One year ago tonight I was on a wild trip in Vegas...staying at the Palms Hotel. (By the way, I took the top two photos during my trip. The other one I got from the Internet).
I had a great time...winning at craps, visiting the Playboy Club and enjoying myself...
It was the first time I didn't want to leave this desert mirage ...after a couple days..
I loved the Palms...it is the kind of hotel made for Vegas....classy, but naughty....cool, but not snobby...I stayed in the Fantasy Suite and I am a hardly a rock star....but they made me feel like one...
Little did I know shortly after returning from vacation I would lose my job...but that is another story will deal with in the coming days on this blog...
But I must admit, through the years I have had a love and hate relationship with Vegas....
I love the fantasy...the sex, the flirting, the drinking, the gambling...the wildness....
but after a while money permeates everything in that so called desert paradise...
it is after all a city built on losers...people losing their life savings and also mob money..
Now, I like to gamble an I love playing craps, but the obsession with money in Vegas gets to me after a while..
it is a souless place...at times
the last time I was there before last summer...i was robbed and beaten in the Hard Rock Cafe parking lot...which is fitting i guess..
after a while vegas will take some part of your soul if you stay there long enough...
i wrote this poem a while back about my conflicting feelings about Vegas...baby...
GP
****
VEGAS, BABY
A town built on losers,
beckoning the ultimate win,
the ultimate sin,
another chance,
perhaps a new beginning.
Hints of the eventual reckoning
are lost
in a neon haze.
I want to live in neon.
I want to fuck in neon
in the lobby of the Hard Rock Cafe Hotel
with strains of classic rock riffs
pounding in my ears.
I live for neon lights flashing in my dreams.
I yearn to beat the odds,
beat the house,
beat the system,
but I am playing with loaded dice
and a marked deck.
Hey, I am no loser.
Just wait, I'll turn it all around.
Just one more roll.
Just one more hand.
Do you understand?
Vegas, baby, that's who I am.
I am a living, breathing embodiment
of a souless sham.
George Pappas
Copyright 2008
1 comment:
This is amazing GP! You sum up, not only Vegas, the place, but the contagion it spreads. It is without soul and draws out the worst that human beings can be. Greed, despair -- just one more card one more roll of the dice.
I won on the machines! Money clattering into my greedy little hands! Suddenly, I was surrounded by gamblers! Old pro's telling me to stick with the machine/leave the machine -- whatever I do, keep gambling -- I was on a lucky streak! Needless to say -- I lost the lot!
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