I drive to Chicago and wait for Fu and Pie, who are trekking across Illinois. To waste time while they drive, I wander through the mall, a quest for undergarments, because my god, despite the fact that I have six pairs for three days, I still am having some kind of mental breakdown over the fact that I don’t have the right panties with me. It’s all about foundation this trip, about looking svelte despite lumbering around like a linebacker, which is why I have resisted comfortable, exquisite ugly shoes in favor of light, airy strappy sandals with torturous heels to give the illusion of defying gravity. My one consolation is a black pair of Mizrahi driving moccasins whose tony name excuses the comfort.
I trek to my crazy little hotel that is supposedly near O’Hell, except that really, it’s not anywhere near O’Hell. After driving fifteen minutes away from the mall, Pie calls and she is at the mall and can’t locate the new highway, so I offer to go back and get them. It seemed only fair, since they made it all the way across the country to me, so I can double back fifteen miles. They find the landmark of Ikea, where they sweat quietly outside a loading dock until I arrive. Jen hugs me a long time because I am chilly from the air-conditioning, a portable cooling device clad in a t-shirt and jeans. We head to the hotel, smuggle the birds up to the room, and then Pie and Fu take quick showers. They put on skirts and look like actual adults, so I swap my t-shirt for a funky black shirt with crazy sleeves so that I don’t look like their tragic Win A Date With Famous Internet Writers charity case. We go to Maggianos, eat stuffed mushrooms and an entire truckload of pasta with vats of cream and then also dessert, then drive back to the hotel where we giggled in the dark and shouted sillyness across the room until Jenfu yells “Ok… and break!” and we obediently fall fast asleep.
About eighteen minutes later, I answer the wake up call, take a shower, get dressed and share a cab to O’Hell with a delightful older couple about to retire in the Cayman Islands. I gamble that I will be able to fly on a direct O’Hell to Las Vegas flight, thereby avoiding a pitstop in Dallas (and undoubtedly falling down on a rusty spoon and dying of lockjaw or something because Texas wants to kick my ass). At the last minute, my gamble is rewarded, so I struggle with my luggage down the aisle and stop at seat 6D, where a nattily dressed man in 6C is already chatting up the stewardess. He hops up and offers in an intriguing accent to help me with my bags. I accept, thank him, and then settle in for the four-hour flight. He introduces himself and we chat and then I learn that he is an editor and a writer and also staying in THEHotel. I tell him about my freelancing and my pet project and soon we are chatting the miles away, sharing everything in the world and exchanging cards and phone numbers. He invites me to meet his friends at Jaguar and compliments me on my luggage and I am very happy that I switched flights and slipped on my Stuart Weitzmans before boarding the plane and also invested in some leopard print Diane Von Furstenberg luggage because for a moment, I could be anyone, a socialite or a rock star or an heiress, not merely a silly little internet writer from Wisconsin. David is quite honestly a delightful man and it was clearly destiny.
After I land, I skip through the airport, happy at the way that the littlest decisions can cause an entire change of events, the flutter of butterfly wings and all that. I weave through the baggage claims, once again thankful that I hadn’t checked anything, then wander out to the passenger pickup where Jake is waiting with our rented Jaguar convertible, a sack full of water and some lunch from Trader Joe’s. We make a lap around the strip, bake in the hot sun, then drop off the kitty with the valet and check into our suites across the hall from each other. Then, with a world of things to do and no time to waste, we settle onto the sofa, eat our sandwiches and peanut butter-filled pretzels and watch Starship Troopers on TNT. We are as gods.
