I promised a number of people that I’d blog my trip to Las Vegas to the inaugural EAA conference. It’s been ten years since my last visit to the US. Of course, it is fair to say that Las Vegas is not really the US, nor is Los Angeles, but you can’t keep insisting that the real US is somewhere else. After a while, the line wears thin.
After 24 hours here, I’ve come to a number of conclusions. Las Vegas is where American’s go to experience the world without having to get a passport. You can visit ‘Venice’ without the stink and the sinking. You can visit Luxor without the beggars and the dirt and the bout of diarrhea. You can see wildlife without being attacked by mosquitoes. You can pay to fire an automatic weapon, just like you can in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Although they don’t throw in a water buffalo as a target. You can order in a hooker without having to bribe the bellboy the way you do in Bangkok. And, well, then there is Donny and Marie Osmond who are sort a bit like transgendered versions of Kim Il Sung, without the tank parade.
To say that I’m suffering from culture shock is an understatement.
This is indeed the land of plenty. And yet… for all its promise to satisfy your every desire, it feels strangely comfortless. My suite would easily fit a family of five back where I come from. The bed would accommodate a foursome. There’s an enormous bar fridge, but there’s nothing in it. There’s no customary hot water kettle and sachets of coffee or tea for when you wake up jetlagged at 3 AM. The water pressure in the shower is like getting a begrudged golden shower from a god with a prostate problem. And the hairdryer in the bathroom keeps shutting off every two minutes.
All this STUFF and no comfort.
A fellow conference attendee, who used to work for homeland security, kindly warns me against emailing my room number for fear the email might get hacked! And… then… someone might turn up and knock on my door and… kill me with one of those missing Libyan surface to air missiles maybe?
I restrained myself from telling her that what I was really worried about while standing in the insanely long line-up at US immigration LAx was finding out I had the same name as someone the US government didn’t like and getting renditioned to Syria like that poor Canadian motherfucker who was tortured for a year before they found out it was the wrong guy. There isn’t a court in the US that will agree to hear his case. Now THAT fucking scares me.
The fear is palpable. It’s everywhere. The gadgets they’ve come up with to ensure you haven’t stuffed anything nasty up your woohoo. Meanwhile, the humans manning the gadgets move as if dreaming or underwater, slow and with a smoldering resentment at the abuse they routinely put up with for doing their poorly paid job.
Standing in the line-up to check into the hotel, I listen to the exchanges between guests and the reception staff. Each loudly announces their pedantic but vital accommodation requirement. Do they have soy-milk lattes? Is there colouring in the soap? Can the receptionist assure them that no one has ever, ever lit a cigarette in the room they are about to stay in? What are the carpets made of? Because I have a mold allergy, wool allergy, sugar allergy, gluten, lactose, perfume, detergent, oxygen intolerance.
These people whose peculiar intolerances have become the things that define them as individuals… because this is the way they claw their own humanity back from the insurance adjusters and marketing statisticians and accountants who have found it much more convenient to herd them into mountains of chunkable data.
That’s what this feels like. Like I’m in a land of frightened, easily offended eaters, doggedly gorging on Cinnabons to damp down their anger, their disappointment at the exhausting banality of their lives.
It’s really no wonder so many Americans turn to religion. They need to believe in a personal Jesus, because the rest of their life is so pathetically impersonal.
Tomorrow the conference attendees will begin to arrive.
Sorry you’re having such a lousy time. Vegas and LA in NO WAY represent the true American ‘experience’ as I’m sure you know. We’re all MUCH gloomier. 🙂
Good lord! I’m not having a lousy time. I’m just an outsider looking in.
No tea kettle? That would be a NIGHTMARE for me.
Sausage factory living. In goes the meat, round goes the handle, out come uniform, pink, pointless lumps indistinguishable from each other.
The thing is that it’s simply not true! People aren’t really that way. But they’re so used to being treated that way by institutions that hold huge amounts of power over them. You know, the waiter who brought my breakfast up to me was such a charming man. He came here as a political asylum seeker from Argentina. He graciously let me practice my Spanish on him. He’s got a daughter in med school and a wife who is an ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) fanatic. Las Vegas was the only place he could afford to buy his own home.
And the buffets! And Paris! And the people who gamble such huge amounts of money you wonder if it’s possible to have that much very readily disposable income or what risks they take and why. It’s kind of like Twitter. See you tomorrow 🙂
Very much enjoying your view of the place from the outside. You are getting dose/view that locals intentionally avoid. Kind of a fish bowl we look in on occasionally. Like the sharks at Mandalay Bay. ( go see )
That actually makes a lot of sense.
RG,
I’m smiling as I read your post, I’ve always wanted to go but just never have gotten around to it, someday…
Thank you,
-TFP
And to think – all those canals & water sprouting like ear hair everywhere & not a child swimming in any one of them. Only in America…
Well, on the positive side, they’re not getting amoebic dysentery either. 😛
I’m already enjoying Las Vegas by proxy more than I did in reality. 🙂
I don’t want to ever go anywhere, but I love reading your reports.
You’ve landed in America’s fun house; or madhouse, depending on your perspective. Vegas is a crucible that concentrates the most depraved of our characteristics. I don’t think anything on the strip is supposed to be real. Nobody goes to Vegas to re-connect with their souls. People go to embrace their inner solipsist.
But, you can drive an hour or two in any direction and find some of the most stunning landscapes that America has to offer as well as a much more sane and pioneering population.
I’m sorry. I must disagree with you. The most depraved of your country’s characteristics play themselves out in Washington, D. C.
” All this STUFF and no comfort.”
