"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...’ and suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.”
“You’ll have to drive my car,” Jenn says.
We’re standing outside the Avis offices in Fullerton, planning a course of action now that we’ve discovered there is nowhere nearby she can leave her car while we take the rental to Vegas.
“I…I’m not too confident about doing that,” I say, remembering how even pulling the seatbelt across from the right while sitting in the passenger seat felt weird. “It could end badly.”
She looks at me, then we both look at the car. I have a sudden, stark image of exactly how pissed off Jennifer would be if I decided to take a chance and wound up wrecking the thing.
“I liked the cab idea,” I say.
It isn’t until a little later, after we’ve dropped her car back home, taken a cab back to our rented Chevy, and left Fullerton behind in favour of Interstate 10 towards San Bernardino, that I notice the crucial detail that would have swayed my decision in the other direction. The Chevy has an automatic gearshift, which leads me to ask an obvious question.
“Is your car an automatic?”
“Yup.”
“That’s what I was most worried about. Everything reversed, you know?” I say, making gear-shifting motions with my left hand.
As soon as I’ve made the gesture, I find myself looking out of my window to hide a smile. This is partly due to finding my own complete lack of observational skills amusing, but mostly because the gear-shifting metaphor is strangely apt for a smart boy on the wrong side of the ocean trying to answer a lot of difficult questions in a very short period of time. Flying over here was like making the decision and getting into the car. How it’s starting to feel is like I looked down for a complex gear-stick and found that I was driving an automatic. As the days roll by, faster and faster now, we become increasingly comfortable in each other’s company, less inclined to silence and walking separately. We hold hands, put our arms around each other, kiss in public. We laugh a lot. As couples go, we’re not grossing anybody out yet, but that may only be a matter of time.
Oddly, the one thing we’re missing is the depth that our online conversations have. I’m inclined to blame myself for that. In text I find it easy to be honest, sometimes alarmingly so. I can find the right words and the right order. And if I fuck it up the first time, I can always delete. I don’t have that same confidence when I’m speaking. I’m not shy, and anyone that has had the dubious pleasure of my company will tell you that I rarely shut up. But it’s the sly cultural observations, faux-outrage, and surface obsessions that emerge in such situations, never the analysis, theory, and occasional soul-bearing found in NFADR.
Never is this more apparent than on Interstate 15.
I’ve looked forward to this for so long that I’m disappointed when I realise that we’re on the road itself and that the scenery hasn’t changed all that much. Viewed through the eyes of my Fear And Loathing fetish, the speculations Jenn and I shared about going on this very trip, and the huge amount of research I did on this stretch of road for a piece of fiction called Interstate Love Story, it isn’t much of a muchness. Or at least, this particular section isn’t.
We pass the time with music (chosen mostly but not entirely by me) and conversation (centering mainly on the truly terrifying amount of bumper stickers endorsing Jesus, GWB, or both), distracting ourselves from the monotony of travel and continuing to get to know each other through old stories and favourite themes. I’m enjoying myself, and I barely notice the beginning of our ascent to the Cajon Pass. One minute we’re driving through urban, sunbaked California, the next we’re on a road that curves magnificently upward between snow-dusted mountains. One side of my family originates in the Lake District, and I’m used to such views. Jenn, however, seems stunned by the sight of snow, and her glee is infectious. In moments, we’re taking it in turns to point out the next shining white vista or frosted peak, laughing like children who might at any moment pull to the side of the road and build a snowman.
From the dizzy heights of the pass, it’s once again a question of contrasts as I-15 drops down into the Mojave Desert. Initially, the chief difference is one of tone. Passing from the deep blue sky and the gleaming white of the mountains to the dull browns and greens of the Pre-Victorville desert is quite an experience, but it’s nothing compared to the way the Mojave opens up once that city is behind us. I have the image imprinted on my mind: two lanes of blacktop cutting a dead straight line all the way to the vanishing point, sunlight flashing on distant chrome from a sky coloured the faded blue of well-worn denim and interrupted only by pencil-scratch vapour trails and the occasional smear of cloud. Everything is bleached and coated in a fine layer of dust; a cacophony of the organic and mineral rendered antique by day after endless day spent in this sunblind void. You have to look ahead, at the road and the distant mountains, because there lies continuity. To each side, only the chaotic absence of civilisation; no paths, no landmarks, no destinations.
