The Day After

There I was, tired but satisfied. I soared above the clouds at thirty thousand feet wedged into my chair next to a bronzed middle-aged couple.  Wait a moment, I am middle-aged just minus the bronze.  Does that mean they remember me as a seemingly unconscious white guy?  

I flew half asleep, a victim more of dragging myself out of bed at 3:30 am then a hard night drinking and gambling.   I was suddenly awakened by a snort that I summarily tried to conceal by executing another one with with eyes wide open.   The woman beside me didn't seem to take the bait as she examined me trying to determine if I was dying.  She was nervous in her own right.  Apparently she hadn't flown in twenty years and sleeping did not seem to be on her agenda.  She clutched her husband hand and likely wondered how I could be so relaxed during such a frightening moment.  

Reluctantly, I was on my way home.  Just a few days earlier my seat companion had been a red neck man in his 30's.  He was surrounded by football coaches and on his way to Las Vegas for some type of coaches meeting.  I was always fascinated by men like him.  While they purported to be athletes and former athletes their general physique made Homer Simpson look like an Ethiopian distance runner.  Bellies hung out and jowls flapped in the wind.  For most of the flight the man beside was ripping drink coupons out of a book and staring blankly at FOX News.  The two seemed to be a brilliant combination of mind numbing opiates.  Alcohol for the soul and FOX News for the eyes.  I am convinced for red necks and the intellectually challenged FOX News is a kind of crack cocaine.  When taken together the combination of booze, Shawn Hannity, Bill O'rielly, Brian Kilmeade and Gretchen Carlson makes the mind sink to levels of ignorance seldom seen by humanity.

Something strange happens to me each time I venture out to Las Vegas, the land of contrasts.  It is a place where dryness reigns and rain seems a gift from the Gods.  When I arrive I treat the experience like a mystery with a conclusion yet to be discovered.  I take a winding path throughout the depths of depravity, excess, opulence and hopelessness like Gulliver confronting the Lilliputians.  Each adventure is filled with happiness, a touch of sadness and a lingering desire to return.

This trip would be my first time out in a year and despite the bad news that one of my two best friends, Alfredo would not be joining us I eagerly wished for my friend Dave's arrival.  I hadn't seen him in over a year and each time I did it was like no time had passed.    Dave is one of those rare friends in life I think I could ask anything of.  He is a confidant and a brother.  In fact, many seem to think we are brothers an occurrence I seldom shrink from and instead, chose to relish.  I should be so lucky to share my blood with such a fine man.

The first night I would be on my own. I decided to break things up a bit and stay at a strip hotel.  At 25 dollars a night, the price I booked at the Imperial Palace was unbelievable.  It was only after my arrival I discovered why.  I should have taken a clue when the hotel front desk offered me the chance to upgrade.  It was presented in such a way as, "are you sure you want to stay there?"  I was resolute, I mean how bad could it be?  The second clue should have come when they directed me to my room.  They spoke of a winding course almost maze like.  I took note and proceeded on my way through an obstacle course of elevators, escalators, stairways and parking garages.  I crossed a tunnel like area where hotel staff pushed carts around behind the scenes.  I finally found my way to a nearly subterranean area where the window of what seemed to be an ancient motel looked blankly out onto a cement block staircase.   The room seemed clean but the darkness and location made me feel as if I had been assigned accommodation in the palace dungeon.  I sat in the room momentarily and when a vision of myself swinging from a rope where I had hanged myself out of environmental depression flashed through my mind, decided to leave.  After a reverse trip I found myself back at the front desk eager to plop down another twenty bucks for a room in one of the towers.


The following morning I moved to a hotel in downtown Las Vegas.  Traveling alone is always at times a lonely affair and I was eager the next day I received a text from Dave announcing his impending arrival.  I met him in the hotel lobby and moments later we were striding across a casino looking for cheap craps.  I felt like I was home.

