Strange For A Living, part four.

The nights had turned to days as they tend to in such synthesized settings, and the days were running together. It had been nearly a week and the people that tended the elevator had long since become familiar with my face. Theirs were days of knowing where in the hotel to get the best sandwich at three o’clock in the morning when room service has no appeal. Or, to hold you upright when you’re drunk, loud, and too friendly at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday. They’re always happy to point you in the direction of an ATM, and turn you loose on the tables. They were good at it, and usually went about their days offering to the people that came and went from the elevators, the kind of smile that only comes from having dependents and a mortgage. I don’t take them for granted. With drunks piling in off of The Strip on a Friday or Saturday night, I couldn’t comprehend how a person would resist creating opportunities to ignite some excitement with the cattle prod that I knew they kept close to hand. I kept my eye on them, as I believed it mutual.
The valets knew everyone and are the perfect go between for whatever bizarre and marvelous thing you could have in mind to purchase. The rules were simple and unwavering; all transactions occur at their discretion, and in cash, up front. In that manner, all are created equal in the marketplace. Be it Charlie Sheen, Harry Reid, or the best man from one of the bachelor parties staying at the hotel, you’ll have to leave your cash and wait twenty minutes for the valet to contact the guy. Information is the exception, and comes immediately for the right price, still in cash. I don’t know that they’re completely cognizant of the vast network going on around and thru them. I think it’s fair to say that no human being currently walking the face of the Earth is more than three degrees from a Las Vegas valet. It’s the kind of cellular networking that terrorists and advertising agencies would pay top dollar to utilize for product placement.
The line in the desert is overt, and visible in every direction from the window on the late flight out. There’s a point where the suburbs in which they all spend that other part of their lives, the valet, Nick Cage, and the elevator guard, just end, and the desert goes black, indistinguishable from midnight seas. It looks almost as tho the desert is turning the lights off behind you, keeping whatever you had done while out there, in the dark. It just felt as tho there should be somebody on that switch, and that perhaps I should be tipping them. I had gotten what I had come for. Times were strange, and there was ugliness on the airwaves at all hours, day and night. It had seemed logical, to me at least, to get on a plane and go to where strange is what everyone had come to be a part of. Escaping it hadn’t seemed to be an option, so getting weird in the belly of the beast had come to be the plan of action. Sure, there were flaws in the plan, but that’s the case with anything.
As I sat there, with the lights off, playing with the ice cubes in my drink, and going over my notes and recordings, I was hard pressed to see the great take away from the trip. It didn’t present itself as that single, scintillating scribbling on a crumpled cocktail napkin. It was more of a progression. From the window of the suite, on the first night, you see all of the imagination, fantastic, and implausible, come to life in the middle of the desert. Then, as the days pass, you come to be more aware that you’re floating in a large pool toy thru a hotel lobby, and not a Venetian gondola. The veneer of the smiles from the people paid to be nice to me didn’t seem to have the same shine as when I had arrived. The rest is a tale best told at the tables. They masterfully convince us that we’re having a great time while we’re being drained, but assure us that great fortune is right around the corner. We’ll just abuse you a little while longer, and your future will indeed be bright. Spoken out loud, it sounded like the same description that you get regarding a day at the office. It was time to leave.
The terminal was otherwise empty when we arrived. It was unusual to be able to hear music in a place that I had always associated with a crowded hum being pierced from time to time by the loudspeaker. As many days and nights as I had gone thru that airport, I had no idea that there was music on speakers until that moment. Bob Dylan would see us to the tram with “Tambourine Man”. And why not? He’s a grand poet, and certainly knows something about being strange for a living.

Strange For A Living, part three.

The Strip goes on all day long for the locals. Rooms are cleaned, stock is rotated, and the working crowd moves thru side doors in alleyways that go unnoticed. It’s not until the sun takes leave that the peacock people come out. They drift in small musters thru the room, displaying their plumes, and costumes. Stepping carefully in shoes they’re unaccustomed to, their movements have an acutely avian aspect. The night is indeed young, and the drinks that they clutch have not yet taken the hold. These are not yet the beasts of bravado that they would become as the evening wears on. These are timid creatures, their darting eyes still evaluating the environment, and the others of the muster.

The night had gone on as most do in Las Vegas. Bartenders did a brisk business, and the tides of show times swept masses in and out of theaters where dancers, singers, musicians, mimes, actors, magicians, tumblers, and high end transvestites dashed about in preparation of the curtains’ next rise. The lion’s share of the crowd had been making their way from casino mall to casino mall, countless among them procuring potation randomly along the way. Many of the same individuals observed only hours earlier, and a few buildings over, perfectly tucked, taped, and tacked in place, were now wearing bounteous beakers of booze and beer on leashes around their necks, carrying their shoes in their hands, and holding each other up. Grinning with hypocrisy, I slurred something half-bright about leashes, masters, and vice into the recorder. With so much wrong minded fun, and absurdity all around me, bombarding my augmented faculties, surely notes would be of value. Their costumes had served them well. These weren’t thespians, and it becomes clear to anyone that takes a moment to notice that the costumes, and masks are less for the audience than themselves. It’s part of the whole reason why they’d come. This wasn’t the crowd that was drawn, this was the crowd that was driven. They had been driven into the desert by their oppressors, the weight of their chains becoming too heavy to bear, and the daily disappointment of an existence that happened to them while they were making their best efforts towards other ends. Here it would be different. Here, in Sin City, not only could they be who they wanted to be, but they could fall, if statistically only by accident, back-asswards into fortune with as little as the drop of a coin and the push of a button. Here, their leashes attach them to pleasure, and even if only a long shot, the odds of something good happening were better than at home.

