Las Vegas. The Rodeo’s in town this weekend. A perverse gathering of cowboys, hobos, sex-starved housewives and lonely blue-collar workers blowing their kids’ college funds in a single weekend.
It's a giddily stroll down the strip, wearing ten gallon hats, bloodshot eyes that sentence you with a glance, mini skirts and pink stilettos - the warm dregs of last night’s margaritas still gripped tightly in their hands. They have all gathered here to lay mounds of ten dollar bills at the flashing neon altar of the God of the American Bad-Dream. The good ol’ boys are here too, plaid cotton shirts and cheap sunglasses, they let out a yeehaw, high five and go looking for topless bars while their Texan housewives, cotton candy curls spilling down over their ageing cleavage, giggle like hyenas and offend the western desert night with their dizzy southern drawl. It’s a truly twisted pilgrimage: millions of smartly-dressed hyenas handing over thousands of dollars at the Altar of the Flashing Lights. They are defined by a deadly combination of blind optimism, a large disposable income and the constant craving for cheap thrills. Some believe they will see The Light and hit the jackpot, take home the big prize and live happily ever after amen. But most are just in it for the kicks - sensation junkies, big kids in expensive suits, rolls of blubber stuffed into their Levi’s, hogs on barstools devouring Jack Daniels at long neon troughs, they gamble away their savings thousands of dollars at a time and laugh it off with a shrug. Everything is bigger in America. The roads, the misery, the meals, the open land, the payouts. Even the night itself seems larger in America. Were you hit at a traffic stop? Want 5 litres for the price of 4? Need your palm reading? Want a chance to win the trip of a life time? Do you experience pain when urinating? Want to be ready for the Second Coming of Jesus? All you have to do is call this number. But to those of us who live in the shadows of the mind and not in the world; those of us who joy has left in its wake; those of us who were born into endless night; those of us with shoulders frayed by the moonlight; those of us whose souls are defined by longing, it is one long desolation row from sea to shining sea. It is still Walt Whitman’s America. It is still a working man’s world. We are still dwarfed by the smokestacks and cut off from the land by the plough, slaves to loans and mediocrity, going nowhere in a hurry, living very ordinary lives but not very simple ones. The world is not a dream. All of this is not all for nothing. But we let it pass us by as though we were dreaming. We cling onto passing things. We climb the ladder and don’t look down. We have forgotten how to ground ourselves in the simple things, in the ecstasies and rhythms of the earth itself. Los Angeles. Skid Row ain’t no joke. Hustlers, drunks, schizophrenics on the corners fighting over a few pennies, a few mouthfuls to survive another day of life. But among the desolation there are little flickers of that pura alegria, the sensuality and humour of the Latina America I was a fool to leave behind and am aching to return to. All night pressed together dancing sweating laughing drinking until dawn... salvaje y borracho in Santa Marta, fuegito blanco de mi corazón. Puerto Rico can keep it despacito! I want la chica with the voz sensual, la quemona, huepaje, el baile de tau! Everyone swaying in paired rhythm in the shadows by the beach. Ay si que rico, ay vente pa’ca, así que bueno, que deli, que bendito, que me abrazas hasta la madrugada acostados en la playa con la brisa sobrepasando nuestros cuerpos casi soñando...
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AuthorEnglish teacher from the UK. Living in Granada. Currently working in Doha. Archives
February 2022
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