Leaving Las Vegas on Passover

April 2, 2010

As readers may recall, when offered a weekend father-son bonding trip anywhere within a few hour plane ride my younger son chose Vancouver.  My older kid, nearly sixteen, was inclined to pass on the opportunity altogether—no way to Santa Fe, hell no to San Francisco… Portland, Seattle or Phoenix?  He sooner have snot in Kleenex.

Finally, given his interest in both gambling (at least in our parentally questionable ventures to the Santa Anita Race Track) and good food, I proposed Las Vegas.  He was all in.  As for me, Las Vegas ranks somewhere just below dental work and just above exploratory surgery.

The drunken woman on the airport shuttle singing, “You must have been a beautiful baby” set the tone right off the bat.

With no offense meant to those who love Las Vegas, through psychologist eyes it seemed like a vast holding pen built to drain humans of life spirit, or perhaps a collective waiting room for some super-sized Rehab (with gambling, over-eating, smoking, drinking and sex-addiction pervasively, and rather heartbreakingly, gripping wide swaths of the crowds).

The cab driver taking us from the airport asked me when I’d last been there, at which point I remembered that it had been sixteen years—stopping for the night with Andy, five months pregnant and not wanting to fly, on our way to Sundance.  Thus this was Nate’s second trip to Sin City.  In the first instance I’d played craps and won, now I was older and had no interest whatsoever in gambling, preferring to set a responsible example for my kid.  I was also clearer on, and sadder about, the cruel exploitation of unwary humans in these P.T. Barnum-inspired greed cultivating sucker opportunities, particularly the powerful use of intermittent reinforcement to engender addictive behaviors.  In many a casino you could hardly make your way out when trying—no windows, no clocks, every corner circling back upon itself back to the blinking lights and sounding bells of pyrrhic victory.

In the lucid dream of life, Las Vegas is, arguably, my nightmare:  people everywhere walking along with two foot tall drinks, smoking it up or sitting in sad trances at slot machines.  Nate stared out at the vast sea of slot machines, as we passed our eleventh Starbucks and entered our eleventh casino, observing that it was pretty much Castle Arcade for grown-ups.  I suggested that a cynical view was of a lot of nicely decorated trash bins into which you could put your money.  He felt that this was simply true, and not cynical.  We watched people gamble, guessing on if they would crap out or make their number, learning how easy it is to lose without actually losing.  We made up stories about strangers, guessing things about their lives.

Neither of us are too keen on lots of crowds, noise and wackiness—and so we would wander around, from pyramid to cheesy Camelot to fake New York and on to fake Paris, Venice and the like… and then need to retreat to our hotel room for quiet time watching basketball or playing text-twist on the laptop.  Okay, we’re nerds.

We started to play a game in which we won a pretend million but had to spend it in Vegas—quickly realizing how tacky everything was, we dropped the upgrade to a suite and started to secretly think about who we would give the money to.  Our leading contender ended up being the wistful Italian waitress, working on a fake Venetian street when she was actually from Milan.  She had followed her mom to this god-forsaken desert who herself had come there because of a man:  “Men, always trouble” she said.

We also liked one of our cab drivers, a transplant from Kingston Jamaica, who told Nate that he was too old for Blue Man Group but too young for Love—but appreciated how much taller he was than myself.  Nate thought it was cool that I was happy to be short and let him be tall, feeling that some dads would be “pissed about that.”

Another driver told us about “The Mansion,” a secret palazzo behind walls where high rollers committed to gambling a minimum of four hours per day at a minimum bet of $5,000 per hand.  He’d only taken one fare past those walls in sixteen years, and also talked about how all the locals denied gambling, but many of his fellow drivers would go straight from getting paid to the casinos.  He clearly struggled to make an honest living and felt blessed not to have the gambling bug.  We wanted to give him our pretend money too.

Nate liked the fact that several people thought he might be twenty-one, especially when he was dressed nice and we sat eating gourmet food high above the lights of the strip.  We watched the full moon rise through the sweeping atelier windows of the restaurant and I suddenly felt sick—sick to be eating rich food and unsure how I would handle my entrée when my neurotic mind reeled with the question of if I might have gotten a bad snail.  My mind went to my dad, in his assisted living and I wondered if thirty years from now my son would be eating some nice meal with his son when this very meal would be his own haunting memory.  But I told my kid what I was actually thinking and feeling and that was just the ticket—again and again, I find honesty and authenticity, even about our weaknesses, proves a healing and connecting path.  I felt better and really enjoyed the rest of the over-the-top meal at a place Nate had scoped out, and which he really loved, joining him in savoring every flavor and texture, this was where he found his bliss in Vegas.

I had paid little attention to the calendar, other than to line things up with spring break, and thus it was a bit ironic to be in the desert, facing the Luxor, as Jews on Passover.  Whatever other religious resonance, for both of us it was a good time (like building pyramids must have been), but we were more than ready to make our Exodus.

The last morning I went down to the Starbucks at 8:30.  This was the parents with young kids time of day and I met the most grounding and nice parents… folks who used to live in LA, and deal with the movie biz, but who got out of Dodge and went back east for a different life.  Chatting and looking at their lovely child, I felt grounded once again, and alive, like after they cut through the upside-down ship at the end of The Poseidon Adventure (not the remake, but the Ernest Borgnine/Shelley Winters classic).

