Wonderhussy

Talk about kicking a girl when she’s down!! Look what they made me do at Footmode.com last week…

 

 

 

 

 

Picking up where I left off last time: I was on my way to my monthly shoot for Footmode — but since I was no longer a starry-eyed newbie (this being my third shoot with them), they took off the gloves. Whereas last time they let me be the Domme in all the shoots, sticking my feet in the face of the other girls and making them sniff ’em… this time I had to take a turn as a sub, and let the other girls kick MY ass and otherwise humiliate me (the first pic shows my evil scientist nemesis using a remote control to turn me into a toe-sucking robot). It was all in good fun, but it was still slightly degrading…but also weirdly therapeutic. I’ve spent the last month or so alternating between fits of bawling and rage, so it was kinda fun to express my pain and misery on camera.

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t ALL bad, though; I still got to put on a cheerleading uniform and act like a bitch for a good half of the shoot…which was ALSO extremely therapeutic! (I always wanted to be a cheerleader in school, but we were always too poor to afford the uniforms and training camp and stuff….plus I am a klutz and a terrible dancer; so this is as close as it gets, for me.)

 

 

 

 

 

Anyhoo, this went on for eight hours over two days, and was a welcome distraction from the lameness my life has become. Aside from this, all I’ve been doing is collecting boxes, packing up my shit, and getting ready to move. My house was finally listed on the MLS the day before Thanksgiving, and I got around 10 calls from prospective buyers in the first few hours. Some asshole is gonna get a bangin’ deal on my place, sooner than later! Which I guess is good for me…but it’s still lame, depressing and tiring. Now I gotta find a new place to live :-/ Bah, humbug! It’s a good thing I’m an atheist, or I’d be really pissed to be spending my Christmas in this fashion!!!

Aaaaanyhoo, another welcome distraction was Girls’ Night Out with my friend Bunny, a cross-dressing misanthropist and incorrigible cynic I met back in the day at Ye Olde Photo Lab. Listen to how fucked up the company we work for is: because of her “condition” (pre-op transsexual who works in full drag), they would only let her work the Cher show (figuring Cher fans to be a bunch of cross-dressing homos and weirdos who wouldn’t be offended by her). Personally, I don’t know what they were so worried about; clueless straight men used to hit on her ALL THE TIME… but the photo company insisted on hiding her away up in the balcony (in the cheap seats), so she never made any money, got discouraged, quit, and finally moved to Seattle, where she was apparently held in indentured servitude at a lodge in the mountains until finally escaping back to Vegas. Being desperate, she went straight back to the photo company to ask for her job back…but they never liked her on account of her cynicism (they all drink The Secret on a regular basis, and if you’re not with ’em, you’re a second-class citizen). At first they told her they weren’t hiring….a lie, since they have super-high turnover due to the shittiness of working conditions. Finally they got desperate enough to hire her back, but hid her away over at this drag show in one of the dumpy old hotels, where she was languishing until I plucked her out and whisked her away to Fremont Street for a night of fun!

Our first stop was the Heart Attack Grill — after my spaghetti and ice cream pigouts of the week before, and prior to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I was working on a short piece for Las Vegas City Life (one of our local alt-weeklies) on my adventures in gluttony. Since I failed at the spaghetti challenge, I hoped to redeem myself at the Heart Attack Grill by polishing off one of their Quadruple Bypass Burgers — 2 pounds of beef smothered in Velveeta, onions and bacon, on a lard-toasted bun, accompanied by lard-bathed French fries and a 2,000-calorie Butterfat milkshake with vanilla vodka in it. YUM!

Bunny is always watching her figure, so she just had a shake while I went balls-out. I was REALLY hungry that day, having eaten nothing and done all those Footmode shoots, so I thought I stood a good chance. I should have listened to the bartender, Mike, who warned me that these burgers are like the Hydra of Greek mythology — take a bite, and it just gets bigger. And it was true! After only about 1/3 to 1/2 the burger, I was stuffed. Maybe if I hadn’t guzzled 2000 calories’ worth of butterfat & booze while waiting for my food, I would have made more of a dent in it…but as it happened, I was sadly vanquished again 🙁 And I didn’t even have bacon on it! (Bacon and most porkly products weird me out, so I asked them to hold the bacon.) I am pleased to report, however, that the burger itself tasted excellent! The fries were OK, but only if I held my breath while eating — otherwise the lardy smell was too much for my delicate stomach. But the shake was the BEST part — I will definitely be stopping in again for one of these!

