GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #119: TONE OF A TOWN

I just came back from Las Vegas, and the tone of the town never ceases to amaze me. A city always has a vibe, and for the most part, it's almost always the same. There are exceptions, but Vegas is by far the most different in the US.


It's not about prostitution. That's actually illegal in the city limits. In fact, these days there is a remarkable shortage of people passing around the hooker cards you would have seen ten years ago.


You can still smoke in buildings, which is unusual, since I come from one of the first states to adopt anti-smoking laws inside of buildings, even in bars. But that's not what it's about.


It's not even about gambling, which you can do almost anywhere now. The state of Illinois has opened up to the idea in a major way, and you're hard pressed to find a bar that doesn't offer gambling in some way. Which isn't to take away from the fact that Vegas has a slot machine for any intellectual property--even THE WIZARD OF OZ and THE WALKING DEAD (and I'm sure there is a slot machine dedicated to THE FOUNTAINHEAD somewhere)--but it's just not that special anymore.


No, take a walk down the Strip, and you'll feel a different energy from any other city in America. Everyone's drunk and happy just to hang out in a city where you can get anything at any time. Hell, there's an M&M store, and it's not just a little corner shop. No, it's a giant store with several levels, and they pump the smell of chocolate out into the street to entice people to come on in. At any given hour, you can find some drunken woman hanging off of the statue of the yellow M&M guy from the commercials that they have outside. Nearly all of those women are not concerned with their mini-skirts riding up to give a pervert the chance to see what kind of panties they wore tonight, just so long as their friends get pictures they can post to Facebook later.


In any other town, everyone would be on guard, but in Vegas, almost everyone has a license plate issued from out of the state of Nevada (unless it's a rental car). This truly is a party town. Granted, there are still homeless people asking for money, but it's not enough to drag the vibe down. The out-of-towners won't allow it. They might even encourage it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #100: MY GRANDFATHER, A MAD MAN

Tonight was spent in an unexpected fashion: I was in the hospital with my grandfather, who had slipped and fallen outside. He scraped his noggin pretty badly, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It's OK, he didn't even need stitches. The VA took a CT scan and saw there was nothing wrong. They just put a bandage on and told him to put ice on it for 20-minute intervals.


Still, it's kind of fucked up that this happened today when I told you all I was going to talk about him in tonight's GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS.


First, I should give a great deal of thanks to him. All of the times you've heard about me being in the hospital, dying from pancreatitis or suffering from a mystery illness or trying to live with an abscess or fighting through dental problems, he drove me to the ER. For a change, I got to drive him. I rolled him around in a wheelchair. I stayed by his side while the hospital ran a variety of tests on him. And then, as I left with Gramps in the wheelchair, bringing him out to my car, I brought the wheelchair back to the lobby. On my way, I saw the guy who collected wheelchairs from the parking lot. He was in his own wheelchair, and he thanked me profusely to the point where I started wondering if I was the first person to ever bring a wheelchair back to the lobby to save the poor guy from having to go out and bring it back. It's not like this is a shopping cart you can just leave in the parking lot. It's a frigging wheelchair. I couldn't imagine someone NOT bringing one back to the lobby.


But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I want to discuss my grandfather's youth as a mad man. No, he wasn't in advertising. However, he led the kind of MAD MEN lifestyle you see in Jon Hamm & Co. He went to martini lunches and smoked in the office and all the other things you see on that particular show.


Truth is, he was in men's clothing. He worked in sales at Bonds until it went under. Then, he worked locally at Leonard's until that was sold. All told, he worked in the business for more years than I've been alive, even now. But back in the day? That was something different.


Gramps taught me how to make a real Manhattan. Mixologists get it wrong all the time. If there's ice in your Manhattan, the guy who made it fucked up. A long time ago, I posted Gramps's recipe on MySpace, but since that's no more, I'll post it here for posterity: Take two shots of whiskey (it can be rye, but it's better if it's regular whiskey) and one shot of sweet vermouth. Stir it together over ice. DO NOT SHAKE. Then, pour it into a martini glass, but make sure none of the ice gets in there. Put a cherry into the glass (I skip that part, because I'm an asshole and I hate fruits and veggies), and you're done. Gramps told me that he knew a guy back in the 'Fifties who would drink about 10 of these things and then drive home to his family. Do that math: three shots (two of which are whiskey) times ten. I asked my grandfather if this guy died young, and he didn't. His heart gave out about twenty years ago, which placed the guy in his seventies.