L-Dave R- Me after too many beers

Not far from Las Vegas proper there is a National Park called Red Rock Canyon.  It is a dry landscape punctuated by colored rocks molded by the winds of sands and time.  They existed long before a city of lights was built at it's base and will crown the valley long after it's demise.   Absent the company of  Alfredo, Dave and I decided to set out on what was rated a fairly easy trail.  We clutched plastic water bottles and were essentially completely unprepared for any obstacles we might meet.  I would imagine the best reference might be the cannibalistic Donner Party and frankly between the two of us, I probably had the more inviting belly.  My light shoes were barely adequate to navigate the falling rocks and crushed earth.  Shortly after commencing our assault and lost in conversation, we realized we had missed the trail marker sending us on our fairly simple hike.  Instead, we found ourselves assaulting a small peak that not only crowned the park, it jutted out into the valley like a sentinel standing watch over a western gate. 

Despite our general lack of preparation we did have the foresight to cover ourselves with SPF 70 sunscreen.  The value of this move was readily apparent as the sun beat down on us with the ferocity of a cake baking in an oven.  I half expected to rise up in the air helped along by the yeast and hops I had consumed in beer the night before. 

Sips of water were savored and felt like butter sliding down my throat.  The trail markers were few and far between and like prospectors searching for gold we found ourselves constantly guessing which path was the right one to take. Looking to one side across a ravine we noticed a woman in the distance scaling the side of a cliff in her attempt to find a serviceable trail.  From time to time we would pause and take in the view attempting to catch our breath before continuing on. 

View from Red Rock Canyon

Eventually we made it to the top and were welcomed with an amazing panoramic view of Las Vegas and the surrounding mountains punctuated by the snow capped Mount Charleston in the distance. At the summit there was a military ammunition box and when opened, it revealed a treasure trove of messages and mementos left by previous hikers.  To summarize my state of exhaustion I scribbled the date and the note "I am buried over there next to the big rock, please leave flowers."  As we ventured down the emasculation of the moment began in earnest.  It started when we were passed by a shirtless man with a tanned Adonis body jogging up the mountain.  This was followed by a group of three beautiful apparently lesbian women hiking up, looking stunning, void of even a bead of sweat.  Another two more likely lesbian women followed with rainbow socks and smiles of contentment. 

With legs of jello Dave and I planted each foot securely and worked our way progressively down the mountain.  It wasn't long before having reached the summit, the shirtless man reappeared and weaved his way around us still jogging.  "Sweet little cruise huh?"  he said flippantly as he passed.

Dave looked at me and said, "I have never felt like less a man."

I answered, "I don't think I have a penis any longer."   I tried to sooth our humiliation by offering, "he his probably gay."  It didn't help. 

There is something about Las Vegas that changes me from an introvert into an extrovert and no, it is not the alcohol.  In my normal life I have little desire to meet different people but for some reason, in Las Vegas, I open up.  I end up in the most amazing conversations and each one teaches me something different.  The list is like a rogues gallery of people.  There was the illegal immigrant Filipino nursing home worker whom out of economic necessity traveled half around the world to make minimum wage, sleep on a couch and care for our elderly.  Or the Vietnam era Marine who was looking for the greyhound bus stop to make trip back to Long Beach California.  He has a small sailboat that he lives on and ventures out to Vegas every so often.  He carries his life in a back pack he places on bus seats as if it were a passenger and jovially refers to it as the one person he knows that never talks back.  He told the Scottish couple sitting beside the pack to let him know if his  backpack friend causes them trouble.  He was heavyset and shared with me that he had two VA paid for heart operations and was expecting another heart attack any day.  He gave himself ten years and said he was intent on enjoying life.  He recounted a tale of once knowing one of the dancers whose bottom figured prominently on a sign outside the Rio Hotel.  At that moment, I wanted to be him.

