Vegas

Contracting a name is usually a sign of fond familiarity. Nicknames are created out of affection. Some are a little rough, but most reflect true friendship. Nicholas becomes Nick, but to my relatives and wife, I will always be Nicky.

Everyone calls Las Vegas, "Vegas." I mean everyone. Only foreigners or rubes use its full name. I don't think there is affection in "Vegas," rather notoriety. "Things you do in Vegas stay in Vegas." It's a separate reality.

Vegas.

I was there from Tuesday to Saturday on a trip my wife meticuously planned to celebrate our anniversary. She wanted to take me to see Cirque de Soleil's production of "LOVE," a celebration of the music of the Beatles. The show was fantastic. It was an experience of a lifetime. I appreciate fully what my wife did. The only problem was that the show was in Vegas.

Shortly after we arrived, Ann asked me what I'd like to do during our time in town. Vegas exists for one reason - gambling, and everything else supports that. I have an addictive personality, and I could really enjoy gambling. Fortunately, I have learned that I have little luck, and gambling rewards those who are lucky. I believe that double blind, placebo using, massive test group studies would conclusively show that some people are luckier than others. And I am one of the others.

No gambling. More shows? No one in town I wanted to see. Gourmet food? I am on a perpetual diet. Shopping? I don't have to go to Vegas to discover how much I hate to shop. Outdoor activities? It was 95 degrees by 10 am and 106 degrees by 2 pm. No amount of dry makes 106 tolerable.

I liked our room; I liked the show: I got along with Ann most of the time. The truth is, I hated Vegas when I meandered through there in 1969, and I hate it today. I hate mindless, glassy eyed women feeding money (no more coins) into slot machines that never pay out as much as they take in. I am frustrated to see men ride the roller coaster at the black jack tables, losing then winning then losing again. The House can ride the wave indefinitely; gamblers can't.

I am most disturbed by the hundreds of women I saw who were dressed down in an attempt to hook up.. There might have been thousands; I only noted the ones who looked and smelled drop dead gorgeous and were dressed in outfits so scanty that prostitutes would never even think about wearing them.

My son-in-law Mike observed that people suspend their moral standards when they come to Vegas. You may not do anonymous sex in Akron, but you can in Vegas, and no one even cares. You may never pay for professional sex in Denver, but in Vegas, lines of pitch men click cards and hand out literature about immediately available call girls to the throngs walking down Las Vegas Blvd. I didn't see obvious signs of less tolerated forms of sexuality, but I'm sure you can find pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia in Vegas.

I am saddened by suspended morality. I have no right to demand that Vegas be shut down, any more that I have the right to insist that homosexual unions be banned (if I believed they should be banned, and I don't). It's important to remember that civil rights don't have to fit religious standards. The Church has no right to insist that the society that surrounds it resembles it.

Vegas can continue to be what it is. My only form of protest is to not go back there and to share my attitude about the place with others. I would strongly encourage everyone spellbound by Vegas not to suspend whatever values they hold when they are there. If you think something is wrong and you do it, you have to deal with guilt or reassess your standards. Some people wear their guilt better than others, but suspending values in the middle of the desert, drunk on free booze, squandering the summer's earnings, waking up next to someone you don't know seems to be pretty guilt inducing.

People can choose to be better than they are or worse than they are. Vegas brings out the worst in people, and I guess its ongoing popularity is an indication that humans want this, at least part of the time.

But I don't want it, at least not anymore.