Gangs of Low Caucasia
A weekend in Vegas with Wrestlemania and the Grateful Dead
There was trouble brewing in Vegas. Civil War in an uncivil land, where schizophrenic cokeheads were employable, and men who ordered salads were considered rude.
Two factions had taken over the city that weekend. On the east side of the Strip, The Grateful Dead (or rather, Dead and Company) were playing at the Sphere. The Sphere was Sin City’s Sistine Chapel. It was a sight to behold: an electric snow globe filled wall to wall with potheads and freaks and the children of potheads and freaks who all worshiped the same ever-changing deity—a Theseus’s ship of a band that has lost most of its members, yet only grows in popularity. Their fans are called “Deadheads,” which is an apt term. To be a 50 year old man unironically wearing tie-dye requires such calibrated mental destruction over drug-addled decades that one’s brain must either be dead, or close to it.
On the West side of the strip was Wrestlemania at Allegiant Stadium. These were God’s laziest creations; unintelligent people evidence of unintelligent design; a mononational conglomerate of vitamin deficient mongoloids possessing fewer teeth than fingers, and body weights well above their credit scores. Make no mistake, reader, these were Satan’s very own. A rare kind of low octane garbage, too trashy even for Oscar the Grouch. I use no hyperbole when I say this: Wrestlemania is a right-wing terrorist organization comprised of globe-shaped people who believe the Earth is flat.
Chaos.
It was not my decision to go. This was a trip born from impulse, the day I listened to my roommate Johnny Orange’s vinyl of Terrapin Station on enough magic mushrooms to meet God’s secretary. Halfway through the record, I received a clear epiphany, a divine message written in Times New Roman font that I needed to receive a blowjob while watching the song Estimated Prophet played live. I relayed this to Johnny Orange, who agreed that this was now a priority. At the height of my trip, I purchased two tickets for two shows in Vegas two weeks from then, along with a two night’s stay at the Venetian Resort. Isaiah 22:22: What He opens, no one can shut. No refunds.
If I may give the reader one bit of advice, it would be this: Restrict internet access while on Psilocybin. Or else, you might end up spending three months' salary on a trip to Vegas just to see a band you only vaguely enjoy. But it happened, was happening. From God’s lips to Otto Fischkin’s ears, I was on a mission to get domed at the Sphere.
I took the 7am flight out of JFK which meant I had to be up at 4:30 AM to leave my apartment to catch the 1 train down to the E train and run over to the Jamaica Shuttle to Terminal 5, lest I pay for a $120 uber which my attendance on this trip had already made impossible to afford. On the walk from the Times Square stop to Port Authority, I passed a middle-aged man with his penis out, one dry hand on his shaft. His grip was soft and so was the rest of him; he wasn’t moving a muscle apart from when he wished each passerby to, “Have a blessed day.” I didn’t see any sign he had finished—it appeared he had forgotten about his nudity altogether. I couldn’t imagine the terror he would feel when he finally looked down and saw his unbusinesslike handshake on his own limp member. I imagined it would be like Wile E Coyote realizing he had outrun a cliff. I knew it was bad luck to pass an exposed yet unmasturbated penis in New York City, but I was running late. I passed him anyway.
“Have a blessed day,” he said to me, waving with his one free hand.
The flight to Vegas was full with both deadheads and wrestlemaniacs. I tried to guess which gang of low caucasia each traveler belonged to. The couple next to me who had matching neck tattoos of looney tunes characters and were watching Hulk Hogan on the Pat McCaffee show and nodding at his statements were Wrestlemania through and through—white trash unworthy of a snow-covered landfill. These were idiots watching idiots interview idiots in front of a live studio audience of idiots. I guessed their combined IQs were somewhere around the speed limit on Highway 61. The woman one row up with hairy arms and a septum piercing reading Alan Watts was clearly there for the Dead. A pothead philosopher if I’ve ever seen one. The fat white man on the opposite side of the aisle with a pig nose and mismatched socks dropped his headphones on the ground and reinserted them in his ears without wiping them. He could have gone either way; an ardent denier of germs and logic (Wrestlemania) or a believer that eternal music was worth the price of certain ear infection (The Dead.)
