Alan Ilagan

The view of the sky from my suite at the Venetian. Clouds bracket the top and bottom of the scene, closing in on this last bit of blue, closing in on this last bit of summer. Ahead lies the Fall, and after temperatures in the 100’s, I am more than ready. I will fly East, back to my home. The West has a way of messing with my head – it’s fun, it can be enchanting, but it cannot last.

In the Northeast, there will be a proper Fall, that definitive line where Summer ends and the long, fascinating trek to Winter begins. But first, one more trip – to Washington, DC – for a family wedding. Fittingly, a mural at the Las Vegas airport sets the stage…

Rescuing the tail end of the trip, the hallways of the Wynn and Encore provided a perfect resting stop for the hours before my plane departed. In the midst of the garish, over-bloated heat and hype of Vegas, there were glimpses of paradise here. The crowds parted in these long lobby-like spaces, and with no conventions in sight, the emptiness and quiet were a brief bit of relief.

After making it through the weekend, (and winning one more round of Roulette) I decided to treat myself to a celebratory cocktail at Parasol Down.

Drawn in by the colorful umbrage of a multitude of hanging parasols, I descended to the bar area, where the afternoon sun was beating down outside the windows, backed by a waterfall. It’s one of the wonders of Las Vegas that in the middle of the desert there is all this water – in the fountains, the waterfalls, the pools… and yet none of it is natural.

A pretty server with piercing blue eyes and dark hair brings me a cocktail menu and I decide on her recommendation – the Pear-A-Sol. Made up of Absolut Pears vodka, Belle Paire Pear liqueur, pear puree, and sweet & sour mix, it is a dream – like drinking the sweetest pear in liquid form.

It is the perfect ending to a perhaps-less-than-perfect weekend in Las Vegas. And then it is time to leave.

On my last day here in Las Vegas (waiting out the hours before a dreaded red-eye back to NY), I sit in the opulently appointed Ball Room section of the Encore Hotel. This and its sister hotel, the Wynn, are easily my favorite part of Las Vegas. There’s less cheesiness, less of a theme-park feel. It’s decadently over-the-top, but in a classier way. It’s not trying to be something it’s not, or bend a theme into a caricature. The Venetian is, at this point, dated, and while suites are nice, I’m not sure they’re all that much better.

The trip is almost over, assuming that Hurricane Irene has had the courtesy to move aside and allow me to return to NY this evening. The verdict on Vegas? I came, I saw, and there’s no need for me to ever do it again. I won some, I lost some, and in the end just about broke even (not counting a bit of shopping, but I have some amazing Hugo Boss shoes and a Tallia jacket to show for it). I tried my hand at the Roulette wheel and did surprisingly well, lost a bit at the slot machines, but had fun doing both. The truth is that I’m not a gambling man, which makes a Vegas trip largely an exercise in futility.

That said, it is something that everyone should do at least once, and this was my turn. On a deeper level, the fact that Las Vegas failed to impress me is indicative of the kind of guy I am – and it’s decidedly not Vegas. I just don’t have it in me. Even my everyday style is wrong for this city – with the possible exception of a few sequins or a feather boa or two, but the vibe I got was that had I been wearing them I would have gotten my ass kicked. For the Strip, my style did not fit in, and neither did gay men as a whole.

Unless they’re on stage, they don’t quite seem to belong in this city (I might have heard more “faggot” or derogatory “gay” comments – not directed at me – than I have anywhere else in recent memory). In spite of that, I don’t think I saw a single gay person in all my time here. Granted, I didn’t seek out the gay clubs or wander the Fruit Loop, but surely there are a couple of homos slumming it with their straight friends – how could I be the only one?

The drinking thing was fun to see at first, much like New Orleans, but on a city-wide scale, and the novelty wears off quickly enough. This was not how I preferred to enjoy a cocktail. Yes, it was a kick to get free screwdrivers intermittently delivered by inattentive wait-staff (despite decent tips), but the whole drinking-on-the-strip thing is not necessary for me. A proper cocktail is an art form – to be savored in slow, deliberate enjoyment, not out of a 3-foot-tall plastic sippy bong while stumbling along a crowded street.