Finally, we realize that we were burning daylight (burn being the operative word) and continue with our plans to see Hoover Dam. Personally, I cultivate complete and utter apathy about Hoover Dam. I hate to be sexist, but when I talk about going to Vegas, the only people who ask whether I want to see Hoover Dam are the male people. The women just don’t seem to care. I mean, it’s not like they just dug it up and there was a dam there, left by ancient indigenous people. They built it. And relatively recently too, not like five hundred years ago. Testament to humans harnessing the power of nature or something, I guess, but there are other ways we have harnessed nature that don’t get as much attention. For instance, cocoa butter is natural and it makes my skin ridiculously silky and it’s a lot more impressive than a big chunk of concrete. But Jake wants to see the dam and since he selflessly tolerated my rabid slavering over the sharks at the Mandalay Bay aquarium last year, I owe him at least a damn dam. Poor me, having to drive to a tourist attraction in an air-conditioned Jaguar with a best friend that I don’t see often enough. Your heart, it undoubtedly bleeds. And we are off into the desert, in search of clean easy power.
When we get to the dam, it is a hundred and million degrees outside. I am wearing jeans, due to some kind of misguided Wisconsin notion of summer. Jeans! I gracefully lose forty pounds in five minutes via the sweat coming out of the top of my head. We find out that we are too late for the dam(n) tour and I suggest to Jake, who really wanted to take the tour, that we could come back in the morning, but honestly, it’s a big tampon for a river, what else is there to see? The art deco quality is cool, and the angels are breathtaking. (The angels? There are angels at the dam, right? By then my brain is medium rare, so someone tell me there are really dammed angels?) Jake declines. The sun waves at us and then files its nails, whistling a happy tune. The 116 degrees each swim before our eyes and we head back to the Jaguar. I improvise messy crooked pigtails with my sweaty hair and we turn back toward a glimmering mirage, wondering what anyone would do living in Boulder, Nevada, this life inside an EZ Bake oven. As soon as we clear the mountains, we can see Las Vegas, perfect in miniature, clear and in sharp focus. Over every pass, we expect to see our off ramp, but it is still another twenty miles. The arid landscape and megalith hotels play tricks with our eyes and make everything seem much closer than it is, as though you could reach out and touch them. We trust nothing.
Back in my suite, I fill the lagoon-sized tub and soak while watching stupid shows on the plasma screen inside the bathroom. I love the fact that I get to live in this set of rooms for three days, with its guest bathroom and floor to ceiling views of mountains that seem as though they are right there but are really seventy miles away, and a giant black pyramid that looks like a piece of playground equipment when viewed from the 23rd floor, as though you are meant to slide down the sleek black glass and land safely upon the back of a Sphinx. We get dressed for dinner, which ends up being caviar, vodka, smoked salmon, and more vodka. Already we are acclimating. Sadly, we drive no one away from our table this time, so we will need to try harder. I realize that I forgot my phone, so we go back up to the suites, where I decide that my Oriental shirt and flat orange slippers are not fabulous enough for dancing, as we must dance, for it is God’s day and we are in Sin City. I throw on a black dress and, at the last minute, decide to go without hose for the first time in my adult life. It is just too hot to bear, so I zip up my boots over bare legs and vow to only pull this move in Vegas. I declare that there must be dancing, so we find a dance bar filled with locals and spend the next four hours on the dance floor, sweating and bouncing and doing my best to not resemble a portly Stevie Nicks. I manage to look like Sarah Rue portraying Stevie Nicks. Surrounded by gay men and drag queens, a straight guy walks up to me and asks if this is a gay bar, and I laugh and dance with him out of pity. A former drag queen visiting from Cleveland sticks his face in my cleavage and makes num num num noises and then his straight sister grabs my ass. I get nasty looks from hot gay men wearing tight t-shirts for being Jake’s dance partner. I am covered in sweat, make up long gone, but I feel like Gwen Stefani mid-concert, only sans the beguiling abs. We are definitely living up to our rock star image. Jake has declared that we cannot go to sleep until at least 2 am that morning, which will be a full 24 hours of being awake for me. At 1:30, I stop dancing. We are both glistening head to toe, my hair a salty crisp wig, like surfer hair, only wetted by an ocean of sweat. We drive through the deserted local streets and share fish tacos and a quesadilla (kaysadillah), letting the 100 degree air wick the water from our skin. Our lungs turn to sand paper and we upend giant bottles of Dasani like thirsty toddlers.