When I landed, I stepped into the desert and called an Uber. The air was thick and translucent with heat; everything in front of me appeared wavy, as if the horizon was on the other side of a thin cellophane sheet. The wind coming in the window was not refreshing at all, every gust like a deep exhale from the back of the throat. My driver resembled George R.R. Martin if he had a crippling opioid addiction. He stopped at several yellow lights on the way to the hotel. At one point he sneezed and under his breath muttered, “Bless me.” Vegas was that kind of town. No hand outs.
Johnny Orange couldn’t make it, so I sold his ticket to my college friend Benny Narco. Benny was a 6 foot 3 ex-linebacker who wore a silver chain and called his dad by his first name. We called him Benny Narco because he had connections to every drug dealer this side of Appalachia. Also, he had the fastest hands in the West. Benny flew private and arrived several hours after I did, which gave me time to find the poker tables at the Venetian.
I made my way to the $800 buyin table at the Venetian and sat to the left of a man with an uneven beard and wolverine-like fingernails wearing snakeskin boots. His name was Tanner, and he told me in one breath that he had taken 62 shots of whiskey in the last 36 hours, had eaten no food, had made 120 grand that month, had married a 65-year-old woman when he was 19 but divorced her six months later once he kicked his meth habit and no longer needed her money, and had been off meth and heroin for six years. He was 25 years old. I assumed he was there for Wrestlemania, but when I asked him if he was, he replied “I don’t know no man named mania—and if I did, I don’t wrestle with men. I shoot them.“
An hour in, Tanner removed from his pocket a plastic bag full of magic mushrooms and ate them all. He then announced that the other players at the table were fucked, because these mushrooms gave him a supernatural ability to transcend consciousness and reach into a higher dimension where he could see into our souls. He began playing without looking at his cards, judging based on feel alone whether to raise, call or fold. In the next 2.5 hours, he made 3.5 grand, including $700 off of me. I would have been mad, but as I left, I saw him tip a waitress $1,500, adding, “This money shit ain’t real to me—so long as bitcoin hits 1 million, anyway.”
Tanner was, without a doubt, the greatest man I have ever known.
When Benny Narco arrived, it was already time for dinner. We ate at some high-end Chinese restaurant, where we were waited on by a flesh-colored sex doll they had trained to talk. Everything was delicious, besides one spring roll dish I couldn’t have because it had dairy. We went back to the room, changed, and went to the concert.
On the walk to the concert, local fans were offering $300 to scalp last-minute tickets. I watched a man deny all of these offers, then trade his ticket to a white man with whiter dreadlocks who had offered him three tabs of acid for it.
I’m having trouble describing the concert in fine detail, because I took what I can only describe as a Herculean amount of THC before we left, and by the time the music had started, I was chewing on my sweatshirt’s drawstrings thinking they were spaghetti. I was still set on my goal to receive a blowjob during Estimated Prophet, but the hysteria and eagerness of my shroom trip a fortnight ago had waned, and by now this was more a recited pipedream than it was divine will. Seated on my left was a grey and thin 45-year-old woman named Martha. She was there alone and on two tabs of acid, which she let me know before telling me her name. She told me she thought I was cute. I thought to myself, By God! My dreams really may come true here.
I danced for hours in slow motion. The woman behind me had the gall to ask me to sit down because I was blocking her view—sit down! during a concert! I regretted passing on the dairy dish at dinner. I wanted to give her pink eye at that moment—really ruin her vision.
They played Estimated Prophet midway through the show. My edibles were peaking by then, and I was experiencing what I now believe to be marijuana-induced CTE. I was high high. Greened out. Stoned like a Massachusetts witch. So consumed was I with the thought that John Mayer’s fingers can play notes faster than mine can find my own nipples that I forgot to remind Martha about my reason for coming here and never received my beejay. And just like that, the song was over. The entire trip, fruitless in an instant. My dream of receiving head during Estimated Prophet, gone, all because I ate too much pot. Be careful with marijuana, reader. It robs you of your ambition.
The rest of the show was the greatest concert I have ever seen in my life.
After the show, we passed a line of deadheads waiting to exchange five-dollar bills for balloons of nitrous oxide in the Venetian parking lot. A man with no visible teeth was manning the nitrous tank.
