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Breaking in on dice

In the summer of 1988 I was out of work and living in Vegas. I was a certified in Clark County but I couldn't get a massage job.

I'm hanging out with a kid named Les Fabri. A featherweight from Seattle. I had met him at the Golden Gloves Gym and we started working together. Sparring.

He was a good little southpaw. 160 amateur fights and won about 140. Two time US national champion. Had lost out in the Olympic box offs. But it was close.

By rights I didn't belong in the same ring with him save for he couldn't break and egg and I was a puncher. So it worked out okay.

He was managed by Alex Freed, a Hungarian Jew who made jewelry and owned stores in the Imperial Palace and the big Hilton.

Freed had also managed a friend of mine from Vancouver. Alex had a lot of money. He also had a knack for ruining fighters. He could get you the wrong fight at the right time, the right fight at the wrong time or maybe the whole thing was wrong, wrong, wrong. For short money.

So Freed is sponsoring these guys and he stashes them at an apartment complex near Koval and Trop.

I'm hanging out there and an apartment downstairs, the door is open and there are a handful of people sharing a joint. I partake. The one girl, a pretty black lady, we start talking.

I'm telling her my recent history. In other words I'm out of work. She is a BJ dealer, also out of work. She says "why don't you go to dealers school, they will give you money and everything...!"

I start hanging around this girl. Plus she can help me get pot. I 'm helping her and her friends out with rides mostly. Because I had wheels.

I take her advice and look in the yellow pages. COS. Career Opportunities School.

The first one I spotted. I go. I take some rinky dink test. 6+7+8= ? 21 right?

They tell me "you're a man, you will deal craps." Because a monkey can deal black jack. So you better have a pretty face and a nice rack if you want the strip.

Or would you rather rot downtown?

There was a $1682.00 grant involved and a $2600.00 dollar loan, for three games.

My only question was "how soon can I get the money?"

"10 days." "Where do I sign?"

This school had recruiters and they were scraping guys right out of the gutter. The loans were federally insured. The school got their money regardless of default. Courtesy of the US taxpayer.

Every Thursday guys would show up for disbursement and that was the last of them for another week. They should have called it Crack Opportunities School.

The school eventually lost their federal funding. Too many defaults.

Naturally I''m going to school but believe me, you don't learn how to deal in school. You don't learn sh1t.

I got friendly with a guy there. A Vietnam vet. He had a milky left eye. A piece of shrapnel. He told me he loved Nam. "All the drugs you wanted..." But they wouldn't let him re up cause of his eye.

The school secretary was a morbidly obese chain smoker and her daughter was also pretty hefty.

This guy, the vet, goes over to the New Thunderbird Motel after school one day and has a drink with her.

Now he's telling me he's f**king her. I'm laughing "do you do 69 with her?" Now he's laughing. He tells me "shut upppppppppp!"

He says she bathes me and she'll do anything, "she licks my a-s-s-h-o-l-e."

Not that I needed to know that.

He tells me he wants to nail the daughter also.

The school money wasn't enough, so I got a job busing tables at the Paddle Wheel, a little off strip joint across from the Landmark, Howard Hughes white elephant. I ended up dealing dice at the Landmark two years later.

Shortly thereafter I got a job at the Tropicana, doing massage again. So two part time jobs and school.

The school provided apartments for some of the dealers and it became part of their loan package.

I give the vet a ride home one day. Out toward Nellis.

When I get there, there's like maybe 8 guys sitting around a table smoking crack.

It was my first time. They had a glass pipe, a good one. My turn comes. They are coaching me. I blow out and take it in very, very slowly. Long and deep.

Then they tell me to hold it. My heart is about to pop. They tell me to let it out slowwwwly. A millisecond and the rush hits me, crawling up from my spine and exploding in my head like an orgasm times ten.

I'm sitting down kneading my thighs and grinding my teeth and they are laughing because I am righteously lit and I understand instantly why people turn into hard core addicts off the first rush.

Because it is never again like the first time, and you chase and chase and chase.

That's it! That's what I am. I will try anything. But this one time I really stepped through the portals of hell. I struggled with that sh1t off and on for the next 8 years.

The Trop turns into a full time gig. But it's a garbage job. No money, bad working conditions. The spa was not owned by the Tropicana. It was owned and run by Ken Mizuno a degenerate gambler who had baccarat markers for millions up and down the strip.

The only notable thing was that one evening Rodney Dangerfield came in. No one was around. I was just attending for the other kid. I gave him a towel and some juice. He stiffed me.

There was an assistant manger there. We got along okay at first. One evening there was an incident. Can't recall what about. I mean, I was fed up with that job and was anyway about to break in on dice somewhere.

Anyway, we had a verbal altercation and he fired me on the spot. He was behind the desk. Another masseur was there, a venomous little Cambodian dude who died of cancer a couple of years later.

I badly wanted to punch the manager in the head. I mean I had an internal conflict going. I'm thinking "I am going to jail..."

But the urge to lay hands on this f**king guy wins out and I reach over the desk and give him a shot in the head.

He comes out from behind the desk and we're trading. He's big, about six two, but he can't really punch.

I'm feeling inhibited on account of "I'm going to jail..."

Finally he sits on me. Tackles me and I'm on the floor and he starts slamming my head against the mirrored wall. I'm concerned about broken glass and also it is starting to hurt so I yell at him "THAT'S ENOUGH!"

Security arrives. They escort me to the basement. I got a slice over my right eye. He was wearing a diamond wedding ring. But it wasn't deep and they butterflied it for me.

They took my picture against a yardstick. "he's not pressing charges, but you're 86'd. If you come on the property you will be charged with trespassing."

I apologized but they showed me empathy. They said he must have done something to provoke you.

Shortly thereafter I auditioned at a break in joint called Little Caesars.

My first dice job. I'm going to put this out in instalments. I'm tired now.