After conceding defeat, Dr. Jon came over and made sure I was OK with a brief post-pigout checkup — which I passed with flying colors! I tried to stick around and have a drink at the bar, but I started to feel pretty sick from all the meat and lard (I generally eat a fairly meat-free, low-fat diet) and figured I’d better walk it off. So Bunny and I went for a stroll down Fremont Street, heading over to check out the new Plaza Hotel, which was just renovated/remodeled and has generated a lot of buzz.

The old Plaza was one of my fave downtown hangouts because of its state of genteel, smoke-drenched decay…and its proximity to the downtown Vegas Greyhound Bus depot, which is right next door and makes for a GREAT influx of crackheads and weirdos. They used to have this amazingly crappy little lounge off the main casino where this crazy stoned Eskimo named Dusty Barron used to play guitar/sing/ramble on incoherently…but alas, due to the new renovations, Dusty and the lounge are gone with the wind. Boo! Apparently, the owners of the Plaza were able to score a bunch of swanky new furnishings for cheap from the unfinished ruins of the half-built-but-never-opened Fontainebleau, so the new Plaza looks (and smells) amazing. You’d never know it was the same joint! Aside from the furnishings, there’s also a new cupcake place, a swanky new salon where the stylists wear lingerie, and a lounge/miniature golf course run by Anthony Cools called The Swingers’ Club (that’s me by the 18th hole, a/k/a the Haunted Hole… hahaha. Plenty o’cobwebs in my hole, too).

They are also FINALLY re-opening the fabulous steakhouse that used to sit up under that glass dome on the second floor, looking down at the circus of the Fremont Street Experience. Now THAT was a swanky place to eat! It was one of those old-school Vegas steakhouses with caricatures of local celebrities on the walls and a grand piano in the lounge, but it was at the Plaza so it was cheap and unassuming. They closed it down a few years ago to put in a pretentious tapas place, but it didn’t do well because its suburbanite following were too big of pussies to venture downtown (this was the pre-gentrification period, before the hipster zealots at Zappos.com bought up everything).

Aaaaaanyhoo, in keeping with the “let’s spruce up downtown” spirit, the Plaza re-branded the steakhouse Oscar’s, after Oscar Goodman, our lovable gin-blossomed ex-mobster ex-mayor (his wife is now mayor, so he’s more like the Mayor’s Consort these days…although word is that he’s getting his own “People’s Court”-type show, to be filmed in the theater at the Hilton!). Apparently, Oscar’s is going to be one of those old-school swanky Vegas steakhouses, and what’s more they are going to hire a bunch of “broads” to work as sort of atmosphere models — i.e. sit at the bar and impart Vegas lore and tourism info to interested diners. Sounds like the PERFECT job for Wonderhussy, eh?! Alas, their job fair was between 9-11am the next morning, and I was too hung over to get over there in time 🙁

Anyway, Bunny and I sneaked into Oscar’s and had a look around before it officially opened…and I can report with assurance that THIS PLACE WILL BE AWESOME! Anyone want to go to dinner??? 😀  Then a security guard kicked us out, so we meandered back down Fremont Street to this piano bar called “Don’t Tell Mama,” a place I have long avoided because it just looks like one of those lame-ass places where yuppies and homos get drunk and sing Billy Joel songs. After going in for a bit, and sipping on ginger ale (Bunny doesn’t drink, and my stomach was still wrestling with 2 pounds of beef-n-lard), I can say that my prejudicial assessment was correct. No, THANKS! Although I do have to give mad props to one of the bartenders, an unassuming-looking tomboy type who has an amazing voice and belted out a bunch of really challenging songs while I was there. Go, tomboy bartender!

