May 28th - "Requiem for the Oakland Athletics"

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold, yada yada yada.

Lucille squinted her eyes at the bright lights of the hotel room. The couch felt comfortable, the coffee table she kicked her feet up on felt comfortable, SpongeBob holding the magic conch on the television felt comfortable. Jackie standing off in a corner of the room and doing karate in just a wife beater wasn’t exactly comfortable; intriguing, perhaps, was a better word for it. Regina slumped on the couch, the messy streams and rivers of strawberry blonde hair spilling down Lucille’s shoulder, the slight, relaxed rise and fall of her chest as she struggled to hold sleep at bay? Priceless.

Well, not entirely priceless. A graduation gift from her parents, a part-time job at the grocery store, and credit card debt gave Lucille this view. She finished the contents of her forty-fifth spiked seltzer and tossed it away; she didn’t care to see where it landed.

“Are we boring?” she suddenly asked. “I feel like all we do is get intoxicated in various ways and complain about life. Is that even interesting?”

“I don’t complain about life.” Jackie applied some sick-ass kung fu on the invisible ninja facing her. “And besides, I think you basically described what it's like to be in your early twenties in a nutshell.”

She passed by SpongeBob and looked out the windows. “And we’re in Vegas, for crying out loud.”

Lucille joined her friend in looking out the window (Regina let out a slight groan when she collapsed onto the cushion behind her). They were indeed in the city notorious for its casinos, gambling, nightlife, and poaching of Oakland’s professional sports teams. Their hotel was right on the Strip, just a ten minute walk away from the center of the action. As night settled in, the sea of bright lights illuminated this particular spot of the vast American Southwest. The lights seemed to go on and on, brighter and brighter, until they reached the end of the known world and civilization gave way to pure desert. You could call Las Vegas a land cruise, with the city confines (or rather, in the case of most tourists, the Strip) serving as the ship, the nebulous outside world forming the endless sea.

Somewhere beyond it all, East Eden still existed. So did the Green Mountains and White Mountains. So did Lucille’s own state. Somehow, this vast stretch of land was all connected into one giant country. That had utterly awed Lucille on her first day out here - that the flatlands of the American Southwest could still be considered “American”. There was a world beyond the woodland hills of New England in its tiny little corner on the map.

But that had been the first day. In the three days since then, Lucille alone had drank somewhere around forty-five (45) seltzers, inhaled two (2) packs of cigarettes, consumed a collective eighty (80) milligrams of edibles, smoked three (3) cigars, and sniffed one (1) sharpie (Jackie’s idea. Lucille didn’t let her enact any more ideas after that). The lack of sobriety reduced Lucille to animalistic needs - food (McDonalds) and water (hotel bathroom sink).

While Lucille rubbed weary eyes, Jackie tossed a shirt on. “I, for one, would like to be ripping coke right now.”

Civilization was disappearing before Lucille’s very eyes. “...okay. Do you want to rip coke, Regina?”

Regina gazed up from the couch with tired eyes and made a sharp sniffing noise.

“...uh-huh," Lucille answered. "Well, I mean, it’s a moot point since we don’t have any and aren't looking for any anyways.” 

Jackie already knew this and stuck her tongue out. Lucille just waved her away and checked the time on her phone. The brightness briefly made her emit a low hissing noise. “It’s only 9 PM?”

Jackie cracked her fingers. “That’s primetime to go gambling. Celtics in 7. And I’m a wizz at blackjack. You playing, Regina?”

Regina raised an arm and made a clinking sound to emulate a slot machine.

“Is that your new thing?” Lucille asked. “Just making noises?”

A nod answered her. Regina hadn’t been able to speak for almost an hour now.

“You joining us?” Jackie asked.

Lucille shook her head. “Later. This is our last night here, so I’m gonna do one last night walk.”

“But you did that the past two nights.”

“And I won’t get to do it again.”

