What Happens in Vegas Should Stay the Hell in Vegas
Every time I’ve been to Las Vegas I always promise myself: NEVER. AGAIN.
Las Vegas was not built for me. I was not built for Las Vega, having been born with zero tolerance for tacky. No, I did not get the tacky tolerance gene. I don’t do well with reality shows, Kardashians, etc. As Michael Bloomberg said of Donald Trump, they come off to me like carnival barking clowns. Unlike the way that sounds, I was not born rich. The opposite. But I did grow up in a wholesome smalltown, a teensy beach town in New Jersey, well-manicured, kids playing on the street, good schools, little crime. No frills, no flash. Absolutely unthreatening. A perfect place to retreat into one’s own mind, away from the generally mediocre.
Fabulous Footwear
As a teen, I became better adjusted to the world of books than people, escaping into an even more gentle world of literary fantasy. I morphed into emotional time traveler when reading, to far more emotional times. I made my own clothes, to look the way I felt: like a character out of Colette, Anais Nin, D.H. Lawrence. I related to them more than anyone (supposedly) real, they were “realer” to me. I took it as a message: my imagination was something to cultivate – the only place I’d ever been truly comfortable. It’s the only habitat not threatening to the idea of myself as a highly cultured person in a selective cultured “Bridgerton” like world.
But work called me back to Vegas. A place – the place – that is nothing if not threatening if you don’t happen to have TT (tacky tolerance). You land in the most blaringly glaringly fluorescent airport in the world, beaming and clicking, whistling and beeping fowl noises: the siren call of: “Give me your money, fool.” What do you get in return? Escapist fantasy. Better, safer, than drugs. Depending on how much you take.
Outer space couldn’t be this alienating. Human this place is not.
The cab ride into fauxtown is one long Dante-esque descent into Hell. At 1am, when I arrived straight out of a cultured weekend, I wasn’t ready for the mammoth crazy shaped buildings, as large as pyramids popping out in the desert or the Taj Mahal – Vegas literally has all three. It might be an oasis of spas and shops, but for self-described bookish types like me, it’s the Donald Trump of hotel dumps: your flash ain’t nuthin’ but trash. All pummel, no subtle. A sharp pin pricking my protective bubble.
Purpose-ridden or not, Vegas seeps into your pores, your brain cells, your DNA, like psychosis. Like short Covid antigens. It will lift the minute your return flight takes off – no symptoms to speak of outside of a little culture shock. But during your duration infected, you’re vilely nauseous, headachy, ears ringing (could be the slots), feet swelling, teeth chattering (casino temps kept bbrrrrrrr low). But instead of your sense of smell disappearing, you inhale more readily the wafting scent of treacly Cinnabon butter splashed with salty French fry grease.
Eau de Hades. Eau de Dante. Eau de Inferno.
I was hired by the MAGIC fashion trade show – a monstrously large annual consortium of fashion brands and buyers dressed trendily enough to almost make Vegas look good. My job was to interview a fashion icon in front of a large crowd of 2 to 3 hundred rabid loyal loving Billy Porter fans.
I’d watched his late night tv interviews. He’s lit: fire-y energy that could electrocute an ambien sleep clinic. Calling anyone outside Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O a fashion icon is an abomination of an overstatement. But the man IS a true fashion icon, he’s made dressing an art form – and a political statement on the state of gender fluidity. He helped make men in skirts, glitter or giant hats acceptable, even to the (gulp) mainstream. Maybe that isn’t my cause in particular. But I chose my profession for the freedom it gives me to dress as whatever character I wake up as. And that’s freedom to dream. We all deserve that.
.
I’d had 5 hours sleep in a chilly hotel room (thermostat 68, thank you, Vegas) when I had to jump up to dress like someone who deserves to interview an icon. In other words, fashiony – but not trendy. Just fashion-y enough. I thought a pair of Jonathan Simkhai black tuxedo pants and satin off the shoulder blouse would convey the perfect combo of superficial and serious – adding a pair of Proenza Schouler black and white pumps with a mirror heel. Not the best option to hike the casino floor at the Hilton at Resort World, with its 400 restaurants – most of them packed at 8am.
The interview with Billy was all mapped out – gestation of a fashion icon, just what the trade show and his PR wanted. When he arrived to the green room, his hair in long tight reggae braids, swinging with his walk, in an aqua raw silk belted safari suit with 7 inch high Jimmy Choo platforms, he was clearly performing the minute he arrived. People – just feeling their curiously – feed his energy. It’s more than infectious – it’s downright pummeling.
When we got to the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center, there were about three hundred rabid Billy fans seated around the agitprop stage, plus several hundred drifting through.That very second, the script fell out the window. I’d muttered one question and Billy leaped ripped right into the story of his OG underdressed life: his Pittsburgh parents, restrictive, he didn’t relate to other kids. He learned to sing and dance, he worked his way up to Broadway (“Kinky Boots”), won a Tony (2013), then figured out that his somewhat – flamboyant? -taste in clothes and big big shopping habit could be his ticket to cultural fame. He was right, despite his manager warning he was overspending. But guess what? Standing out (to say the least) on red carpet,s Porter earned a Gap campaign, got Met Ball invites, wore a Christian Siriano tuxedo gown he co-designed – then hosted the ABC pre Oscar show in 2019.
Predictably, Billy began going off script. He morphed into a Gospel preacher (having grown up in the gospel church, where he got his fashion sense), jumping out of his seat, scuttling back and forth at the edge of the stage in his wobbly 7 inch silver Jimmy Choo platforms, preaching his own gospel at top volume: BE YOURSELF! DRESS WITH AUTHENTICITY! DRESS YOUR TRUTH! LIVE YOUR TRUTH! It was fashion fanaticism, the sartorial Sermon on the Mount. The truth-is-beauty Baghavad Gita.
While I don’t have a religious bone in my skeleton, I caught a bit of that fervor of the recent convert. Not that I’ve ever had an issue with what to wear or not – even with parents badgering me – things that felt natural to me when no one was wearing them were the most appealing. But not being able to wear what’s “you” – authentically (cliché’ intended) – suddnely hit home, seemed worth preaching about. Because when Billy finally got to wear what he really wanted – after, he told, being laughed at for years by peers and gawkers alike, he became an almost overnight star.
The rest of my trip was a blur of people watching (normcore to the core: backwards baseball caps, North Face everything, stiff leather jackets, stiff jeans), food tasting (shrimp quesadilla, spicy tuna handrolls– two out of four hundred restaurants), and one very sleepy cab ride to the airport. 16 hours after arrival the slots were still dinging and zinging. People were still throwing money away, desperately chasing a fantasy sold by tv commercials and tabloids, the creators of each chasing fantasies themselves of getting rich quick. I call it “the ticket out” – of doldrums, routine, soul crushing repetition – and worst of all – sameness.
I had the intuition of surreality slipping away. By one thirty pm, the neon and glitter were obliterated by a cold greyish sun, the buildings seemed smaller, collapsible , toys built from Legos. Even the rainbow lit airport appeared somewhat more sober.
No, I’m never going back. Going to Vegas is like slipping under the belljar. Nothing seems normal – because nothing is normal.
Still – there is something about a waking nightmare that’s kinda cool. In retrospect.
