REFLECTION, RUMINATION & RHETORIC FROM THE ROAD: VEGAS
3. Las Vegas: Suicide Capital of the United States
Canned air. A noisy fan whirring all night just so you don’t roast to death or suffocate. Gambling addicts in flip-flops sharing foot fungus in elevators. Little wonder Vegas is this country’s favorite venue for ending it all.
I almost went that route when I got lost in the myriad of casino parlors that intentionally keep you prisoner—as in, no way out. You trek a quarter mile through a casino from Point A (the elevator) to Point B (an exit for your dog to pee) and find yourself back at Point A (and the dog gives up and goes).
Can misplacement, optical illusion, simulation and disorientation, individually or in any combination, lead to suicidal thoughts?
The history of suicide is right here on The Strip:
First, Caesar’s Palace (ancient Rome). In Roman society, suicide was utilized to preserve honor and prevent confiscation of your family’s property if you had seriously misbehaved. The slashing of wrists in a warm bath was invented here.
Luxor. Drowning was the preferred method in ancient Egypt—so there are no fountains (so prevalent everywhere else) in this pyramid-shaped resort.
The Venetian (gondoliers on faux canals). Venice is where you romance the person who eventually drives you to despair and suicide.
After that, Paris, a scaled-down Eiffel Tower, from which French suicides jump.
Finally, The Lost Village of Aladdin, where after getting lost the only way out is—surprise, surprise—through their casino. This place is a composite of all countries Arabic, as if cultures in the Middle East are homogenous. Need I say… suicide bombers?
All ceilings are the same blue sky with clouds—painted by the same bored Zoloft addict. Every so often the ceiling flashes and thunder roars to simulate an approaching rainstorm.
Las Vegas is a dead-end street with a low guard rail facing the abyss. Odd thing is, the self-homicidal of Vegas are not sticking to theme. They shoot themselves in the head or jump from multi-story car parks. No grand statement. No aesthetic exit ramp. No one has even thought to jump into the Volcano that erupts every hour outside the Mirage Hotel.
The kitsch up and down this five-mile strip is as unrelenting as the hot desert sun. Given time, both tempt you to either OD on something or pray to Pelagia, patron saint of suicides.
The American Encyclopaedia: “Suicide levels are highest among the unemployed, divorced, the childless, urbanites, and those living alone.”
Also: More men than women commit suicide, a ratio of four-to-one; 73 percent of suicides are white males, and 55 percent shoot themselves.
Which means this: If you live alone in a city, you’re divorced without children, you recently lost your job and you are a white male… steer clear of Vegas.
And more optical/audio illusions: Interactive movies that fool your mind and senses into believing you are moving forward or backward but never really going anywhere… except into another casino.
Vegas has become is The Great American Temple, where the obese pray for yet bigger all-you-can-eat buffets or $8.99 happy hour prime rib, make that two—oh, and pack one to go. After two days you’re either hypnotized by the slots or your senses are numbed to the point that nothing means anything. In other words, the hotels are full but the culture is vacant and people are numb. Someone needs to be sacrificed to Thanatos, the Greek god of death.
It is the casino carpets that ultimately tip the scale in favor of finito bon soir. They are all uniformly garish.
Could this be to conceal tracked-in desert dust? Or cocktail spillage?
Guess again. These disturbing, obnoxious carpets are specially designed by psychologists to repel your eyes so that you cannot look down while you walk without feeling dizzy and disoriented. (Studies show that disorientation leads to suggestibility.) Instead, you are compelled to look ahead at the slots and gaming tables, which are adorned with flashing lights to grab your attention and haul you in. If you try to beat the system by making yourself look down while you walk, well, it drives you over the edge.
And a gift for paranoid schizophrenics who believe THEY are watching. Finally, someone really is watching. You don’t see policemen along the strip but that’s because the strip does not need policemen. Their sophisticated “eye in the sky” can track you to Paris and back—and record for posterity photos of you picking your nose (although they probably miss Muhammed and Mukhtar from Aladdin casing New York, New York).
So… you are already feeling low and the carpets (and everything else) get to you along with trillions of free radicals in your bloodstream from too much fried food. There’s a better way to check out and it is still part of the Vegas experience!
Grand Canyon, Grand Exit
You know how your whole life is supposed to flash before your eyes when you jump off a building? If you leap into the Grand Canyon, there’s time—a full 15 seconds—for your past lives to flash before you too!
You can roll into Vegas, take a final look at Paris, Venice and New York; do memory lane (ancient Egypt and Rome for the sake of your ancestors): Wallow in simulation. Then spring two C bills for an Air Vegas flight over Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, to a tiny airstrip on the Grand Canyon’s west rim.
The guide welcomes you and she wants you to board the return flight to Vegas. But even if you tell her your plan there’s not much she can do about because not only is there no landline telephone service on the west rim but there is also no cellular service.
Danger lurks everywhere. Rattlesnakes, scorpions and large hairy spiders. A whole book has been written about people who perish at the Grand Canyon, albeit most by accident, not design.
The highpoint is a Native Indian outpost staffed by Hualapai Nation who lay on, as a last supper, an all-you-can-eat buffet of BBQ beef, baked beans, corn and a warm tortilla. Not only do calories no long matter, you’ll want some bulk for a final descent.
If I were inclined to check-out, it would be here, at the Grand Canyon, not a multi-story parking lot in Vegas. After all, this is your life you’re concluding. Why make your last stop in a tacky town built specifically to con everyone out of their money, their mind, their life? Why end it there when without much further effort or expense you can fossilize with a two-billion-year-old wonder of the world?
Alas, I’m still here.
And you should be too.
Because suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
And when, one day, the grim reaper naturally arrives, you’ll have plenty of time to be dead.