We left the hotel and went out on the strip looking for trouble. But I had been up for over 24 hours at that point and was higher than Wilt Chamberlain in stilettos. Despite how badly I wanted to argue immigration policy with the wrestlemania rednecks—despite how badly I wanted to cut my teeth with the dentally challenged—I needed to pass out.
Besides, we still had night two.
At 5pm the next day, Benny Narco and I left bed to grab a bite before the show. We got Turkish food, and Benny asked the waiter how authentically Turkish the place was. When the waiter responded “Very authentic,” Benny asked if they could give me a hair transplant before the entrées came out. “He doesn’t have medical insurance,” Benny added. “Just send his bill to our room.” Then he slapped his knee and laughed at his own joke.
On the way to dinner, Benny had used his non-LinkedIn network to order us enough magic mushrooms to eat vegan for the rest of our short lives. They arrived before dessert, so we chopped them up and sprinkled them on the flourless chocolate tort. The waiter asked if we wanted the chef to do it for us, but we declined; they’ll let you do anything in Vegas if you haven’t yet paid your bill. Then we ate enough shrooms to make a Republican senator play hacky sack.
On the way to the show, Benny said, “I don’t feel the drugs at all.”
Giggling at nothing, I replied, “Either the shrooms are working, or my legs are half the weight they used to be.”
We got lost on the way to the show, but it wasn’t the shrooms. Vegas casinos are Cretan labyrinths designed specifically to get you turned around and trapped. I wondered if this had ever worked; if anyone ever thought to themselves, “Well, since I can’t find my wife and kid… I might as well lose the house.”
We still got to the concert on time.
The drugs made the music sound phenomenal, but I had no balance, and had to sit down most of the show. Benny Narco was seated next to me with his face in his hands, crying. It was bothering me how I couldn’t focus or dance, so I had Benny text his dealer who was a floor above us to bring us a vial of coke. Benny was still crying when he texted him, and a tear fell onto his keyboard. This was the text he sent:
Can you bring me a vial of cokehsiapenfbskwofh;;;;;;;;;;
This was the next text he sent:
Coke?*
I had to retrieve the drugs because Benny claimed he couldn’t walk on account of his legs being “too thin.” I am still having trouble Rorschaching this statement. We did a few bumps from our room keys and woke up instantly. Here’s piece of advice number two, reader: Never, and I mean never, mix magic mushrooms and cocaine. It’s the most terrifying combination. Anger and delusion mix like Oral-B and Orange Juice. Within half an hour, I had tackled Benny to the floor for trying to fight the sign language interpreter, who he thought was talking shit to him using gang signs.
“I’ll kill you, bitch!” He screamed on the way to the floor. “You’re fucking with the wrong gang!”
“God damn it, Benny—get it together! You’re not even in a gang!” I yelled at him, straddling his horizontal body with my knees pinned on his forearms.
“It’s the principle of it, Fish! It’s the principle of it!”
They didn’t kick us out of the Sphere after that. There’s a certain amount of chaos you can create and be left unbothered, where each security guard says to himself, “They don’t pay me enough to deal with this shit,” and leaves you alone.
We finished the concert, and again, it was the greatest thing I have seen in my life.
“Can you believe Wrestlemania is here?” I said to Benny as they finished playing Brokedown Palace.
“Those conservative sons of bitches,” Benny said, doing another bump of C. “I fucking hate tariffs.”
By the end of the show, we had agreed we needed to jump a Wrestlemania fan that night. And I still needed to get laid. We went back to the room to change into fighting clothes, then went out on the strip.
At midnight, the two clashing cultures of the deadheads and the wrestlemaniacs had flooded the streets of Vegas like a sick rendition of Cinderella meets West Side Story meets Dazed and Confused meets Honey Boo Boo. The veg’d and the manic. Left wing and right wing. The tie dyed and the camouflaged. Those who had smoked away their brain cells, and those who never had any to begin with. I wanted to ask each side if they thought it was better to have had a three digit IQ and lost it, or to never have had one at all. But I doubted either side would know Shakespeare.
