010 - Medieval Times

Saturday is hazy for me. I remember the itinerary was to hang out in the arcade for a bit, then go to Medieval Times next door, then back up to the suite for the show. I really hadn’t been taking care of myself, and the weekend was a marathon of flights, drives, late nights, and liquid dinners. I’m going to spoil the story here and let you all know that I blacked out that night. The first and last time in my life, in the place where bad decisions are meant to be made.

That morning I tried to call Delta and have my Sunday afternoon flight pushed back. Several people there had planned on making a longer weekend of it, staying until Monday or Tuesday, and I wanted more than just forty-eight hours if I could make it happen. Mildly hungover, stomach grumbling from a supreme lack of solid food, clammily sweating out the last of last night’s overindulgence, I psyched myself up to see if I could convince some poor call center employee to look the other way and hook me up.
I was connected with Danice — not Denise, Da-nice. I spun some story about needing to come back later, someone I had been travelling with was hospitalized and I wanted to stay through his recovery. In case you didn’t know, Delta doesn’t play games and neither did Danice. She asked me for the name, date of birth, and relationship I had to said person, what hospital he was in, and whether I had a copy of his admittance form. I hung up. I can think on my feet, but I can’t forge documents as easily. Leaving Sunday it was.

My next memory is arriving late to the arcade. I think we had been up in someone’s room drinking (the likely option) but don’t quote me on that. The whole reason people went to the arcade was because one of the hosts had proclaimed himself the world’s greatest Street Fighter player — skills honed as a youth when he held court at the local bowling alley’s Street Fighter 2 cabinet. Most, if not all of the attendees were brought to the show via video games, so there were a couple old-school enthusiasts who wanted to see just how they all stacked up. I’m not much of a competitive guy, nor was I even alive when the Hadouken made its cultural imprint on America, so I passed on watching a bunch of near-forty-year-olds battle it out for bragging rights.

I opted to show up just minutes before our reservation at Medieval Times, teetering on the edge of overserved. As our legion of listeners lumbered down the long hallway toward the arena, the staff informe dus that no outside beverages were permitted, and I soon found my hands double-fisting pawned-off potions of all kinds: a frozen daiquiri, half a martini — I just wanted the holives, but hey, no soldier left behind — and I think a few sips from a gin and tonic before setting the glasses down by the wall and jogging ot  catch up with my compatriots.

We were seated in the “Hungary” section, and to our surprise, quickly learned just how empty the first show of the evening was. 5 or 6PM, and our crew of four-dozen felt incredibly out of place. Across the arena on the other side was a kid’s birthday party, to our left what seemed like a VFW or nursing home field trip, and to our right, a scattering of adults who probably randomly stumbled in from the casino and decided to stay. Saying we stuck out like a sore thumb is a gross understatement. We stood out like forty belligerent drunks forty yards from some third grader’s Arthurian birthday, complete with balloons, cake, toy swords, and paper crowns.

If you’ve never been to Medieval Times, it’s essentially an indoor renaissance faire. Shitty food served by waitresses in low-cut dresses and push-up bras, while four knights play out a scripted story and swordplay their way until only one is left standing, usually the representative of the section celebrating some special occasion. The wenches from the wayback machine came to take our drink orders, and I tried to buy a round of beers for the hosts sat just down the row from me. I guess those orphaned cocktails from the hallway had caught up to me, and were showing more than I thought.

“I’ll worry about them, darling,” she said. “And it looks like water for you.”

Our “dinners” came, all identical: some strange Pop-Tart-looking “pie”, potatoes, and the star of the meal — “Honey I Shrunk the Rotisserie Chicken”. All thrown together on a wooden board and gently microwaved, I didn’t touch any of it. Everything was cold, my pie still frozen in the middle, and my dwarf chicken looking like a clammy corpse freshly pulled from a river. That’s okay, I had drank my dinner, and was craving sleep more than sustenance. The Forensic Files feast wasn’t worth the fuss.

I watched the spectacle unfold through half-closed eyes, my right arm propping up my face, dozing off while the valiant knights dueled to the death. The senior citizens’ representative had bested the squire of the section to our right, leaving only the birthday party’s knight and ours. I’m not sure what was in the script for that night, but it looked like Hungary was supposed to take the fall, and allow the contingent of kindergarteners to claim victory in combat.

With his flowing auburn hair and chiseled face, our medieval panty-dropper called for cheers from the crowd. There was no way we were letting Sir Steal Thine Lady lose. Belligerent and billowing over the arena “HUN-GAR-Y, HUN-GAR-Y, HUN-GAR-Y”, the tide began to turn, sparks showering off the combatants’ clashing blades, horses springing in circles through the sand — the Hungarian Hunk had the upper hand, and finally his enemy stumbled, miming death as our hero’s sword stage-stabbed him through the sternum.

