I was in Vegas again last week. Me, Wheelchair Cousin and her mother, and my cousin Aaron who went on the Louisiana road trip with me in 2013. A quick little jaunt, we left Wednesday morning and got back Friday afternoon. We went mostly so that Wheelchair Cousin could go. She’s had a rough year with the pressure sore, the subsequent surgery and recuperation. Since she’s going back to pharmacy school at the end of the month, we thought it would be nice to enjoy something.
Most of my problems with Vegas is that there is no queer representation on the Strip. Oh sure, there are the four Sephoras, the stupid water show at Bellagio, every waiter at the restaurants. But for anything queer, you have to travel off the Strip. Because there’s always been at least one heterosexual with me in these trips to Vegas, there has been no gay Vegas for me. Just walking, drinking and staring at what essentially amounts to high-priced malls.
On the Las Vegas Strip, there are four Sephoras all within walking distance of each other. There’s a replica of Paris, of Venice, of New York and inexplicably the Miracle Mile of Los Angeles. As you walk through these simulations (and note that I really had to resist using the word simulacra,) your mind goes into a blur. Didn’t we just go by a Gucci? Why is that midwest couple in overalls going into the Prada store?
It is also so loud that everything is silent. The noise, the lights, the sensory overload just causes my brain to shut down so that I’m not marveling at the spectacle. I’m not noticing where I am. I don’t know that I’m hungry. I don’t realize I’d rather be in a swimming pool. It’s all a blur.
What was really cool was the High Roller “observation wheel” over by the LINQ (nee Imperial Palace.) Rather than a normal ferris wheel, it’s a slow-ride in these big pods that take about 30 minutes to go around. Being sealed in one of the pods was a good way of escaping the noise, to get a moment to think while looking at the vista of the city.
As we left Vegas, we went to the Seven Magic Mountains installation. It was a nice way to end the trip, an explosion of color amid the austerity of the desert.
Seven Magic Mountains between Jean and Sloan.
The only reason I really look forward to my birthday is that I get time off from work and that I usually rent an Airbnb out in the middle of the desert in the Joshua Tree vicinity with a pool, hot tub, and no one around for 5 acres. So here I am in Landers (or a bit away from it really) whose claim to fame was that it was the epicenter of a 7.3 earthquake in 1992 just hours before a separate 6.5 earthquake centered in Big Bear hit on a Sunday morning. Wild stuff.
I arrived here yesterday, and on the way had to stop to get gas. Since this stupid fucking illegal war with Iran has driven gas prices sky high again, I’ve mostly been back on public transit again because, fuck that. There I was at the Arco station jaw agape as the $30 went to $40 and on up until it landed at $72 for 13 gallons of gas. Yes, the “cheap” gas.
I’m going to be spending most of the time in or around the pool trying to finish Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz. I’m at around page 604, so I have about 400 more pages to go. I’ll be honest — I have no fucking clue what’s going on in the book. It’s a slow, slow read and demands your attention but not in a painstaking way. It’s a very enjoyable read, but I honestly don’t know how we get from one part to the next. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I’m just riding the wave, going where it’s taking me and try to make sense of it later.
I’ve started working on a couple of things with myself and hope to get better at as I begin my 48th year on this planet: I have started to journal more. It’s the most mundane scatterbrained thing. I hope it doesn’t cause someone’s head to explode when they go through my journals after I’m dead. (How cute. I think I have any importance that people will actually read what I write rather than just dispose it like they should.)
I need to curb my YouTube addiction. I don’t watch tv shows. I don’t watch sports all that much. I don’t use TikTok. I only doomscroll through Facebook at 3 am after I have woken up to take a piss. I am no longer perpetually online. But I will sit down and waste hours upon hours watching YouTube videos. I really need to get that in check.
That’s all I’ve got. Overall, I’m not happy, but I’m not completely depressed. Let’s just call it nonplussed. For someone who feels like a stranger in his own country, I guess that’s about as good as we can hope for.
Occasionally, after reading certain books, when his disgust for daily life became particularly marked, he longed for the lenitive hours immersed in a cloister…
There is just a clause in the above sentence in the first chapter for J.-K. Huysman’s The Damned (Là-Bas) that really stuck out to me: “when his disgust for daily life became particularly marked.”
I had to go back to work today after two weeks off. The first week I did a road trip that culminated in being in a cabin for two days in Choteau, Montana that had a hot tub. It was nice to sit in the hot jets while it was 18F (-8C) outside. Then I meandered my way home before just doing nothing for the second week. Just sitting with my cats, sleep, and tell myself I was going to mop my floors before doing none of that.
After these weeks of doing a whole bunch of nothing, to my horror it was time to go back to work. The dread of walking into my office which I liken to a monkey cage at the zoo, plugging in my laptop and opening Outlook. Emails filled with complaints. That was the dread that was inside of me.
So I get it when Huysman’s protagonist Durtal has a “disgust for daily life.” It’s certainly reassuring that not a lot has changed over the last 130 or so years.
As we left Vegas, we went to the Seven Magic Mountains installation. It was a nice way to end the trip, an explosion of color amid the austerity of the desert.
