LAS VEGAS DIARIES
An excerpt from a chapter entitled ‘One or two naughty bits’ – about Mullan’s experiences in Sin City
I AM, incidentally, probably one of the only journalists in history who came out of a brothel with more money than he had on entering it. Like so many vastly improbable tales, it is absolutely true, and entirely innocent. It happened in 1981, when my old school friend Frank Fee and I were in town for the Ray Leonard v Thomas Hearns welterweight classic.
The all-pervasive glitter and jangle of Las Vegas palls very rapidly, so after two or three days there the non-gamblers, like us, try to get out of town as far as possible. Frank and I hired a car, and went driving in the desert. Four hours down the road, with our throats as parched and arid as our surroundings, we spotted a hand-painted sign directing us off the highway to ‘Belle’s Roadhouse’, which in our Irish innocence we assumed was a pub.
Our suspicions should have been aroused by the fact that we had to approach the building through a long corridor of barbed wire, with guard dogs roaming loose on either side of the enclosure.
We were admitted by a somewhat overblown lady, who led us into a long, low, poorly lit reception room and sat us on a settee against the wall. By now, the reality was beginning to dawn on us – complicated by the fact that neither of us had either the inclination or the cash to enjoy the situation, nor had we the slightest idea how to extricate ourselves gracefully from it.
The madame clapped her hands, and from half a dozen doors leading off the room there appeared girls in varying stages of undress, who ranged themselves in front of us, at eye to crotch level, like an honour guard ready for inspection. We both squirmed with embarrassment as the ladies introduced themselves solemnly: “Hi, I’m Cindy Lou from Alabama.” “Hi, I’m Cindy from Kansas City”, and so on. In desperation, we said that we hadn’t made our minds up yet, and could we maybe have a drink while we thought about it?
Happily, the girls were intrigued by our accents and were content to sit and share a beer. After the fourth or fifth, it became clear that we were not intending any serious business but were, as the TV commercial used to put it, only here for the beer. One of the girls was an avid boxing fan, so much so that she paid me in cash for a six month subscription to Boxing News which has been renewed regularly ever since. (She had, in fact, been at school with Floyd Mayweather, who once fought Sugar Ray Leonard and whose brother Roger was a stylish holder of the WBA junior-lightweight title in 1983-’84). She also gave me her business card, which was tastefully emblazoned with the legend “Ellie May, The Best Little Lay On The Whole Highway”.
We spent the best part of three hours there, and in all that time not a solitary customer showed up. Finally, the madame lost patience and said “Look guys, if you ain’t buying the merchandise you’d better get out of the store”, and we took the hint.