Dtlv Where Is an Art Culture in Vegas That Isnt So Dark and Drug Infested

Thither is a tension in the crowd, a sizzling silence every bit words and cheers cutting short and all eyes focus on the same point, everyone holding their breath, every jaw and fist clenched like in the last moments before a fight, as if anybody is about to explode at once. More people are huddling effectually the tabular array at present, closer to the action, pushing against one another until there are no singled-out bodies anymore just rather a single compacted entity made of suits and cleavages and spilled spectacles, a wordless human being volcano set up to erupt under the wary watch of the floor muscle, the unabridged casino going silent as the bike spins and spins and spins.

"Black eleven," the croupier announces every bit the ball stops in a jolt.

And the volcano goes off.

A deafening weep of victory immediately surges from the crowd'south collective throat. Strangers shout at the tiptop of their lungs until their lungs are close out of air. You tin feel the rut existence released similar lava and undulating over the cheering people. You can feel it in the timeless nighttime – or is it day? – and in the vodka-infused breaths, as heads become lighter when the chips totaling more than $250,000 go counted and pushed toward the winner.

"Vegas, infant!" someone yells.

Welcome to the globe of loftier rollers.

The winner is Hari Keng Joo, a stubby Malaysian entrepreneur in his thirties. Keng Joo spends a calendar week in the gambling uppercase of the globe every twelvemonth. He was taught early that coin was to be spent. His partnerships in several venture upper-case letter firms never contradicted his habits so far. "I'k only living the life, man," he says, smiling and sipping on a glass of Macallan 1950 unmarried malt whisky ordered from the MGM Grand's reserve.

"I dearest to be here," he adds. "It's a special identify. Dubai is dainty, but Vegas is the real deal, you lot know? It'due south like a playground for me!"

Like most of the twoscore million visitors who come to Las Vegas every twelvemonth, Keng Joo is hither to unwind and take a chance. The resort he stays at is a cluster of curved glass buildings rise from the Strip in a silvery flare. The personnel from this iv,000-room hotel know him well. He has a reputation for being an extremely generous tipper and for throwing legendary multi-twenty-four hours events. "He parties hard," explains his personal concierge host, who wished to remain anonymous in guild to protect his job. "I time we had to hire a whole team to clean his suite. The place was trashed to oblivion. Like, overturned mattresses, upside-downwards chairs, and glitter, glitter everywhere. God, the glitter."

Keng Joo always books the aforementioned 2,000-foursquare-pes, $5,000-a-night penthouse on the top flooring. The management is happy to oblige, regularly comping him free services like a private drome hangar for his Gulfstream G450, or a Bentley Mulsanne every time he needs to become out. This morn, Keng Joo was treated to an assortment of Hermès shaving creams and foams in his private barber room. He relaxed in his sauna for an 60 minutes before putting on a grey Armani suit from the Wintertime 2022 collection, purchased directly from Giorgio Armani himself in Milan.

Simply for now, Keng Joo is celebrating his big win and doing awkward dance moves on the gaming floor. I gave up counting his losses later the offset million, but his luck at roulette probably has him slightly alee at last. "I don't care if I win. Information technology's all most the thrill," he says joyfully. "Stay close, I'll prove you effectually."

I follow him to some other high limit room, where a fellow member of his entourage is playing blackjack. Impervious to the dealer'southward cues to stand on a difficult 17, his friend forfeits about four grand in the span of a minute.

Keng Joo suggests nosotros get to the nearby Planet Hollywood for a drink, which everyone agrees is a great thought.

He doesn't even remember about cashing out.

The heaven is vivid orangish from the setting lord's day. I cannot say how long I was within the casino. Sewer stench has replaced the scent of common cold tobacco. Older people amble leisurely on the shiny sidewalks, catching strip-club flyers given out by canvassers.

"Allow'southward do shots!" Keng Joo declares at Planet Hollywood's bar, brandishing $100 bills to get the bartender's attending.