Maybe a few years ago Vegas would have been a better fit. Right now, it was a fun diversion, but I’m glad I don’t have to go back any time soon. I think part of it was that a lot of friends had extolled its virtues, and I was eager to join them, to be part of the crowd, to fit in where and when I never could. I have to accept that I’m not a Vegas boy – or Showgirl for that matter – and I never will be. So much of my life, admitted or not, has been about trying to fit in – I’m still waiting to be okay with the fact that it may never happen.

Here, alone in the vast, beautiful hallway of this hotel, I sit and ponder how it is that the more I try to be like everyone else, the less I am. Who would have guessed that Las Vegas could force such an existential crisis, albeit it a resignedly happy one?

A word, if I may, on some of the fashion I encountered in Las Vegas (and I will not be posting any ‘People of Wal-Mart’ style photos – I’m not feeling that cruel). The fashion of Vegas was like a glitzy version of the Jersey Shore, and that’s meant to be every bit as horrendous as it sounds. The ladies – if we can call them such – were in dresses so tiny that they often rose above their thong-threaded ass cracks. The boobs were barely contained. The make-up was… heavy and excessive. Don’t even get me started on the shoes. All I’m going to say is that if you can’t walk in high heels, don’t fucking walk in high heels. That looks worse than no heels at all, and all that hunching is not doing anything for your posture or back.

As for the guys, they fared no better. Board shorts and a tank top (or no top at all, when there really should have been), or jeans and a plaid button-down shirt were the only outfits that any of the gentlemen seemed able to pull off (when they weren’t pulling out a beer from a 12-pack in the doorway of a Walgreens). I’m gagging just thinking about it.

Bottom line, the fashion I witnessed was just one big sad, sorry mess. I expected glamour, I expected glitz, I expected excess bordering on sleaze, but what I found was just pathetic. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the venue, but whatever the case, it was dismal.

I opted for casual summer garb, but turned it out with a couple of jackets and some pastel-hued pants. It turns out I could have gotten by with swim trunks and a tank-top with nary a raised eyebrow – and I’m talking for dinner and shows. But really, what could I have expected from the preferred playground of pop-culture pseudo-celebrities like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian?

While much of this narrative is coming out more negative than intended, there were definite charms to Las Vegas, beginning with the shows. Though the Venetian pumps out Phantom music ad nauseum (it houses the Vegas version of Phantom of the Opera) and from every possible outlet (elevator, hallway, gondola rides, Canal shops, even the street outside), there is more to be seen, including several Cirque de Soleil productions.

For our first show we saw ‘Le Reve’ at the Wynn, a hybrid of water and aerials (and not technically affiliated with Cirque de Soleil), and its intimate seating arrangement and dynamic production was an inspiration.

The next night I took in its pre-cursor, ‘O’at the Bellagio – actually quite a different animal entirely. While ‘Le Reve’ was impressive in its acrobatic aqua-technics, ‘O’ burned with a more resonant and haunting flame, weaving a dream-like hypnotic state in its wake. Both were a thrill to behold, but while billed as a night of theater, that emotional push and pull of a proper play or musical was somewhat lacking.

These are spectacles – you may marvel and gasp at some of the physical antics and visual tricks, but there is little to tug at the heart or challenge the head. Like the city they inhabit, there is a façade of glamorous tendencies that, if one isn’t careful, can seem like a lot, but in the end there is little substance behind it, except what you bring to the table. Sometimes that’s money, and sometimes that’s meaning.

The visuals are indeed a sight to see, though, so the best way to enjoy them is to take them in as a thing of beauty, one of the delights of Las Vegas – fleeting, superficial, and just dazzling enough to make it worthwhile – once.