Johnny Vegas (character)

Johnny Vegas is a character in several of Tim Dorsey's novels. He is 6 ft tall, tan, fit, and lives a life of leisure thanks to a trust fund set up by his father. Despite being young, handsome, and moderately wealthy, he is known (at least through the narrative) as "The Accidental Virgin". Each time Vegas encounters a willing woman, something happens to ruin the situation. The intervening occurrences are frequently highly improbable or outlandish, such as finding floating corpses while on a speedboat, witnessing an apparent suicide from a bridge, et cetera.

Vegas' character is far from sympathetic, however. He is somewhat stupid, arrogant, vain, sex-obsessed, and has very few morals. Unlike some other recurring peripheral characters (such as Detective Mahoney), Vegas is used almost entirely for comic relief rather than in advancing the plot.

Appearances

The Stingray Shuffle

Vegas makes several attempts to have intercourse with woman, all of which fail for reasons beyond his control:

Vegas pretends to be a golf pro, and takes an unintelligent girl to a mini-golf course. They try to have sex in the range cart, but as it makes its way onto the course, it becomes a target for the other golfers. They begin to shoot golf balls at the enclosed cart, causing the woman to jump out in fear. She then gets hit on the head with a ball.

Vegas tries to have sex with a female book reviewer on a train called The Silver Stingray. The train, which is traveling from New York to Miami, derails, and the woman crawls out of the wreckage naked, unharmed, but terrified. Johnny is also unharmed, but it is implied that he is still a virgin.

On a speed boat, Vegas takes a woman to an off limits island off the Florida coast. High on cocaine, the woman takes off her clothes and runs onto the island. Just as Johnny follows, the pair are attacked by monkeys, who live on the isolated island because they are used in science experiments.

The book also describes two other experiences that Johnny Vegas has had in the past.

Vegas tried to have sex with a Cuban girl in Little Havana, but were interrupted by the FBI's removal of Elián González from his relatives' home nearby.

A female attorney was very close to having intercourse with Johnny, until she overheard the news on TV. It was shortly after the 2000 US elections, and the Supreme Court ruled that Al Gore had lost the voting in Florida. This upset the woman so much that she insisted on watching the news reports, leaving Vegas a virgin yet again.