A Morality Car Wash: A Trip to Las Vegas

from Volume 13, Issue 3, of The Inner Swine, September 2007

Here is an actual conversation:

DUCHESS: For my birthday, I’d like to travel somewhere for a little vacation.
ME: <incoherent weeping>
DUCHESS: Man up, weepy boy—we’re going.

This happens more than would be tolerable in my life if not for liquor’s sweet, forgetful embrace, and it never gets easier. My wife likes to travel, and I do not. This means we travel on a regular basis. Now, if you were to ask The Duchess if we traveled a lot, she’d laugh sarcastically and possibly harm you in some minor physical way. If you ask me, we travel far too much. Objectively, I find myself on an airplane about twice a year, heading somewhere I do not want to go (which is everywhere, because travel sucks). One of these trips is usually the annual pilgrimage to Texas to visit with my wife’s family, which is non-negotiable, and the other is generally a brief vacation-type trip that The Duchess plans for us. I always greet the news with weeping, and she always sedates me before dragging me to the airport because of my childish behavior when a trip is in the offing.

I know my wife is physically stronger than me, you see, so I have learned to resort to childish tantrums in order to try and hold down the number of loathsome planes I have to get on in a year. I’ll never avoid traveling altogether, I know, but The Duchess is like a river breaking through a dam. If you don’t do something, you’re going to get washed away. At least if you plug up some holes and make a go of it you can reduce your damage.

So, when she announced that she had a bizarre desire to go to Las Vegas, I sighed wearily, did my weeping, and then resigned myself to the trip. We had enough frequent flyer miles or something to fly first-class for free, and The Duchess tried to sweeten my reaction to the trip by reminding me, constantly, that you get to drink cocktails for free in first class.

Someday we will examine the fact that everyone in my life tries to make me do stuff by offering me free booze, but let’s not go there yet.

Why Vegas? Well, part of it is the simple fact that The Duchess has adventure in her heart and simply wants to go everywhere, especially, apparently, places that boast a Liberace Museum, which is a museum dedicated to the style and flare of the late, somewhat lamented Liberace. Also, it was one of the few places to which she could swing two round-trip first-class tickets for free. Finally, I suppose it can’t be denied that there is something of a Freak Factor in Vegas As in, hey, look at all the Freaks.

I’m no gambler. Gambling to me is akin to throwing your money away. I am sure some people find it amusing to do so, and some would even argue that if you know what you’re doing there’s little risk in gambling, and people are entitled to their incorrect opinions, of course. The fact is every game in a casino is stacked against you, and while you certainly might win, your chances of losing approach 100% over time, so, no thanks. Of course if you enjoy gambling for the activity’s sake, more power to you—go forth and bet. It’s just not for me.

So going to Vegas when you don’t plan to even put a courtesy quarter into a slot machine is kind of a bizarre thing to do, maybe. So’s going to that area of the country and having exactly zero interest in seeing the Grand Canyon.

ANOTHER actual conversation:

THE DUCHESS: We could rent a car and drive out to the Grand Canyon. It’s about three or four hours away.
ME: It doesn’t seem worth it. I could be drinking.

So, maybe we’re bizarre—we’re going to fly five hours and spend a hefty amount of money simply to drink well, eat well, and take in some cheesy shows. I figure it’s actually just like gambling, just without all boring card-fondling and lever-yanking—I’ll fly in and leave behind a big hunk of money, and everyone’s happy.

I was going to do a typical travelogue sort of thing, breaking things out into Day One and Day Two and all that, but to be honest the whole trip seems like one long day, unbroken. If you spend more than a few days in Las Vegas in August, my friends, you soon get used to seeing a few constants:

• mind-peeling triple-digit heat outside
• douchebags in Elvis-sunglasses
• overly friendly casino employees who aggressively want to know if you’re interested in a free dinner and show
• endless casino floors placed between you and anything interesting

In short, the trip blended a bit. So instead of trying to break this down into a day-by-day recount of our Las Vegas adventures, I thought I’d present a general overview of the experience leavened with details where I can actually recall them.

The Engineering of Piss

Las Vegas is the most horrible place on Earth.

It’s hot, it’s barren, it’s more or less the world’s largest shopping mall, it’s not pedestrian friendly, and the whole artificial contraption of the city is designed to open your pockets and extract dollars as efficiently as possible.