My grandfather told me about the time he was driving home with the woman who would become my grandmother, and they hit a guy in a shady part of town. They looked in the rear view mirror, and they saw a guy back there in the street, but they were certain the guy was pretending, so they drove on. This, of course, shocked me when I heard about it. However, he told me that people who didn't have so much money back then had a habit of jumping in front of cars just to get a payday when they get hit.


And then there were the stag parties. Gramps would get all of his work buddies together, and while their wives played bridge in the living room or parlor, the guys would watch stag films while smoking cigars and drinking scotch.


Surprisingly, these are all things I learned as an adult. You'd think that knowing these things as a child would have informed my career as a writer of fiction. Not so. The world has always been fucked up, it's just that most people don't think about it.


I grew up in a house that was next to a whorehouse. Of course, I never knew that when I was a kid. However, my mom and aunt went to school with the daughter of the woman who whored herself out next door. Johns would drive through the neighborhood, looking for the house, and they would sometimes see my grandmother, who was only forty back then, and think she was the woman they were looking for.


They eventually arrested that poor woman. The family that moved in after her bore a daughter of their own, who would eventually become the first girl I ever played doctor with.


There are certain things you don't expect of suburbia . . .


You never think your neighbor is selling her body to stay afloat.


You never think of your coworkers as guys who would gather together to watch porn while their wives played cards downstairs, and that something like that would be a socially acceptable practice.


You never think of your grandfather as a guy who drank and partied and fucked and generally had a good time.


You never see Gramps as Don Draper, but let's face it. He probably was. I know, in my case, that my grandfather lived up to those kinds of things.


It's not always a good thing. He's sexist, even though he doesn't mean harm. My grandmother once told me that he said, on their first night together back from the honeymoon, that he swore to never do the dishes because that was women's work. He's racist and refers to the mail woman as a Negress, but he means no harm to her. He would actually step in and do his best to stop harm from coming to a woman or a person whose race was different from his own. He's not a hateful guy. He knows that the world has moved on, and he's trying to be better about it. He's not there yet, and he might never be. But he's trying,


I don't know about his feelings on gays. I've never asked him or seen anything from him on the subject. My guess is that he doesn't like them, but he would not want them to be hurt because of their sexual inclinations. If he saw someone being hurt for such a thing, I'm certain he would step in and do his best to help them out of the situation.


My grandfather is not perfect, but he raised me with as much love as anyone could ever bestow upon another person. For all of his flaws, I love him more than I've ever loved another man.


Tonight, I washed blood out of his hair. I treated the wound as best as I could, and I bandaged it with what I had at hand. I looked up the symptoms of a concussion, and I asked him about his experience. Thankfully, he was in the Army, and treatment for him at the VA was free. I drove him there, and the VA checked him out, tested him and made sure he was OK for release. Thankfully, I was right about my diagnosis: there was no concussion, and he didn't need stitches. They let him go after three hours.


In three years, he will be 90. He's got a lot of my medical issues: the 'Beetus, high cholesterol and hypertension. He's had all of these without losing limbs, losing sight, having a heart attack or having a stroke. He gives me hope.


I'm an atheist, so I don't do prayer. He's Greek orthodox, even though he hasn't practiced since he was a boy living in a household that demanded he reject English for Greek in ordinary conversation. As far as I know, he only prayed once as an adult, and that was when he had skin cancer. It was cut off of him, and it was benign, so he was fine afterward.


If you pray, I'm sure he'd be grateful for anything you would say to any Lord that might exist. I even hedged my bets a little. I don't believe in God--or any god at all--but I offered my prayer to whoever might be listening, not because I think anyone's listening, but just in case. I would never ask anything for myself, but for Gramps? I'd ask the world.


Thank you, John Kopoulos, for everything you've done for me. I hope for . . . well. I just HOPE.