Bruce Willis is in the lounge backside us, gently explaining to a college girl how to play craps. The daughter's eyes are locked onto him and she laughs nervously every time he shows her something new.

On the seat near mine, Ralph Molina, a hedge fund manager and an investor in some of Keng Joo's ventures, is debating another invitee on the value of entertainment.

"Our entire civilisation relies on information technology," he concludes. "We're a nation whose success is based on how hard we party. You lot thought it was freedom and family values? No, human. All nosotros want is more parties. Nosotros gobble on cocky-gratification similar dogs on their own shit."

We shortly head back to Keng Joo'due south exclusive pool party where he talks in Malay with a short man in a tuxedo who I understand is his younger brother. The two of them are eating Wagyu sirloins the casino's chef imports from the Liverpool Plains in Australia. A magnum of Champagne is opened at their side.

By the puddle, an attractive UCLA biomedical physics student tries explaining circular dichroism and angular momentum to a perplexed man in swim shorts. An older woman in a flashy bikini complains that a local lady kicked her out of a blackjack game because she thought she was ruining the flow of cards. A human being in swim shorts brags about the costly signature cocktails he had at the XS gild.

"I drove a Lamborghini Gallardo today," says a fraternity guy.

"I went for a helicopter bout of the Thousand Canyon," says another.

"I killed it at poker and lost everything at baccarat," replies a tertiary.

The h2o smells like diluted booze.

The night is young.

When the music gets too loud, I walk to the front desk to see Paul, a hotel employee I've been talking to for a few weeks. From waiter to grouping manager to special events assistant, Paul has worked nigh every entry-level job at the resort. He knows a lot near the casino's inner workings and asked that his full proper noun not appear in this story for fright of reprisal from his employer.

This final day has been a scattering for Paul. A couple was caught half-naked in an elevator. An elderly gambler soiled himself while playing slots and flung feces at a group of bachelorettes. A invitee wouldn't believe snorting cocaine in the reception area was illegal. A footling-person prostitute was taken out by the police later on performing oral sex on a customer in a public bathroom.

"When it goes incorrect, it goes really wrong," he says. "I tin have entire weeks going without a hitch, and and so blast, shit happens all at in one case. At least information technology makes for skillful stories!"

Paul recounts an upshot from a month before, when a visitor from Sacramento was establish dead in his room after losing his entire 401k, one cease of his necktie strung around his neck and the other attached to his bathroom's door knob.

"Management obviously wants us to handle this kind of situation actually advisedly, but sometimes it'southward hard to proceed it under the radar. You can't pretend the dead grandma sitting at the buffet with crab legs coming out of her mouth doesn't exist. Nosotros actually have to bargain with decease pretty oft. Information technology'due south like…anywhere else, I guess, just crazier."

He describes how specialized cleaners are sometimes called to sanitize a room from blood and other bodily fluids, at times completely repainting or refurnishing it before the next three p.1000. bank check-in. He mentions the thefts and the cheating that casinos have to deal with on a regular basis – up to 34 percent of gambling-related crimes beingness committed past staff. He tells me about the fragrances pumped through the air conditioning systems to cover the smoke aroma. He depicts the "dildo bins" discarded every year during spring break when customers leave personal items backside after a few nights of kinky adventures. He brings up the sixty thousand pounds of shrimp eaten every day in the urban center. "It's a shit show, merely it'southward a fun shit show," he jokes.

After a few moments, a man from Keng Joo'southward party comes up and slips a folded $50 bill on the counter. "Tin you hook me upwardly?" he asks nonchalantly.

Paul nods, swiftly puts the nib in his pocket and writes down the man's room number. "Twenty minutes," he replies.

The man nods and walks back to the elevators as if nothing happened. Paul informs a colleague he'll take a smoke pause, then heads to the garage where his car is parked with a small corporeality of illegal substances inside.

"Vegas, baby," he winks at me when he comes back, carrying a CVS plastic bag filled with what I imagine to be MDMA and other society drugs.

Keng Joo texts me to say that the party volition continue in his penthouse. "U dont want to miss this."

