Las Vegas. Unique in that the mere mention of it triggers equal amounts of exhilaration and nausea. The thrill of hearing bells toll from a slot machine in your financial favor, the thought of having to check out by noon for your flight at midnight, the throttling bass beats as glitter falls across your private table, the gluttonous wasteland of the $10 all you can eat seafood buffet, the gorgeous girls, the screaming rednecks, the long limousine, the pungent cab. I’ve experienced every glamorous offering and endured each grimy waste product of the desert oasis. Sin City.
I’ve had a complicated twenty-year relationship with Las Vegas, which started on “official assignment” in 1997. I kept pretty tight with the glamorous side of the city during those years, highlighted with a two-year stretch between 2006 and 2008 where I kept up a furious attendance frequency of about once every six weeks. Looking back, I’m not sure what I was thinking – but that’s really the best part I guess.
The stories are of the typical Vegas fare: dodging death with the city’s first topless dancer, mistaken for a magician, posing as an ambassador to get a police escort to the airport, spending odd amounts of time with Britney Spears and family, having to convince Mike Tyson that the girl with me isn’t Cameron Diaz, etc., etc.
But the life expectancy in Vegas is short, and my connections there started to dwindle. Life in the desert marches on like anywhere else, and eventually my trips started sparkling less and less. The time has come to say goodbye, but not to the stories.
Catching myself telling these stories so often made me realize that I was forgetting more than I was remembering. I needed to put them to paper.
Leaving Las Vegas is a collection of sinful short stories highlighting my most interesting times there. For me, it’s a goodbye letter to a city that gave me a lot of material. I’m not saying I’ll never be back, but I’m confident I’ll never again be afforded the opportunities there to have as much fun.
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I’ll be posting a different story every few weeks until I run out. Stay tuned, and follow LESS TRAVELED TALES to be notified when another story drops. All the “Leaving Las Vegas” stories will include a (LLV) in the title to make them easier to find. The stories aren’t chronological, so you can read them in any order.
