Picture this: it's August 2, 1969, and you're drunk and sweating in the dry evening heat of Las Vegas. The foul-mouth hookers laugh at you as you stumble across the Strip. For some reason you want to see Buddy Hackett, because he's a nice guy and once gave you money for food. And you know Buddy is staying on the tenth floor of the Desert Inn.

So you get into the lobby of the Desert Inn, sneak past security to the elevator. You ride up and get a sudden shiver that you might have pressed the wrong floor but can't remember the right one. The elevator doors open and you know immediately that you've made a big goddam mistake. Everything is bathed in blue light and there's a real shiny floor and lots of chrome: it looks like a hospital. "Hey Buddy?" you say in a thin voice. "Buddy, where are you pal?" But it's very quiet.

You have a choice - you can leave or stay... Alright, I stayed because whatever might have happened to me at that moment would likely be better than the scum-sucking, bottom-feeding existence that I was leaving behind.

Next, from behind a closed door, I hear the sound of a radio or TV set. That, I figure, is where Buddy is staying. So I open the door very slowly and for a second truly believe somehow I did end up in a hospital.

There's a kind of white spotlight in the room. I see an old skinny guy propped up in a bed. On a cabinet beside his bed is a film projector - and the reel has ended and keeps flipping over. The old guy is awake and he's glaring at me.

"Where the hell you been!" he yells, kind of coughing. "You peckerhead! The second reel was over an hour ago!"

I feel like telling him to shut the hell up and just die like the stinking dog he is, but I decide to play it cool, this guy might be a mobster and it would take a snap of his sick, thin fingers to make me instant worm food.

"Yes sir," I say, and I walk over to the cabinet, stop the motor, and begin to thread he third reel. The old guy is squinting at me.

"Do you know Buddy Hackett?" I ask, pleasantly as possible. "I was looking for Buddy."

The old man just cranes his neck at me. "I can't hear you!" he shrieks. So I notice he's wearing hearing aides. We look at each other for a second, and then he asks, "You Mormon?"

"No," I say, "I'm Dusty."

He considers this for a moment, then says, "Are you a clean man?"

So now I'm thinking the guy is as gay as a clown. "Hey Daddy," I say, "I don't swing that way, if you know what I mean. Pour moi, it's always been the ring-a-ding-ding, the blonder the better."

Now he's really squinting at me and kind of pulls himself up in the bed. I notice his hair is long and greasy. "Who the hell are you!" he yells.

"Easy Pops," I say, "don't get your dandruff up. If you know the best things about popular music, then you know the name Dusty Carr, and that's me."

He starts to sway his head from side to side, like he's trying to remember something. "Didn't you do 'You Are My Angel'?"

"That's just one of my big hits," I reply. This guy is hipper than I thought.

Then he flops back onto his pillow and moans. "Shit! The longer you stay in this room," he says, "the greater the potential for contamination."

"Grandpa," I say, "I don't know what you're drinking, but I've been surviving on Thunderbird wine for two goddam miserable years, so if you wants to slide a cup my way, I won't refuse."

Then he starts just waving a hand at me. "You are wasting my time," he says, "begin the film."

So I turn on the projector. The movie is 'The Green Berets" with John Wayne. I hate Wayne and all he stands for, so I begin to sneak out of the room.

Just as I'm at the door, the old guy says, real calmly, "Son, you ever heard of neurosyphilis?"

"No," I reply, "is he Italian? He might be one of Sinatra's bodyguards."

The old guy smiles then starts to laugh. "Are you an honest man?" he asks.

"It depends on the situation," I reply. "Let me ask you a question. You take a six-pack up to the cashier. He gets the price wrong: instead of three bucks he charges you one. What do you do? Hey, I can see you're thinking about it, and that, my friend, is what I mean by honesty."

And this just starts the old guy laughing even more.

He finally stops, then says, "How would you like to work for me?"

"Like doing what?" I reply, "changing your bed pan?"

"Christ no, son," he says, "I want you to handle my messages, that's all."

"How much is the pay?" I ask.

"A thousand a week," he replies.

"I'm your man, gramps," I say.

"You know who I am?" he asks.

"Hopefully somebody with a few thousand dollars," I say. That starts him laughing even more.

"I'm Howard Hughes," he says. The name means something to me, but I can't finger it.

"Weren't you in Bobby Darin's band?" I ask.

"Who?" he asks.

"Darin," I say. "You know, 'Splish Splash', 'Mack the Knife'."

He starts squinting at me again. "Yeah, Bobby Darin. Sure, I love that little monkey," he says, "and I like you Dusty Carr. We're going to work out just fine!"

So the following Monday I show up for work at the Sands. I'm kind of hoping that nobody recognizes me, and if they do, I've concocted a bullshit story that Hughes is bankrolling my next album. Let's face it; the situation's a little embarrassing.

Some big, chunky, humourless Hughes aide meets me at the elevator, and we ride up together. I'm feeling that terrible anxiety you get when your body isn't sure whether you've been drinking too much or too little. So this aide keeps kind of peering at me, like I have lesions on my face. Then he says, "What's your angle with the old man?"