I run into my room, strip everything and dissolve into the cool stream inside a glass room, then throw on black pajamas that match the hotel and slip between crisp sheets. In the morning, my cell phone plays ‘Just Like Heaven’ and wakes me up. I know that it is someone who is not saved in my address book, so I don’t rush to answer it, but then it rings again and wakes me up. I find it in the living room and pick it up just as it stops. I wander into one of the bathrooms and then the room phone rings. David! He is to test drive the 2006 unreleased portrait edition today, and Jake and I have tickets to La Cage after David gets back, but we make plans to meet for an industry party after that. I jump into the tub and soak, my muscles weeping for their new-found diva status. From a heap on the floor, my the previous night’s black dress curls into a fetal ball and sighs. Jake calls while I’m taking a post-tub shower (yes, I know) and mentions that he has to take the car back, so I call the spa and get an appointment for a massage and a fresh manicure. The massage sucks, the manicure is nice, but the best was the lack of concern I had while swimming naked in the five foot deep hot tub. I’ve come so far in just a year’s time. Amazing. Of course, it helps that there weren’t many people in the spa and the water room was empty, but still.
I get dressed and skip back up to the 23rd floor, sans makeup with crazy hair. Jake opens his door as I pass and after I brush my hair, we are off to have a light brunch, and then to find a tram and then a monorail that is really another tram but with much verbal masturbation. Then, we check into the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton, where we have a Warp Core Breach (a really expensive drink that tasted like Kool-Aid and had DRY ICE in it), laughed at the roaming Ferenghi, and then went into the exhibit, where we were delighted to have been abducted by Klingons (one of us is apparently the ancestor of Jean Luc Picard. I think it’s Jake, and he insists that it is me they were after) and laugh ourselves silly at the live action scenarios and Jordi’s banana clip visor. When that is finished, we race back around and do the Borg thing, but that creeps me out because I am strangely freaked out by the Borg. ‘I do not like the Borg!’ I whisper when they are coming, but no one hears me because it’s just too tense. However, they used the tall actors as Klingons, so only short actors were Borg. It was still very creepy though and also very awesome, which is saying a lot for someone who rolls their eyes at almost all things Star Trek, and kept watching for Chewbacca.
We hop back into a cab and go to the hotel to change for our show. I contemplate taking another bath, but instead opt for a quick shower to conserve time, and even still, when Jake knocks on my door, I ask him to come back in five minutes. He has risen to the challenge of my fashionista wardrobe and coordinates nicely with my purple and black tulle skirt and black empire-cut cleavage shirt along with my feathery black purse that Jake renames ‘Wendy’s Road Kill purse’. We both have rock star hair and toast to many many things with our Grey Goose and cranberry (fortified with Echinacea!) cocktails. By the time we make our way down the hall, we are giggly and stupid, having only eaten a light brunch ten hours earlier. We get the best cab driver, Selinda, who is pretty and fun and we spin over the desert landscape and she tells us that we are her favorite customers and I recognize that she’s ‘family’ (thanks for the code word, Mary Kaye) and we tell her how awesome Gipsy was the night before and we make a silly video that doesn’t even make sense and we tell Selinda that we are best friends and there is a moment and the sun peeks into the car window and grins.
