Living in Las Vegas is like meeting a girl at a nightclub. Through all the flashing lights, loud music and the crush of the crowd, you see a hot young thing batting her eyelids at you across the room. Your heart flutters. You can feel your face flush red-hot. You’re not sure if it’s from the haze of cigarette smoke or the beer goggles that you’re now wearing after downing a gallon of vodka, but to you, she’s the most wonderful person you’ve ever met. It’s love at first sight.
As you dance the night away together, bumping and grinding and sweating, the chemistry builds. She’s giving away all the signs. You know that you want to take this girl home and ravage her in every way possible – and she knows that you know and she’s down for anything. It’s like neither of you want to be out each other’s lives from this moment.
But after you wake up in the morning and rub your eyes to take a real look at her in the sunlight. The bile rises in your throat from her scent. You study her body intensely. It’s pocked, flabby and pale, covered in bruises and scars. Her make-up is peeling from her body heat. It’s intense, but right now, the last thing you want to do is be next to her.
Too late – as you begin to slowly creep out of bed, she stirs, sits up and greets you with a smile, only this time you can see the stains in her teeth. She begins to talk about the night you’ve had together and you can’t believe the shit that’s pouring from this girl’s mouth. “I know you have feelings for me, and yes, I have them too – I want us to be together forever.”
You smile politely. You answer her questions with a series of uh-huh’s and mmmm’s, but secretly, you want to get the fuck out of there as quickly as you possibly can.
Las Vegas is a seedy, dangerous place by day. As you walk down the street, you'll find yourself surrounded by dusty, ragged, downtrodden zombie bums that wander aimlessly up and down Flamingo, usually hanging around the bus stop outside of the Westin. You can tell by how much they’ve pickled in the Nevada sun as to the length of time that they’ve spent on the streets.
Still, they don’t beg. Instead, they just sleep in the shade or sip from the pint-sized beer cans in brown paper bags. They know that nobody’s going to give them money. This is Sin City. Out here, you’ve got to fend for yourself. If you don’t develop a steel spine, Las Vegas will chew you up and spit you out.
Oh, and God help you if you’re homeless and out on the street on weekends. There must be some sort of code, because on Friday and Saturday nights, they’re nowhere to be found. After all, they have to make room for all the tourists.
Instead, they’re replaced by hoardes of Hispanic immigrants that stand on every street corner of Las Vegas Boulevard, wearing cheap fluoro t-shirts blaring the slogan, “MEET HOT SEXY GIRLS TONIGHT!” All day and all night, they’ll flick pamphlets at you – you’ll constantly hear the fap-fap-fap of the cardboard slapping against their hands, trying to dish off discount vouchers to strip clubs and escorts.
All you need to do is just keep your head down and keep walking – besides, if you are looking for a quick fix, there are red-and-yellow boxes on the sidewalk that have all the pornographic catalogues you need. Not an actual newspaper stand or postbox in sight.
So one would think that upon arriving to work before the start of another day at the World Series of Poker, you’d be okay. It’s air-conditioned, spacious and besides, you’re in the midst of poker Mecca. The biggest poker event on the calendar. Surely, this would cheer you up. Right?
Wrong.
It’s not that you don’t want to be here – after all, it’s everyone’s dream to come to the WSOP, no matter if you’re a player, dealer or a member of the press. Like any job, you have your good and bad days, plus you’re always meeting lots of new people and running into plenty of other friends from back home.
It’s not that at all – it’s the incessant clacking and riffling and splashing of poker chips, across all 400+ tables in both the Pavillion and Amazon Rooms. Add to that the super-high ceilings and it makes the sound echo like crickets chirping. Not even the years of working in casinos and card clubs can help you to shut out the sound.
It drives you insane. You feel your blood boil. You have to get rid of the noise, it’s burning into your brain and it’s making your ears ache. As soon as the tournament director announces time for the break, you run outside for a smoke and escape to the silence.
And you don’t even realise that until you’ve looked up from lighting your cigarette, it’s now late at night and the glittering lights of the casinos on The Strip are lit up once again. You see the bellowing fountains of the Bellagio. The Roman empire that is Caesar’s Palace. The bella vista of the Venetian. The untold bounties that lay within Treasure Island and the piercing tower of the Stratosphere and all the places in between, making the black sky burn from the neon.
And it’s at that very moment, as you look out at that view, that you find yourself falling in love with her all over again.
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