Las Vegas: A Giant Ashtray Lined with Fake Gold

 

My wife and I walked out of Mandalay Bay around 10 P.M. The hot humid air swirling amidst thunder storm warnings was thick and shortened my breathing. This didn’t surprise me. I knew a man from Vegas who said the temperature sometimes stayed over 100 degrees past midnight. 

Covered in a sheen of sweat, we navigated through the crowd on the Las Vegas strip, and we found ourselves passing a gauntlet of what had to be over 500 diminutive men in tattered rags trying to force escort service info into our hands. The information was on shiny cards. The hunched over distributors looked emaciated, tired, and glassy-eyed and had no excitement—quite a contrast to the titillating services they were advertising. Their only evidence of vitality was the way they’d hold their thick stacks of cards, which they snapped, to get our attention, as we walked past them. These languid disseminators of escort services were the poorest of the poor working for presumably a lucrative industry.  

While I repelled the lugubrious ragamuffins, there was a dust storm made worse by open construction sites. People speaking in different languages were screaming and using shirts, newspapers, hats, and anything else to cover their mouths and eyes. I could feel grit in my teeth. 

To get out of the sandstorm, we walked into a nearby hotel, the Luxor. A muscular man dressed as Hercules or a centurion was being photographed by two giggling girls. 

As we walked through the lobby, a woman dressed in hotel attire shook my hand and unctuously asked what I would be doing in Vegas. Before I could answer, she said she would give me “money,” what was not money per se but coupons for various shows. I told her no thank you and she looked disappointed, perhaps slightly offended, as if her friendly greeting had been in vain. 

Everywhere I went, people wanted to offer me “money” or stuff escort info in my hand or charge me $5 for water or charge me for headphones so I could hear the televisions in the hotel’s gym. I couldn’t relax because in part I felt like thousands of robotical arms were always trying to reach into my pocket and pull cash from my wallet. 

When I didn’t feel the sound of cash sucking out of my wallet, I saw mostly sad people hung-over from too much alcohol and too many unrealistic expectations or I saw people still intoxicated by Vegas’ meretricious dreams but knew that the gleam in their eye would be gone and they too would be sad and hung-over. 

I suppose I am not light-hearted enough to enjoy Vegas, to embrace its full-fledged commitment to hedonism. I am made uncomfortable when I am put into a situation in which the expectation is to have fun. 

I would like to have fun someday, but Vegas is a bad choice. For me, Vegas is a colossal ashtray lined with fake gold and its inhabitants seem blind to its noxious properties.  

I’m thinking next summer of something more quaint, a little bed and breakfast on Victoria Island near Vancouver. 

Comments

[Mike W]

At the risk of becoming a Herculodge syncophant, I completely agree with you about LV. I went there once, in '99 for a bachelor party, and thought the whole place looked like a set from the old Twilight Zone series. Everything looks flashy from a distance, but walk up to it, and it turns into paper-mache.

Almost all of us on the trip worked full-time in Manhattan, but we wound up going to that little simulacrum of Gotham they put up. Kind of odd.

LV just made me want to go to someplace else, someplace real, Austin or Taos or rural New Hampshire or wherever.

The whole vast enterprise is premised on the notion that we never rise above our basest instincts, our bodily functions, our crass material needs. And those shabbily-dressed throngs of chain-smokers at the slot machines with the big plastic cups of coins - have you ever seen a sadder-looking collection of lost souls?

Sorry, you can have the soapbox back now.

[jeffrey McMahon]

Mike, at one point I thought LV was Hades and indeed I thought of a Twilight Zone episode with Sebastian Cabot as the Devil ushering lost souls in Hell as hedonism.

Jeff

[Mike W]

Always loved that episode. An evil Mr. French in a white suit..."This IS the other place!"

How you gonna beat that?

[jeffrey McMahon]

That was my favorite episode. My favorite part is when the bank robber, after he's overcome with ennui in the pleasure palace, says, "This is heaven, isn't it?" and Mr. French laughs devilishly while the camera descends into his flaming esophagus.

[Ed S.]

A nicer South Bay trip is Catalina Island..."26 miles across the sea." You must be sea-worthy to make the one-hour journey, however...no landlubbres with fluttery stomachs.
But for a day or two, it's great to go back to the 1940's and be miles away from traffic, crowds, and everyday concerns, surrounded by the prettiest bay of turquoise water you'll see on any exotic isle. Be sure to take the Submarine ride.

[Tom Welch]

There's a small town off I-40 in eastern Arizona that I once stopped to eat lunch. When you walked into the Denny's Resturant you felt you were in the Twilight Zone. I was expecting to see Rod Sterling come walking through the front door.

[gerald j]

definitely looks like the bar scene in star wars! if its up to me,, when hell freezes over baby! me in vegas that is.

[gerald j]

oh, got a vacation suggestion for you, sea islands of south carolina, kiawah,or seabrook island perhaps. i grew up here and im a little biased! they have a river cruise that takes you along the intracoastal waterway from charleston down to, and stopping over in savannah and then down to jacksonville and back. absolutely beautiful panaroma from a smallish river cruiser with private balconies. i did it two years ago,, heaven man.

[jeffrey McMahon]

Gerald,

Gerald,

That does sound nice. There's a mystery about the south that makes your idea sound compelling.

Tom,

Many parts of the south west seem haunted by ghosts from the wild west and indeed have a Twilight Zone feel.

[jeffrey McMahon]

Ed,

I've gone to Catalina about 7 times or so since I was 14, having grandparents in San Pedro.

It was essentially a girl-watching endeavor(the ferry boat being a rather smoldering experience) at the time and sadly that's about all I can associate it with.

But now I'm sure I could soak in the tiger sharks and sea horses through the glass-bottom boat.

[Leeds Escorts]

Wow, you've got lovely pictures here. Looked like you really had a good time in Vegas with all the fun there and some kind of "services" that the city offers. ;)
By the way, those M&M's are just cute.