We are obnoxious in the casino, all the way up the escalator until we walk into the VIP line for the show and I ask for a table rather than chairs. I am already calling everyone ‘Baby’, even the person who takes our tickets. I am informed that I must provide a gratuity to receive one of the gangster booths, but she won’t say how much they consider a gratuity so I withdraw a largish bill out of my road kill purse and say ‘Baby, is this a gratuity?’ and Jake declares that it is his favorite moment of the entire weekend. We each claim a side of the U-shaped zebra print booth and proceed to drink very strong drinks and I kick off my Stuart Weitzmans and then we scream ourselves hoarse for the absolutely incredible drag performances. I think I want to have sex with the Madonna impersonator, but I don’t know if that would be gay or straight sex. The things we hold deep in our hearts while in Vegas. After the show, I slide out of the booth and onto the floor and J.Lo asks ‘Honey are you ok?’ and then when I am, asks where I got my skirt. Then I call David, who is at a business dinner at the Wynn, and accidentally call him Baby. But David is ok with that and tells me he will call me after he was done with dinner. I decide that he’s probably just being polite to me at this point and that I was just a ‘one flight stand’ so we walk out of the casino and Jake, who is also very tipsy but looks like he’s managing better because he’s not wearing strappy sandals, declares that we must go across the street and get one of the advertised cheap hotdogs. He orders while I drunk-dial Fu, then we attempt to eat $5 of really cheap, really bad food, including a hotdog that is so large I describe it as a ‘whale dong’. I can’t even get my mouth around it and must take side bites, which is saying a LOT. The nachos are completely inedible, which is just stupid because nachos are the cheapest food in the entire world. Taco Bell has delicious nachos that only cost 79 cents, so how could the $1.49 anonymous casino nachos be so completely awful? And we were drunk! Drunks will eat the worst crap food in the world! It boggles the mind.
Jake decides that he will walk to Treasure Island to see the sirens, but I, in my delicate state, declare ‘Fuck that, baby’ and jump into a cab. When I get to TI, the show has begun but they are full, so I jump back into a cab, find Jake and demand that he go back to the hotel, which looks very close but is really forty hundred drunken steps away in blistering heat. He falls asleep in the cab, to the point where the cabbie and I have a discussion that he has fallen asleep in the cab. He wakes up and insists that he was not asleep, then falls asleep in the lounge while we wait for some ginger ale. It is, by then, all of ten thirty and having extreme guilt that we peaked so quickly. We wander back up to the suites and are saying goodnight when I hear ‘Just Like Heaven’ play. David invites me to his party, so I change out of my crazy drag show outfit into something a little more classy. Jake begs off, so I wander downstairs and hear David call ‘Oh there she is, Weet darling!’ He leads me through Mandalay like a princess, up to the queue to get into the Foundation Room. A gorgeous girl who might be a model tells the bouncers to remove the ropes as we are VIPS, gives us special gold wrist bands, then she takes David’s hand, who takes my hand and together we parade past dozens of incredulous beautiful people who are trapped behind the ropes and who are not on the list and sadly do not have gold wrist bands. We get to the express elevator, where she explains to even more beautiful people that they will have to wait because we are VIPs and then brings us to our private room, where there are couches and pillows and soft lights and where we have our own bouncer in a black suit wearing an ear piece who asks me to give him a hug every time I pass him. The drinks are free in our private room and I chat up several hot posh British men who work for Jag Ewe Arr. Then David brings me out to the terrace where the entirety of Las Vegas spreads out beneath our feet and glitters like spilled diamonds.
So this is what it’s like to be a fucking rock star.
I wander back inside, give the now required hug to our main security man Jamal, then wander in to laugh and dance with Victoria, also from Jag Ewe Arr, whom I impress when I ask if her accent is West London. Then I comment on her fantastic halter top, a black number with an incredible gold sequined neckline, thinking that it was a great homage to Versace. She shrugs and says apologetically ‘Right, well, it’s a bit down-market, actually, it’s Versace.’ At that moment, I am wearing a top I got on clearance for $6, and my Naughty Monkey shoes. The only reason I even recognize the Versace style is from watching the Donatella skits on SNL, but it doesn’t matter, Victoria and I are soon dishing about how guys sometimes don’t expect girls to like sex and how weird we both think those girls who don’t like sex are. I am awash in incredible accents, between David’s rich Mediterranean and the varieties of Jag Ewe Arrs, and try extra hard to quell my Wiscaaaahnsin. Luckily, only people who have actually been to Wisconsin can recognize my particular subdued Wisconsin accent, so in this room, I’m pretty safe.
