“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”: Adventures of a Curious Character

“Fine,” he says. “But unfortunately, I have to go to San Francisco this weekend, so you just mail me the results, and if you lose your four hundred dollars, I’ll send you the money.

The first schemes were designed to make him money by honest arithmetic. Now, he’s going to be out of town. The only way he’s going to make money on this scheme is not to send it—to be a realcheat.

So I never accepted any of his offers. But it was very entertaining to see how he operated.

The other thing that was fun in Las Vegas was meeting show girls. I guess they were supposed to hang around the bar between shows to attract customers. I met several of them that way, and talked to them, and found them to be nice people. People who say, “Show girls, eh?” have already made up their mind what they are! But in any group, if you look at it, there’s all kinds of variety. For example, there was the daughter of a dean of an Eastern university. She had a talent for dancing and liked to dance; she had the summer off and dancing jobs were hard to find, so she worked as a chorus girl in Las Vegas. Most of the show girls were very nice, friendly people. They were all beautiful, and I just love beautiful girls. In fact, show girls were my real reason for liking Las Vegas so much.

At first I was a little bit afraid: the girls were so beautiful, they had such a reputation, and so forth. I would try to meet them, and I’d choke a little bit when I talked. It was difficult at first, but gradually it got easier, and finally I had enough confidence that I wasn’t afraid of anybody.

I had a way of having adventures which is hard to explain: it’s like fishing, where you put a line out and then you have to have patience. When I would tell someone about some of my adventures, they might say, “Oh, come on—let’s do that!” So we would go to a bar to see if something will happen, and they would lose patience after twenty minutes or so. You have to spend a couple of days before something happens, on average. I spent a lot of time talking to show girls. One would introduce me to another, and after a while, something interesting would often happen.

I remember one girl who liked to drink Gibsons. She danced at the Flamingo Hotel, and I got to know her rather well. When I’d come into town, I’d order a Gibson put at her table before she sat down, to announce my arrival.

One time I went over and sat next to her and she said, “I’m with a man tonight—a high-roller from Texas.” (I had already heard about this guy. Whenever he’d play at the craps table, everybody would gather around to see him gamble.) He came back to the table where we were sitting, and my show girl friend introduced me to him.

The first thing he said to me was, “You know somethin’? I lost sixty thousand dollars here last night.”

I knew what to do: I turned to him, completely unimpressed, and I said, “Is that supposed to be smart, or stupid?”

We were eating breakfast in the dining room. He said, “Here, let me sign your check. They don’t charge me for all these things because I gamble so much here.”

“I’ve got enough money that I don’t need to worry about who pays for my breakfast, thank you.” I kept putting him down each time he tried to impress me.

He tried everything: how rich he was, how much oil he had in Texas, and nothing worked, because I knew the formula!

We ended up having quite a bit of fun together.

One time when we were sitting at the bar he said to me, “You see those girls at the table over there? They’re whores from Los Angeles.”

They looked very nice; they had a certain amount of class.

He said, “Tell you what I’ll do: I’ll introduce them to you, and then I’ll pay for the one you want.”

I didn’t feel like meeting the girls, and I knew he was saying that to impress me, so I began to tell him no. But then I thought, “This is something! This guy is trying so hard to impress me, he’s willing to buy this for me. If I’m ever going to tell the story … So I said to him, “Well, OK, introduce me.”

We went over to their table and he introduced me to the girls and then went off for a moment. A waitress came around and asked us what we wanted to drink. I ordered some water, and the girl next to me said, “Is it all right if I have a champagne?”

“You can have whatever you want,” I replied, coolly, ‘cause you’re payin’ for it.”

“What’s the matter with you?” she said. “Cheapskate, or something?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re certainly not a gentleman!” she said indignantly.

“You figured me out immediately!” I replied. I had learned in New Mexico many years before not to be a gentleman.

Pretty soon they were offering to buy me drinks—the tables were turned completely! (By the way, the Texas oilman never came back.)

After a while, one of the girls said, “Let’s go over to the El Rancho. Maybe things are livelier over there.” We got in their car. It was a nice car, and they were nice people. On the way, they asked me my name.

“Dick Feynman.”

“Where are you from, Dick? What do you do?”

“I’m from Pasadena; I work at Caltech.”