The plastic container sat atop the mini-fridge when we checked into the room. No one else noticed it right away. But, I did. Maybe I was secretly looking for it.
Under my breath I muttered, “Uh oh.” and gave a sly smile as I looked it over.
“Oh, yeah!” I heard Seanbaby say from over my shoulder as he dropped his backpack on the floor. Without turning to him, I knew were both glancing at the same thing.
    The hypodermic needle disposal container.
“There it is.” I said. To which he replied, “That shit is going to be tasty.”
    Everyone continued unpacking and admiring the room. None of us stopped to ponder: what kind of hotel has a needle disposal container just sitting out in each room? It didn’t really matter. We didn’t come to Vegas to sit in an expensive hotel room anyway.

    So, after entire day of screwing around in the hot Las Vegas sun one of us decided it’s time to ’take the party up a notch.’ I’m not even sure who said it, but I distinctly remember Hasser answering it with a guttural, “Whoa yeah.”
We stopped at a place we affectionately refer to as “Liquor Moccasins” because two story reader board outside didn’t bother with any sort of punctuation when advertising their two best-selling products: hard liquor, and leather moccasins (seems like a natural fit, doesn’t it?). While there we loaded up in several bottles of booze, argued about the mixers, but stayed away from making any hasty shoe purchases.
    Minutes later, a few of us arrived in the hotel room hot, thirsty, and ready for some action. Hasser promptly stripped down to shorts and a wife-beater. Xjan and Angelo both plopped down on the couches.  Seanbaby and Joyce were still on their way back from the casino bar, sure to be bringing lots of booze with them. I ran down the hallway and crammed as much ice as I could into several plastic bags, and then ran back.
    Sean and Joyce had just arrived with cocktails, and about eight cheap beers.
“Wow, you guys got a lot of beers.“ I said, exasperated.
Joyce responded with a high pitch, “Fuck yeah.”
“I’m probably going to drink about six of these.” said Seanbaby. And he did.
    The party had officially started.
    Beer caps started dropping onto the floor, muted by the dirty carpet. I grabbed my laptop, placed it on top of the television, and started playing all the disturbing gangster rap MP3’s I could find on my hard drive.
“We are going to get so shitty!” Angelo exclaimed.
We pounded beers and poured all kinds of heavy drinks. I made a complete mess of everything when my ice-filled bags started to melt on the table. Before I knew it, everyone was getting a nice buzz and starting to get a little out-of-control. So, when Joyce and I started to take swigs from the Bacardi bottle it just opened to door for what was soon-to-be the crowning moment of mayhem. Seanbaby got up from the sofa, went into the other room, and came back with a new container to drink from.


    
    That’s right.
    The hypodermic needle disposal container.
     Seanbaby performed this feat for the first time a year before, but at the time were drunk, half-naked, and had just finished covering our entire room in pornography. Our level of hijinks was pretty much off-the-chart at that point, so when he drank from the needle bucket it seemed pretty commonplace.
    Not this time.
    We had a whole new crew with us, and more importantly - we were still mostly sober. So when he took the container off the fridge, there was a moment when everyone sort of thought, “Well, he’s not going to do it.”
Well, he did. He dumped in the rest of his pina colada and a ton of rum. The extra rum was already pretty hardcore, since Sean and Joyce both bought the two-dollar pina coladas, but had the bartender dump at least three more dollars worth of booze in it.
“That is so wrong.” said Xjan.
“Oh, man.” replied Angelo as he busted out his disposable camera.


    
More stuff was said, but it was all incoherent chatter as we all talked over one another. Clearly though, we could all tell Joyce didn’t think it was such a great idea. Although, I don’t think any of us thought it was a great idea, even Seanbaby.
But, he stuck his straw in the container and gave it a nice stir anyway. Anticipation began to materialize as we all gathered around him on the couch.

He took a small pause, then quickly hunched over and took a big-ass swig from the needle bucket. We all cheered, with the exception of Joyce who winced and made a retching sound. With a crackly voice that quieted us all, Seanbaby yelled, “This drink tastes like AIDS!”


 
That’s right.
    His drink tasted like AIDS.
    In the back of my mind I remember thinking, “I can’t imagine what that really tastes like.” Which is preposterous. I’m sure it just tasted like a pina colada, but for some reason we all winced like he was slurping from a mason jar filled with herpes-positive urine.
    “Oh man.” said Angelo a few more times while Xjan and Hasser both shook their heads in half-amusement, half-disgust. Of course, Seanbaby finished his drink as we all started into the ramifications.
“I wonder if they wash those out.”
“I hope you don’t get herpes.”
“I won’t.”
“You could, you know.”
“That has to be a new container. They cant just wash them out. Can they?”
“No.”
“What if all they did was just wash it out and then put it back? This is the Ho.”
“They don’t.”
“Yeah, they don’t wash them out before putting them back.”
    We went on like that for about five or six more minutes before Seanbaby finished the discussion with his candid assessment, “I don’t know what they do. All I know is one thing. And that is…this mother fuckin’ drink tastes like AIDS!”
    We all agreed to take his word for it, and soon the container was back up on the refrigerator - where it clearly belongs. Hasser got clothes on. I loaded up a soda bottle with the most gut wrenching zombie piss anyone has ever been unlucky enough to drink, and we set off down the strip, looking for adventure. 
    But that, is a story for another time.

If there is any moral to this story, it would probably be: “Don’t drink from a questionable disposable needle container because it’s gross and probably somewhat unhealthy.”
    Sure, that would be the easy way to look at it.
    But, I like to think that it’s something like: “Sometimes life gives you a straw for a reason and you gotta stick that straw in a drink, any drink, and suck hard. Enjoy life to its fullest - at least for the six weeks until the lab results come back.

         /robot