The Road of Excess Leads to the Palace of Wisdom

By Pauly
Hollyweird, CA

The attractive lights flickered as you sped down the mountain and raced at 92mph towards the brute void. Perhaps, you glimpsed out the window of your plane with the intensity of a leering sexual deviant. The Luxor light captured your attention. The poignant beacon of promise was where the unreliable patron saints of gambling gathered. St. Coulda. St. Would. St. Shoulda. They all jeered at your unanswered prayers, yet you continued to worship them like a lazy sod.

Blurry images of the Strip reminded you of psychedelic versions of Crayola crayons. The incandescent lights are ominous, and some where under the muted glow, your fate silently awaits your arrival.

The reason that you go to Vegas instead of seeing the largest ball of twine is because Vegas offers up something no other place on the planet can deliver. You never know when it just might be your turn to get lucky and that's why you go for a longshot at living out your wildest dreams including the rush of a lifetime after you cashed out racks and racks of chips and required a thick-necked security guard to escort you from the cage because you feared that the local speed freaks will jump out from a row of Wheel of Fortune slots and jack your shit.

You don't go to Las Vegas to make love. You're there to fuck or get fucked. And if you spend too much time in the pits you get the gnarly rodgering of your life, except they're not gentle and never use KY.

What's your ultimate goal? To have an orgasm so intense that it woke up everyone on your floor. Even if you have to cheat a little bit or you prefer unorthodox avenues of sexual fulfillment such as hardcore bondage or role playing, you have to seek out those individuals in marginal forms of employment who cater to such unique palates. That's how you end up with the Thai sex slave from the massage parlor on Valley View, or the cheese-addicted street walker on Trop, or the frigid call girl that you called from the number on the card that the 5 foot tall illegal immigrant porn slappers shoved in your pocket when you walked past Casino Royale. Don't forget about the hardest working minxes in Las Vegas with sore crotches that flock to the various hooker bars.

My scatterbrained MTV generation happily digested nauseated jumpcuts of the glitzy and hipster side of Vegas. Hollywood brainwashed us. The myths of Sin City were hidden deep inside behind miles and miles of our shit-clogged intestines. The tantalizing lure of decadence quickly attacked our humility like a sleeper cell fulfilling a fatwah. It's a matter of time before your morals decay.

Rush in and rush out. Hit and run. Vegas quickies are recommended. Anything sustained will cause permanent brain damage as a decade of Las Vegas time turns East Coast intellectuals into bluthering space monkeys.

Implosions and expansions rule in the city while abandoned houses in foreclosure swept through the burbs like a case of the clap in a Budapest whorehouse. New strip malls hawking needless shit were sculpted out of stones extracted from mountains older than the souls of a million reincarnated generations. Yet they are mostly empty.

Miniature ghost towns as shallow symbols of commerce infest the landscape. While the skies above are invaded by shiny high rises that no one can afford to buy because everyone is broke in Las Vegas yet they continue to build because the available ones are gobbled up by Middle Eastern fat cats who sleep on piles and piles of cash due to our morbid addiction to oil and opulence.

That embarrassing reality is a tragic reminder that we failed to evolve. I wonder what could have been in our glorious nation? Yet all of that momentum was pissed away on gaudy SUVs and watermelon tits and my pampered generation of party crashers are nothing more than a morass of used car salesmen and fame whores trying to get one last high before the soiree is over.

Last call. Better make mine a triple. Shit, just give me the whole bottle.

I can't stop thinking about Ayn Rand's crumbling society in Atlas Shrugged. System overload. Every few weeks another construction worker dies on the clock and another ghost roams the Strip ready to haunt the next wave of looters and moochers.

Those voices in your head? They're not subliminal messages pumped out through the casinos. No, they are real voices from the beyond. The Las Vegas valley is ripe with tortured ghosts. The taunt you and tease you. I run into the gambling demons in the worst places like the precise moment that I want to leave my Pai Gow table, yet my good senses suffer a massive seizure and I'm paralyzed by the gobs of greed that violently pump through my bloodstream as the sensible part of me curls up into a ball.

I won't ask you to step inside because I have sold everything that's worth seeing. After a while, all those hostile thoughts that spilled out of my head left a hole that can't be plugged. Although I wanted it bad, you wanted more.

Even when I suggested that you leave, the warning was ignored and you stuck around to see what became of us. Me and the lights. I frolicked. I conquered. I stumbled. I crashed hard. As much as the missteps ripped you apart like shrapnel, the worthless swill also soothed you like a lick of ice cream on a boiling summer day that melted the roof of your mouth.

I already sent a message out to the spirits. Prepare for my arrival.


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