I'm not sure if there is anything I wouldn't do right now for a vacation. Seems like every other day, I am looking at other people's vacation photos on Facebook: Hawaii, New York, Thailand, all places I would love to be right now. Jealousy only begins to describe how I feel.
The other day, I got a little postcard from a hotel/casino in Vegas, offering me a couple of free nights and a show. I caught myself looking longingly at it as I tried to figure out how Sam and I might take advantage of it, knowing that it was not very probable.
Though I will still say that one of my best vacations ever was the week in Oahu, I must admit that Vegas is my favorite city. I hate admitting that because it seems like such a small-minded, shallow, bourgeois selection compared to a host of other possible choices, ones that offer history, culture, and class. One could easily argue that Las Vegas offers no history, a diluted version of culture, and faux class; instead, it serves up flash and glitz and a generous helping of gaud.
And as much as I hate to admit it, that is exactly why I love it. No thinking needed. Days can go by without really using my brain beyond deciding what buffet to have for dinner. In fact, I think it is totally believable that if I were in Vegas for the last few days, I would still have not heard about the earthquake in Japan. The escapism that Vegas offers is that enveloping, so thorough as to be unavoidable.
It's not even so much about the gambling that I find so attractive, though there is plenty of it and I could while away an entire afternoon at a lively craps table. And it's not the club scene, as I don't think I've stepped inside a club in years. Though I love the kitchiness of it all, the audacity, I know deep inside that none of it is real, and everything I see is designed for one purpose only: to part everyone who visits with their hard-earned money.
But that is kind of the beauty of it all, isn't it, the simplicity? It has become, for me at least, a vacation destination where I do not have to think at all. By now, I have stayed in over half of all the major hotels in the city, and can probably tell you tourist information that rivals a hotel's concierge. I know back streets to get from one end of the Strip to the other, and can take you to every single bar listed in the local gay rag, all of which I visited when I was there by myself shortly after my 22nd birthday, including one that advertised a "foam party." Funny how Vegas defines a foam party: what I imagined to be a room full of half-naked men writhing to house music in a sea of, well, foam turned out to be nothing more than an inflatable kiddie pool plopped in the middle of a small dance floor with some bubble bath and one sad queen dancing by himself in the corner.
Vegas can be like that, I guess; nothing is as it should be. Ancient Rome is brought to life down the street from the Eiffel Tower, which reflects the lights and glamour of Hollywood, which is adjacent to the "Manhattan" skyline, which sits a block from an "Egyptian" pyramid.
Some day, I'd like to see the real Colisseum, visit the real Eiffel Tower, or maybe even have my breath taken away by the actual Sphinx crouching next to actual pyramids. For now, I guess I can settle for Vegas versions, or, as my case may be, just spend an hour thinking about them. At least it did, for a moment, make me feel like I was right there. Seems like this is the closest I'll get to a vacation any time soon.
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