I think I’ll tuck that thought away , save it for the days when I feel like I’m missing out.
I love to hear/read your experiences in LV. It’s always interesting to get it from a visitor’s POV. Not necessarily LV in particular, but the US.
I read about your culture shock on Twitter and remembered that when I came home after living in Asia for many years, the US felt so gross, violent and unconscious. I almost felt violated just being here. It took me a long time to adjust.
I went to Vegas for one day. I had intended to stay the night, but I couldn’t stand it there. The non-stop noise, smoke (and I smoked at the time), the frantic energy, it was too much for me so I got in the car and drove all night instead of staying.
Currently it’s a severely depressed economy there, so I’m sure it’s changed a lot since I went.
Can’t wait to read your comments on the Convention.
Donny and Marie! Brillant. Evidence, if needed, that there really is life on Mars. After you navigate the swollen gullets face down in the buffet, you should take a walk to the Mirage and see if the white tiger is ok. Enjoy the conference!
I saw the lions at the MGM instead. They were smart. they were sleeping.
Such a strange country; I’m still ambivalent about visiting. Yes, the Americans I’ve met seen normal, sensible people; but they were all in Europe, and I’m not at all sure about the majority. And, would you add ‘fake’ or ‘pseud’ to your title? So much there seems unreal.
“The water pressure in the shower is like getting a begrudged golden shower from a god with a prostate problem.”
RG, this is a fine example of why I keep coming back to read here. I know exactly the water pressure you mean, not because I’ve ever been to Vegas but because your imagery is so perfectly spot-on, certainly creative but still beautifully succinct!
Looking forward to the rest of your updates on the conference.
This is why I consider you a wordsmith of the highest order, RG. I bet you spent a while honing that one, and it was well worth it. 🙂
As for Las Vegas, what offends me more than anything about that place (not that I’ve ever been there) is the massive wastage of water in what should be desert. The water table in the area has dropped enormously because of Las Vegas’ greed. Shame on them.
A great read…thanks. When I lived in California many years ago, we would run over to Las Vegas because it was bright, exciting, open and cheap. I returned there last year for the first time in decades and found myself wondering how one experiences culture shock in one’s own culture? It’s bizarre (one of the most fitting uses of that adjective) like a Disney World created by Hunter Thompson. Do they have a memorial park for him there?
You are the best narrator, Chula!!! Thanks!!!!
I’ve always been curious about Vegas… but in a slightly cynical, wanting-to-see-the-true-underbelly-of-life kind of way.
And I don’t think it’s just the famous shotgun weddings that make me think of marriage when I think of Vegas. It’s that Vegas, like marriage, – from my distant view – seems like a good idea on the outside, but I don’t quite believe in it.
I have to agree with Huguette: you make a damn fine narrator.
Painfully familiar. Thankyou for the wry smiles. And the reminder of my last arrival at LAX, with 700 of us waiting patiently in the immigration queue with no staff on hand to take our obligatory fingerprints and mugshots. “Welcome to the USA” indeed. I’d landed from Phnom Penh. Culture shock doesn’t begin to describe it. Enjoy the dislocation. May you find some comfort in it.
RG,
I have to admit that, as an American (albeit displaced) I feel the need to defend my homeland after reading this, even if the use of the word homeland feels ill-fitting.
Vegas and LA are, of course, America. But Americans often say they aren’t because, more than “America” they are “LA” and “Vegas.” America is a big, big place – and these cities are very unique places. Vegas, more than anything else, is a distillation of America. To call it representative is akin to calling dried salt crust on a rock representative of the ocean. It’s also a very young city – and where you Re is less than twenty years old, making it a sociological infant. Moreover – Vegas didn’t grow, it was designed and built. It was made to accommodate the weirdest, be the most ridiculous, and cater to the darkest. To paint this acid-tinged wet dream from the Western Hemisphere’s collective id as “America” is unfair.
But, I also have to admit, that I love Vegas – and I love it for its unreality. I go there because it is so bizarre and so unbalanced. It’s an experience to be bathed in, because it is unlike anything else on earth. Only Dubai is close. None of this is to say what you have said is wrong. It’s merely to offer my perspective on what is and isn’t, and why such a phantasm even exists.
If Vegas is an infant, LA is a kindergartner who was born to teenage parents. It’s an ocean of concrete that erupted into being in the golden age of the American car. And it’s growth eventually made Vegas happen. In that way, the cities are forever tied. But LA, where I lived three years, is also a place I loved, but unlike Vegas, it was a place I lived (I would never reside in Vegas). LA’s ridiculous largesse is also it’s beauty – as it affords a complete mix of all cultures in multiple critical masses. There is a social place there for everyone – and the weather is always wonderful. (it’s really hard to explain just what a tremendous effect consistently 70-degree-and-sunny weather has on the psyche, but it’s enormously positive) I understand, and happily agree with every person’s complaints about LA, because they are largely true – namely traffic and cost of living. Yet I was happy there – and happier than I have been anywhere else.
Again – your perspective is yours, and there’s no right or wrong to it. It simply is. But, in some way, I feel as though I owe my estranged homeland my voice after this post. I do look forward to hearing about the rest of your visit.
I am sure you’re right, Sylvanus. It’s not an objective view. No writing ever is and I never claim mine to be.
I always find the culture shock of coming back to the States at least as hard as anything I’ve experienced traveling abroad, harder in a lot of ways because it always brings me up short to realize that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go home, because the home I knew as a little girl growing up in the Rocky Mountains, no longer exists. Coming back, even for a holiday and to visit with family and friends, always feels a bit sad, which makes your account all the more poignant.
K D Grace