There is something almost marble bathrooms and haute couture silk cushions that insulates you from the remainder of the world. From carefully selected flower bouquets to timeless Haviland Limoges porcelain tableware, everything in a luxury suite suggests instant fulfillment and blindness to the mutual struggles happening fifty stories below.

No broken cars here, no belatedly phone calls from abusive boyfriends, no expensive power bills to worry about. Just the lush quietness of opulence.

"Allow's go this started!" Keng Joo exclaims, Taylor Swift's "New Romantics" playing loudly on the Harman Kardon sound arrangement. People dance and clap, with the city glowing through the flooring-to-ceiling windows behind them.

I notice the man who spoke to Paul in the lobby, holding a CVS plastic handbag and talking to a busty blonde in a black dress.

A sleeping room door opens, displaying a mass of tangled figures lumped together in the one-half-lite. I see a big adult female on all fours, surrounded past men. I see faces buried in slits and crevices, twisted in lustful rictuses, with tongues licking and fingers exploring wide-open bodies.

Keng Joo has downed an ecstasy pill and is now French-kissing a random girl on a burrow while taking a selfie. Hors d'oeuvres are scattered on the floor.

The party is in full swing.

I look for a familiar face up and see Hazel, a 25-year-old escort who Paul introduced me to earlier in the week. Hazel doesn't look dissimilar than any other woman around. No suggestive miniskirt, no overloaded makeup. But a girl adjacent door with a friendly smile and lovely brown eyes.

The personal entertainer agency she works for executes thorough background checks of her clients to ensure her transactions are secure. Hazel says it's well worth the cut the agency takes. Prophylactic and anonymity are extremely of import to her, which is why she uses her escort alias instead of her nascence name. Her company tin toll upwards of $2,000 a night, although parties and special requests are more expensive. She says most clients simply desire good-looking company and don't ask for more than than flirting.

"My clients are like boyfriends," she explains. "There has to be some chemistry, otherwise nothing happens. I merely take sex when I want to anyways. Most of the time it's only a affair of doing conversation and being a nice person. I actually enjoy it."

I ask her nigh how she came to do this for a living.

"I was bankrupt and figured why non? I worked every bit a stripper for a while, and I speedily discovered I could make a whole lot more cash past myself. I get to meet interesting people from all over the world. I become to do stuff I wouldn't have dreamed of. Nosotros all need dreams. The thing is, hustling is still illegal in Clark County so I accept to be cautious. Street hookers have it worse, though… It's easier for me. I don't have to work in the open up and risk getting busted by surreptitious cops."

This night, Hazel has agreed to participate in group sex with some of the party's guests. She offers me to follow her to the bedroom I caught a glimpse of before. "It'll be interesting," she assures me, merely requesting I go on a low profile when I'thou with her.

In the sleeping accommodation, a gray-haired human being approaches Hazel as she gets naked. The man calls himself John and is a regular customer.

"He's a sweetheart on the surface but a real creep in bed," Hazel will later say. John is married with two children and lives in California where he works as a sales VP. He's confident plenty to talk about ecological roof gardens and solar energy in the midst of an orgy, giving appreciative looks toward a couple playing with a translucent vibrator.

"Me and my wife are trying this open matrimony thing," John explains. "I know what this means. I just don't have the time for a divorce. It'south not only nearly pleasure. Information technology's most control. About revenge. About getting what you want when you want. This is what they don't tell you about adulterous, or partying, or gambling. They tell you nearly the guilt, only the truth is that sinning feels proficient. I wasn't tricked or forced to cheat on my wife. I simply went from 'this feels great' to 'why don't I feel bad?' to 'why tin can't I feel bad?'"

John and Hazel soon begin kissing and fumbling with each other. I stay in a corner, wishing my tequila glass was nonetheless full, my stomach twisted in discomfort.

Legs are knotting and hands are grabbing. Knees are scraping on the carpet.

"I like a daughter who knows how to handle pain," John says as he pulls Hazel's hair downwards to make her squat in front of him.

