How Does It Feel
The time I accidentally partied with Orgy, Disturbed, Crazy Town and some strippers in Las Vegas.
This story sounds fake. It isn’t. It’s 100% true. I originally published this on an old blog years ago. Buckle up and let’s go to an after party, kids. - TS 5/5/2026
What I am about to confess now will probably blow a lot of my friends’ minds: I once attended an Orgy, Disturbed and Crazy Town show at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. Now, let me explain. It was December 2000, I had become Internet friends with a young photographer named Mia who was obsessed with the band Orgy. She asked if I would meet her at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas and see them play with her. Being a good friend, I said OK. I knew the show wouldn’t be my bag, but I considered it a anthropological experiment. (I often went on weird adventures like this when I was a young musician and lacked stable employment.)
Being lo-budg rock ’n’ rollers, we both took a Greyhound bus to Vegas — separately, from our respective cities. That’s right, classy. This seemed a convenient (and cost effective) choice… until Mia’s bus never showed up. I would later find out she also had no cell phone. Again, this was 2000 and cell phones weren’t yet ubiquitous. At the time, all I knew was my little Internet friend Mia was living up to her name. So now I was stuck alone in Vegas with tickets to a show I didn’t want to see in the first place.
Seeing as how I was completely screwed, I decided to turn this debacle into a story. I took a cab to the Hard Rock Hotel and figured I would just play slots and enjoy free booze… for hours. Did I mention we had no hotel room booked as we were supposed to stay with her aunt and I only had $120 in the bank? That’ll come in handy later.
As I meandered the Hard Rock casino, I ran into some old roadie guys wearing all access laminates and struck up a conversation. I decided for the purpose of my adventure (and to avoid looking like I was willingly attending tonight’s show) that I would lie and say I wrote for Rolling Stone.* At the time, I was actually working for a local music magazine in Whittier, California called Mean Street. My primary duties consisted of putting address labels on magazines, dropping them off at the post office and once-in-a-while getting to actually interview a band. But I figured no one would delve.
I forget the main roadie’s name but it was like “Wolf,” “Mad Dog” or something else that implied he enjoyed hauling Marshall amps and not showering. He told me he worked for Disturbed and that Jenna Jameson had been on the bus with them all day. He asked if I was going to the after party in Orgy’s suite. I replied, “Sure.” He instructed me to give him my cell number, promised to find me after the show and escort me up there. I figured as long as I could find somewhere to stay up late and party I wouldn’t have to sleep in a slot machine chair (which was my actual plan).
When the show started, I found myself in the front row. I still have no idea why. A tall, lanky dude (6’4”) stood in front of me (5’0”) and the front stage. After promising he and his three friends that I would buy them a drink (they were underage), they willingly gave up their front row spot to me. For the record, I bought one drink for all four of them. I might be the most ineffective corruptor of youth in the history of time.
Then, the show began. Disturbed and Crazy Town lived up to their names. I was in awe that this was what the kids were into. I felt old and I hadn’t even cracked my mid-twenties. Little did I know that the music industry was gearing up for a solid decade of rap rock and cheesy stage shows.
When Orgy began playing, the crowd went frenetic. I remember peering out into a sea of girls sing-screaming “HOW DOES IT FEEEEEEL?!” and wondering how many of them actually knew that “Blue Monday” was a cover. I also wondered why the two girls to my right began flashing their breasts to Jay Gordon when he wasn’t looking in our direction. I found him to be quite a good frontman and was easily amused by guitarist Ryan Shuck’s custom Ibanez that had blue LED inlays.
After the show, I walked up to the merch table where Mad Dog Wolf was idling. One of the guys from Disturbed was with him. I heard the fellow say, “Invite her to the party” and suddenly I didn’t want to go. However, my desire to mooch free food and crash out on someone’s floor was stronger than my desire to play craps by myself, so I followed Mad Dog Wolf up to the festivities.
Once inside the party, I encountered a barrage of strippers, rockers and more conveniently for me, pizza! I happily helped myself to a few slices while trying to find someone interesting to talk to. As I neared the balcony, a blonde girl in a plain white tank top and jeans started chatting me up. She said she was also from Los Angeles and was so happy to be in a city where you could smoke inside. I concurred. (Ed.note — I have since quit smoking.) I introduced myself and she replied, “Hi, I’m Jenna.” I then experienced a mental flash similar to seeing your life quickly pass before your eyes except with naked people. Jenna. Jameson. My first concrete thought was, “Oh my God, I have seen… oh…” followed by, “My brother is going to be so jealous.” Truth be told, I found her to be pretty low key, polite and ironically demure compared to the rest of the ladies in attendance.
And what ladies... wow. I remember a statuesque, buxom blonde with braces drunkenly telling me how she told her friend, a pageant contestant, that she needed to sleep with Donald Trump in order to win said pageant. Miss Drunky would later get so plastered that she tired to pole dance with the balcony railing and had to be pulled off because the guys were afraid she was about to plunge 10 stories. That would have been a tragic, although fascinating way to go.
