Photos: Leaving Vegas (Hoover Dam)
Since THE UNDERGROUND GUIDE TO LAS VEGAS proved to be a boon, directing me to Red Rock Canyon and Atomic Liquors, I let it guide me to a place I would never have considered going.
Hell, I barely tracked it down even with the address. It was hidden behind a strip mall in one of the most soulless places in a soulless city, devoid even of the strip's neon charms. Who would have thought, nestled in this beige tomb of capitalism, would be a place that Gourmet Magazine dubbed "the best Thai restaurant in the country"?
Since I imagine just reading me rave about food can only be so interesting, I'll cut to the chase: had I known this place existed, I would have been there for lunch and dinner all three days.
Whenever anybody's told me they're going to Vegas, I become a raving hobo prophet insisting that they MUST MUST FUCKING MUST go to Lotus of Siam. And every time they say they didn't, a part of me twinges. THE FOOLS. IT COULD HAVE BEEN YOURS AND YOU DID NOTHING!!!
But I understand that any sane person would balk at the concept of a Vegas buffet--where for a reasonable price you can eat all the congealed punishment your body can withstand--but I was seriously tempted to steal a tray of the banana eggrolls alone. I used to think that my whiskey-and-tequila phase killed off my ability to taste more nuanced flavors, but in retrospect, everything seems bland in comparison to the wallop of spices and sweetness at Lotus of Siam.
And then I got the call from my Mom that Selina, one of my cats, was dying. She had a small tumor in her mouth for many years, one that would have required expensive jaw surgery to excise, so we never did anything about it. But it had been slowly growing the whole time. Now, it had grown so large that she was blind.
Mom said we would have to do something about it, but she thought they could still have a couple weeks before then. Enough time for me to make it back home on schedule.
So I needed a pick-me-up before I hit the road once again:
I figured some coagulated mass of fat and sugar would be exactly what I required, but this one tasted oddly bland. Maybe it was the spices of Lotus of Siam. Maybe it was the superiority of the frozen custard I had in St. Louis. Maybe it just wasn't that great.
I drove on, making it to the Hoover Dam by around midnight. The UNDERGROUND GUIDE said this was the very best time to visit. "As massive and as quiet as the grave of some ancient and profoundly egotistical emperor." But they did not anticipate that when I'd be there, the Dam would be undergoing some massive construction, a giant bridge being built high above the road. As I learned in Vegas, seeing the naked skeleton of a block-long casinio-to-be, there's something so hauntingly beautiful in a James Cameron way about seeing well-lit steel construction at night.
I apologize for the blurriness, it was the best I could do with low-light capabilities. Even if they were sharp, it couldn't capture the haunting immensity of the Dam at midnight. It's a strange feeling, seeing such a thing when you're alone in the darkness, your only company being the passing cars. There's a strange sense of emptiness when you drive onward, back through the flat desert roads of Arizona, which would be indistinguishable even in daylight.
It's a limbo state, where a person unwittingly suffers from a kind of bizarro locked-in syndrome: the body goes on autopilot while the mind is deep in the throes of thought.
When I was a friendless teenager, I was kind of a Crazy Cat Boy. I used to tell myself that I couldn't go out of town for college because I didn't want to leave my kitties behind! Never mind that I didn't want to upset my possessive alcoholic father, who fought to keep me in town, fought to keep me so fearful and trained that I'd be terrified to travel anywhere outside of DC.
Once he died, I found that leaving was suddenly much easier. I walked out that door, giving Selina and Georgio a simple but easy farewell with a pat on their kitty heads, and was off. I felt no sadness leaving them behind because I knew they'd still be there when I got back.
And Selina would, I was determined of that. But I wondered if she would even be the same cat. If I wanted to even see her like that. If I owed it to her to be there for her when the time came. If I should just tell Mom to go ahead and do it herself, which could be either a blessing for her or a cowardly act for me. I knew one thing, though. She'd be terrified. She always is, going to the vet. I knew I had to be there for her. But I didn't know if I could handle it. I didn't know if my being there would be enough to keep her from being scared.
And so, an hour outside of Vegas, back on the road again for another few hours until I would find a nice rest area to sleep, I drove on. And every so often, for a few minutes at a time, I would start sobbing all over again.
Sorry. No one likes hearing dying pet stories. Next round of photos will be more upbeat, I promise. They'll be cowboys and missiles creepy animatronics, I swear!