The morning light hits Las Vegas early, a radiant yet unwelcome call to life from eastward. My coast, some 3000 miles its orient, has already bustled away two hours, and Vegas, wanting none of it, continually hits the snooze. “If it be thus a dream,” it picks from Twelfth Night, “then let me sleep.”
Rita Hayworth famously held “They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me.” Befitting a starlet who distracted America through depression and war, Vegas will indulge you and dine you, intoxicate your vices and wax your splendor. Slots! Music! Blackjack! Strippers! In nowhere but Vegas can you waltz to bed with Gilda on a continuous desert high, glorious and deafening, with neon flickering outside your window begging you to come back for another hand, another dance, another tryst. But before the light can bounce off the golden windows of Mandalay Bay, Gilda slinks away to primp anew, and leaves you to wake up alone.
Vegas is an American gem, as part of the cultural canon as baseball, Gone with the Wind, or the Super Bowl, a sanitized snapshot of how wildly we dream. Dance with Gilda down Las Vegas Boulevard and get lost in neon, in flashing dreams, in names that roll off like lovers. Bellagio. Mirage. Mandalay Bay. Encore.
Vegas will take you around the world in eighty minutes, to indulge your worldliness without leaving the desert. Eschew your passport and in less than four miles, you can paddle the canals of Venice, stare down a pale, blue-eyed sphinx; swim amid Roman gods and flirt with Kipling on the Road to Mandalay. If you want to rekindle your childhood (our deepest longing, if Glenn Beck has taught us anything), there’s King Arthur’s castle, the Emerald City, and a pirate ship. Want some guarantees on the local nine? Grab a sports book. Sox at 6/1? Sign me up.
Which is why the Vegas morning is such a bleaching experience, a sobering gap between ecstasy and banality, between Gilda and, well, not Gilda. "Remember last night?" the empty slots seem to ask: "Sorry we couldn't stay... we know you understand." Checking out? Here’s your airport cab, we’ve got more coming, thanks for the memories. More new hopes, more dreams, more Americans willing to forego worries, war, and Depression, for a tryst or three with Gilda.
In Vegas, you can forget your perils at will, and let Gilda glide you to sleep. When you wake up and she's gone, at least you know you got a goodnight kiss.
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