A few minutes later, the women got off on the ground floor of the hotel. While the Miad cousins took the gambling area by storm, Lucille strolled off, heading for the front door. On the other side, greed made tangible greeted her. Not that greed was always a bad thing, and perhaps that wasn’t the right word, either. Desire made tangible greeted her. Because Vegas didn’t produce anything besides fulfilling desire, did it? The Strip didn’t hold factories or investment banks or medical research. It held bright lights, glitzy restaurants, M&M emporiums, giant jumbotrons.

This was a dream world, and Lucille didn’t think that just because she had a few hallucinations last night. A place like this only existed because of human desire. Consumption built this city. The ability to take it all in, live in luxury. To let go of the rules. Vegas didn’t have rules. Or rather - the normal ones didn’t apply.

Life was ruled by the 9-5. The highway commute. The train commute. The office. The factory. The job. The responsibilities of work and at home. Family obligations. And beyond that - social causes. A world set on fire and strapped to a runaway train with less and less of a chance to pump the breaks. Environmentalism. Nationalism. Patriotism. Self-improvement. Anything that held a grip on life no longer existed in this city. Perhaps that’s how vacations normally work - and a general sense of detachment and slight growing of insanity always comes with any vacation - but something about Vegas emphasized the detached nature of it all. The mind, body, and soul were free of their normal functions. The stairs you take to work every Tuesday? Gone. Domestic and foreign crises? Obliterated. All that mattered was this short portal of passing existence. Life only existed within the five seconds of here and now, the five feet in front and behind you.

In that crowded sidewalk, Lucille lit up a cigarette simply because she could. It being a Wednesday didn’t matter, exhaling around other pedestrians didn’t matter, lung cancer didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to anyone already creating the clouds her stream of smoke soon joined. And then she tossed the cigarette to the ground, much of it still unsmoked, and crushed it with a nihilistic shoe simply because she could. Cigarettes weren’t cheap, especially in inflated areas like Vegas, so any unsmoked part of the cigarette would be a waste of money. But money didn’t matter. Inflation didn’t matter. Banking institutions, social etiquette, the future, the past. All of it disappeared. If Lucille wanted to, she could’ve rented out a car, drove it out to the desert, and just pressed on the gas pedal until she disappeared into oblivion. That would hold the same sort of feeling.

In an ironic way, the lack of rules, both enshrined in law and enshrined in manners, was followed by everyone out here. Lucille was just one part of a roaming pack of humanity, moving down the avenues covered by streetlights and moonlights, feeling the dry desert heat on her face, down to her grimy fingertips. She probably should’ve changed her shirt or showered before this, but that held no meaning, either. Girls dressed in flamingo costumes offered to take a picture with her; on the pedestrian bridges, men in dreadlocks belted out makeshift tunes on makeshift drumkits that were really just overturned plastic buckets; a tall man offered to sell her molly. Lucille soaked all of it in.

But the funny thing about the Strip is that, once you get far enough down, it suddenly just ends. Or rather - the mass of humanity does. All of a sudden, you’re just alone. Casinos anchoring the end of the Strip still loom over you, as does that nihilistic feeling of decadence, but all the people have disappeared. Things turned quiet, and now Lucille was just a lubricated person wandering by herself in empty boulevards. Flood lights shone down on her, beams shone into the sky. This had all the makings of an area that should’ve been populated, should’ve been crowded, but instead, Lucille could hear the echo of her own sneakers and decadence stepping on the concrete sidewalk.

Only one other person existed. He was walking towards her, still a good distance away down the sidewalk. He held a banana in his hand. Lucille didn’t know why he had a banana in his hand. Presumably to eat it.

They got closer and closer. Lucille’s mind worked at its basest instincts. She had gone three days without rules. Wordless thoughts drifted through her, and the unfortunate part about writing, and perhaps even a word-based consciousness, is that things must come sequentially. One word after the other. One sentence after the other. One paragraph after the other. Something like that, while useful, doesn’t do justice to the way the mind always works. Sometimes, you realize two things at the exact same time.

I could murder this man.

This man could murder me.