Later, there are signs of life in the desert, and I find myself almost disappointed that we’d already stopped for lunch in Barstow. It would have been quite an experience, I think, to pull into one of these sad, isolated outposts of nowhere. One in particular catches the eye; nothing but a tiny garage and what I identify as a restaurant of some kind only by the sign that decorates its roof. ‘EAT’ it says, and that is all. Something in that saddens me, perhaps the appeal of marketing stripped of all its gimcracks and slogans, reduced to a single lonely word so purely functional that it makes a mockery of Colonel Sanders and Ronald McDonald, of value meals and corporate tie-ins, of advertising executives with seven-figure salaries. It’s a three-letter indictment of an entire culture, and it’s almost heartbreaking.
Whatever instinct makes me reach for Jimi Hendrix the next time a CD finishes is the right one. Just as I’m thinking that Interstate 15 is through surprising me, that I’ve had my virgin experience and will never see this landscape through the same eyes again, Jenn eases the car into a gently curving stretch of road that leads down towards the town of Baker and I turn towards the passenger side window just as a rocky outcrop is drawn aside like a curtain. The view is like nothing I’ve ever seen, and the sentences are already forming in my mind, words falling over one another as though frantic for inclusion.
The Mojave is no different, and perhaps it is the growing blandness of the desert floor, with its constant geography and struggling wisps of creosote and sagebrush, that renders the mountains beyond in such spectacular shades. They are strangers here, formidable terracotta giants standing in judgement of all they survey, their peaks seeming to come together as though in conference, sharing ancient secrets and passing on the whispers of the wind.
Will the wind ever remember, Jimi sings, the names it has blown in the past? And with this crutch, its old age, and its wisdom, it whispers ‘no, this will be the last’.
It’s like an alien landscape, so utterly foreign to my experience that I’m breathless. No combination of words, no painting, no photograph could ever truly capture this assault on the eyes and mind, this unique picture leant further strangeness by the ghost-moon that looms large in the sky above, dropping its daytime camouflage to bask in vanity.
To illustrate my point about not being able to talk as I write, I share this experience with Jennifer by saying something so incredibly awful, so unbelievably bland, that I cringe to think of it. I say: “That’s a nice view.”
I suck. My God, do I suck. Like Monica Lewinsky, like an industrial Electrolux, like Madonna’s cover of American Pie. For a moment, I consider simply undoing my seatbelt, opening the door, and falling out onto the road and into the path of the truck behind us, where the balanca of karma can be restored by a systematic crushing of every bone in my ever-sucking body beneath its wheels.
Obviously, I don’t. I’m going to Vegas, for Christ’s sake, a fact I’m now being reminded of by the huge billboards that line both sides of the road, advertising pretty much every variation on gambling, entertainment, and half-naked women you could possibly imagine, along with a few you couldn’t. In their own way, they’re every bit as alien as the mountains, if a little lacking in the former’s beauty.
“We should be crossing the Nevada state line soon,” Jenn says. “I can’t remember if it’s marked or not.”
If it is, I don’t notice. Jenn tells me roughly when we’re passing it, but I don’t see any signage. In fact, the only clue that we’re closing on Las Vegas are the ever-present billboards and its satellite cities, places like Primm and Jean, which are miniature versions of the Vegas I’ve seen on TV and in movies, younger siblings Interstate 15 swats aside as though impatient to get to the real action.
As it turns out, the ‘real action’ is a huge traffic jam that puts the brakes on my enthusiasm just as surely as Jenifer puts them on the Chevy. I’m seeing Las Vegas, and I’m appreciating it. It’s just that I’m getting travel-fatigue and I want to be out, wandering around like a tourist, drinking too much, and spending money I don’t have. Even stuck in a traffic jam on the road leading into the city they sometimes call Lost Wages, I’m entertaining fantasies of winning hundreds of thousands of dollars at Blackjack and being able to do whatever the hell I want for a few years. That’s the rather dubious magic of the place, I suppose. It’s a cheap neon fantasy about winning lots of money and maybe sleeping with a stripper. It’s the city as a stag night. It’s cheap and garish and meaningless. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” they say, without adding: “Along with your money, your dignity, and a good portion of your memory.”
This is what I think even before I’ve walked the strip, what I think when we finally find a space in the huge car park at the rear of the Stratosphere hotel/casino/tower/carnival of pimps, whores, and tourists of every shade, what I think when we’re stuck in the queue to check in, and even when we’re at the desk and I’m finally saying and doing all the right things in America and not looking like some clueless English idiot. That vibe is as much a part of the city as the casinos and shows. Vegas knows what it is, and it knows you came here anyway. There are no apologies or excuses, and they wouldn’t look right written in flashing neon letters ten feet high anyway.
Our room is quite fantastically huge, especially when you consider that we only paid twenty dollars for it. This makes immediate sense to me. It is, after all, the off-season. On top of that, if I owned a combination hotel/casino/fairground/theatre, I’d make the rooms cheap, too. It gives people the illusion that they’re not spending much money, when the reality is that they’re getting fleeced all over the place. It’s times like these that I’m thankful for being poor. I can afford the room and maybe a hundred bucks on top of it. Once that’s gone, Vegas and I will come to a parting of the ways.
