I'm rubbing my eyes way too hard, so I stop walking and let my vision come into focus. I can feel humidity's serpent-like slither wash over me like a warm wave in a sea of piss -- and it very well may be, as I am 2 miles off the Strip, on a 98 degree night with thunderstorms staggering drunk, bleeding from my head, and suddenly aware of my dillema as I stammer towards the giant monolith in the distance. Like God's glow, the monolith calls out to me: MGM Grand.
Lightning. I take a few moments to gather myself and try to shake off the alcohol, and, despite not smoking pot in two years, the marijuana from the black man in the dance crowd with the joint. My thoughts are clearing up as I pick up my pace. Just as I remember the midget in the fez hat operating the elevator, my stoned laughter is cut short. First by my bleeding scalp, now dripping into my right eye, but then something to my right catches my gaze, then I hear it: a woman crying.
Normally I'd walk past. Normally I'd play dumb to the middle-aged woman bawling into her lap, sitting only three feet off the sidewalk. Normally I'd be that person. Normally I'd go back to my room and feel guilt and terrible awful feelings about it, and normally I'd never stop miles off the strip to shoot the breeze with a homeless person in fucking Las Vegas -- normal is far, far away.
I stand over the woman and take a long drag off my cigarette, suddenly feeling parched. She hasn't even noticed me yet, so in a dry, cackled voice I can hardly recognize as my own I lean down and pop the obvious inquiry: "What'sa matter?"
She's still bawling and still hasn't noticed me. Confusion sets in, and I ask again. Then, "Are you okay? Were you raped?" The fact I asked the last question sobers me up more.
She seems to notice my presence, not my voice, and slowly looks up. I try not to look shocked, or even surprised at her tattered and bruised face, but I can't help it. I can't tell if she's been beaten tonight or two weeks ago. She's missing a tooth -- no, teeth -- and I'm suddenly aware of what I have just walked into. Her snaggle-toothed scowl is the final step in sobering me up enough to be able to reason again, and as she throws her hands up to me in some sort of desperate plea (among random spitting, screaming "GIBBER-GABBER"s), I take in the full weight of my decision to stop.
I take two long steps back, and collect myself. She's still got her hands in the air, howling as if she's going to die. Maybe she is. Maybe she's in the middle of a fatal stroke, or a deadly aneurysm. Maybe the portion of her brain that enables you to beg for a fucking 911 call has been severed, and she is pleading to me to save her life. I grow wings... I begin to levitate...
You are here to save me, she tells me. You have been sent here by divine intervention to rescue me from the depths of this festering whore corpse. I will go with you. I will follow you wherever... you... go...
Time to keep moving.
The trauma passes as I hit the strip, some 30 very, very long minutes later. I head up the street towards the New York New York, as I know it is directly across the street from the MGM. A Russian man and his companion stops me and asks for a cigarette. I give him one, ask him where he's from. Moscow. I lie and tell him my family is Chechen, and I am returned with a shocked gaze from both of them. They seem at a loss of words, then the other one says, "Dobry dien!" I return the phrase, and continue walking. A few stoned giggles later, and my enjoyment is punished once more by more blood in my eyes -- both of them this time.
After our brief encounter, the lights around me catch my attention (after only fifteen fucking minutes of being engulfed by them), and suddenly I feel stoned. Very stoned. So bright, so vibrant. I am aware of my toxicity now, and I am beginning to enjoy it. I keep heading south, now with Planet Hollywood to my left, and cheesey light show is amazing. I smile, wipe the blood gathering on my forehead, keep walking... this is never going to end.
This is Vegas. This is never going to end, I think again. Then aloud, "this is never going... to end..."
... Benign ramblings.
A Bentley pulls up to the MGM as I head past the valet parking. Then a Lamborghini. Now a Mercedes, and the Mercedes seems strangely out of place. Almost impoverished in comparison. A man in a white suit exits the car. He lights a cigar, and waits for his supermodel female friend to exit the other side before shouting extremities at the valet guy.
Before I zone out into another dimension again, I quickly walk past this madness and suddenly I have teleported through the casino and into the gift shop, where I ask for a pack of Camel Filters. The woman asks me something, and I repeat my request. She's not budging, and I am starting to lose my patience.
"Camel... Filters."