Las Vegas is, in fact, the city that shouldn’t exist. It’s in the worst spot for a city—hot, without a reliable water supply, in the middle of nowhere. Trust me, if civilization were to collapse some cities might manage to maintain a semblance of organization because they have some resources they can draw on, said resources being the reasons that the city sprung up there in the first place. Back before electricity and other modern systems, after all, people gravitated to these areas and built these cities. Las Vegas? Not so much.

Still, we had a damned good time there, because despite all this artificial bullshit, despite the fact that you can’t cross the fucking Strip anywhere you’d actually like to cross the Strip and the fact that every time we walked into a casino/hotel to see or do something we had to fight our way through the entire fucking casino, being assailed left and right by jackasses who are paid to say “Excuse me!” in exactly the tone of voice that will get you to pause and say “Yes?” just so they can ask you if you’re interest in a free dinner and a show (Sidebar: Does anyone actually take these jackasses up on their offers? If you do, please send me five dollars immediately for mysterious reasons. Thank you.), despite all this, Las Vegas is a city designed entirely with your comfort and entertainment in mind.

I’m a man, after all, for whom gleaming tumblers filled with single-malt whiskey are all I want from dinner. I am a man who appreciates a well-stocked honor bar and a place to sit in the shower. I am a man who likes to pour himself two fingers of hooch, run a shower so hot the glass enclosure starts to slowly melt, and then sit in there sweating until I pass out. When I wake up, freezing and damp, I then like to go out and eat a huge dinner. I am also a man with a childlike love of magicians.

In other words, surprisingly enough, Las Vegas is actually my kind of town.

I am also a man who goes to the bathroom and ponders how in the world the powers that be handle all the tourists in Las Vegas and their piss. I mean, every day thousands of people descend on the city and begin excreting like mad. How do you engineer all that piss away?

I am, as you can tell, an extremely strange man.

I Want to Believe

Another reason Las Vegas is more fun than its whorish, artificial bones led me to believe at first is the fact that there are so many damn casinos. One after another, and they are all trying to lure you inside despite the fact that they all offer you the same fundamental product. Now, I know some casinos have better odds on the slots or other refinements, but if you know stuff like that you’re probably not wandering the Strip with a yard of cheap margarita clutched in your slack hand. The casinos need ways to make you want to come inside, aside from the gambling, so there was always something to see.

We saw tigers and sharks and dolphins. We saw ridiculous free singing performances in the middle of food courts. Moving statues, dancers on platforms suspended from the ceiling, dancing fountains—if I have to follow my indefatigable wife from store to store, trying to summon some level of enthusiasm fro Yet Another Sweater (YAS), I at least like to have things to break it up. At home, when I shlump after her in some mall or other, the best I can hope for is a Cinnabon or something. In Las Vegas, when I am about to fall over from a lethal combination of exhaustion, boredom, and sticker shock, there’s usually a bar within feet (booze is distributed just about everywhere) or, failing that, there’s some form of entertainment. Usually both.

Since I spend most of my time following my wife around stores anyway, this was a veritable paradise.

On those rare nights we weren’t shopping, we managed to see a few shows, which was a lot of fun. I’m not really a “show” kind of guy, you know, but after a few days spent trooping through stores and evenings spent passing out in white-hot showers they were a welcome break. First we checked out Penn & Teller, who are always reliably subversive and entertaining, and somehow ended up in the front row, which led to wild hopes of being picked out and abused by the magicians. Sadly, we were ignored. Perhaps if they knew about my white-hot booze showers. . .

The other show we took in was Cirque du Soleil: O, which, frankly, I didn’t quite understand. With the sheer number of freakish acrobats jumping around and diving into a huge tank of water, it took me a while to even realize that there was a story. It was amazing, of course—a huge troupe of people with more coordination than me, dressed in outlandish costumes and performing death-defying stunts—and I definitely enjoyed it, but I also felt like the troupe could have just as easily made shit up as they went and I’d never have known better.

I never claimed to be a bright man. I drink in the shower, for god’s sake.

Un plus de whiskey, sil vous plait

The worst part of the whole trip, sadly, was our flight home, which sat on the tarmac for four hours before we took off, with the same episodes of King of Queens running over and over in a loop. The only thing that kept me sane was the fact that in First Class, they’ll bring you drinks, so I boozed it up and by the time we took off I was snoring loudly and mumbling things my wife will no doubt use against me before long.

I may never feel a burning need to return to Las Vegas, but overall I’m glad I went, if only for those wonderful evenings spent sipping a drink while the hot water steamed around me. Ah, paradise indeed.