Well, The Drinks Are Free... Kinda.

What Vegas is, is a man stumbling out giggling into unexpected daylight,a man whose face is a little too red to just be that way from his mirth, a man whose boldness and expertise and whose very manhood was challenged over 12 stupid hours of gaming on a Saturday night in which the temperature didn't fall down below 90 until night became that morning.

Vegas is this man now laughing out loud as he passes another man running the large industrial vacuum over the carpets in the casino hallway, the carpets with the red, yellow and brown swirls that are either cheesy or retro, depending how your night is going, the carpet that lives under lights that never dim. Vegas is this man being too punch-drunk giddy to care that he's snorting now as he laughs, because Vegas is also absurd, ostentatious, homicidal, and orgasmic by turns.

Vegas is the man playing all night in casinos built on ground that used to be Old Vegas, and realizing why Old Vegas is gone and not coming back: Because there's more money to be made by pumping Jay Z through bassy house speakers and putting fringe-laden, surgically-enhanced girls on podiums in the middle of the table games section, or on bars out front to bring in the rubes. The man knows he has a daughter, hopes he's done a better job than to think she'd end up in this... Well, hopes she has better sense, anyway.. The man shudders a bit and doubles down on 13. The man plays his hunches. And realizes that as much as it seems so, little has really changed.

Vegas is grinding out a night of black jack and Pai Gow and 2/4 Limit Poker, and having it slap you in the face like the man's first ex-wife. Vegas, tonight, for the man, is needing red and getting black, is needing 10 and getting 8, is watching dullards luck into Fuck You money while good men who plan, scheme and Play Their Systems go bust, with only a rigid self-discipline to keep them from slamming down cards, drinks and invective.

On the other hand, though, Vegas is also this same man, who is most definitely not giggling yet, getting lost on his way back to his hotel, being beguiled again by electronic poker machines, knowing he should be sleeping, but knowing he doesn't have to, wondering what it would be like if you never slept, feeling how that would feel as his extremities probably went numb.

Vegas, though, is also the man on his literal last legs, still pounding vainly away at the video poker machine, somehow hitting an impossible inside draw to a royal flush that just happens to make him exactly enough money to be exactly even for the night, which causes the man to start giggling insanely, and feeling the synapses in his brain tell him in no uncertain terms to cash out, go home, go to sleep, because to play further, after the Impossible Card to complete the Impossible Night, which after all only got him even, would be to anger the Gods of Gambling so much for its impunity that he would be smited should he continue.

And so finally, Vegas is the man giggling, passing the other man with the vacuum, the housecleaning staff just clocking in, the first shift dealers, getting back to his room and counting his money and still cackling to himself. And Vegas is that man, me, finally laying down, wondering if the sun's intensity even allows such a concept as blackout curtains in hotel rooms, and falling asleep in five minutes, and not setting my alarm.