Las Vegas tends to consume people.  Some find the city and never leave.  They become trapped in a cycle of money and despair that ultimately follows them to their demise.  Like the deserts that once lured prospectors in search of gold, few make it rich and others and the truly fortunate ones know when it is time to leave.  Each pretty face that works at a casino table, dances on a poll or works as an escort is hardened by the city.  They are constantly hit on and I wonder how they piece together any semblance of a normal life.  Where do they draw the lines in their lives and how do they sift reality from opportunity and personal destruction.

Not far from downtown Las Vegas, far from the glittering opulence of the strip is a run down casino that seems to be taking it's dying breath.  It is called the Western Hotel yet the motel rooms that surround it seem to have been boarded up at some point in the distant past.  Were they not it would likely be a den of hookers and homeless.  The sign in the night is broken and reads only Western Hot.  It is just passed the invisible line were tourism ends and local reality begins.  Smoky, the air conditioning ceased to operate while we were there.  When we asked if they were going to fix it, one of the dealers commented the casino had no money.  An odd collection of locals walk in and out.  Some are tradesmen, others destitute.  They plop down a few dollars and then move on.  At night street prostitutes hardened by the streets walk in and are at times escorted out.    In all it is the very unsavory nature that I respect most.  I respect it because it is real.  Everything there is real.  From the lunch counter that closed promptly at 9 yet was sure to make us a two dollar taco to join our Cinco de Mayo Special Tecate beer and shot of tequila to the bartender that while toothless had a magnificent smile.  

The Western has the cheapest Craps table in all of Las Vegas with a one dollar minimum.  It is an amount unheard of anywhere else.  You can literally gamble for hours and risk very little.  Three dealers work a craps table and through the hours of play Dave and I came to know each one.  They were a cross section of real Las Vegas.  There was Irma, the middle aged Mexican woman who now joined by her parents, husband and two children called Las Vegas home.  Irma was quick to recognize me and always called me by name as she pushed the dice in my direction.  A young Cambodian woman married to an American named Sarun constantly told us how hungry she was as she rubbed her belly.  A middle aged Chinese woman announced she was too ugly to ever be married again yet charmed me every time she smiled.  Finally, there was an older man who by any measure should have been retired.  He was white and rotund yet seemed to command the table with the authority and wisdom of an old Vegas hand.  A Hispanic Pit Boss possibly of Cuban descent would stop by from time to time to examine the dice or count out chips.  Sarun might give the lucky man a shoulder massage.  He was friendly and didn't exercise the stern unfriendly gaze of the normal Pit Boss.  

One particular player was an elderly woman named Lucy.  Tiny and hunched over she kept track of every dice roll on a sheet of paper attempting to isolate any trend.  While a statistician would tell you it was an impossible task, for Lucy it seemed quite possible.  When the waitress would round the table with free drinks in hand Lucy would get a special order, a tall glass of white milk.  We told her we wanted her to be our aunt.  She smiled and shortly afterward made her way around the tables edge to kick Dave in the ass for making a series of poor dice rolls.  My favorite was a thirty something man with an obvious attention deficit disorder who would jet over from a black jack table from time to time, plop down a five dollar chip on a crappy bet and tell the dealers to keep his winnings for him as he ran off to the black jack table once again.

Just across the street from the Western is a trailer selling burritos.  We avoided it for awhile but with pains of hunger late one night decided to give it a shot.  The attendant fixed us our food and as we sat at a picnic table heaping salsa on the food I asked Dave what he thought.  I expected something like, "my God the gas I will have," or "I wonder if that's where the dogs went?" When Dave announced it was most likely the best burrito he had ever eaten in his life.

Las Vegas is like a Pablo Picasso painting.  It is an odd collection off disjointed and seemingly irrelevant images that some how form a congruent whole.  Some how it is impossible to make sense of it all yet the image still stays with you over time.  In it's own way it seems to find it's own logic, it's own sense.

