I will need to sequester a small portion of my pension check for playing the slots as I enjoyed losing $20 here, $20 there. In fact, I found it kind of meditatively soothing as I won a little and then lost it, or bells went off and I hit a small “fortune” and then I lost it. Many a time I came close to winning a hundred or two hundred, but close is not good enough. I noticed that it was not the idea of winning so much that pleasantly placated me. It was something else. It was the chance that was alluring, not the winning necessarily. Around me, young and old, haggard and overweight, smoking cigars and cigarettes, focused intently, mesmerized by the designs on the spinning rollers. I just got the kick of spinning the top across the ground, having pulled the cord to give it momentum. It was the throw against fate and not the reward that appealed to me. I beamed at coming close at winning while others gyrated, spoke to the machine, moving their hands in demonstrable gestures to the gods of chance.
Of course, what comes with playing is dreaming, of how money might be spent — on a dinner for one’s friends, on buying new carpeting, of decorating the new house, rarely of saving but of being a spendthrift. The dreaming compels the continuation of playing. The sirens of random chance, of good fortune, of winning are the susurrance within the casino. And as the 20 dollar bills are slipped into the serpent’s thin slot, as automatied sounds record its digestion and sounds cue you into beginning the game one has to mentally estimate how much one can avoid to lose. I noticed, obviously, that amount varies depending on how stimulated I felt — or how sparkling was the game with its ups and downs. So I managed to spend more than I needed to, leaving worrying about how much I could afford by the side. Ah, as the wit said, do not avoid temptation but enter it and be done with it. I concur. I felt rather free dipping into my money, believing in the illusion that I could replenish my wealth down the line. Well, yes and no, to that. What I can share is that I enjoyed myself without the stress to win but the excitement of cosmically watching as I lost money without a care in the world. Like sex, one should not struggle so hard in the giving but relent and allow oneself to take in.
I have made the environmental decision that I prefer trees and ornamentation to the hard surfaces of the desert lands. The major highway (215) in Vegas strikes me as relatively new, but it is stark and barren. It has not been adorned with trees or shrubs. And in the saving of water, it is stark if not a stainless razor slash through the town, a Sweeney Todd cut. Yet the town is planning to make a man-made lake, so that on the one hand we have that old human attribute of rational duplicity, fooling ourselves on one hand and arguing with the other that this is a natural good to have. The split shows in the overbuilding of Vegas. After all, how many pedicure stores do you need or coffee shops? The jewels on the ring are the casino/hotels of the strip surrounded by cheaply cut smaller chips, of an inpure quality. It is a sad condemnation I feel, for this is what human beings do to their surroundings. We despoil and at the same time raise high great buildings and wonders. From a lousy bagel at a lousy Einstein’s to a great steak at Hanks, from a terrific giro at the Greek Bistro to a terrible omelet at the Sunset Casino hotel, from the beautifully manicured lawns and well-attended lanes and streets of Green Valley Ranch as well as the thoughfully planned out District, to the disarray of neighboring communities, chocked full of strip malls, perseverating the same stores over and over until one feels like throwing up at a curb.
I cannot make acute observations about the inhabitants for they strike me as polyglot, migrational, and in that is the hope that they may be more liberal in their views. The mix is appealing to my eye. It doesn’t take too long for my conditioned self to evaluate and record what kind of men and women are attractive to my social sense. We all, I know I do, eventually become automatic in our instantaneously sense of what we find pleasing and admirable and what we feel bigoted and prejudiced against. So I will announce here that I find narrowness abhorrent, flip flops disgusting, Midwest hairdos bizarre bird nests, high heels a great invention for the male eye — it can save a woman’s appearance and restore her to some kind of attractiveness; mysteriously annoyed by elderly, very elderly, men and women with iv tubing under their noses because they have emphysema, with their little cannisters of oxygen affixed to their walkers, grotesquely playing at the slots; good-looking women slathering up their arms with tattoos as if the wives of Queeg-Queeg; the cheeky breasts of cocktail servers trying to cut out a living for themselves, these inflated mounds a kind of sexual come on — ah, the species, for it still works. And there is more to add.
I like men and women of class, however you wish to determine that; eating outdoors in a warming breeze; elated by well designed furniture in an upscale store in The District; I dislike families or couples who eat their luxurious meals in upscale restaurants and rarely speak to one another or behave as if this is isn’t enjoyment of a kind. So utilitarian. I like to kibbitz and I do that with servers (waiters?), believing that joviality makes the meal taste better and that the waiter (!) does his work at a higher level if he is engaged. What was interesting to observe here in Vegas and elsewhere in my experience, is that the servers are not used to this. So after 15 to 20 served meals, here is this wise-cracking Jew making jest. However, it takes seconds and they are with me on the slope, especially when I insist that they give the check to the couple at the other table who strike me as cosmetically ugly and unpleasant individuals. Unpleasant people should pay all restaurant checks, a personal rule of thumb.
In Vegas I sensed the old Matt well up as I felt that the decision to move was more than right; it returned me to life, that I could engage other human beings of similar interests or better still, individuals who sensed or believed or simply knew that one must do more than live life, whatever that is, but to delight in the varieties of experience. I got it: you are a teenager, you shower in the late afternoon on a July day, throw on a clean shirt and jeans and smell how freshly laundered it is, slip into fresh socks, go down the elevator and that first cooling and caressing breeze of a late summer day arouses the cheap cologne you’ve put on, because you are going to the park to meet up with friends or to take another gander at that hottie that makes you have a woody.
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