I watch when she unzips him and puts him in her oral fissure. I watch when he rams into her, making her bound forward at each thrust of his hips. I listen to the wet noises and to the sound of the mankind bouncing and shaking.

And she never quits grinning.

In that location is something sad and sick about him that Hazel sure knows how to handle better than I do, because I have to close my eyes when his teeth exit a neckband of bite marks on her neck, pushing deeper and deeper and making her red and sore.

"Suck your thumb," he orders.

It's about command.

I scout her close her lips around her pollex, letting out a long, grateful moan every bit John finishes on her face up and down her chin.

She never quits smile.

"What happens in Vegas…" she says.

Virtually revenge.

"You look like shit," Paul says when I arrive at the front desk-bound a little past ii a.yard. There are still lots of people in the lobby. I couldn't sleep for the globe.

Paul needs to get a fresh stockpile of drugs. He sold virtually everything he had in the last three hours. "I'thousand e'er too short when this guy's in town," he says about Keng Joo. "Whatever I take, it'due south never plenty."

His supplier is already en route to selection him up and bring him to a North Las Vegas stash firm where he will make full with new stock.

Nosotros head to the self-parking garage where we promptly hop into an old white Pontiac sedan waiting in a dark corner I assume is not monitored by surveillance teams. The homo behind the cycle looks upset upon seeing me.

"He'southward cool," Paul reassures him.

"Skittles and water, huh?" the man chuckles after a moment of silence, alluding to the MDMA and GHB Paul asked him an hour earlier.

The man, a hairless heavyset guy named Angelo, says he is part of a local Norteño faction run by one of his cousins. The gang belongs to the Mexican cartel Nuestra Familia and specializes in drug distribution, prostitution and car theft, supplying a wide range of small-scale-fourth dimension dealers like Paul.

Ranked in the peak ten of the nation'due south most dangerous neighborhoods in 2010 with a trigger-happy crime charge per unit 112 percent higher than the national boilerplate, North Las Vegas is no stranger to such criminal organizations, remaining an important drugs transshipment point in spite of law enforcement's efforts.

Angelo does the speed limit all the way to the stash firm, his machine growling in the desert night. Virtually of the lots are vacant here, with churches and prayer centers every two hundred yards, scattered betwixt cinderblock houses and parted-out cars.

"Tourists usually exercise uppers," he explains. "Kids do spice [synthetic cannabis] and bath salts [synthetic cathinone]. Crack is almost merely for natives. Black tar [a crude, unrefined opioid] and meth are more in demand now because they're so cheap. People go fucked up on that shit, human."

Balzar Avenue is far from the neon lights and the shows. No crowds in the streets, here. No bachelorette parties, no reality-TV celebrities in custom tailored suits, no sparkling wine tastings. Simply broad streets with no lights on past night and no shade after sunrise.

The stash house is nondescript, surrounded by wire fencing like most in the area. Cemetery plastic flowers are scattered in the dirt. At that place is a minivan demote in the forepart yard. A dog barks, his chain lashing and clanking.

Angelo invites u.s. to come in. The place is dimly lit and smells like pot smoke. People are crashed on futons, whispering about united states. Two guys are playing Halo on an 85-inch flatscreen, elimination Ruddy Bull cans one after some other.

Virgin Mary statues are neatly displayed on a shelf and crucifixes are nailed to every wall. A motion picture of Christ is hanging in the kitchen where microwaved leftovers pile up in a trashcan. There is a gun on a counter.

I give Paul a worried look to which he responds with a shrug.

Angelo pops up from the kitchen with several bags of colorful pills. I recognize Ambien, Hydrocodone and Ritalin, all regularly used in pharm parties – when teens invite friends to ingest whatever they discover in their medicine cabinets. "Last shipment got busted," he says. "I'll have more next month."

Angelo lights a joint with Paul and explains why he's a Norteño. "I do what I practice considering that's how family works, you know what I'm saying? You gotta help your kind no matter what. It'southward like animals. Don't have no choice."

