Grievous Skankage

"Matt Damon should have never married that waitress. It just gave people hope," says The Suz.

This is Saturday night in the heart of The Strip in Las Vegas, wandering between Planet Hollywood and The Cosmopolitan. A lot of the casinos here have themes, e.g. New York, New York, The Venetian, Treasure Island. The best The Suz can come up with for The Cosmopolitan tonight is, "I wear very little clothing and and professionally attempt to starfuck."

I like her turn of phrase, but borrow a better one from Christopher Moore: "Grievous skankage."

There's an abundance of tube dresses and hot pants and halter tops. This is clothing that requires waxing of pretty much everything.

But at least skankage is democratic. There do not appear to be any sort of age or weight restrictions on wearing this stuff.

"Manda, it's 2:00 a.m. on Sunday. These are people trying to salvage the weekend," Suz tells me.

Salvage the weekend? All I had to do was put on a tank top in a futile effort to beat the desert heat, stand outside the poker area at Planet Hollywood to watch highlights of the Giants game.

I'm engaged in sending The Kiwi a message about the game on facebook.

"You're texting about me, aren't you?"

I didn't even see him until he was really too close to my personal space. He's tall, reasonably good-looking, and younger than anyone trying to chat me up should be. But he's got one of those weird piercings in his face.

"Nope, not texting about you."

"Yes, you are. You're texting about me."

"Actually, I'm texting about Cody Ross, but thanks for your interest," I say in my very best I'm-bored-with-you-now voice.

You can get the same results by having boobs and walking up to a craps table in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. Of course, in either case you're also likely to pick up something that will require broad-spectrum antibiotics, but if all you want is to hook up with some dude, it's clearly not that difficult.

So with the abundance of desperate tube dresses out there on any given night, I'm beginning to wonder how the pros stay in business. My suspicions were confirmed by two guys I overheard on the sidewalk: "All you have to do is go to a club, hang out until about 2:00 a.m. and wait for the runoff."

So this is where the home delivery option clearly provides a competitive edge.

It also eliminates any possible need your average fan of The Hangover might have for using charm or wit to seduce "the runoff," so I'm guessing these jobs are reasonably secure.