Already this guy is boring me. Besides, my left arm is beginning to tremble involuntarily. He looks like a pig with a marine haircut. "There are some people in this world," I say, "who really know how to party. And I don't mean just drinking and drugs. Any butthole can do that. I'm talking about the really scary shit, late at night, when you're alone, and all the ghosts of the men you've killed take you gently by the hand and dance you around the floor." He's bug-eyed and looks like he's going to puke. I stand real close to his face and say, "And that, toothpick, is why Howard Hughes likes me. Because… he… is… already… dead!"

The elevator doors open and I'm led over to a table of five guys all dressed in black suits. "You Dusty Carr?" someone asks.

"That's him," says somebody else. "I recognize him from the old Milton Berle show."

So they tell me my duties: every weekday morning I'm to take a package, personally given to me by Hughes, and deliver it to wherever he says. That's it. All expenses paid. One thousand smackers a week. It's a beautiful world again.

I don't know what to tell you about Howard Hughes. I mean, at first I thought he was okay; he just had some very weird beliefs. Typically, sick shit doesn't bother me, but Hughes would go on and on about germs or government conspiracies or why the size of a woman's breasts is incredibly important (which is true, but it makes for a limited conversation).

He would tell me about all the famous people he knew, most of whom were dead. And I would sit on a chair by his bed, wondering why a guy with all his bread didn't just live inside a constant, wild, depraved and dangerous party. It made no sense. Hughes told me that he had syphilis, that he'd got it in the 1930s from some Hollywood skag and that it was eating up his mind. You see, Hughes knew he was nuts, but he couldn't help himself because there were billions of microscopic worms tunnelling into his brain. Sure, I felt sorry for him, but I was only hanging in for the money.

I met a lot of people who were genuinely freaked out that I worked for Howard Hughes. Once, Hughes told me to go to the White House and "personally give" President Richard Nixon $200,000. In the Oval Office, when I dumped the cash into Nixon's lap, he almost yakked; he didn't even look at it, he just held me in this laser beam stare that was so intense I thought it was sucking out my sanity. Finally, he stood up, put the money on his desk, and said, "This isn't for me Dusty, you understand. I think of it as a big Louisville slugger that's going to bat 'em all in the nuts." And then he looked me over and said, "People criticize me for being too stiff and formal, but I tell you now - it's impossible to find a good leisure suit, don't you agree?"

Another time Hughes asked me what I'd do with a billion dollars. I told him that I'd start by getting an intimate threesome together - me, Raquel Welch and Brigitte Bardot. He said that that was a dangerous idea; that there'd be too much fluid exchanged. "So what?" I said. "No", he told me, "the germ count would be enormous." Poor Howard, all of those greenbacks and he was terrified of a few bugs.

About six months went by and, although I was making a lot of money, I was getting tired of being this stupid errand boy. Really, I was just a glorified courier. And Hughes started getting creepy, like growing his fingernails until they turned into these long yellow coils; or storing his urine in jars beneath his bed. What I really mean to say is that Howard Hughes was no fun. My world is all about pianos and cocktails and beautiful women in tight dresses who laugh politely at my patter: it does not include cans of stored piss. I think you can dig it.

So one day in October, 1970, I told Howard that I was quitting; that I wanted to kick-start my singing career and the best place to do that was here, in Vegas. He replied that if I left him and stayed in Vegas, he would have me killed, that my mere presence would cause him to worry. The fact that he told me this, with complete calm, while attempting to move his bowels, led me to believe him.

I said to him, "okay, as we're in the gambling capital of the world, why don't we roll on it? If I roll high, then you have to leave Vegas. If you roll high, then I'll stay here with you."

Hughes laughed and said why not, he was looking for an excuse to leave anyway.

So we rolled a dice. I got a five and Howard got a four. The next day, which happened to be Thanksgiving, Howard Hughes left Las Vegas forever. True story. You can look it up.

Okay, I admit now, thirty years later, that I should have stayed a little longer with Howard Hughes. Leaving him was dumb and impulsive, but I don't give a hot shit because that's the way I am and I like me.

So I walked out of that hotel with five thousand dollars in my pocket and jumped in a cab for the Las Vegas airport. I knew that if I stayed in Vegas, Hughes would have me wasted. He still owned half the town and didn't want someone with my perceived - and I do mean 'perceived' - instability running amok.

I got to that airport and sat down in the reception area. I remember some broad beside me had a transistor radio that was playing 'Alfie'. "What's it all about love, Alfie…Without true love we just exist…" Man, Hal David really nailed those lyrics. Anyway, I thought, this is my chance to go anywhere in the world because I might never have this kind of money again. New York? Miami? London? Paris? Barcelona?

No, screw Barcelona, I didn't even know where it was - I just liked the name. I settled on New York City because it was the one place in the world where penniless Americans feel at home - and it still is.

I suppose, judging from what happened to me in NYC, that maybe I should have gone somewhere else. But you know, the famous philosopher Frederick Nietzsche said, "What doesn't destroy me only makes me stronger." The fact that he committed suicide puts a terrifying twist on that bit of wisdom - but hey, only the truly persecuted can appreciate it.

Anyway, as I flew out of Las Vegas, looking down at the receding lights bunched together like desperate miners' lamps, I wolfed my third Southern Comfort, feeling pleasant and friendly, little knowing that I was about to be engulfed in a frenzy of non-prescription drugs, aberrant sex and late night violence… What's it all about indeed…