While in Las Vegas my friend Dave introduced me to the art of Shephard Fairey.  We located some of his work on the wall of parking garage under an elegant Vegas strip hotel.  The location of the art was almost art in itself.  Some of the sheets of paper adhered to the wall in a collage and covered with a glossy resin were stained with foot prints or spots of food.  Another rested behind a giant pickup truck parked dangerously close to the wall.  It was as if the location was a social comment unto itself.  An attempt to say, I am urban, I am temporal.  While I demand for you to obey I cannot resist the social forces around me.  We moved around the obstacles as best we could and snapped photos with our cell phones.  


Sadly Dave had to leave before me yet after his departure I attempted to follow a trail of a rumor that there was another exhibition of his work.  It was said to be in a gallery at the same hotel.  So on an exploratory quest I returned to the glittering Cosmopolitan Hotel and commenced asking around.  I was directed to a gallery on the third floor and upon arriving there found a very young rather mystified young man who had no idea what I was talking about.   Another man, seemingly of greater authority as he had a plastic earpiece pointed toward a small two room gallery with large glass windows.  Behind it a dark haired young man worked assembling art and constructing his vision.  "That is him," the man told me.  "Shephard Fairey." 


"What luck!" I thought and with some trepidation I entered the room and looked around.  Paper mache lions hung from the ceilings and a few prints hung on the wall.  In a second room behind a partially closed door a young man worked, examining prints on the floor.  It was odd I thought, I didn't really recognize any of the prints.  It must be a new and exciting direction for his art.  The man seemed timid and lost in thought but I interrupted him with a glowing appraisal of his work.  "Your art is wonderful," I told him before asking, "were you influenced at all by 50's and 60's socialist propaganda images from Eastern Europe?"  He looked a bit confused before agreeing, perhaps a bit.  We talked about different directions of art and how it could be a living entity, changed by those who viewed it. He told me how the lions were actually pinatas and how when his exhibit time was about half over he planned to have a viewer break them to change the look of the exhibit.  


We kept talking and really connected when he mentioned his love for skateboarding and I shared some stories from my son Noah.  Finally at one point when I mentioned some specific piece of art he responded, "yeah, that is Shep Fairey."  

Shelter Serra

"Oh shit!"  I thought as a mixture of embarrassment and disbelief moved through my mind.  This was not him.  Idiot hotel staff!  I had no idea what Shepard Fairey looked like and the fools outside probably didn't want to seem stupid.  I scrambled for words and tried my best to cover myself.  "Um, yes, he is great but I like the directions that you have gone.  Your texture is really nice and the living creativity."  I knew it was artist goobly gook  but it seemed to resonate with him.  I asked if there was a place I could buy his prints online and he grabbed a postcard from a cabinet and scribbled a web address.  If I buy one, send it to him he told me, he will personalize it.  I glanced at the back of the card.  Shelter Serra, that was his name.  Well he is nice too I thought.  I wondered if my face was beet red.  Could he actually have bought my ignorance?  I told him I didn't want to keep him any longer and knew that he was very busy.  As I walked away I had a vision of me at an art gallery in New York.  While my comments to Shelter were quite sincere, I was likely a living example of the artistic ignorance he confronts on a daily basis.  Maybe someday I will actually see Shepard Fairey working in a gallery.  If I do, I might think he is Shelter Serra.

That night I sat alone at a bar wishing my friend Dave was beside me.  I drank a 2 dollar Heineken and was the recipient of a beer from a couple Canadians I helped gain a bartenders attention.  They were quite appreciative and couldn't understand how I knew they were Canadian, "eh."  Later an older Scotsman and his wife talked to me for a bit and traded pearls of wisdom