We went to Ole Red, a country themed bar that seemed the prime spot to meet Wrestlemania’s worst. And it was. There was more camo in the bar than there was oxygen; the people were enormous, so the camouflage became moot. Benny Narco and I, freshly insane from our now-empty vial of blow, sat not-still in the corner, scouting which Wrestlemaniac needed to be taken down. The one with the MAGA hat and confederate flag sweatshirt seemed a likely candidate, but Benny told me we needed to be patient. “You don’t want to lose your Queen hunting a pawn,” he said.
In the meantime, I was looking for a redneck lady to bring back to the hotel. A blonde by the bar in a black jumpsuit caught my eye. I went over to say howdy, but Benny, wide-eyed and bloodshot, put a hand on my shoulder. “You ever hear of the game ‘Keys’?” he asked me in a terrifying low-pitched growl. When I shook my head no, he revealed to me a second vial of coke, then said, “You walk up to a stranger, and you have to do a bump off every key on their keychain.” I had no interest in this game; it was something that was only fun to cokeheads. But when Benny double-dared me to, I took the vial and approached the blonde by the bar.
“Hey, I made a deal with my friend that I have to do a bump off every key on your keychain,” I said. The coke from earlier must have still been in effect, because I finished the sentence before she had fully turned around. When she finally did, I wished I hadn’t. Her jumpsuit wasn’t a style choice—it was a uniform. Written on one side of her chest: Allegiant Stadium. Written on the other side of her chest: Custodian. She then revealed on her hip more keys than I had thought there were locks in the world. A hellish halo of cut copper. By the end of our game, I was ready to found a tech startup.
The blonde and I hit it off in the six weeks it took me to finish the game of Keys. At some point, we started to make out at the bar. I had to keep my eyes open, because my face was too numb and I couldn’t feel hers against mine. When I asked her if she wanted to go back to my place, I noticed the time: 4 am. Only then did I realize that the bar was mostly empty, and Benny Narco was long gone. I knew he’d be asleep in our room, so I couldn’t bring her there. I asked where she lived, but she said she didn’t want to bother her roommates. If only I had my own room! It’s a sad world when only the rich can afford to be horny.
“I have an idea,” she finally said. “Come with me.” She grabbed my hand and led me out of the bar. We headed West on the strip until we arrived at Allegiant Stadium.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Just follow me,” she said with a smile. I didn’t trust her, but I was thinking with the wrong head.
She used one of her keys to open a side door, and led me through several hallways until we were in one of the suites overlooking the stadium. Body odor from the show lingered in the room; a redneck dutch oven. I would have had to bring an N-95 just to survive an hour in there. But a surgical mask in a Wrestlemania crowd was like a yarmulke in 1940s Berlin.
One thing led to another between me and the blonde, and ended with me receiving a Pee Wee Herman handshake from her on the balcony seats. I spotted a MAGA hat by my feet, and, lest I dirty my new jeans, I turned to the right to shoot at it. I wondered what would happen when a good man’s DNA touched this evil, evil fabric. I thought it might burn straight through with a loud, crackling hiss like sulfuric acid. But nothing happened, and I began to wonder if I was truly a good man. The G and R on the hat became blurred, leaving embroidered on the hat, Make America Eat Again. If you had seen the body weight of the Wrestlemania crowd, you would understand that this edited hat would have still been a hit at the merch table.
I returned to the hotel at 6am, and grabbed my things and headed straight to the airport. My flight wasn’t until 11, but I had to get out of this Godforsaken land immediately. I took a nap with my eyes open and woke up to final boarding. I looked out the window as we took off, and watched as the manufactured palaces became beige colored specks camouflaged not well in the infinite sand. I was ready to be home again. New York wasn’t a perfect place. A city of false idol worshippers in search of a green mirage. A herd of necktie-wearing wanderers led by Uncle Sam dressed as Moses, or maybe the other way around. I was ready for it, though. To wake up again and chase the big lie. Manhattan was its own kind of prison; but a lifetime in that grey purgatory was infinitely better than one more night in this Neon Hell.
Otto Fischkin is the alter ego of Sam Frank Jr. Sam is a writer and standup comedian based in New York City. He has been published in The Bangalore Review, The Gramercy Review, and his standup comedy has been mentioned in the New York Times. He was named “Best Screenwriter” at the 2021 Austin Lift-Off Film Festival. Sam is working on his debut novel about the circus industry.
Sam can be reached at samfrankjunior@gmail.com
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Disclaimer: This work is fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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