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15 july 2000
----- transcribed from a handwritten entry I'm on the 4th floor of the "Empire State Building," eyeing the "Brooklyn Bridge," wrapped in art deco as a fireboat cruises below my window, recklessly spraying water into the air. It's been a shitty weekend. I've been down and lonely. I've been drinking so I won't be down and lonely anymore. Said drinking left me with a killer hangover this morning that just added to my state of morose. I sat around the apartment all afternoon, suffering two migraine headaches as the walls of loneliness continued to close in on me. Saturdays shouldn't be like this. I escaped to the car and went out driving ... quite aimlessly. I wound up at Disneyland, the "Happiest Place on Earth." There I sat in the parking lot debating whether $40 was a fair price to pay for "Happy." Somehow the idea of soaring Space Mountain rockets and politically correct Caribbean pirates didn't appeal. So I left. I wound up in a bar -- probably the last place I should have been -- drinking is bad. Luckily the martini was small and weak. A cellphone conversation with my friend Don convinced me to get back on the road. In the car, 9:30pm, Newport Beach, still talking to Don... "I think PCH is this way..." "You're going home?" "Where else?" "I dunno." I flipped a frustrated u-turn and got on 55 north. I half jokingliy mentioned a destination to Don, and he looked it up on MapQuest and plotted me a route. I snickered to myself and kept on driving north. An hour later I was descending from the San Bernardino mountains into the Mojave desert, heading north on I-15. I stopped in Barstow at 11pm for a quick burger and some coffee. Continuing across the desert, speedomer ranging from 80-110mph, I felt nuts. I passed an exit marked "Zzyzx Road." That made me rub my eyes. Then came Baker, Gateway to Death Valley, and home of the World's Tallest Thermometer, which at midnight read 95 degrees fahrenheit. The road became ghostly. I half expected PeeWee Herman's friend Large Marge to come honking by in her big rig. Ascending an enormous hill to 4000 foot elevation, my ears were popping. Over the crest, I saw the lights of Primm, Nevada, and in the distance, still sixty miles away, the white beam from the lord-knows-how-many candlepower light of the Luxor pyramid, shooting straight up into the sky from Las Vegas Boulevard. Forty minutes later, at 1:20am, I exited the freeway and pulled into the New York New York Hotel Casino parking garage. Fifteen minutes later I checked into my non-smoking room in the "Empire State Building," dropped off my jacket, and headed downstairs. I have no idea what made me trek to Las Vegas for a night. Maybe it was an intense desire to get away from myself, from this lethargy in which I've been esconsed since returning from Detroit. I walked around for two hours, here at the hotel, across the street at the MGM Grand, the Excalibur, the Luxor. I didn't stop to drink or gamble once. I was somehow uncomfortably enjoying the dizziness of sensory overload. Beautiful people, newlyweds, the jingle of coins, cheesy lounge acts, the smell of pheremones piped in from above, programmed to make me wanna "play" some more. I feel like an alien here, and it's strangely refreshing. I don't know if I'll gamble at all ... that wasn't what this trip was about, although I really have no idea what this trip is about. All I know is that I'm here, and it's 4am, and I'm going to sleep, completely and utterly sober for a change, and knowing that when I woke up this morning, I had no idea I'd be sleeping in Las Vegas tonight. How many people in this city can say that?
In the forum: 15 july 1999: : didn't write 15 july 1998: (p)resenting the past : the Cutting Crew are now singing "Don't Look Back ..." Why not? I look ahead and I see myself turning into a bitter old curmudgeon. And I'm staring at the monitor, shaking my head, and silently laughing to myself. What's the fucking point?
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