Never Get Off the Boat: X Goes to Las Vegas, Part Two

Published on July 18th, 2014 in: Culture Shock |

By Jeffery X Martin

Part One

My name is X. I write all the time. I don’t get out much. So when I got the opportunity to go to Las Vegas, I jumped on it, hoping to have a good time and gain some new experiences.

Well, what happens in Vegas can stay in Vegas for all I care.

---

If you asked a poor white kid where a rich person lives, he or she would draw you a picture of The Bellagio.

The Bellagio is almost inhumanly gorgeous. It hurts to look at. It is the perfect absurd mixture of Harold Lloyd and Willy Wonka. On the lobby ceiling is a gigantic glass sculpture, flowers blooming from the roof, all of them looking like sculpted and shaved treacle. Candy flowers above, slots to the right.

From my seventh floor window, I can see six swimming pools. Not bad, for a fucking desert. Downstairs is a botanical garden with hundreds of thousands of perfectly bloomed and landscaped flowers. There is also a fountain with three different kinds of chocolate that flow from ceiling to floor. And you thought I was kidding about the Willy Wonka aspect? All that’s missing is a plastic pipe with a fat German kid stuck in it.

I didn’t think I suffered from any form of social anxiety until I walked into the lobby of the Bellagio. It is a constant crush of people, from all over the world. Listen, and it sounds like a support group for survivors of the fall of the Tower of Babel. To walk into this place is to become immediately lost and helpless, thrown out of your comfort zone and into a harsh place, beautiful but sharp.

Check-in, once we got to the counter, was simple. I gave them a credit card, in case of room incidentals, and we were on our way.

You can still smoke inside in Vegas, and the casino smells like God’s ashcan. Sweat hangs in the air like a low cloud, and there is the same mixture of excitement and desperation one gets from a high-school back seat after Senior Prom, where every second feels like a hyper-extended now-or-never moment. It’s like walking through hyperspace.

As we walked past the piano bar, the musician was playing the theme from The A-Team. Incongruous, yes, but fitting in the sense that we, and the people we were smashed together with, were all soldiers of fortune here on an assignment. Make money. Get laid. Make a mark of some kind. It’s Vegas, baby, fuckin’ DO something.

Our room is impeccable, with conveniences I barely understand the need for. Automatic curtains? Why? I know how to open curtains all by myself, like a big boy. I’ve done it before. There are track lights above the bed that shine down like the sun into your face when you lie down. It’s like a bedroom designed by the Ministry of Love.

The bathroom is pretty awesome, though, with a deep tub and a jet powered toilet that flushes so hard, the handle recoils like a shotgun. There is also a separate, glass-walled shower, like the kind you see in porn loops, where girls try to shampoo their own tits off. I always wondered where they filmed those things; apparently, the answer is Vegas.

I wanted to get some water and put it in the refrigerator, but I couldn’t. It was full of terrible beer. Oh yes . . . the mini-bar. Fridge full of booze and some snacks on the dresser, all of them priced outrageously. A bottle of water: ten bucks. Eight dollars for a tiny box of chocolate chip cookies. Every single item attached to an electronic sensor. If you budge it, you buy it. Clever folks in the hospitality industry, boy. We made a special mental note not to touch the goddamned mini-bar.

Hannah had a short orientation to attend, with a reception dinner afterwards. I stayed in the room for that hour, getting dressed. I wear black. All black, all the time. I like it. The only real splashes of color I indulge in are different colored ties. But by the time Hannah got back to the room, I was in full funereal garb. Black shirt, pants, and black tie. We ventured downstairs for my first evening as Work Husband.

It’s nice to be arm candy once in a while, and it’s even nicer to be so at an event with an open, free bar. My preferred drink is a tumbler filled with ice, Pepsi, and three shots of vodka. I call it “Dinner.”

I had a few small Dinners while waiting for the actual meal to be served, and hung out with Hannah’s bosses and co-workers. They’re a good group. I find them quite pleasant and down-to-earth.

This reception was swanky, and when dinner started, we got in line. We were served very tiny pieces of seared flank steak, still a frighteningly alive dark maroon inside (I ended calling it “Steak Profondo Rosso”), and some blanched peewee potatoes that looked for all the world like boiled peanuts. It was a delightful appetizer, which ended up being the entire meal, except for the weird stab at dessert. Sure, crème fraiche is delicious, and the little dribble of raspberry sauce on top was refreshing, but there was a bottom layer of basil crème. The herb, basil. It tasted like sick lasagna, almost gritty, with a slight back-end note of potting soil.

Needless to say, I had a couple more Dinners to wash that down with.

Plied up and crazy on free booze, and with a decent storehouse up in the room, we decided we needed to make a trip for essentials. My hot and intelligent wife, who is smarter than me even when she’s ripped on Chardonnay and screwdrivers, decided we needed to get a gallon of water. Luckily, there’s a Walgreen’s drug store on the strip, and it didn’t seem that far away. We ventured out into the night, Frodo and Bilbo, trying to get rid of some goddamned ring and pick up some water, and realized quickly one does not simply walk into Walgreen’s.

+ + +

It is night on the Vegas strip, and the action is on. People are out in force. Fat fuckers from the Midwest, the French, the Middle Easterners; it’s more of a culture folding than a culture clash. Everyone is here for strictly hedonistic purposes except for the poor bastards that work here.

All right. To get to the Walgreen’s from the Bellagio, go out the front door and cut right. Head towards another casino/resort called The Cosmopolitan. When the scary guys come at you making guttural noises and snapping pieces of paper at you, don’t be afraid. They’re handing out hooker cards. Prostitution is legal in Las Vegas, and the guys are literally pimping their wares. [I have a pile of those cards. I want more. I think of it as “Hokemon.”]