All the trappings about civilization had been whittled away. Only one remained, the most basic of all. Civilization could only work if people willingly agreed to sign an unwritten contract - that I won’t harm you and you won’t harm me. But, down that sidewalk, the fleeting thought thundered around Lucille’s head. It wasn’t a case of it’s either you or me; this would be a crime of opportunity. Nobody was around. Nothing was real.

When she was younger, Lucille once read a short story set in rural America during the Great Depression. A traveling businessman traveling from one big city to the next spontaneously decides to stop at a small railroad station in the middle of nowhere. He strikes up a friendship with an old man who has nothing better to do than sit on his rocking chair at the station, watching the dusty trains pass by. With the sun setting, the two agree to head to the hills outside of town to see a night sky full of stars.

The businessman is awed by the sight of all those stars for the first time. He then looks at the old man and reveals the same conundrum Lucille currently faced - he could easily murder the old man. It’d be the perfect crime. Nobody knew the businessman was in town or went with the old man to go star-seeing. He could take the first train out of there the next morning and none would be the wiser.

The old man gives a simple answer. He himself could easily murder the businessman. It’d be the perfect crime. Nobody knew the businessman was in town or went with the old man to go star-seeing. He could simply go back to his rocking chair and none would be the wiser.

The two were at an impasse. The same went for Lucille and the Banana Man. 

The fleeting thought told Lucille that, in her life, if she were to ever murder someone or be murdered, it would be this very moment, when the two distant ships of life had their brief passing in the middle of the night.

The gap between them got closer. Lucille had never killed someone before.

Ten feet, maybe. The light at a nearby intersection changed color, dousing Lucille’s face in green.

Five feet, even less. Palm trees lining the avenue looked down upon them in this sea of nothingness.

Three feet.

Two feet.

One.

They passed by each other. There were no sudden movements, no sudden motions. Lucille and the Banana Man simply kept going.

The thought disappeared just as soon as it came. The French called it l’appel du vide - the call of the void. Sometimes, when you stand on a tall cliff or look over the railing of a bridge, you become aware of just how easy it would be to fling yourself over it. You might never have any thoughts like that before or after that moment. Just the mere act of being there can make you think of it, just for a moment, before you move on with your life.

Same with Lucille. Sure, a lot of the rules may have been whittled away, civilization might’ve disappeared, but she was still a human being. And with that came the knowledge that a person only has one life. That’s something we all share. It would be easy to mess up someone else’s life. But we don’t, and we move on with our lives instead, leaving the call of the void behind.

Lucille smelled herself and decided she would take a shower after all. On the way back, her voyage complete, she came across perhaps the pinnacle of the American experience - the gigantic pyramid on the end of the Strip, shooting up a blue beam into the sky, a massive Bud Light logo projected on its side. Were this a field of grass, she would’ve placed her arms behind her back and let herself fall into the flowers of the mountain meadow, feeling utterly content with it all.

But she stood at the end of civilization in the middle of the desert looking at a gigantic advertisement. The blue glow illuminated her face. As she looked up at it, she decided that a) she was glad she came to Vegas and b) by this point, she would be glad to leave it. She needed a shower, a sandwich, and a breath mint, preferably in that order. But even beyond that - she needed her family, she needed her usual routine, she needed East Eden. She needed rules and that sense of normal, everyday life that sometimes we so desperately want to escape.

You could say Vegas is escapism at its core. It exists in some sort of zone of unreality, four miles of unfiltered dreams. But you’re very much trading one reality for the other. Fortunately, if you play your cards right, as most people tend to do, that old reality will still be waiting for you, and perhaps you’ll even find yourself enjoying it more.

Of course, that was Lucille’s interpretation of Las Vegas - an existential trip, four days of madness and pleasure wrapped up in excessive romanticism and self-introspection.

But for someone like Jackie and Regina - and perhaps the term for people like them is “normal” - their interpretation of Las Vegas was four days of hanging out with friends, getting drunk, winning money, losing money, having a good time, and going home satisfied.

Who knows which interpretation is right?