Fuckless in Las Vegas
Three-way shrimping arguments and two-dollar beers at the National Abstinence Clearinghouse convention
By Dave Shulman
First published in L.A. Weekly, July 11, 2003.
BEFORE THE SUN ROSE on the morning of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse’s convention in Las Vegas last week, Jesus sat three booths before me at the Victorville McDonald’s (Roy Rogers Drive at La Paz), drinking coffee, reading His Bible, lips moving. White skin, check; thick silver beard, check; black baseball cap with large silver letters across the front: J-E-S-U-S, check. Yep — that’s Him, all right. Maybe I should get in good — offer Him a refill or an Egg McMuffin?
But I was running late, and, anyway, there’d be plenty of Jesus time in the car. Whenever you hit open desert roads pointed at the Heartland — especially at dawn — bad ClearChannel music disappears as all channels, clear and otherwise, turn to nationalistic discussions of Jesus and Danny Bonaduce.
When I got to my room on the ninth floor of the Gold Coast Hotel on Flamingo Road (“The Place Las Vegans Call Home”), I found I had a pristine view to the west of the criminally coherent blandness that is residential Las Vegas. Downstairs, the casino smelled just like the bowling alley on the other side of the building: a potent, concentrated mix of our own Mar Vista Bowl, Urbana’s Thunderbird Lanes and unbathed English Leather. It was a scent evolved from not less than 600 million cigarettes, 40 million shrimp cocktails, 60,000 puddles of vomit, hundreds of unreported rapes and a handful of murders. Infections and maladies of the lowest order hovered just below eye level, no matter where one placed one’s eyes.
Ten miles northwest of here, at the J.W. Marriott Resort Spa & Golf, “Abstinence Goes to Vegas” was in full swing, with its conventioneers singing the National Anthem at the Viva Las Vegas luncheon, its postluncheon Elvis-related entertainment and something called “breakout sessions” — some kind of a convention term, isn’t it? But here at the Gold Coast, somewhere between the elevator and the casino floor, an inebriated, three-way shrimping argument was underway. The gist of it was that the young woman didn’t drive all the way out here to suck on the two men’s toes, and that they were to drive her back to Apple Valley at once. One man walked off in embarrassment, the other remained. The woman called this man a piece of shit, then she, too, walked off. The remaining man bore the look and scent of every rural roadside mechanic who’s ever knifed a senior citizen’s hose to sell a radiator. Shrugged at me with one of those “Women — can’t live with ’em, can’t pay ’em to suck toes” looks in his eyes, even with the mirrored glasses.
I don’t drink much. Doesn’t mix well with some of the other drugs. Certainly not in the morning. But that wasn’t important anymore: I needed a two-dollar beer.
***
“Abstinence Clearinghouse is a non–faith–based organization,” said Kristin Scuderi, the National Abstinence Clearinghouse Media Director, who was More Than Happy to answer my questions about religion and masturbation. “However, most of our members do have faith.” “Any particular kind of faith?”
“No. It doesn’t matter if you’re . . . [reading my name tag] . . . Jewish, or Christian, or Muslim, or whatever — anything at all. Our mission is to promote the practice of sexual abstinence until marriage.”
“So this is specifically about intercourse? Do you take issue with other forms of sex? Masturbation?”
“We basically don’t talk about masturbation. We don’t say anything against it, or for it. We just don’t talk about it.”
I’d rehearsed a handful of tasteful queries into anal sex, toys, pornography, gaiety, trisexuality and the like, but I sensed that these, too, were things that Scuderi didn’t talk about. She was kind and polite, personable, perhaps even reasonable. Who was I to make trouble?
So instead I sat quietly at the media-relations table in the media-relations room, drinking fine coffee as Scuderi ran down the score. I’d missed a panel discussion called Faces of Abstinence, which is a terrible name for a panel discussion, regardless of its degree of precision. One of the featured Faces of Abstinence speakers, Scuderi explained, was one Jackie Brewton, an accomplished 42-year-old virgin. “Forty-two,” Scuderi repeated, pointing out Brewton’s photograph and bio on page 12 of the conference guidebook. “I just think that’s so commendable.”
Members also included people Scuderi called “secondary virgins” — postadolescents, I gathered, former fuckers who’d experienced a kind of spiritual . . . something, and were now virgins again. But the Clearinghouse’s focus was clearly on devising ways — by whatever means necessary — to prevent teenagers from fucking until after a ritual in which rings of precious metal have been harpooned by their fingers, where God can see. “We have studies that prove that in parts of the country with monitored rates of teen abstinence, there are much lower incidences of STDs and teen pregnancy.”
“Monitored?”
I thanked Scuderi and hit the Exhibitor Showcase in the adjacent Marquis Ballroom, where, by my estimation, women outnumbered men by at least 3 to 1, though this does not take into account the likelihood of a well-funded cross-dressing coalition.
Even my previous assignment — last weekend’s odyssey at the Erotica L.A. Convention — couldn’t adequately prepare me for this: hundreds of low-key, fully clothed citizens of classic Midwestern proportions, standing, sitting, strolling and chatting unremarkably. An indoor church picnic of Polite Americans bettering the world with selfless Goodness and sloganed mugs, T-shirts, posters, buttons, petitions, pens and stickers: Save It For Later; Not Givin’ In; I’m Worth Waiting For; Virginity Rules; Everybody’s NOT Doing It!; Marry Me First; God, Mom & Me Tea; Control Your Stuff! Table after table, neat and clean, laden with wholesome subversions and gospels.
I found at Booth 412 a friendly, rotund, freckly father of two, with a table full of near-life-size photographs of the front of his head. Above the head, in 48-point, nicely kerned type, were the words “I didn’t want to be this way.” Beside the head, a poem: “These feelings were something I didn’t ask for/And didn’t want/I came to feel hopeless in my personal struggle/With homosexuality and sexual addiction . . .”
And below the head, a big black cross and the words, “Metanoia Ministries: Redeeming pasts and changing futures through Christ.”
“Will you be coming with us to pass out Good Girl Cards?” Deanna Grimm, an Abstinence Clearinghouse official is, like all the Abstinence Clearinghouse officials, what’s known in certain circles as a Total Knockout Babe, dressed, incidentally (or perhaps not), in a tight black dress. And she smelled really good, too. It was having an effect.
“To pass out . . . ?”
“Good Girl Cards. At 8 o’clock, everyone’s taking shuttles to the Strip to pass out Good Girl Cards. You’re more than welcome to join us.”
Grimm summoned Scuderi, who provided me with an actual card. On the front: six extremely blurry virgins and Ellsworth Kelly reproductions on a gray background; between pictures, the words Good Girl in gentle, 18-point italics, followed by the word Cards in thick, black, otherworldly bold. On the back: “Why choose abstinence?”
“May I keep this?”
“Of course.”
“Eight o’clock on the Strip?”
“The shuttles leave at 8. We’ll be there at 8:30.”
“Where on the Strip?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“I’ll be there.” Seven hundred forty–plus clean, decent citizens passing out blurry virgin cards. The Strip’s only a mile or two long; shouldn’t be hard to spot.
***
I returned to my hotel room to get a bit more food, beer, marijuana and sleep before the big pass-out.
By 8 p.m. it had cooled down to 103 as I headed east on foot up Flamingo Road, over the freeway and into Stripland. Friday night traffic jam. Flashbacks to childhood fevers. Taxis covered in ads. Hummer limousines decked out in Christmas lights and white-boy hip-hop. But where were the 740-plus abstinents? You’d think there’d be commotion, hooker protests, tear gas, something . . .
Nothing. No one. Nowhere.
What a tease.
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