Between gasping at the view of the city from the window and taking quick showers to wash Interstate 15 from our bodies (Me: “Come to the Stratosphere, where the soap smells like marzipan.” Jenn: “I don’t know what that is.”), I finally find the time to call Jammie.
“Guess where I am?” I say, turning from the window to grin at Jenn, who is lounging somewhat seductively on the bed.
“I don’t know, at home?” Jammie replies.
“Try again.”
“I don’t know. Where are you?”
“Vegas.”
“What?”
It soon becomes apparent that Jammie has drawn a rather obvious conclusion from this, which brings us no end of amusement. Yeah, lots of people come to Vegas to get married, but finally meeting each other has made Jenn and I a little more practical than that. Then there’s the fact that Jennifer wants to wear a proper wedding dress when she gets married and I never want to get hitched in the first place. I suppose we could have gotten married in Vegas, and it could have been fun, but I bet we’d have ended up regretting it.
I’d have liked to talk to Jammie for longer, but it’s hard to keep your concentration when you’re looking down on the strip at night. I think she senses this, because after a quick chat with both of us, she signs off far sooner than I’d expected. Despite that, it’s now getting on for seven o’clock, and when Jenn suggests we hit the town, I agree instantly.
The first place we go is the bar at the Stratosphere, where we knock back Jack Daniel’s, beer, and several unidentified cocktails the barman assures us we’ll enjoy. Once we’ve tipped him a few times (and that’s another custom I needed to adjust to. You don’t tip the bartender in England), he actually buys us a round, a neat touch that probably ends up earning him more than he spent. I say probably because those cocktails really are good, and by the time we leave the Stratosphere, maybe an hour later, we’re already drunk.
On the trail of Hunter S. Thompson, we hit the Circus Circus next, and I’m disappointed to find that there is no longer a revolving bar. There are acrobats, but they’re not performing on this particular Tuesday night. Had those two things been present, I think I would have stayed in the Circus Circus all night, getting drunk, muttering about polar bears, and possibly trying to buy a monkey. One of the things we quickly discover is that once you’ve been in one Vegas casino, you’ve been in them all. There are thematic differences, but the basics are the same.
Though I’m drunk, Jennifer clearly has a lead on me in the inebriation stakes. At the bar in the Circus Circus, I can’t help but notice one of the staff, who has both a huge moustache and a name badge that reads ‘Rafael’.
“I wish my name was Rafael,” I mutter. “It’s a porn star name.”
“RAFAEL ISN’T A PORN STAR NAME!” Jenn replies. She doesn’t shout it that loudly, but by comparison to my whisper and also the fact that he’s passing us at the time, it isn’t exactly discreet. Rafael shoots me a dirty look and I smile like a man with thousands of dollars in my wallet before ordering some more drinks.
Then onto Stardust, and then somewhere else, and then a wild west-themed place I forget the name of. I’m mixing my drinks, switching up between JD, Bailey's, and various cocktails. I’m drunk. I remember sitting at various bars and ordering drinks and playing the machines on the counter. I remember Jenn eating a giant hot dog and some popcorn. I remember us watching, horrified, as a woman emptied her winnings from a slot machine with one hand while playing the one beside it with the other. I remember a mechanical bull and a horse racing simulator. I remember that the three things I kept seeing everywhere were dollar signs, magicians, and blank-eyed women without much on. I remember a lot of things, and not many of them make sense.
The next thing that’s relatively clear is staggering back along the strip with Jenn. We have our arms around each other and we’re giggling, muttering insults at passers-by and discussing the phonetic and grammatical differences between our respective versions of the English language. Somehow this gets us onto the atrocities committed by our respective ancestors, and before too long we’re trading xenophobic barbs and laughing helplessly, a strange trans-atlantic partnership pushing through the Vegas crowds, stumbling back to our hotel through a wash of alcohol and goodwill. Someone shouts something at us from the open window of a car full of goons, and I turn to offer them a cheerful “fuck you.”
“Don’t be hating on my vatos,” Jenn says.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” I reply, pulling her to me.
Those five words have become a catchphrase, a private joke, and here, making unsteady progress back towards the Stratosphere with my arms around my giggling partner in all this, that’s a sobering thought. Las Vegas, sometime around midnight, a city I never dreamed I’d be in and a girl I never thought I’d meet. This might be a haven of all that is superficial and up for sale, but I’ve become a part of something that isn’t. On a day of contrasts, that’s perhaps the greatest of all.