He says the gang protected him when he was sent to the Southern Nevada Correctional Center on charges of bombardment and robbery, after getting caught on camera attacking a gas station attendant. He says five years behind bars was the toll to pay to notice a purpose.

Despite his robust sales, Angelo still lives in a standard-size firm well-nigh the Air Force base, and drives a shitty Pontiac to deliver his produce to his dealers and wholesale purchasers. "I don't get to keep everything I brand," he explains laughing. "Some part of the money goes to La Eñe [the cartel]. Another goes to my cousin and his associates. It's like any other business."

Angelo decides I need to see 1 of his cousin's girls, a thirty-twelvemonth-erstwhile laborer smuggled from the Mexican state of Chiapas whom he keeps inside the business firm and uses as he pleases in exchange for fake documents and the promise of a meliorate life. He tells me that her food, clothing and medication are all taken intendance of, and that while she mainly does chores like cleaning and laundry, she's sometimes asked to provide sexual favors to guests or partners.

Man trafficking through the Mexican-U.Due south. border is estimated to affect nigh 18,000 people annually, of which many will be exploited in prostitution rings or as modern-day slaves until they've repaid the "coyotes" who help them cross. Often they wind up in Las Vegas.

"Promise you're prepare for this, man. Te llegar a conocer el diablo this night," says Angelo, showing me the way to a room in the back of the house before immediately returning to his sofa with Paul. "You become to run into the devil tonight."

The devil lives in a red, cherry-red room in which h2o from a bubbling fish tank reflects on the walls similar the marbled veins of a dead body. A fly is stuck on a tape ribbon dangling from a fan.

The devil appears, and it'south a tall and thin adult female with scars on her stomach and high heels that sink into the rug at every step.

She disregards me and puts tar heroin into a square slice of tin foil, dull side upwards, lighting a flame underneath the foil and chasing the heroin until it burns liquid, using a pen tube equally a harbinger to inhale the smoke ascent from the oily substance.

She speaks in tongues on the unmade bed, reciting staccato syllables in a soaked trance, half-naked in the one-half-light, moving rhythmically, with growly sounds coming out of her mouth as she invites invisible men to quench their desires with her body.

She notices my wait and smiles, and all I want is to get out of hither and never come dorsum. "No estoy aquí," she tells me. "No estoy aquí," with a grinning widening on her face. "I am not here."

I swear I tin run into the lights flicker.

I look until she is asleep to leave. I try not to look over my shoulder when I get out of her scarlet, red room.

I don't see Angelo once more that night.

The shadows are already growing long on the ceiling when Paul decides it'southward time for us to get. I chug an energy drink and follow him to the nearest street corner where we look for an Uber to pick the states up. The morning time is cool and dry out.

The sky is already too bright.

The ix a.g. sun is called-for my bloodshot optics. I'm with Hazel, who is helping Deliah Brown – the big adult female I briefly saw at Keng Joo'southward sex political party final night – across the valet expanse behind the hotel. Deliah works the streets for a Norteño branch similar to the ane Angelo is function of. Dissimilar Hazel, she's not used to participating in private events.

"Men want pretty skinny girls," she says. "I ain't none of that," she declares, pinching a lump of her stomach fat. "Thankfully, everybody got a fetish present!"

Walking visibly hurts her. She doesn't say a discussion when Hazel tells her we will accompany her back to her place and make sure she'south okay.

Brownish used to live with her ex-beau and his abuela in Naked Urban center, a once-seedy area of depression-rent apartments in the shade of the Stratosphere Tower. She says she sneaked away when her ex started abusing her. Soon she had to plough tricks for a gang and then she could accept coin and protection.

Today, she lives in a storm drainage tunnel, by the train tracks most Dean Martin Drive, a stone's throw from the Rio Casino.

The tunnels, built in the 1970s to control runoff and protect the developing city from flash floods, are home to virtually 5 hundred homeless people, making them one of the largest skid rows in the U.Due south.