Looking back on it, we maybe were a little too enthusiastic, and perhaps a touch unsportsmanlike. Sore winners, or just lost in the sauce, we cheered and yelled and made more of a scene than required. To anyone at Medieval Times in the Excalibur Hotel on Saturday, October 12th, 2013, I’m sorry. But not really. We were on vacation; it was our time. The knight hopped up the wall into our section, and we took a massive group photo. He was taken aback by our fervor, and we had to explain to him we were meeting up for a podcast... it’s like a radio show, but on the internet.

With high spirits of both a psychological and liquid nature, we filed back up to the suite for the start of the show. This is pretty much my last first-person memory of that night. I wasn't really that drunk, but my brain and body had started to shut down. Note to self: maybe get a hotel room next time, so you can at least have some control over when and where and how long you sleep. I needed a real meal and a real night’s rest, two things I hadn’t had in days. I had burned the midnight oil the night before, and now all I had left was the last few millimeters of wick, and the flame was fading fast. I remember sitting in an armchair in the suite as the show started, someone sitting on my lap, preserved in a photo with my disheveled hair and barely-open eyes.

The next memory is me taking off my shirt and putting on a chain-mail vest — no, seriously. One of the hosts had made it by hand years ago, and it was intended to be the prize for a trivia contest based on the show. My reputation as an obsessive fan and utter historian lead to the concession of giving it to me outright, and not wasting time to prove what everyone already knew. Plus I was one of maybe three people who could even fit in the damn thing. I remember how cold it was. Air-conditioned-room-temperature steel is definitely jarring on bare skin. The last thing I remember is waddling into the shared room of three listeners down the hall, and sleeping twisted up in a tiny chair.

The intervening hours were, as I learned from those in attendance, effectively spent sleepwalking. At one point I fell asleep in the suite, only to be roused long enough for a little semi-conscious socialization before slipping back into sleep. There’s a photo of someone cradling my limp, passed-out body, chain mail peaking through the top of my halfway unbuttoned shirt, and another Kodak moment of me bleary-eyed, sitting up, barely alive, holding the pages of an escort advertisement up to the camera, blinded by the flash.

Fortunately, I was not the only person who fell victim to the celebrations. Over the weeks to come, I’d hear about people who woke up half-naked, unable to locate their pants, altercations with the police, and less-than-understanding next-door neighbors, people who lost their ass playing blackjack, and others who racked up bar tabs they couldn’t bear to look at until they got home.

I unfolded myself from my strange and uncomfortable slumber in the hotel room chair Sunday morning, shocked at how quickly the time had gone. I never even saw that penthouse, so many plans slipping through my sleepwalking fingers. But I had had a tremendous time. So many great conversations and memories, so much laughter and a sense of belonging. We didn’t know if we’d ever do it again, but everyone who came left as family. All with this unduplicatable shared experience. Nobody had ever done it — meet up with forty internet strangers and party like it’s 1999 in Las Vegas. Fucking insane. Forever in a secret club of “‘member in Vegas when...”. Stories that would be told and retold countless times over the years to follow. For most, if not all of us, it was the greatest weekend of our lives. Even if there was a lot we didn’t remember.

Sunday was a melancholy affair. With everyone leaving at different times, there was no organized event for the day. I caught up with a few people in the hallway headed down to the buffet and joined in. Ready for my first real meal, my stomach in knots after taking a backseat to anxiety and alcohol all weekend. We got to the entrance and I realized I had left my wallet in the room, to which I didn’t have a key. So, being the delinquent I am, I just entered in through the lane of exiting patrons, with nobody so much as raising a finger in protest.

Vegas didn’t earn its reputation as the city of excess by accident. The buffet was immense — anything you could think of, it was in that room. It looked like what I imagine a Willy Wonka Restaurant would be. If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. A broke college kid still surviving off a double-double two days ago had crash-landed in a culinary cornucopia, and I wasted no time grabbing everything that caught my eye.

As we sat down to eat our Last Supper, the seven or eight of us, I realized my eyes were bigger than my stomach. I barely touched any of it, too preoccupied with the goodbyes to come. Dreading having to leave. Blackout and all, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life. I fit in, I belonged, these were my people — what if I never saw them again? How long could I make these two days last? I pecked at my food as we swapped stories of events missed, funny anecdotes of nights gone awry. We hugged one last time, took a photo together, then left.

McCarran Airport, waiting for my flight and scalding black coffee to cool, I finally broke down. Tears silently streaming down beneath my sunglasses, I mourned the lack of time, and celebrated what I gained from what little we had. Bittersweet. Uncertain. Proud of myself — I just survived my first-ever vacation. I made it all work (mostly). No history of family trips or school excursions, and as an intrepid nineteen-year old, I accomplished what I had set out to do. Nothing was the same.