Too Many Mornings

Sadly, some things that happen in Vegas also leave Vegas.

If you have a sensitive disposition, then I beg you not to read what I am about to write.

Turn off your computer, and take a walk instead. Go visit your grandmother and enjoy a glass of iced lemonade while you reminisce about old times. Give your children an ice cream cone. Read the leather-bound book of prayers your pastor loaned you. Do anything—anything else at all—that seems wholesome, pure and good, and never, ever visit this site again.

I issue this warning because what I’m about to tell you is not only true, it’s so horrific that I’ve unsuccessfully tried to suppress the memory of it for nearly 30 years. And I’m only sharing it with you today because I hope that by finally bringing this secret into the open, I will be able to expunge it from my mind.

I want to be healed.

I want to watch the sun rise on a new day and not see only shadows.

I want to laugh, and not think about crying.

My sad story begins in the spring of 1982. That was the year my wife and I travelled to Las Vegas, Nev., for a weekend of rest and relaxation. We booked a room the legendary Stardust Resort.

The Stardust is gone today, a victim of the modernization that has transformed Las Vegas into an adult-oriented amusement park. But when it opened in 1958, the resort instantly became a national sensation.

It boasted the city’s largest casino, swimming pool and hotel. It had a drive-in movie theater, a convention center and an international race track that attracted star drivers like Mario Andretti. Magicians Siegfried & Roy began their careers there. Wayne Newton once earned $25 million a year singing on the resort’s main stage, making him the highest-paid performer in Vegas. The great comic George Carlin also was a frequent headliner.

In short, the Stardust was a premier resort. It was classy. And although my wife and I aren’t big gambling fans, we expected to have a great time dining, swimming and catching a big show.

And we did have fun.

Until the final day.

My memory of exactly what went wrong is a blurry now. Grainy. Dimly lit. Choppy. A B-rate horror movie in a run-down theater in a seedy area of town.

But I can tell you that one minute we were standing together in the main game room drinking Long Island Iced Teas, feeding quarters into the slot machines and laughing because we were winning. The next minute I was standing alone in the men’s room staring blankly at the largest pair of tighty-whities I’d ever seen. They were…well, elephantine. Elephantine is the only word that adequately describes the peculiar enormity of this particular pair of underpants. What I’m trying to say is that an elephant could’ve worn them. Perhaps not a full-grown African elephant, but certainly one of their smaller cousins, an Asian elephant. The underwear was that large.

But it wasn’t the size of the underpants that caused me to gasp.

It was their condition.

The briefs were soaked in shit.

In fact, everything in the stall was covered in shit. Not firm chunks of shit, either. That would have been almost palatable compared to what I saw, which was—I’m so sorry, but I can’t put this gently—liquid shit.

Shit was smeared on the floor. Shit had filled the toilet and spilled over the sides. There was shit on the seat, the handle and the plumbing. There was shit running down the walls of the stall. Shit had splashed—and I swear I’m not making this up—onto the ceiling.

The ceiling!

I fell into a state of shock. I was dizzy, and had trouble breathing. The stench was unbearable, and I was unable to muster the strength to think clearly. But I recall asking myself, “How does shit get on the ceiling? How?”

I didn’t have an answer. It was as if a 600-pound, desperately diarrheal man had exploded in the bathroom. His bloated corpulence burst like a rotten melon on a hot summer day and passed into another dimension, leaving gallons of medium-brown excrement as the only evidence of its miserable existence.

Medium-brown liquid excrement.

I retched. (I’m retching now.)

My mind screamed, “Close your eyes! Don’t breathe! Run!” (My mind is screaming now.)

But you know how you instinctively slow down and study the aftermath of a car accident even though someone might be badly hurt and you might see something you’ll regret? (Yes, you do, don’t deny it.)

I had entered the same prurient state. (I’m still there now.)

So I stood and stared, absorbing every detail. And when I’d finally seen it all—when the basest, most perversely curious regions of my mind were satiated at last—I walked out of that tainted restroom like I was still a normal person and I stepped back into the noise and light and everyday ordinary activity of the casino. I didn’t think to mention what I’d seen to the hotel staff. I didn’t even tell my wife about it until days later, and she pleaded with me not to repeat the story ever again.

And I haven’t, until today.

A lot of time has passed since then, and yet I still can’t think of Las Vegas without seeing those grossly soiled shorts in my mind’s eye. To me, they have effectively polluted a city that proudly flaunts its pollution, and that’s no small feat. It is, in effect, an abomination of abominations.

It bothers me that I can’t shake that hideous image from my mind. But I have slowly come to accept that I’ll never solve the mystery of what happened that day in a restroom deep inside the grand, old Stardust.

I do have a theory, though.

I believe a seriously overweight, overworked assistant marketing executive named George flew into Las Vegas from New York City that weekend with $5,000 cash in his pocket. His plan was to let off some steam by blowing his bankroll on blackjack, booze, bimbos and buffets—plus indulge in a seemingly endless stream of 99-cent shrimp cocktails.

And George’s weekend of debauchery was going perfectly until his poor stomach rebelled and started rumbling. He rushed to the bathroom, but burst forth before he could fully drop his pants and properly seat himself. Panicked, he started flailing his arms wildly, then stepped into the effulence of his bowels and slipped and fell, throwing fountains of shit into the air.

Covered head-to-toe in his own filth, George did the only thing he could reasonably be expected to do: He stepped out of his soiled underpants, washed up as best as he could, re-dressed himself, checked out, bought a family-sized bottle of Pepto-Bismal at the nearest 7-Eleven and took the first available flight back to New York City.

Once he was safely home, George realized the folly of his ways and started attending church—twice on Sundays, and once on Wednesday nights. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous to quit drinking, and Jenny Craig to lose weight. Eventually, he met a woman at a fund-raising  spaghetti dinner sponsored by the church. They fell in love, got married and had two kids.

And one day, many years after his intestinal supernova at the Stardust, fate dictated that the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce would hire the marketing firm George worked for to help it boost tourism.

Sitting in his cubicle at work and remembering his tragic visit to Vegas and the shameful event that had fueled the positive changes in his life, George immediately coined the phrase, “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” And as we all know now, those seven simple words became the cornerstone of one of the most successful ad campaigns in marketing history.

But George and I both know his catch phrase is a lie.

Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

George took the awful memory of that offal day home with him, and so I did I.

And it lingers. It lingers bitterly.

God help us both.

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