Thanks for reading this GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS. It's the most important one I've ever written, and I love you all for making it this far. Hugs and kisses for you all. Goodnight.

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #31: PROSTITUTION

I have always been a huge believer in the legalization of prostitution. Some of you may have heard about a 14-state crackdown called National Day of Johns Arrests. Instead of targeting prostitutes and pimps, the cops went after the johns. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has taken the lead on this thing, and he had this to say about the sting operation: “It makes them understand that there are some consequences here. The public still perceives prostitution as a victimless crime, so we’re going about it this way to address the problem and raise awareness.”

Here’s the problem, though: prostitution, generally speaking, actually is a victimless crime. There are no victims, only winners, and the only reason it’s a crime is because the courts say it is. The john is a winner because he or she gets to have sex. The prostitute is the winner because he or she gets paid.

Hold on, Bruni, I hear you say. What about child prostitutes? What about pimps kicking the shit out of their girls? What about this, that and the other thing? You’re right, those are definitely crimes with victims. However, the only reason they exist is because prostitution is illegal and therefore unregulated.

Let’s take a look at where it is legal and regulated: Nevada (for the most part; there are some counties that don’t allow it). While there are the usual problems, these instances are vastly lowered by the legalization and regulation of prostitution. (There will always be child prostitution, because no one in their right mind would legalize that. People will always have illegal cravings, and there’s nothing to do about it except to crack down harder on those who would sell kids and those who would fuck kids.)

Working conditions for legal prostitutes are good. They’re constantly tested for disease. Brothel owners can’t beat them senseless. No one forces women into this industry here. Some people will still say that sex isn’t something that should be sold. To quote George Carlin, though, “Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn’t selling fucking legal?”

It’s all about choice. Morality can’t be a legal issue because morality is subjective. If you want to sell your sexual organs, you should be able to do so. If you want to buy someone else’s sexual organs, you should be able to do so, just so long as the person who has them is a consenting adult.

That’s key to the equation, by the way. Everyone involved must be a consenting adult. If this requirement is not met, then the act is a crime.

There are still some valid complaints about legal prostitution, though. For example, the legal prostitutes complain that the health tests are to protect the customer, not the prostitute, as the customers aren’t tested. This is a fair complaint. In Australia, the customers are screened carefully before they get to pay for sex. This is something we should adopt here, because if we ever do legalize prostitution, sex workers absolutely need to have rights.

Also, there are some odd laws requiring prostitutes to not wander very far from their brothel for very long. In other instances, they need to leave the county if they’re not working. In even other instances, they can’t hang out in local bars and socialize when they’re not working. As a result, some prostitutes have complained that they’re being unfairly detained or regulated. Again, another fair complaint. We need better regulations.

If we can fine-tune this process before taking the next step to legalization, we will see an amazing drop in crime, maybe even shocking. There will still be problems, but it will be nothing like the mess we have now.

Dart also said something else: “If there was no demand, there would be no prostitution.” A simple, slightly goofy thing to say. Let’s face it, there is and always will be a constant demand for sex, and as long as prostitution is illegal, selling fucking and the violent crime that is empowered by lack of legality will always be a problem.

By the way, Dart might not be all that bright. National Day of Johns Arrests lasted for 18 days, which is 17 more than is required for a national day of anything. He was quoted by TIME as saying that “53% of the arrested johns were married and 47% were college graduates.” To directly quote Dart: “The idea that these are a bunch of ne’er-do-wells could not be further from the truth.” The article doesn’t mention whether or not he gave serious consideration as to what, exactly, this means.

And who the fuck says “ne’er-do-wells” anyway?!

Okay, one last thing: did you know that Rhode Island accidentally legalized prostitution in 1980? It wasn’t fixed until 2009. So what happened during nearly two decades of legal selling fucking? Researchers at Baylor University took a look at it, and to quote the WASHINGTON POST article about it: “[They] found that more women entered prostitution . . . and the price of their services fell. In addition to the lower rate of gonorrhea infections among women, Shah and Cunningham [the researchers] estimated that decriminalizing prostitution prevented 824 rapes that would have been otherwise reported to police—and presumably many more that otherwise would not have been reported in any case.”

Hm. Very interesting. Your thoughts?