"The population downward there varies quite a bit," journalist and abet for the homeless Matthew O'Brien explained in a 2011 Huffington Post interview. "Y'all have some teenagers living and hanging out, center-aged men and Vietnam veterans. And people who came out to Vegas looking for the American dream … Instead, they're living below the hotels and casinos that lured them out here in the first place."

"My house is over in that location," Brown says later on Hazel parts ways. "It'southward very dark only it's okay," she continues, leading me to the tunnel'due south archway. "Information technology'due south safety, don't worry."

The iii hundred miles of hugger-mugger channels stay cool and dry nigh of the time, proving a relatively sound identify to stay until information technology rains.

"You acquire to watch the atmospheric condition," explains Neil Whitfield, a forty-year-onetime recovering alcoholic living down here, near Brown. "Floods are rare, but when at that place's a storm coming, yous make a run for it. There'southward no time to fool around. The water level will rise very fast in a affair of minutes," he adds, raising his hand to the tunnel'due south ceiling. "First year I was here, I waited too long and got out paddling on a mattress. People die every year. They become swept and go carried miles away from here. So yous gotta be ready."

But like the communities living in New York's Freedom Tunnel, the residents of the Las Vegas flood drains try to wait after each other. Dozens ended up hither afterward losing their backdrop during the 2008 economical crisis, when the city had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. They know the municipality won't aid, going as far equally sending them across land lines to get rid of them. "Information technology's not platonic having a poverty trouble when you're the Entertainment Majuscule of the Earth," Whitfield notes.

Nosotros crouch in the dark, going farther underground. Whitfield warns me about scorpions. The halo of our flashlight illuminates graffiti on the walls. Grocery carts and plastic chairs betoken the remnants of old camps.

"That's Mike's place," Whitfield says, stopping in front of a bluish tarp hanging from a article of clothing line. "Mike!" he calls, a scrawny homo in a blue hoodie actualization from backside the tarp, a tablet calculator in his hands.

Mike Mullen is a rod buster by trade, responsible for the installation of rebar on construction sites. The viii,400 jobs added past structure companies in 2022 benefitted him for a few months until he was let go because of lack of work.

Both Mullen and Whitfield adventure in local casinos to make ends meet and enjoy free treats. They know which slot machines accept the all-time pay-off and the lowest variances. They know where to look for unused credits, which they phone call "silvery mining." They know which off-strip blackjack tables are the best.

"Machines at the El Cortez return 92 per centum on average," Mullen explains, showing me a tablet app he uses to write advanced formulas. "I use the standard deviation strategy to summate which spin will be winning. Information technology's not that complicated. It's a lot like counting cards, except information technology doesn't get you kicked out of the casino," he continues, stressing that blackjack, craps and video poker are even so statistically the all-time ways to limit the house's edge on the game.

The ii men reminisce about a common friend who died of an overdose in the tunnels underneath the Mandalay Bay the twelvemonth before. They poke fun at the brightly colored sweaters he wore and at his constant bickering with his imaginary dog.

Whitfield then brings me to his house, a little deeper down the tunnel. Hoarded items are piled up neatly in what he describes as his living room. All his holding are set up to be moved in case of a sudden overflowing. He owns a toaster oven and an electric libation that he plugs into a portable power pack to cook and refrigerate his nutrient. His floor is covered with rugs. Battery-powered LEDs permit him to read whenever he wants.

"That'southward non much, but I'm kinda proud of information technology," he says.

It's belatedly when we sally to the fresh air. We join a group of tunnel residents sharing dinner together in the centre of the spillway where floodwater would afterward rush through during a historic spring tempest. Deliah Chocolate-brown is here, equally is Christine Alvarez, Mullen'southward sweetheart, fresh out of rehab, and a couple other people I haven't met yet. Nosotros all sit down in a circle and enjoy Chinese take-out.

"I slept all 24-hour interval," says a guy with a blood-red baseball game cap.

"I hustled a grouping of college girls for booze," says another.

"I got punched in the face by a tourist," says a third, pointing to a bad trample on the top of his cheek.

