Folks, we are now leaving Las Vegas. I’d arrived that Friday
to attend a conference and see a few sights, my first visit in 18 years.
It was a hot Friday afternoon. The sidewalks of Sin City surged
with humans. Families, couples, frat boys, working girls, book clubs, bus tours
and even a few Fundamentalists gathered. They screeched, giggled, jiggled,
slurped and preached their way up and down the strip. Huge puffy clouds full of
promised rain glided above casinos, desert scrub and endless packs of people.
In a city famous for its excess and its very own Rat Pack, I
was neither excessive nor part of anyone’s pack. I was alone.
But Not Lonely,
Dammit!
Here in the City of Illusion to observe and ponder, while
attending a Blog
Conference, (a lot of self-indulgence), I wondered where I fit into the
need we humans have to join.
I read somewhere once that Louis Leakey believed after humans
evolved physically to survive, our minds adapted to survive as social
creatures. We have this drive to affiliate and become part of a social
organization. Gathering in groups started somewhere. Why?
Walk Like an Egyptian
Current anthropological theory (sounds kind of smarty pants,
but hear me out) is that great civilizations and complex social organizations –
like the Egyptians or the Incas – first arose out of need. If people banded
together to divert water for crops or to hunt or to protect the kids, well, everyone
was better off.
Once the practicalities of getting the group to build a
better community was set, all sorts of rules about how people should act were
thrown into the mix. We call them societal expectations -- like people
shouldn’t go to Las Vegas alone.
Which is where I come in.
Hey, Lady, You Okay?
So I’m waiting for the Las Vegas Blvd. strip shuttle to show
up and take me back to my hotel. Not once, but twice, concerned citizens, also
waiting for the shuttle, look at me, standing there all alone (but not lonely,
dammit!) and ask if I’m waiting for the South
Point (shameless plug) shuttle. I answer, but wonder what’s going on. Why
the concern in a town without a heart?
And then, while inside the Beatles Cirque de Soleil
show (I should get a kick-back here), a pleasant middle-aged man with his wife
is careful to make sure I’m comfortable in my seat and tries to draw me into
his group’s conversation.
What am I? Slack-jawed and drooling? Don’t answer that.
And it doesn’t end there. While waiting for the volcano to
erupt outside the Mirage (C’mon, someone send me a check!), a nice man
with a New Zealand accent steps aside m’lady style to allow me space on the sidewalk
and says, “Can you see?”
From start to finish, members of the community inquired
after my well being. Before I arrived, friends wondered who’d I’d go with? Is
it a big party? No one and no, were
my answers. I’m going alone, but I won’t be lonely, dammit!
That’s Just Weird
I was like a dog at a cat show, a nun at a strip club, Donny
and Marie at an Obama convention. I just didn’t fit into our expectation of a
trip to LV, but that poor bastard who puked all over town is quintessentially
Las Vegas. Hail, Caesar, King Tut, and Captain Morgan.
