"Is this fun for you?" I asked my friend Nick, who had currently lost $200 on blackjack. He had another $200 worth of chips still on the table.
"Sure." He waved his hand above the table, silently talking to the dealer in a casino sign language I still don't understand. On the other end of the blackjack table sat a Japanese businessman who sometimes gave Nick advice, and between them were two guys from Indiana who looked like the biggest losers I'd ever seen: cargo shorts; low ponytails; complaining to the cocktail waitress about the orange slices in their Shock Tops.
"Why are you losing so much?" I've known Nick since I was 20, and he remains the smartest person I've ever met in my life. When he put $400 on blackjack, I really believed we'd be walking away with thousands somehow.
"I'm playing optimally. I'm doing what the book says."
"This doesn't seem very optimal." The dealer collected one of Nick's $25 chips, and Nick gave another to the cocktail waitress when she brought his vodka soda.
"Well, that's gambling." He signaled something else to the dealer. The Indiana guys were sharing their various gambling superstitions and were shocked when the cards didn't work out in their favor. Gambling: astrology for men. More guys joined, quietly handing the dealer cash to burn. As stupid as these men all were, I had to admit they could do math very quickly. I never really learned what was happening. They were playing a variation of blackjack I wasn't familiar with. I stopped asking questions and enjoyed the ASMR of the cards and chips shuffling across the table, which would occasionally light up. Everything in Vegas lights up. Nick lost all $400, and then we left and crossed a 6-lane street to get lunchtime martinis.
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I spent two nights at the Circus Circus hotel and casino with Nick and our friend Julian, who I've also known since I was 20. Nick had found a Hunter S. Thompson quote about the casino:
"The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos . . . but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space."
Another friend we saw that weekend quipped that Circus Circus is where you stay when you have a family and a criminal record. There's a permanent circus and an indoor amusement park under a rose-tinted glass ceiling that gives the whole park a sickly aura. You can smoke inside the casino and you can get married just above it. The elevator keycard scanners don't work. In the mini mall between the casino and the hotel lobby, you can buy airbrushed art of Pikachu dabbing.
We always had to walk the entire length of the casino floor to get to the elevators to our rooms. Casinos are designed to make you lose your grip on reality. There are no clocks or windows so you never know what time it is, and everything's covered in mirrors and changing lights so you're not sure where you are either. If you want to get to your room, you're going to need to find your way through the labyrinth of slot machines that are each racist in a unique way for some reason.
Nick's room had a view of a wall five feet away. Julian and I got luckier. Our room had a view of the city disappearing into the desert which swept up into snow-capped mountains. Snow! In the desert! All three of us had grown up in California, and all three of us love the sight of snow, rain, water. I would look out that window, which had a collection of Vans "Off The Wall" stickers in the top corner, and think, God, Vegas is beautiful.
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Our first day in Las Vegas, Nick, Julian, and I foolishly walked 30 minutes to In-N-Out. When I had looked at the map, I hadn't noticed most of this walk was on a thin sidewalk next to a highway. After that we took Ubers everywhere, no matter how silly it felt.
In the 7 minute Uber ride to breakfast the next morning, our driver Terri exclaimed, "Oh my God, you're going to my favorite diner here!" She had a thick accent and proudly proclaimed herself an Alabama hillbilly. She had taped up poker chips and tinsel all over her car. She used to live in Florida where her husband is from, but she hated it there, said people are unfriendly and it's not really the South1, and she's happy they moved to Las Vegas. Every local we met seemed happy to have moved here, like this was what their life had always been leading towards.
"The owner of the diner is always there. Vicki. Tell her I say hi!" Terri handed me Vicki's business card and dropped us off. Vicki's diner had equally remarkable decor. Almost everything was pink. A large collection of rooster ceramics stood watch on one wall. On the opposite wall, an inscrutable painting of a landscape with John Wick's (?) floating head loomed over us. We didn't ask about it.
Vicki herself came by our table when we were done eating. She was an older Greek woman with bright blue eyeliner and she talked to everyone. She was so happy we liked the food and that we had passed along a "hello" from Terri that she asked for our shirt sizes and came back with free T-shirts for each of us. Good luck getting that kind of hospitality in New York. Or Florida, apparently.
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We had all come to Las Vegas for a one-day music festival featuring various goth and nu-metal bands. Ninety-five degree heat be damned, everyone was wearing head-to-toe black. No one wanted to look like a poser.
