They say Las Vegas is “America’s Playground,” but after spending 3 days there, I’d describe it more as “America’s Anti-Playground.” Why?
What is a playground? A playground is where my friends and I spent several hours every day playing on the slides, the swings, the merry-go-rounds, running and laughing and discussing the important things of life. And no matter how mad I got at my friend for coming down the slide before me or not letting you be the leader that day, everything was back the way it was the next day. And I still went home feeling happy. Everything was immediate, for the moment, and ultimately, largely without consequence. It was the best time of my life. Or so I’d like to think.
The first glimpse of Vegas for most people is from the plane, descending into McCarran airport, and if they’re lucky like us, they see it in all of its nighttime glory, the gaudy green of the MGM grand, the faux Eiffel tower and NY skyline, the abduction-like searchlight piercing the night sky from the Luxor. If I was a kid once again, my eyes would have been transfixed by this show of opulence, eagerly awaiting the moment I could explore the vibrancy of the city myself. Instead I was just glad to be getting out of the plane and soon enough, the airport. That’s one of the things being stuck in an airport for 6+ hours after missing your flight can do to you.
Ironically, although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had my first real glimpse of Vegas on the way to our wonderful Sin City Hostel from the airport, courtesy of a $1.25 ride on the city bus. Going along a road parallel to the strip, the bus was populated by the usual group of people you might imagine seeing on a city bus at 1 in the morning: working class people. Tired people. Normal people. Life is tough everywhere, and Vegas is no exception. And were it not for the frequent glimpses of light from the strip at each intersection, one could imagine being in a normal city. But the conversation we had with a fellow traveller was different from a normal city: “Go to the Aztec Inn…it’s smaller than the famous casinos, but I once made $xx there…” There was a sense of doomed optimism in his voice, like the kind you hear in the forced voice of a patient at the hospital, a patient who knows things are not going well, they will not go well, and they perhaps never really did go well.
Meeting up with my friends at the San Remo, I heard for the first time the mantra of Vegas: “I’m down right now, but I was up $xx earlier!” With the fixed smile of alcohol imprinted on his face, he played blackjack applying his (only slightly impaired by the 12 hours of constant buzz) intelligence to the problem of beating the dealer as frequently as possible. And I found myself wanting to do the same. Luckily for me, what you want is what you get at Vegas, and I sat down by his side, with a well-worn $200 in my hands, fresh from Mr. ATM. Long after he went upstairs to sleep, me and my roommates from Tech were still there, amassing our own private fortunes. We were all up. And the depression had already taken its hold on me.
My roommates and I spent several hours that night (and every day and night subsequently) playing blackjack, hold ‘em , let it ride, drinking and laughing and discussing the previous hand and the next hand. And no matter how much joy we felt for each other on that lucky 21, the smart double on the 11, the trips in 3-card poker, or the empathy we felt for each other on that unlucky dealer’s 21, the double on the 11 where we were gypped with the ace, the shitty hand in 3-car poker, there was a growing isolation that I haven’t felt even in this year, my most depressing yet.
The marathon poker sessions of my addict roommate and myself yielded more evidence of the growing absurdity of our situation. Here was the champion hold ‘em player, my roommate, who plays several games a week, bringing home no less than $50 on average, buying back in for stack after stack of $100 worth of chips for more 3-6 games at The Mirage, while I survived with slow yet steady gains to my original $50 stack. Marvelling at my seemingly heightened skills, making small talk occasionally with my fellow enemies, I slid deeper into the abyss of my thoughts. 1 hour flew into the second, 4 hours suddenly became 6 and 8 hours climbed steadily to 10. As my mind steadily grew more weary of congratulating itself on its stellar playing and marvellous good luck, the physical stacks in front me started echoing my inner descent into poverty.
Leaving him there to try and recoup his losses on the next hand, my other roommates and I headed home for some rest. But the next day was the same day, continuing. Except now we hadn’t heard from our Poker star for several hours, and all our attempts to reach him on the phone were met with a “voice-mail not activated yet” message. But we weren’t concerned, because after all, he’s a big kid and he can handle himself now. And we were right, of course. We went back and met him finally at 7ish that night. Tired, and down a net $300 after his $200 surplus from the first night’s blackjack, his first statement was nevertheless “I was up $xx earlier.”
As my carefully accumulated winnings started dwindling rapidly on our last day there, I found myself feeling better and better. Leave adrift in the sea of loneliness, my mind’s boat caught the wind of impending departure and latched itself firmly onto that wonderfully cool breeze. I caught myself looking down at my shirt and feeling the immediate pangs of regret for not buying the Interpol concert tickets when I could have. And it hurt, realizing that I could have seen Secret Machines with them, in a concert that would probably stick in the dusty recesses of my mind long after my love for computer games had faded, long after my memories of a world getting fucked harder everyday became mere ashes, being used only to sustain the fury at the injustices of today. And I was looking forward to going home, feeling sad. But happy that I was feeling.
Because throughout hundred dollar monster gains and five straight 3-7 off-suit hands that I had to muck, I felt nothing. I continued from force of habit more than anything. The meaningless snatches of conversation at the poker table were worse than the trite bullshit I get tired of hearing from people in the real world. Because more than just being worthless, they were also completely fake. Like rats pushing buttons in their cage, hoping to get their human masters to reward them with a tidbit of cheese, something to nibble on for a bit, something to better understand their strategies, all the players started baited conversations, hoping to hook their adversaries into revealing the secret of which button was hooked to the cheese. It was like my normal activity of wasting countless hours on bash.org, except this was even worse because there wasn’t even the occasional brilliant nigger joke, the fleeting joy at seeing a fellow human express a sentiment I felt myself, the obviously faked repartees of countless other denizens of the internet. There were only cards and money.
All the trips I’ve taken with friends in the past, I can remember many moments that are characterized only by the feelings I shared with my friends. The only memory of this trip I will remember is the sheer terror I experienced, alone, completely alone, during the ride at the top of the stratosphere. Although my wallet feels marginally lighter now by a few hundred bucks, my heart feels more burdened by the lack of any other strong memories of this trip. Because unlike the playground of my childhood, nothing was immediate in Vegas. Nothing was just for the moment, because there were no moments in Vegas. And there are consequences of the trip, ones that I would never have considered. It wasn’t the best time of my life. It wasn’t even the worst. It was just time, lost.
Tags: las vegas
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Specious Logic » Blog Archive » Concert Review: Holy Fuck and Cornelius
April 9th, 2008