Later I ventured out to Fremont street where I crossed paths with the most perfect pinup model I have ever seen.  She was darting around the walking avenue with a group of girlfriends apparently part of a wedding party.  They were all wearing matching buttons.  Her hair was pinned, partially tied back and she wore a tight fitting dress that accentuated every curve and was elevated by high heels.  Her makeup highlighted her cheeks and lifted them to glow prominently punctuated by a tiny black mole.  I seized a moment and introduced myself.  It was an awkward place to have a conversation but she seemed so pleasant and maybe a little bit drunk.   Her name is Sierra Denae and she is a model for Bettie Page, a company named after the famous Pinup model and dedicated toward reproducing the long lost pinup style.   After saying goodbye I darted up to my hotel room and hurriedly scribbled a couple email addresses on a paper.  I returned to Fremont moments later certain I could find her again.  I followed the trail of Elvis music and noticed her standing with her friends.  Approaching behind I tapped her on the shoulder.  She turned and seemed to refocus here eyes on me.  "Oh my God!" She exclaimed.  "You are like a ninja."  We traded emails with her scribbling hers on top of my phone and tucking mine inside her bra.  I then left her to the crooning of an Elvis impersonator and the revelry of her friends.

Personally, one of the saddest qualities of the city is the gulf between the visitors and the visited.  The girls that work in Las Vegas are there for one thing, to make money.  They could be escorts, hookers, street performers, nude dancers, show girls, dealers or waitresses.  Each is using their sexuality as a commodity.  It helps them sell a product from a drink to a casino game or their own body.   They are likely hit on  twenty times a day and could fill a library with phone numbers.  Ninety-five percent of the numbers are from visiting men, most of them married.  All are looking for a good time for their vacation and a memory when they leave.  None of them fit into their idea of a relationship.  The problem is that my greatest desire it to simply know their story.  I want to learn about the happiness and sadness in their lives.  I want to see the world through their eyes and understand how they internalize it all.  I want this because it feeds me.  It feeds my creativity.  Each person is a story, a feeling, a life example.  They are a character composite that will stay with me in their own way.    The problem is that trying to communicate this is nearly impossible.  I have tried and tried with little success.  There is no way to escape the stereotype for which I am cast.  In truth, I am a victim of the same stereotype they confront nearly on a daily basis.  Perhaps the only way to ever conquer this would be to actually move to the city for awhile and call it home.  Only then I could overcome the suspicion and lack of confidence in my own sincerity. 

I have lost count of the number of times I have visited Las Vegas.  Sometimes with friends, sometimes with family.  Each time it is a little different and creates it's own memories.  Some people hate the place, others love it, each for their own reasons.  While I can understand all points of view, mine falls in the later.   It is a place I can renew the bonds with my best friends and I can escape from reality.  It is a fertile ground for difference both good and bad.  It is opulence and poverty, petulance and good-natured all coexisting. It is naked sexuality and a forum for repressed personalities.  

With Vegas still in my recent memory I connected in Atlanta to a smaller flight.  It was unquestionably the most miserable flight I have ever experienced yet gracefully short.  My seat reservations had apparently not been held and I was awarded a windowless middle seat in the back of the plane.  When I say windowless I mean windowless.  The back aisle literally had no window, no recline.  To my left was a girl with a cold hacking up all the way but on the right side, that was the gem.  She was a spastic middle aged black woman that seemed to suffer from ADD.  She thrashed about in her chair lowering the tray table like a child, placing her head on it and then returning it.  She seemed oblivious to the flight attendants calls for cell phone etiquette continuing to make calls long after the rest had stored their phones.  The best part however was the chile dog she produced for her in flight snack.  Loaded with condiment she commenced eating and then for two minutes emitted smacking sounds from her mouth.  Lovely!  I felt my self despising her and realizing the forgiveness of difference experienced in Las Vegas was already giving way to everyday reality.

Arriving back home was bitter sweet.  While the open arms of loved ones are always welcoming the return to working life is not.  I much preferred my quest for the unknown and my time with my best friend.   I lamented Alfredo's absence an quietly commenced to counting the days until our next meeting.  I never want to wish my life away yet aside from my family, each day with my best friends are the best things about living.