A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Apprehension and Disliking in Las Vegas (Part I)

Tuesday night Ann and I were a below-zero, pedestrian kilometre from Edmonton International’s terminal. The sodium lights of the park-and-ride lot shone like diabetes urine. Wind whipped driving snow into slithering, hissing snakes, Medusa before a salon appointment. The battery of our Honda CRV was dead. Ann’s iPhone 6 was adhering to Apple’s planned obsolescence protocol. Neither one of us was dressed for the dead of another Alberta winter. Our roadside emergency kit was snuggled safe and warm at home in the Crooked 9’s garage. We shivered, smoked, swore and giggled at our plight. Six hours earlier we’d been seated in the back of a long black limousine gliding by the palm trees that stand sentinel around the dangerously enlarged heart of the American Dream.

Descending to McCarran you wonder if the jet’s going to touchdown on the Interstate or an actual runway; the concrete strips pretty much abut, separated by a chain-link fence topped with coiled barbed wire. You hope someone like Clint Eastwood is driving your plane. I’d booked a sedan car to take Ann and me to the MGM Grand at the south end of The Strip, minutes from the airport but an impossible walk. I was expecting us to be met by a bored fellow in a black suit holding up an iPad screen reading MEGEOFF at the baggage carousel. Well, didn’t that initial Las Vegas fantasy get snuffed out like a cigarette in a cancer ward. Still, we were a pair of newly arrived magpies in the land of glittery objects.

The transformation of Las Vegas Boulevard began in the final decade of the last century. Consequently The Strip is lined with massive resorts designed to confine guests as voluntary inmates. The Grand Canal Shoppes (oh, please) at The Venetian border an inauthentic canal, that is to say the mall wasn’t flooded. Waterfalls, fountains, volcanoes, castles, pyramids, New York City’s skyline and the Eiffel Tower encourage gawping but not a vibrant street life. There is no scale here beyond huge, really huge and really very huge. The sidewalks and pedestrian bridges are populated with exhausted tourists who were unable to judge distances, ersatz selfie showgirls and touts pushing coupons, vouchers and packets of miracle epidermal ointment. You just want to tell everybody to shut the fuck up, move over and get out of your way because all you’re seeking is some personal space to breathe without being hassled and perhaps a contemplative white filtered Player’s. The MGM Grand hosts over 6000 rooms for rent. There are 10,000 or so hotel rooms in the city where Ann and I live. Your effete digital fitness bracelet will self-destruct before it can count all your steps to perdition in Vegas.

By departure day Ann and I had sort of figured out the layout of the MGM Grand whose exterior is lit a gorgeous emerald green after dark. A puffy Pete Rose was signing caps and baseballs at Field of Dreams in The District. Down in The Underground the America! shop hawked orange odious vulgarian 2020 re-election merchandise, hoodies, MAGA hats and t-shirts. The casino is ringed by television chef restaurants, Soandsomoto, the “Bam!” guy and Wolfgang Fuck. Across six lanes of traffic at the Tropicana, which has all the charm of a fading shopping mall on Edmonton’s poor side of town, somebody named Robert Irvine has elevated the noble public house by charging five or ten dollars too much for everything on the menu.

Smoking is equally expensive in Vegas because you can light up in front of a slot machine. Ann said, “I could get addicted to this.” I had to agree. Beyond the nicotine and free drinks, the Rolling Stones, Elvis and 007 were calling like the Sirens of Greek mythology. I calculate we gambled a century note of our own money, played with four or five times that and ultimately broke even. The sensory assault in a casino is enough to trigger epilepsy. There are music and sound effects, flashing, blinking lights, spinning wheels and rotors, stimulation carried on forced, canned air. “Would you like a massage while you play?” No thank you, please fuck off.

At MGM Ann and I found respite from the calculated punchiness outside in the smoking area to the right of the entry hard by the miniature dog park. I watched miserable, hungover guys leading their wives’ scratching diamond dogs, rats the size of cats. One morning I tried to overhear the conversation of two dreadlocked dudes in fashionable track suits. Their street patois was nearly incomprehensible. They were chatting over a breakfast of herb and Heineken. I made out: “My first Asian.” “No, man, she was Filipino.” They were soon replaced by a Hong Kong hipster who’d dyed the crop of his black ‘do copper. He was as skinny as a triple A battery, toothpick legs in black jeans, no socks, leather shoes, well-turned ankles. He smoked with his flu mask hooked over his ears even as his filter dangled beneath his chin. The local tourism bureau slyly trumpets what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. I’m not sure this is the case with infection and disease.                     

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced, inaccurate alternative source of travel writing since 2013. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9.