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