We talk about how hard life can be for those in the margins of social club.

"I simply wish regular people would meet we are not second-rate citizens," explains Alvarez, a spirited adult female wearing imitation sapphire earrings. "If they saw what we do every day to survive, if they saw how strong we are, they would understand. A lot of us are more than than decent folks."

Someone applauds, nodding in approval.

"I know who I am," Alvarez adds, looking straight at me. "And I know there's a place for me somewhere. I know information technology."

Whitfield lets out a chuckle.

"Virtually people only see what they want to see," he replies. "They don't wanna be reminded of the earth around them. You can say they're selfish, or greedy, simply it's hard to arraign them. I mean…why would they be concerned past us?"

"In life, there's the stuff y'all encounter, and so there's the stuff yous don't," he concludes. "And sometimes it'southward better not to see everything."

We both stand up up and get walk in the nighttime. A giant billboard illuminates the nearby highway overpass. Dirt dust rises in spirals at each stride nosotros make.

Whitfield tells me how he establish God in the desert 3 years ago and how it gave his life a new spark. He tells me how unlike silence in the desert is, how information technology doesn't resemble anything else – tight and dumbo, a constant stream of void charged with a lingering feel of eternity, a purgatory stillness cleaning all and everything to the bone.

He tells me how sometimes, if the wind is right, he can hear the globe exhale. He shows me the crucifix tattooed on his neck.

"As you go older, you lot learn things, you know," he says. "You learn to allow go. Nix you tin can do will modify anything anyway. You learn to accept that."

The current of air is warm and comforting in the suburban night.

When nosotros come back from our walk, I come across Dark-brown sitting nonetheless near her blanket and her rolling suitcase, looking at the sky.

"Can't see no stars," she says. "City's as well bright."

Traffic goes by on the highway, the cars rushing through in a headlights blaze, leaving blurry ruby trails behind them.

Brown is comatose from the antidepressants she took earlier. Her words are slow and slurred. Her eyes are glassy, her face blank. "This ain't real," she says, yet looking at the fake daylight radiating in the stricken sky.

Back on the Strip, a human in a Homer Simpson costume hands me a coupon for a gratis drink. He flips me the bird when I say I'chiliad already drunk enough.

The shower I accept isn't enough to remove the clay and the slime I feel covered with. My shampoo smells similar wet forest and herbs.

I call back of Hazel'due south words: "Nosotros all demand dreams."

It'south a simple thing, really. And like all unproblematic things, it's also very complicated.

Las Vegas doesn't want for fancy things, merely its darker and bleaker side is a stark reminder that beingness homo never was a clean business to begin with, and will e'er involve failing and losing, dealing with mud and blood and spit, and decomposable into bones and teeth until we are one with dust.

A delusion built on a dream congenital on impossible hopes, Vegas is a confession that being man, that being live, is a messy predicament we've grown to dislike. A shameful event we cannot wait to supersede with artificial cleanliness and pretend optimism.

"I gotcha, baby!" Keng Joo says to a friend, giving him a small handful of rainbow pills as we lie in a cabana by the side of the corded-off hotel pool. "That shit is awesome, trust me. You'll never try anything else after that!"

I picture show Paul soon getting a text message from someone in Keng Joo's entourage, asking for more than drugs. I picture him leaving his front desk-bound for a quick trip to the parking lot. I picture Angelo in his North Las Vegas stash house, stroking the devil's hair in a ruddy, red room while 1 of his men is selling an ounce of something somewhere in a seedy office of town, perhaps by the throughway, the same pike visitors will apply to enter and exit the limits of Paradise, without cease.

I picture Keng Joo and his guests dancing and splashing in the fluorescent water, sipping on extravagant drinks, the men eyeing bikini girls and the women yielding to chemical sex in lavish suites, gambling for more glitz and more than brand names, all these people lusting, peckish for more, begging for life to come back and whisper one terminal time to their ears, "I am not hither."

* * *

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Source: https://narratively.com/48-hours-on-the-dark-side-of-las-vegas/

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