The occasional round of applause could be heard from the casino floor, where pockets of people piled around tables. Fueled by a hope that some greater, cosmic karma will bestow upon them a life changing event in the form of a hot run at Caesar’s, they celebrate what should probably be the end as if it’s the beginning of something big. I was enjoying the spectacle of their celebration, seeing a good argument for bliss, be it ignorant, or otherwise. …

Strange For A Living, part two.

     I’ve come to think of it as the cattle car. The coach cabin of any given airline could be fairly described as mass transit’s homage to the spirit of water-boarding. If you absolutely have to be someplace, it’s more reliable than hitchhiking, and faster than the bus, but not much better than either in any other way. The days when they served you a bad meal, had pillows and blankets handy, and people laughed and drank with one another are but a short series of projector slides in the archives at The Museum Of Commercial Aviation In America. They make no bones about it in an announcement over the intercom, stressing that passengers count themselves among the fortuitous should they find that they’re being offered a can of warm cola by an irascible “inflight security specialist”, or something of such nature. Requests for things such as more ice or cocktail napkins, it’s presumed, would be met with muted snarls and other moderately muffled expressions of interpersonal ugliness. Your flight attendants will be giving the orders from now on, and you’ll be courteous, and indeed thankful that they’re present, selflessly serving as the last barrier between you and the threat of hair gel, and toothpaste in tubes of more than 4 ounces.

     I slouched in my seat as the full cast made their way past those of us that had already boarded and where now passing,with snacks and cocktails, the time it would take the main cabin to find order. The young couple, the child, and the car seat were engaged in a bizarre operation of push, pull, step, drag that the child had turned into something of a dance. I speculated that one of them must have a friend or relative getting married in Las Vegas. I was also fairly certain that the smart money would be on them becoming the first to attract the acrimony of the flight attendants. It was the sort of wager that was best carried out with discretion, and I had no takers in my proximity. The odds were clear on this one, and the looks being passed between the crew were helping tell the tale. The line in the aisle moved like a caterpillar. A bag would be stowed, a seat taken, and the head would move forward, with the segment people expanding and then contracting into their new spaces sequentially. The announcements were coming over the intercom with increasing frequency, their tone becoming almost chastising as it was clearly imperative, to the crew at least, that we shove off without delay. The rest of us seemed to have no such concern. While the crew and the industry itself are usually the same regardless of destination, the passengers on a flight to Las Vegas might be the last piece of holdout in all of mass transit. These people have come to party, and the mindset is toward general disregard for standards and norms, while no one that knows them is looking. They would arrive in Las Vegas, a dangerous bunch if only to themselves, and turn it on. …

Strange For A Living, part one.

Las Vegas is like no other city I’ve known. It’s origins could be described in almost biblical terms. A criminal wanders into the desert and is overcome by visions of creating a mecca for organized corruption where vice is celebrated, and many are encouraged. With this vision, and Union pension fund loans, Las Vegas is born of the dust and sands. Entertainers would come, the whiskey would flow, and adults would find themselves invited to behave in a manner that would not be welcome or even tolerated in the places where they live out their daily lives. Wine, women, and song on a grand scale. While such opportunities for gluttonous spectacle would suffice for many as reason to come, the true seductress was the dream. The dream that “it” will all just come to you. You see them filing into the terminal, emerging from the planes that bring them, some stuffing bills into the slot machines that greet them before they’ve made it to the luggage carousel. The fat and ugly cut of Americana. The fun crowd. Not fun for a living, mind you, or even on a regular basis, but for the three days that most have managed to scurry away from the daily drudgery, they would do their best to be the people that they always wanted to be, and never dared.
If you rely on public transit from back east as I do, you can see and feel the mood morphing even before you arrive in Las Vegas. I was leaning back in my seat at the bar, drinking whiskey, and killing an hour or so at a hub airport. Atlanta had become titled the busiest airport in the world, and I find myself spending a fair amount of time going thru it. The city has been undergoing an image campaign for some time now, billing it’s self as “The New South”. I don’t see it. In passing, it seems to be the old south with an influx of consumerism, and a “Real Housewives” countenance. By that measure, any place south of the Mason/Dixon Line can proclaim themselves The New South simply by opening an Applebee’s. But, the Hartsfield-Jackson people certainly do a brisk business and the bar doubles up for a couple of dollars more, which was all that concerned me at the time. I heard the voice over the P.A. announce my flight a couple of gates from where I was sitting so I settled the tab, and located my ticket. I threw back the whiskey remaining in my glass, sucking the last of it from the small ice cubes, grabbed my bag, and headed to the gate. I could board at my leisure, but I didn’t want to miss the show. I hit the priority line, made my way down the tube, threw a smile and a nod to the crew, and took my seat. She greeted me, she was smiling, she knew my name. She offered to bring me ice and whiskey. “Two at a time, please”, was my request. I settled in with my drink, harboring anticipation for the parade to follow. …