Incumbency

1414 Sunset Drive
Santa Monica, California

Stoically dealing with the side effects of Las Vegas... Jacquesderridajacquesderridajacquesderridajacquesderr-- BOOM!... busted clockwork floating off towards the horizon as the space-time continuum swallows itself whole... New York, New York, I won't go back, indelible reminder of the steel I lack... pulsepulsepulse...

Las Vegas is not a town for the weak of spirit. It has the capacity to crush a man and utterly annihilate his being. And right now I am weak.

I am in Los Angeles recuperating from less than 24 hours in Las Vegas. Sociologists and philosophers talk about the concept of "sacred time", which is intricately connected to holy experiences. "Sacred time" is, basically, a place where time disappears and one enters into a kind of parallel universe, a non-linear stream of pure existence. After coming into an encounter with this kind of space and returning to the mortal plane, a man is often said to feel... different, having come in contact with the infinite. For many, this is almost too much to bear.

In a highly profane and blasphemous way, Las Vegas has an extraordinarily high potential for this. Many religions - and, indeed, many of these types of experiences - are based on the idea of trance; the idea being that a repetitive motion will eventually negate the self. A sudden variation on that motion will bring everything else into full bloom. Getting to Las Vegas requires this. One way in is, of course, by air -- staring at the same walls, breathing the same recycled air, for hours on end. Another way, by land, isn't too much different: hours and hours of the same arid desert (in either direction) and then, looming Oz-like on the horizon, is Vegas.

We got to town late on Friday afternoon, just before sunset. Coming into the city after something like six hours of solid driving was a revelation. After so much repetition, the desert like a visual mantra, the Strip was like the bright explosion I always imagined one seeing when he achieves enlightenment. Our hotel, just around the corner from Stardust, had clearly seen better days. A large empty room where a casino once was, bordered by an unstocked bar, framed the main lobby. But, the room was cheap and air conditioned. After dropping off our bags, we quickly buzzed down the Strip, Beck's "Midnite Vultures" - flying electrified 0s and 1s - pulsed from the car.

Jon pulled the car - fresh over the 100,000 mile mark earlier in the afternoon - into New York, New York. Entering into a casino, the outside world becomes absolutely irrelevant. Everything is within easy reach. Likewise, there are no clocks, nor are there windows. This destruction of linear and obvious time is the first step towards entering that sacred space. One forgets the order of things. Markers of time are quickly ripped away. A friend of mine told me that all of Las Vegas is tuned to one key, though I can't remember which. All of the slot machines, all of the Muzak, all of the white noise generators... it all hums at the same frequency.

One floats through space, through the ether, all of it equally over-stimulating and, therefore, all equally non-descript; an endless repetition. The last time I was in Vegas, I didn't gamble. This time around, I did. I set a $15 limit. I cashed in $5 for change for video poker. Settling in at a specific gambling station in the midst of the madness, one can quickly become attached to it. In fact, I found myself turning to the video poker machine as a kind of spirit guide to that world. It marked its own time by hands of cards. It made sense of the chaos around me.

It seemed like such an organic part of the scene that it almost become lifelike, breathing with its own rhythm, deeply connected to the throb. As I continued to pump quarters in, I tried to breathe with it. I began imparting human qualities on the machine ranging from moods to the acceptance of luck to out and out sentience. It seemed to have an understanding of its surroundings and, therefore, was to be trusted. Every now and again, I won a few quarters, bringing me up roughly to my starting point.

And then I kept going. My own rhythms, my own internal clock, began to synch up with the pulse of the game. My hands automatically hit "bet" and "deal". With a start, I realized I was out of quarters. "Let's go," I begged Jon. So, we did.

This morning, we headed over to Circus Circus, where I decided to try my luck at video poker once again. I got another three dollars worth of change and went at it. This time around, things worked out better. After working my way down to my last two quarters, a series of small victories brought me back up to almost even. Then, a four-of-a-kind brought me 50 coins. "Let me know when I should stop," I told Jon.

"Stop," he said.

I brought my cup of quarters to the change desk. The woman poured it into the sorter and handed me $16. I'd doubled what I'd put into it. "Let's eat," I said. I treated Jon to an all-you-can-eat buffet and we dined like kings. On the way out of the casino, the taste of blood still lingered in my mouth. I'd done so well before. I wanted to play again, to go back to that space where winning was both a prophecy and a divination. But I also wanted to snap myself. I didn't want to leave Vegas on that kind of winning streak. I wanted to, needed, to lose.

Driving out of Vegas, one realizes that it's no more than a tiny cluster of buildings in the middle of a vast empty space. It could go one expanding more or less infinitely. I hunched in the car seat, only vaguely sensing the numbing heat outside.

Jesse Jarnow can be reached at jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu or by his homepage. Previous tour journals are located here.