So while what happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, what if nothing really happens in Vegas?  Then what stays there?  Still, there’s got to be a morning after.

Perhaps we might dedicate today to leaving our comfort zones, be it in Vegas, or in the exploration of our feelings and our insecurities—in the service of closer relationships with each other, with Carlos and with all our collective children.

Namaste, Bruce

p.s. As I write this post Nate’s cracking up with a friend watching The Hangover for the third or fourth time—enjoying it all the more for having walked the strip and stood in several of the landmark locations that stood as backdrop for outrageous comedy… and no doubt glad to be back home.

{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }

Larry April 2, 2010 at 9:37 am

Love the share about eating and thoughts of your dad. I’ve had that happen with my daughter when we’re doing something together. I think of it as connecting an experience through the generations and by sharing it with her it continues the link. The authentic path seems to always bring us closer.

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privilegeofparenting April 2, 2010 at 9:57 am

Even if we’re sweating and eying the air-sickness bag as we fly.

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Kristen @ Motherese April 2, 2010 at 11:30 am

I haven’t been to Las Vegas since I was Nate’s age (at a conference with my family during July – hot, hot, hot). My thoughts of Vegas will always be intertwined with the terrible stomach virus we all contracted. I had the only high fever of my life and found myself hallucinating in a hotel bathroom. Needless to say, I am not planning a return visit. Your review of your trip confirmed my interest in parent-child vacations, but not, necessarily, to Sin City.

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privilegeofparenting April 2, 2010 at 3:07 pm

A place where fear, loathing and the ghost of Hunter Thompson shuffle eternally up and down a collective hallucination in the middle of nowhere… is no place to be a kid with a virus—maybe it was the universe warning you off early from a place with little to offer a sensitive soul.

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Justine April 2, 2010 at 1:39 pm

The only thing I liked about Vegas was Cirque’s Love. Admittedly, I knew of the Beatles and their songs but only when immersed in a show all about their songs did I truly realize my appreciation for them. Thanks Vegas, for reintroducing The Beatles to my life – Albeit, many decades late. I’ll take it, if that means I’ll have something positive to say about this city. Kind of.

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privilegeofparenting April 2, 2010 at 3:15 pm

Love—it’s all you need.

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BigLittleWolf April 2, 2010 at 2:19 pm

I made a couple of trips to LV 20+ years ago, for conferences. Couldn’t wait to get out of there, though I would’ve enjoyed seeing the desert. I imagine it’s far more of what I didn’t care for then, and as you said, the sort of place that, for some of us, reminds us how grateful we are to be in a different sort of place.

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privilegeofparenting April 2, 2010 at 3:12 pm

Maybe that’s why Dante wrote “The Inferno.”

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Michael April 3, 2010 at 2:40 pm

My favorite post yet! It sounds like you had a good time, bonding over how to help others.

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privilegeofparenting April 3, 2010 at 3:40 pm

I don’t think I’d fully put that together, but thanks—I’m really glad you liked the post.

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bh April 3, 2010 at 6:43 pm

Sounds to me like a whole lot happened. You’re a good dad.

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privilegeofparenting April 3, 2010 at 10:32 pm

Kind of you to say so… Maybe all that stuff that sort of happened was why it was kind of tiring :).

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bh April 4, 2010 at 7:13 am

Holding the space with equanimity can be utterly exhausting. The work of parenting that few notice.

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Linda Pressman April 3, 2010 at 11:15 pm

I lived there for about 2 years 25 years ago and was never enamored of the strip part of town, though my ex-husband was. But I have to say that once you leave the strip area and work in a normal business, it was the greatest. I’ve never had better work friends or more fun just hanging out with them. And the regular people have all the usual stuff that makes up community – churches, synagogues. There just happen to be slot machines in all the grocery stores!

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privilegeofparenting April 4, 2010 at 9:00 am

That’s a great point—I guess it would be like spending a couple of days in Times Square and drawing a conclusion about New York. When traveling you always have to seek out the locals and go to their haunts to find the real genius loci (or spirit of a place). Next time I’ll dig deeper to get the insider tips :)

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Terresa Wellborn April 5, 2010 at 2:50 pm

I second what Linda says.

I’m a native Las Vegan and my children are 5th generation Las Vegans and are not yet hanging their heads in shame. :)

True, the city is weird. It tends towards schizophrenia.

Vegas has the gamblers, players, alcoholics, clubbers. And then the “normal” (ha, what’s normal, really?) people like my family and extended family who all have chosen to live here and raise their children here, too.

I’ve written a few blog posts on the subject of Las Vegas from a native’s perspective. When you live here, authenticity and spirituality is possible, just in a far-from-the-strip kind of way. :)

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privilegeofparenting April 5, 2010 at 4:02 pm

Fifth generation, that’s amazing! Did you guys first get there by covered wagon? My ancestors are an enigma going back that far, but I appreciate your speaking up for the “real” Vegas—and I’ll go check out your posts on it.

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