In Las Vegas, but not staying in Las Vegas

Vegas is how you imagine the world ending: inane frivolity alongside fear and suffering, each pretending not to notice the other.

In Vegas, money trawls its nets through humanity, leaving the skeletons it stripped. They wear layers of clothes they got out of dumpsters and, for the lucky, a child-sized mattress they tote around for getting through cold nights on the sidewalk. Vegas is a huckster’s vision of Heaven built around, through and atop a foundation of hell.

Trump has a tower here. Of course.

Freaks and normals are side-by-side. Freaks are appalled at the dishonesty they believe they live above, and normals are afraid to give more than a glance outside the mainstream they float in. Because, you know, those people are creepy. Men with makeup! Men holding hands! Men with long, scruffy beards! Old women with deep lines etched in their faces and no teeth!

The casino resorts hotels are spotless. Everywhere else looks like the edge of a landfill. Plastic and paper goes airborne when the wind comes up. Dark-skinned people pick it up around the casinos afterward, but elsewhere it just lies there awaiting the next desert breeze.

They have places where you can sell your blood. Smallish signs, but the clumps of people standing around outside testify that advertising isn’t…