Prologue

Every story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, in spite of the fact that these things are fictions. The beginning can be anything: How I Was Born, or Where I Met Her. The end is the story. The beginning and middle are just ways to get there.

But let’s start with origins. Where we are and who we’re talking about. This is like dealing out the cards to start a game of poker. You see an ace, a queen… and hold your breath to see what comes next. And that’s an apt analogy, because everything in this story is about a gamble. As, well, what in this life isn’t?

So, origins. The place: Las Vegas. In the beginning was the dirt. And the dirt was just fine as far as the desert tortoises and the sagebrush and the scorpions were concerned, but people like to build things. Even more, they like to fill up empty space, and lay out highways and establish trading posts. So very quickly there were humans, and some time after that, there was neon and green felt and lights and action and showgirls (the showgirls are important.) And that was Vegas, and it grew, baby. Those tortoises and lizards never knew what hit them.

Our leading lady, Rachel Ferguson: We’ll get to Rachel in a little while. For now, think leggy redhead. Weirdly unsure of herself under normal lighting, but ready to take on the world when the spotlight hits her. A major player.

The other players: will become obvious. There’s a blonde, a brunette, a ghost, and a few others. You’ll get to know them.

The storm: Storms are important, in the desert. In books, they’re usually a sad attempt to skip steps. It rains when the hero’s sad, the sun shines during the falling-in-love phase, and so on. This is officially known as the Pathetic Fallacy. Pathetic is a technical term having to do with pathos, feelings, but it’s a pretty pathetic substitution for good writing, too. This story may turn pathetic. Watch for it.

Limos: They hold secrets. Like a box onstage when a magician’s doing his finale, a limo in Las Vegas might hold anything. If a lady steps in, a tiger might step out, or vice versa. Everyone from big name entertainers to hapless Midwest boys on a jackpot-fueled bachelor party tear use limos, and the bigger and flashier, the better. Big and flashy are important, in Vegas. And limos mean things, they bring things. Who knows what might emerge when that smoked-glass door gets opened?

And now it’s time for a beginning. The entrance of our first big leading character onto the bare stage. What a stage it is, and what bareness (bare is also big, in Vegas, although, as Rachel’s mother noticed, it is amazing how much fabric a girl can be wearing and still be naked.) The desert north of Vegas is desolate as few other places on earth would dare aspire. Emptiness there is professional emptiness, Olympic caliber lack-of-anything, the kind of blank dirt and sagebrush scene that pushes the horizons so far away you swear the earth is flat after all, and that Columbus guy was the biggest hustler in history. Maybe we’re all still just living out his con.

Roaring through this colossal empty stage one evening a few years or decades or lifetimes ago came Testy Lesbiana, fab drag queen and biker chick, suited up in black leather from her inch-long eyelashes to her spike-heeled, studded black boots. And as she chewed up the miles of Highway 95, having come west from Manhattan and turned left at Reno, she marveled at the sheer eternal nothingness all around her. She noted the stunning lack of people or habitations or even the stray electrical outlet, and she wondered where the hell the city was hiding until she saw it, plopped without warning or fathomable reason right in the middle of nowhere, and gearing up to flash and dazzle and spin itself into a frenzy as the sun went down and the sky turned to navy and the lights, the lights, the lights all came on in force.

She slowed, pulled over, stopped, and stared at it. A few desert crickets, or maybe scorpions with violin pretensions, were tuning up behind the tumbleweeds. Testy waited as the evening darkened and the city brightened into its full gold and red and hot white glory.

“We’ve got a future, you and me,” she told it.

And then a rushing sounded, a low purring rumble throaty as the voice of a fallen woman in movieland. It crested the low hill where the highway dipped just ahead of Testy and revealed itself as Southern Nevada’s own answer to the chariot, the carriage, and the first horse of the Apocalypse all rolled into one, a shiny gold Caddy with a glandular condition limoing its way away from town and off into who knew where in the empty desert. Maybe there was a secret hideaway on a mountain nearby and a casino owner spiriting his favorite girl there. Maybe some high roller had experienced a sudden craving for fried frog legs in Tonopah. Maybe a big name entertainer had just closed his last show and was heading to Tahoe for a second weekend. Who knew?

Testy stood and watched the car head toward her, and felt its wake pull at her lashes as it went past. “Happy trails," she told it, and whoever was inside. And then she cackled like a wicked witch in a fairy tale. “Who knows what's up in that place?” she asked the scorpions. “Who the hell knows?”

And she slung her leathered leg back across her saddle, revved the bike up, and tore off down where the limo had come from, an adventurer ready-made for the Desert Mecca.

And that, children, is our beginning. Stay tuned.

NEXT POST: Sunday, July 12

The Author's Confession

I was a dancer in Las Vegas off and on for almost fifteen years. In between times, I worked in Reno and Tahoe, in South Africa twice, and around Northern Europe on a cruise ship. But Vegas kept pulling me back with easy work and cheap apartment rentals, no matter how many times I tried to escape the asphalt-liquifying summers.

Those years were the very end of a golden era. Dancers in Nevada then could pick the kind of career they wanted, and work without pause. All the big hotels – MGM, Stardust, the Dunes – produced enormous topless extravaganzas, with dozens if not hundreds of performers on stage. If you signed those contracts you got insurance coverage a free food in the cafeteria, and lots of time during the day to raise a family or go back to school and rack up multiple advanced degrees.

On the other hand, for the dancers who hungered after harder work and greater recognition, there were lots of little cabaret shows. These featured a handful of dancers, a bare minimum of sets and costumes, and some of the most demanding, coolest dancing to be seen on any stage anywhere. When choreographers like Ron Lewis, Cary LaSpina, or (a few years later) Michael Darren or Jaymi Marshall were in control, those shows and those dancers could be breathtaking. I still have a couple of ‘em on video, and aside from being amazed at just how nude we all were, I am still blown away by them.

That whole world is gone now. Cirque du Soleil has become the entertainment flavor of choice in Vegas, and the cabarets have gone the way of the tiny topless dinosaur. The tight community I was a part of has dissipated and disappeared.

This is all, no doubt, good and proper. Times change, and the brilliant production of 1980 becomes the embarrassingly cheesy throwback of 1998. But I still miss that era. I miss the dancing and the fun backstage and the community of performers coming and going. I miss the weird dressing room smell of pancake makeup and Acquanet infused over decades.

All this sentiment and remembered joy gave rise to Totally! Nude! Showgirls!!! several years ago. This story has grown and evolved. I've shared it with friends, discussed it with agents, and, for a short time, given it its own website. Now, as my life goes in new directions, I offer this version as one last tribute. I do love this story, and all its crazy denizens, and I think they deserve a life outside of my head.

One note: none of the characters presented here are meant to be representations of anyone real, in spite of what some of my friends think. A few of these characters were inspired by real people, but they are mine alone, and none of their foibles or faults is meant as any kind of commentary on any flesh-and-blood figure. (In several cases, the real people I knew are so big and entertaining and over-the-top that I would be incompetent to represent them, let alone out-do them for the purposes of a humorous novel.)

These characters live in a city which is Las Vegas and isn’t, in a world which is realistic and which never existed at all. I hope you enjoy. (The characters will certainly be having a fine time.)