After that, I bid Bunny adieu and went home for my usual nightly ritual of crying, drinking wine and eating magic cookies. But before I left, Bunny asked how the Mullet McWartface show was going. You may recall that the headliner in the showroom where I work recently changed from Captain Fantastic to this washed-up, raspy-voiced ex-coxswain with a spiky blonde mullet and an army of slavering cougar devotees — and you may remember as well that times have been reeeeeeally tough, photo-sales-wise. But all Bunny wanted to know was if I had a way to pass along a message to Mullet McWartface, who is well known to be a model railroad enthusiast! You see, Bunny’s hobby is wandering around the hinterlands photographing train tracks in the mist, and she wanted to see about maybe selling some of her prints to Mullet. I had to regretfully inform her that alas, I have no contact with Mullet himself…although I had been carrying on a sort of low-key flirtation with his bass player, unbeknownst to me. I would see him every night in the employee dining room, and I knew he had something to do with the show, but I assumed he was a roadie or stagehand or something, since he was eating slop in the EDR with all the other peons. Then I went in to watch the show on the last night of Mullet’s engagement, just to see what all the cougars were so fired up about, and I saw that he was actually the bass player. Either way, I had no way to pass along Bunny’s message…and now Mullet and his entourage are gone, not to return for their next engagement until March 2012.

Sooooo, after my big night out with Bunny, I wrote this scintillating article about my food adventures, and then it was time to pack up for the trip home to California for Thanksgiving. I always go home for the holidays — it seems suuuper-depressing to stay in Vegas at that time of year, although I have heard from friends that it’s actually awesome (in particular, the youth hostel downtown has a potluck dinner with all the backpacking Euro kids, and that sounds INCREDIBLE!). This year was somewhat inconvenient for me, however, since as mentioned my house was listed on the MLS the day before the holiday, so all day Wednesday and even on Thanksgiving itself I was deluged with phone calls. But whatever! I still had a good time with my nutty family.

A word about my family: they are not as transparent as I am, and don’t like having their photos posted online. So I have no pics to share — just like the time I went to that Wiccan jamboree at the Sekhmet Temple, you’ll have to use your imagination! Anyhoo, we’re pretty close-knit and for the holidays we all meet up at my mom’s house in San Jose, CA (not really her house; she’s been renting forever and plans to try and buy a house up farther north, in real hippie-dippy NorCal country, soon). Everyone was there: my oldest sis and her Israeli hubby (with whom I camped at Burning Man), my little sis (a recent college grad with a psychology degree, living at home while working as a office temp), and my bro (a recent engineering grad who just got his first “real” job as a programmer at some company in Sacramento) and his girlfriend (a student at “casually-pepper-spraying-cop-land a/k/a UC Davis). We spent all weekend eating, boozing, smoking and drumming — gooooooood times 🙂

One day we all got dressed and took a drive up north a ways to the little town where my mom and dad grew up and met, and where my dad lived most of his life before ending it all in a fit of depression earlier this year by stepping in front of an Amtrak train on Tax Day. We had heard of a little memorial someone had erected in his memory near the train tracks, so we went down to check it out and pay our respects…all while making many tasteless gallows-humor jokes about trains, which passed by at intervals. Weird, but fun! I forgot to stop in and have a shot of Rumpleminze at the local bar, as was my dad’s tradition in life (he usually had a beer and a shot of Rumpleminze…but on the day he killed himself, he had FIVE shots)…but from now on, I vow that whenever I’m in the town of Martinez, CA, I will have a shot of Rumpleminze in his honor! As Dog is my witness!!!

But now the holiday is over and everyone had to go back to the real world…which for me means facing down a week of unmitigated hell. I have no fewer than 8 different Realtors bringing prospective buyers over tomorrow, and in between all that I still have to pack up more stuff, lift weights and look for a new place to live. NOT very much fun, I’m afraid. Better put on my Big Girl panties, like they say…

I’ll leave you with some photos from my shoot with Cam Attree earlier this month — the one where I froze my ASS off running around the desert in inclement weather. They came out awesome, despite my mental and physical misery throughout the entire shoot, and he even wrote a blog about it:

http://www.nudephotographer.com.au/2011/11/23/

vegas-part-2-wonder-hussy-the-lake-beds/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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