Launched myself into a frenzy of America:  

 

 

 Las Vegas, hometown.  Houston, AMERICA.  Out by the airport and then to the downtown.  DALLAS, Texas.  Strip after strip of logoland, freeway living, meaningless turn signals. LOUISIANA:  Baton Rouge.  Humid hotness hospitality.

And spackled in between the cities, a constant flow of in-homes and shop-alongs, the world of research, where you recruit humans using criteria, psychologically manuever your way to the truth of their humanity, then convert these human faces and beings back into statistics.

It’s a trip.

 

I remembered the Barstow trips to Los Angeles when I was a little girl and ALLEGEDLY flashing everyone in the Big Bob’s.  My grandmother and mother tell me I danced around showing off diaperless bebevajay.  I kind of remember it.  That was fun.

 

No chance to try it again; after a horrid day of things and packing and driving and details, hit the passout point in the Barstow parking lot at 2am.  Exhaustedly left the windows down, bitten by mosquitoes 3 times.  I am very allergic to mosquitoes.  3 new scars a’poppin.

 

largest thermometer- mosquito bites- big boy Barstow

 

Some people do not believe I went to a school in Nevada named Bonanza but I did, and so did Jenna Jameson.  Massively unremarkable.  Mormons and rich kids and poor kids and weird kids.  Crappy teachers, stupid classes, fistfights and altered states of reality. 

I get kicked off campus by cops now, not dragged back.

 

My sister found an eyeball that popped out of my bag and eyed it, brain going.  Do you want it?  I asked her.  Well I was thinking I’d put it in the doll she said.

 

Genius.  Mother has seated some blond talking Cricket creature in this old little electric car I drove as a bebegirl.  Dirty, ratty, missing an eye…

Cricket’s a mess, until the doctor shows up to do emergency kitchen surgery.  Fixed+Amazing.  Less than an hour of work.  My sister rules.

socket to her- eye captain- balls out awesome

 

Sadly, I missed my brother’s OFFICER DOWN show at some tattoo place.  He’s the leader of the band, plays guitar, I’m so proud of him.  But I did find the time go out with my old beloved Liv.  Double Down, Divebar, Dino’s. 

appropriate

The worst/ most interesting was when this curly headed, dirty meatface methhead accosted us in my mom’s car, my MOM’S CAR, grabbing the doorhandle and yelling for us to get out and look at his car.  LOOK AT MY CAR he yelled.  YOU HAVE A CAR GET OUT AND LOOK AT MY CAR.

I did not want to do this thing.  He was pulling on my door handle, some other car’s door handle, insanely aggro, and I put (MY MOM’S) car in reverse and backed up about 100 feet at 50mph.  Livvy and I watched him; she called her friend, the bouncer at Divebar.

 

  cracker is a great name for crackhead.  but so is crackhead. you can’t see cracky in this pic, just the dude he was threatening

We watched him flip out on some other people, grab a golf club from the trunk, begin swinging, and while this happened we hid the car behind a van and walked into the desolate bar. 

This really gets me:  the breakdown of reality.  I felt present.  I was living in reality.  About to launch into an intense research trip,  dealing with my mom in the hospital, emergency situations all the week before. 

This night was a mere distraction, but in Vegas, nights are just days and life is just time.  I like it, really.  Don’t tell me when to stop being awake.  Am I insomniac from growing up in Vegas?  Or just a lucky coincidence?  And how did I get lucky enough to leave?

 
vegas time victims

 

Fast forward to the guy with the golf club going bananas in the parking lot storming the bar and, AGAIN zones in on me for whatever zonked out methhead reason. 

YOU YOU’RE THE ONE COME AND LOOK AT MY CAR!   YOU HAVE A CAR COME LOOK AT ME! 

It was super violent aggro, this dirty, dirty man a foot taller than me, clearly out of his mind and demanding I go to the parking lot with him to look at his purple Cadillac with the blown airbags and trash trailing out of the trunk.

I look at Liv and she is on her phone, oblivious.  I realize later she is tweeting this:

DON’T TELL ME WHAT YOU CAN’T DO.  TELL ME WHAT YOU CAN DO.  DON’T TELL ME YOU CAN’T MAKE MY CAR MOVE.   

I couldn’t take the agitation.  It was truly too much. I threw my beer at the ineffectual bartender and we left for Dino’s.  Much better.

 

It was lovely to see my girl Liv after so many years.  Friendship. It was like making up for lost time when this pockmarked youngster bought us Iron Stripes and guessed our ages, “correctly,” at 20 and 21.  Immediately after telling us that “women age worse than men.”  He was wise and old, aged 22, and told us all about the gut-wrenching feeling of old age that happens once you get past 21.  So experienced.  We hit the photobooth and split.

learn +love+ liv it up

Our night wasn’t crazy– it was not the time to freak out and hit casinos.  It was hometown revisit mode.  Wake up in the morning and work mode.  Besides, I never gambled in Las Vegas; I moved away pre-legal gambling age.  There’s no way I’ve put $100 into a slot machine in my lifetime, but I’m getting closer.  At the airport, tried it with a five.  Played around a bit and cashed out at $2.50.  Pointless, right? 

But I had to make sure Vegas knew I was in control.  I give you what I want.  And I don’t expect a thing.

last chance to win, sucker

 

Aside from the schizophrenic nightlife, Vegas was sad and happy and half of me wants to take my family far far away from that time-zone hellhole… and half of me wants to move back and live like I used to.  24 hours a day, music, reading, driving, mountains, drinking, heat, thinking.  Life on Vegastime.

purple mountains, endless time.  i miss them.