For some reason, I had an unusual sense of bravado that night. When the lead singer of Disturbed attempted to hit on me by sliding his hand behind my neck and whispering something in my ear in a foreign tongue, I rolled my eyes and muttered, “Cool. You speak Hebrew.” He immediately stood back and said, “How did you know?!” To which I replied, “I studied it in college.” Which was true, although I had actually failed that course so I had no clue exactly what he was saying but I did know it was in Hebrew. He tried to save face by saying something suggestive in English but I just looked up and said, “Look, let me bust your balls and let you in on a secret: I will be the only girl here not making out with you tonight.” Man, if only I was always so snatchy. (My one competing memory for such snatchiness was when I asked Nick from B.R.M.C. for a cigarette and he replied that he had one between his legs to which I quipped, “Well, if it’s that small then you shouldn’t brag about it.”)
I forget what followed exactly (mostly because I was getting bored), I do know that when Mr. Disturbed and I sat down I could tell something was wrong with him. It was very much that, “I’m in a band and strippers are all over me but actually, I’m really depressed” sort of rock ’n’ roll fare. I ate more pizza and wandered over to talk to Ryan from Orgy because I really wanted to compliment him on his guitar. It was the highlight of my night.
I asked him what he would do if the Orgy thing ever stopped working out and he said, “Oh, I’ll just go back to being a hair dresser.” I was floored and Ryan was now my official favorite person of the evening. We chatted two more seconds and then he left.
Following this, things started to get hairy at the party. I wound up sitting on a bed with two tall Asian girls, one was rather touchy feely (and in buttless chaps) and another was quite coked out and complaining about “that asshole Glenn” who dumped her. Glenn really isn’t a very rock ’n’ roll name so I completely missed the fact she was talking about Danzig. The one in the buttless chaps turned and asked me if I was into threesomes and I replied, “Um, I think I need more pizza.”
As the men in the room starting getting more debauched and people began to feel the need to grab me and ask if I was staying over, I started realizing staying over was not an option. I decided I would suck it up, go down to the front desk and see if I could get a room with the rest of the money on my debit card. As I approached the front desk, buttless chaps girl was there so I hid behind one of the slot machines until after she had gone. I’m still not sure why I did that. I mean, what was she going to do? Kidnap me and force me to make out with her stripper friends?
Anyhow, approaching the front desk, I smiled, placed my debit card down and waited for it to get denied. The clerk smiled, ran my card and then handed me my room key. Holy shit. This was the first time in my life I had my own hotel room. I was so excited. I told myself I was so very cosmopolitan to have my own hotel room…with guitars printed on the curtains…in Vegas. Bless, I was naively gauche. I started jumping on my bed and then fell asleep. It was 4 a.m.
At approximately 7 a.m., I woke up to the most horrendous jackhammering construction sound next door to my room. My first bourgeois hotel-renting experience was becoming a total bust! There is nothing worse than being woken up at some ungodly hour after going to bed drunk at some other ungodly hour. In my stupor, something in my subconscious (definitely not God) said, “Remember the construction.” I didn’t get why, but I remember feeling that bizarre, intuitive nudge.
At 10 a.m., I woke up feeling better and looked over to my phone to see the red blinking light signaling I had a message. At first I thought, “Hmm, did Mad Dog Wolf know I had a room?” and then I registered the more accurate thought of, “Ooh girl, your card got denied.” I was up shit creek and out in the ocean. Not only, did I have no money in my bank account but I also had no credit cards and no friends readily available to dispense money. My only option would have been to call my parents (who had no idea I was in Vegas) and ask them to wire money. And I was fairly certain that ringing up my fundamentalist Christian parents with “Hey mom, I went to Vegas for an Orgy show and couldn’t afford my hotel room” would not have gone over very well. It was at this point my survival instincts kicked in.
Calmly, I picked up the phone and rang the front desk. The clerk in her ever-so-pleasant public relations voice informed me that my card had been denied and asked if I had another method of payment. What happened next was a rapid-fire blur. As I opened my mouth I said, “Yeah, you know what, I’ll give you my other card in a second. But first of all, let’s talk about that construction next door to my room at 7 a.m. What the hell was that? I work for Rolling Stone. I was here last night reviewing a show, got to bed at 3 a.m., only to be awakened by jarring construction that gave me a massive headache. As someone who frequents this hotel quite often I am disgusted by this service! If this is how you treat your guests I am never coming back here again!”
Pause.
“Hold on one second, Ms. Simonian.”
Pause.
“We can comp your next night if you’d like.”
“Fuck that. I have a flight to catch today.”
Pause.
“Ok, we can comp your room. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
And then the angels broke forth in song. Yes, my friends, I had just managed to get a free hotel room on a denied credit card. I began jumping up and down on my bed and screaming, “I’m a Jedi!” Dorky, but true.
I quickly gathered my things lest they changed their mind and scampered down to the casino floor where I ran into all the guys from Disturbed and Orgy. One of the guys from Disturbed asked me about my music and said he was going to call me to sing vocals on a track. Heard that before. Their lead singer/Hebrew enthusiast Dave, clad in sunglasses, looked my way but didn’t mutter more than a terse, “Hi.” Whatever dude, I just got a free hotel room.
When I finally got back home, Mia informed me in hysterics that her bus had broken down and she had been stranded in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. I felt like the worst friend ever having to admit to her that not only had I gone to the show… but that I actually wound up hanging out with her favorite band in their hotel room. However, the very next year Mia would get to hang out with my lord and savior David Bowie, so all was rectified by the universe.
*Years later, I became a music journalist who wrote for LA Weekly, LA Times. and yes, a brief stint at Rolling Stone.