Andrea is $125, no hidden fees. Chloe is $69, because that’s a clever number pun, innit?

Whitney is a $35 special, but she’ll be to your room in 20 minutes or less. I talked about it with Hannah. We decided that if we ever did that, we would just get her to shower in the great glass cube in our bathroom. It would be like seeing a live version of an old favorite movie.

The Cosmopolitan is a horrorshow of a place, with video monitors everywhere, all of them broadcasting abstract visual art. One of them looks like the cover of Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures.” The scary one, though, is the one that is a plant, shimmering and shaking because of the spider web stretched tautly between the leaves and stalks. The symbolism is obvious. You’re in their clutches now, and there’s no way to get out of it. You have entered their parlor. They try to make it seem glamorous, somehow, but you can’t make being sucked, squeezed dry, and tossed away as a broke and broken husk attractive.

Take the escalator to the second floor and find your way to the pedestrian bridge, the skywalk that takes you to the other street. This is necessary, because if you attempt to cross the street at street level, you will be killed. Drivers here do not stop. They do not care about you. Pedestrians have the right to die, but not the right of way.

Oddly, it is on the second floor of the Cosmopolitan that we find our first glimmer of hope, the first glimpse of a soul, humming underneath all this shininess. It is an old cigarette machine that has been retrofitted to become something called “Art-O-Rama.” In the slots where smokes once were are small boxes filled with handmade art by creators from around the world. It’s amazing! It’s the real thing under all the stucco artifice.

We feed the machine a fiver and Hannah chooses something. The label on the slot says, “Pieces of a Beautiful Land.” The box that comes out contains a pair of earrings from an artisan in Hawaii. How is that even possible? I buy my wife earrings from everywhere we travel together, but now she has earrings from Hawaii that we got in Las Vegas. The world grows continually smaller, and we don’t even see it happening.

It is on the pedestrian bridge that we encounter our first homeless guy. He’s singing on the bridge. Down from him, two women with electric guitars are taking a break between songs. It’s a great place to busk, but the pickings seem to be slim tonight.

We go down the steps to the opposite side of the street and for reasons I don’t fully comprehend, the Walgreen’s has a concierge. He stands at the door, greeting everyone, asking if there’s anything he can help with. Is this a step up from the old women at Wal-Mart, demanding to see your receipt before you leave the store, their highlighters always at the ready? I can’t even tell.

This is not like our local Walgreen’s. I turn a corner and see rows upon rows of vodka and tequila. I stand for a second, stunned, because we don’t have this at home. I feel like I just found the Lost Ark of the Covenant. I don’t even know how to respond. When Hannah finds me, I am standing over a display of shot glasses, with rows of liquor behind me. I look like the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio. I am in Heaven. This is El Dorado. I never want to leave.

We buy a fuck-ton of shot glasses, for we are collectors. We get some little snacks. Peanuts. Sunflower seeds. The necessary protein, something to keep our muscles from totally desiccating from the sheer amount of alcohol we are consuming. I can’t even be mad about it. This is a necessary numbing.

Why is there an escalator in a Walgreen’s? I can’t even bring myself to go upstairs. I probably need some kind of VIP card. That must be where they keep all the cold meds, the ones you can add a single electron to and make methamphetamine. How badass would that be? A Breaking Bad lounge inside of a Las Vegas Walgreen’s, giant murals of Bryan Cranston on the walls, LED signs of Aaron Paul above the street, making clever puns about the need for speed.

There are more registers at this Walgreen’s than there are at my favorite Knoxville grocery store. It’s confusing, until I realize that, besides the two-story McDonald’s a little further up, this is the only place that makes sense on the whole fucking strip. Everybody needs stuff from here. Nail polish, tampons, tequila; Walgreen’s is the place, man. It’s one of the few things in this whole town grounded in reality.

Our cashier is named Dezyre. We ask her where to get some good pizza, because those little slivers of raw meat didn’t even come close to filling the ravenous pit of our travelers’ stomachs.

“Don’t overlook the little Mom and Pop places for pizza,” Dezyre says. “Because they’ve got some really good food, man.”

“What’s your favorite?” I ask.

Dezyre hems and haws for a moment. “I don’t remember names of places, but there’s this one little place that has the hot wings? Oh, man, those wings are the bomb.”

“What’s the name of the restaurant?”

“I don’t remember, man,” she said, “I really can’t remember, I don’t know.”

Great. That doesn’t help me.

We leave the super ultra Walgreen’s with liquor, shot glasses, and mixers. Back we go, up the down staircase, escalators working as hard as they can. We are famished. We are more than half drunk. And we have to make our way through the crush of human detritus, back to our room, just so I can get some goddamned pizza, so that I literally don’t die. This is not a joke. I am starving. I am going to pass away if I don’t get some food, and some real hydration, soon.
With sore legs and throbbing calves, we lurch down the hallway to our room. Hannah orders some pizza online. Our first credit card is declined (that’s twice), so we pay for it with a different one. The delivery guy isn’t allowed up to the room, which is weird. This town runs on the backs of guys like him; why shouldn’t he be allowed to come up and see our palatial bathroom?

Regardless, I grudgingly put pants back on, schlump my way back downstairs, and get our food.

We ate that pizza like it was some kind solid Elixir of Life. We didn’t talk. We just ate, breathing heavily, amazed that such a wonderful thing could exist on this physical plane.

The Bellagio is surreal as hell, but they don’t have Cartoon Network on their cable system, which is bullshit. How am I supposed to fall asleep away from home without Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Squidbillies? We were forced to watch Full House for a while, and then we passed out listening to a soft, New Age-esque music channel (“You are listening to Tranquility”).

The next morning, Hannah was gone.

. . . to be continued . . .