We drive through the desert highways millions of miles below one of the most beautiful star-filled skies I've ever seen. We stare silently out our windows, our eyes heaven-sent, time and space a far memory of another reality, fingers crossed for an alien hitchhiker on the side of the road.
As we start to see Vegas, I'm surprised to see even more lights on land than up above and can't help but lose a sense of connection to the Earth but focus on embracing the world of slot machines, hookers and degenerate gamblers.
We check into Monte Carlo and make our way along the strip in search of food not outrageously out of our budgets. I buy a $10 grilled cheese and make the economical decision to pass on the $12 whiskey my body craves.
The next morning I decide to wander the strip on my own and jump in and out of art galleries, shops and kiosks, mostly just incredibly over-stimulated. This city is an abyss of distractions for the Attention Deficit Disordered mind, my eyes constantly darting from lights to cleavage to bum to slot machine to lights.
I head back to the hotel after purchasing a sixer of Pacifico, feeling like my soul has been slightly raped by the city of sin, even during the daylight hours. Jack and I head down to the slots that he hit up solo until 7 a.m. the night before.
He teaches me the ways of the slots and I soon find myself loving sticking my dollar bills in the slot, only to watch some numbers move around on the screen, telling me it's slowly taking my money, and repeat the process. Maybe it was the free double Jack & Cokes that make me feel a false sense of accomplishment.
While Jack and I are being trained in the way of the degenerate gambler, Ben and Mark are at the Chicken Ranch to film. A trashier version of the infamous Bunny Ranch, the Chicken Ranch is full of STD-free hookers at your disposal. Because if you're going to lose any sense of pride, at least you know you wont go home with the clap.
That night I met Mama J out for dinner at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for margs and a plate of nachos 3 times bigger than our heads. While she's in town to sell wind chimes at a trade show, she serves also as a beacon of motherly wisdom for me and I leave her refreshed as ever to enter the testosterone posse that is our crew.
Mark's friend Tommy lives in the area and meets up with us at Monte Carlo. I'm grateful for his knowledge of cheap drink dispensaries on the strip and we head out. I get a little too drunk a little too fast and find myself going into my own world on the dance floor, a place I love to visit when it presents itself to me.
Rather than heading to the wedding chapel, we get some Vietnamese food at Pho King Long (ha). While an Asian chick is puking in the bathroom, the boys share more disturbing stories of true and false life events, attempting to make me lose my appetite. Or mind. I eat on regardless.
The next morning my Kung Pao Shrimp is a sassy little bitch and I spend a good part of the morning taking shots of PeptoBismol, hoping I don't poop myself.
We drive for a 19 hour straight journey into Oklahoma; our only stop being in Alberquerque, NM where we encounter a gay bar, multiple bums and crackheads, and one very good looking hooker.
A disheveled older woman wearing a midriff-baring T-shirt and baggy pants wants to ask Ben the meaning of life but we hightail it out of there, still hungry but content to know we are alive and disease-free.
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