Our beautiful rail thin party planner comes in, exhausted, praising us for being her best party of the night, exclaiming that the hip hop party is ‘like a bacterial shower’. Victoria perks and soon the party planner is leading us through the secret VIP back hallway (so that the VIPs can get to the parties without being mobbed in the main club) and past the first rope into the party and then past the second crowd control rope, which they need to protect Michael Fucking Jordan, who is somewhere within the twenty by twenty area, but it’s so crowded with so many gorgeous tall people that I can’t even see him. We are dancing with the VIPs of the VIPs, right up against the turn table, and the people on the other side are looking at us strangely. I have no idea how to dance hip-hop but David and Victoria and I manage to blend in. I am not a beautiful thin person, so they assume that I must be powerful. I see a girl whom I swear is Nicole Ritchie. I’m certain that mine are the only real breasts in the room because they are the only ones that are moving.
We eventually agree with the party planner that we’re probably going to catch hepatitis if we stay much longer, so we weave back out through the variety of velvet ropes and then back through the club into our own tasteful demure VIP room, where John, all in black, experiments with drink concoctions. When I declare one a success, he names it The Foundation and we sip them until it is 2 am and I realize that I must really go and sleep if I am going to be worth anything in the morning. David gives me kiss kiss kiss and then I air kiss Victoria, one last hug to Jamal who gives me a giant squeeze and says ‘You be good, girl. Be as good as you look.’ Ok then. I glide through the shiny sophisticated halls of my gorgeous hotel, then stop at the restaurant and ask them to make me a milk shake, because I have had an upset stomach ever since the Mega Jumbo Dog and the Red Bull and orange juice in The Foundation drink are giving me heartburn. It is then that I decide this is pure luxury. Not partying like rock stars or with athletic legends or having a man with broad shoulders protect you from the people in a gorgeous club. It’s having exactly what you want, exactly when you need it. And when I needed it, I got the world’s best vanilla milkshake, complete with a dollop of whipped cream and a cherry. Lovely. I take a quick shower, then jump into bed, dreaming about glittering velvet cities of baked earth decorated with drag queens. It is a very good dream.
In the morning, I swim laps in the giant tub, get dressed and throw everything messily into my bags. We have breakfast in THECafe, where I have a quintessential lobster, asparagus and brie omelet, which is early morning perfection. We check our bags with the valet then took a cab to the mall, where we get Starbucks, check out the Philosophy line, and fulfill the obligatory groans about leaving already. Then I shop for shoes. I am dawdling as much as possible but then it is fairly obvious that I should probably be in a cab that very minute on my way to the airport. We hail a cabbie, who tells us about how much money his wife spends in LA and gets nothing for him, but we grow quiet, not really wanting to politely laugh at his inane story, not really willing to participate in this charade. He tapers off after realizing his audience is mentally elsewhere, trying to absorb the fact that our two day press junket is now over.
When we get to THEhotel, Jake suggests that we get coffee and actually try the pineapple upside down cake that we’ve both been eyeing the entire time. The forkfuls of yellow sponge count down the remaining minute and as so is difficult to enjoy through the maudlin mood. I make a cherry joke and it’s bittersweet at best. As much as I love spending time with my faraway friends, I dread the good-bye days. He walks me to the cab line and we promise to do this again, do this soon, not wait another forever. Then I am in a cab/ truck/ something or other, zipped once again to an airport that still smells like Cinnabon and fried electronics. I think about friendships. I am almost unbelievably fortunate. I watch the mountains in the distance and think about how sometimes in arid climates, things that are far away can look as though they are very close to you, as though you can reach out and touch them, but you can’t. And sometimes you close your eyes, reach out for them and discover that they are exactly where you expected them to be.
