but being an aficionado of the "real life lesson" never told my mom that steam burns don't usually remove eyebrows nor trim bangs.  I think he figured we'd learned our lesson, and he was right.  We didn't do that again for at least a week.

Granny Road Rage....

I had just finished my last errand on a cold, rainy December afternoon and was making my way back to my car through a busy mall parking lot, eager to get home to enjoy the rest of my day off.  On a rainy day at the mall so close to Christmas, people are in a persnickety mood.  I didn't want to get in anyone's way or add further stress to a stranger's day.  However there are those who treat Christmas shopping like it's ice hockey.    I was about to meet two senior citizens who almost treated it like a demolition derby.

The parking lots were pretty full, and people were slowly orbiting around the parking islands in their cars, trying to find a spot that would grant them minimal exposure to the rain.  Then something interrupted the soundscape; two different vehicles honking and revving their engines followed some female voices first pleading and then shouting.  I came around a corner to see two very large American sedans (think Cadillac or Oldsmobile,) both nosing in to a compact parking spot immediately in front of the kind of shops old ladies like to frequent, quaint albeit useless tsotchkes on serenely lit shelves up to the ceiling and reeking of cinnamon oil.   The exchange was catching the attention of casual bypassers, who were stopping to tut-tut at the vulgar behavior being displayed.  I felt a smirk spread across my cheeks in spite of myself, and moved closer, wanting to hear what was being said.  

As I approached one of the drivers abruptly flung her door open and got out of the car, which startled me.  She had to be at least 70, wearing black leggings and clunky white tennis shoes, sporting a white sweatshirt with a picture of a kitten playing with Christmas ornaments on it.  "I was here first!" she hollered at the driver while waving her hands in the air.  The other woman slowly opened her door and very methodically exited her car.  She was somewhat older, wearing a purple wool overcoat reminiscent of Mary Poppins, and a matching hat with a clear vinyl covering over it.  "You saw me waiting!" she snapped as she tottered around the trunk towards her adversary "You stole this spot and you know it!"

Bystander eyes were widening and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.  They were talking over each other now, standing in a puddle and slowly getting into one another's personal space while both their cars sputtered white exhaust into the damp December air.  Traffic was backed up in both directions, and somebody several car lengths back leaned on their horn the pulled a U-turn out of the line.

Their voices were steadily rising in both volume and pitch, and the sentences were getting shorter.  I've seen this several times with young idiots right before they came to blows, and could barely believe I was witnessing this behavior displayed by elderly women.  Kitten shirt reached into her purse and threw a packet of Kleenex at Mary Poppins' car, which sailed over the hood and landed on the sidewalk at my feet. There was no stifling my laughter at this point.  It was all I could do to keep it under my breath. 

As amusing as this was, I also recognized that being knocked over onto concrete in a geriatric catfight could have some serious legal and medical consequences. Besides, this was no way for anyone to spend the holidays, so I decided to end the incident.  I walked into the parking spot towards them, mentally rehearsing how I was going to snap them out of this.  They both noticed me when I stepped off the curb, paused for a split second, then Kitten Shirt got back in her car and aggressively reversed, nearly hitting the car she had trapped behind her.  She drove on the wrong side of the road around Poppins' car, and as she did screeched (I shit you not,) "This isn't over!" out the passenger window.  

That was it - the absolute living end.   I started laughing loudly and without shame - this was one of the greatest things I had ever witnessed and no social norms would be allowed to contain the expression of my mirth.  I had to lean against a pillar to keep from falling on the ground.  The cold air tagged my asthma and I started coughing.  I didn't care, I just kept laughing through it.  I gradually became aware that the people who had been standing agape just moments before were now glaring at me like I was TV.  I surveyed the crowd - they were who you'd expect on a Wednesday afternoon at Crossroads mall right before Christmas. Namely, women in their 50's and non-MILF soccer moms.  All of them glowering at me - if looks could kill. Of course, this was funny too, and I brought my hand up to my mouth to stifle my glee in preparation to mumble an apology before making a beeline for my car.  

Then my eyes settled on the glowering unibrow through gauche librarian glasses and sneering vermilion lips under the worst perm I've ever seen.    Her expression looked like she had just bit into a fart-flavored lemon and I started laughing even harder, which just a moment before hadn't seemed possible.  I fell back against the pillar clutching my hand to my chest while the other one almost involuntarily pointed squarely at her.  This precipitated a great deal of scoffing and head shaking as the peanut gallery dispersed to return to their holiday shopping.  I myself decided to get out of there before the police or mall security arrived. I have no idea where Mary Poppins went, but when I left a different car was in that spot.  Yes, I realize laughing like that was immature and rude and I do feel bad about that.  At the same time, I defused what was becoming a dangerous situation and COME ON!!  I'm not made of stone here! It was REALLY FUNNY!