"Sir..." she begins.
"Ca-mel! Fil-ters! That yellow and orange pac--"
"SIR!" she cuts me off with distinct urgency. I pause.
"Sir, your head is bleeding. Do you need a paramedic?"
Lightning. I take a few moments to gather myself and try to shake off the alcohol, and, despite not smoking pot in two years, the marijuana from the black man in the dance crowd with the joint. My thoughts are clearing up as I pick up my pace. Just as I remember the midget in the fez hat operating the elevator, my stoned laughter is cut short. First by my bleeding scalp, now dripping into my right eye, but then something to my right catches my gaze, then I hear it: a woman crying.
Normally I'd walk past. Normally I'd play dumb to the middle-aged woman bawling into her lap, sitting only three feet off the sidewalk. Normally I'd be that person. Normally I'd go back to my room and feel guilt and terrible awful feelings about it, and normally I'd never stop miles off the strip to shoot the breeze with a homeless person in fucking Las Vegas -- normal is far, far away.
I stand over the woman and take a long drag off my cigarette, suddenly feeling parched. She hasn't even noticed me yet, so in a dry, cackled voice I can hardly recognize as my own I lean down and pop the obvious inquiry: "What'sa matter?"
She's still bawling and still hasn't noticed me. Confusion sets in, and I ask again. Then, "Are you okay? Were you raped?" The fact I asked the last question sobers me up more.
She seems to notice my presence, not my voice, and slowly looks up. I try not to look shocked, or even surprised at her tattered and bruised face, but I can't help it. I can't tell if she's been beaten tonight or two weeks ago. She's missing a tooth -- no, teeth -- and I'm suddenly aware of what I have just walked into. Her snaggle-toothed scowl is the final step in sobering me up enough to be able to reason again, and as she throws her hands up to me in some sort of desperate plea (among random spitting, screaming "GIBBER-GABBER"s), I take in the full weight of my decision to stop.
I take two long steps back, and collect myself. She's still got her hands in the air, howling as if she's going to die. Maybe she is. Maybe she's in the middle of a fatal stroke, or a deadly aneurysm. Maybe the portion of her brain that enables you to beg for a fucking 911 call has been severed, and she is pleading to me to save her life. I grow wings... I begin to levitate...
You are here to save me, she tells me. You have been sent here by divine intervention to rescue me from the depths of this festering whore corpse. I will go with you. I will follow you wherever... you... go...
Time to keep moving.
The trauma passes as I hit the strip, some 30 very, very long minutes later. I head up the street towards the New York New York, as I know it is directly across the street from the MGM. A Russian man and his companion stops me and asks for a cigarette. I give him one, ask him where he's from. Moscow. I lie and tell him my family is Chechen, and I am returned with a shocked gaze from both of them. They seem at a loss of words, then the other one says, "Dobry dien!" I return the phrase, and continue walking. A few stoned giggles later, and my enjoyment is punished once more by more blood in my eyes -- both of them this time.
After our brief encounter, the lights around me catch my attention (after only fifteen fucking minutes of being engulfed by them), and suddenly I feel stoned. Very stoned. So bright, so vibrant. I am aware of my toxicity now, and I am beginning to enjoy it. I keep heading south, now with Planet Hollywood to my left, and cheesey light show is amazing. I smile, wipe the blood gathering on my forehead, keep walking... this is never going to end.
This is Vegas. This is never going to end, I think again. Then aloud, "this is never going... to end..."
... Benign ramblings.
A Bentley pulls up to the MGM as I head past the valet parking. Then a Lamborghini. Now a Mercedes, and the Mercedes seems strangely out of place. Almost impoverished in comparison. A man in a white suit exits the car. He lights a cigar, and waits for his supermodel female friend to exit the other side before shouting extremities at the valet guy.
Before I zone out into another dimension again, I quickly walk past this madness and suddenly I have teleported through the casino and into the gift shop, where I ask for a pack of Camel Filters. The woman asks me something, and I repeat my request. She's not budging, and I am starting to lose my patience.
"Camel... Filters."
"Sir..." she begins.
"Ca-mel! Fil-ters! That yellow and orange pac--"
"SIR!" she cuts me off with distinct urgency. I pause.
"Sir, your head is bleeding. Do you need a paramedic?"
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