It's kind of a long story, but a couple of years ago I'm pretty sure I came close to dying of heat stroke while hiking in Utah in July. I lived (bitch), but it did leave me with a fearful respect for what the desert and the sun can do to the human body. So while I was goth enough to be another idiot dressed in all-black, I was not goth enough to want to die that way. For most of the afternoon, I moved as little as possible while sweat trickled down my leg and I gulped down water. It felt like hell. Another friend of mine had to rush back to the hotel after getting so over-heated he couldn't form a coherent thought anymore, and we saw countless people passing out during sets. Imagine risking it all for Papa Roach. I mean I guess I could. I was there watching the set, too.2
Throughout the weekend every time someone complained about how hot it was, we'd all joke, "But it's a dry heat." There's no comfort in this during the afternoon, but at night it makes a difference. Temperatures drop as soon as the sun is gone. I watched the sun sink behind those snow-capped mountains during the Deftones set, saw the sky turn golden pink lavender bloody ultramarine3, felt the evening breeze caress my salt-baked skin, and all the tortures of the afternoon were forgotten. It's amazing how quickly hell can feel like heaven.
The last band we saw was System of a Down. I almost cried hearing tens of thousands of people singing along to "Chop Suey" together. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. It was a sacred moment, which sounds absurd for a nu-metal concert in Sin City, but makes perfect sense when you remember Las Vegas is in the desert, a biome that punches above its weight when it comes to inspiring world-famous religions. So, yes, I heard a choir of goths and metalheads singing I cry when angels deserve to die and thought, wow, God is for real here with us tonight.
A few songs later, System of a Down played their other massive hit, "Toxicity", but cut it off halfway through. Guitarist Daron Malakian yelled, "I better see you all open up some fucking pits right now!" And I looked at Nick, who had been trying to get me to mosh all day, and we just kind of smiled at each other, and before I knew it I was slamming against Nick slamming against Julian slamming against all my friends who were shrieking with joy and complete release. I'm a small woman but I felt safe in this frenzy. My friends won't hurt me. They'll push and shove me but this is good, it's good to have a body, it's good to feel bodies against yours and listen to your favorite bands from middle school and enjoy the desert wind on your skin.
We all left the pit feeling so god damn alive that we didn't even want to see the final act of the night (sorry, Sisters of Mercy). We knew this high was as good as it was going to get. But the adrenaline wouldn't let us sleep either, so we went back to Circus Circus and sat at the casino bar, buzzing with the chatty energy you usually only get from cocaine. At one point an old woman kindly offered us some of her pizza, and it kept us going for another few hours. By the time Julian and I were back in our room, freshly showered and tucked in, he said "I think we'll sleep really well tonight" and we passed out not long before the sun rose again.
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I slept like shit that night. I felt like I was waking up from a Fear and Loathing bender. I had barely even had anything alcoholic to drink the day before, but I forgot how demanding it is just to exist in the desert. One way or another, it'll remind you of the limits of your body.
Nick, Julian, and I eventually crawled our way to a Mexican spot next to a strip club for some breakfast. The restaurant was so dark inside we didn't even notice the silverware on the table at first. Everything was painted black or dark red. Ten TVs cut through the darkness, each showing a different sport. You didn't have to talk or even think in here. Julian called it womb-like.
After eating the biggest chilaquiles platter I'd ever seen, we emerged from our womb into the harsh daylight and walked down some pedestrian-hostile streets to a different casino. The path leading up to the casino doors was lined with jasmine that perfumed the air. The smell smacked me in the face. I missed it so much. I used to see jasmine everywhere in the Bay Area, but jasmine requires a lot of sunlight so I never see it in New York. Its scent is delicate but strong. It demands attention, demands that you notice what a beautiful spring day it is.
Las Vegas demands a lot, too, and 48 hours into this trip I was close to slamming into a concrete wall of exhaustion. For the most part we had stayed on the same two blocks of the Strip, but even within that small amount of land there were so many flashing lights and Hummer limos and chainsmokers and decrepit clown statues (this is unique to Circus Circus) and stimuli, just pure endless stimuli, that it quickly got to be a bit much.
And yet the jasmine was blooming and it smelled good and I was happy. People are nice here. You can lose $400 and still feel good about yourself. The sunsets are beautiful. Does all of this redeem the city? No. Should Las Vegas even exist? God, no. It's a monument to capitalism and man's stupidity. Yet even in this hell, there is beauty. Isn't there something comforting in that?
Anyway, can't wait to get married there soon 💋
1 My fiancée Frankie, who's from Louisiana, later confirmed that Florida is not part of the South, it's its own thing. I continue to learn so much about America.
2 I unfortunately have to hand it to them, Papa Roach put on a pretty good show.
3 Desert sunsets, by the way, are so colorful because of the lack of moisture in the air. Dry heat does make a difference!!