Troubling Stickiness

A study of spaces and bodies stuck in Vegas

It’s 112 degrees. I feel the beads of perspiration collecting on my brow bone and sliding down my temples. The heat licks up every drop of moisture, the sweat evaporating before it could collect and drop off my chin. I taste my own salt. Is a sticky sheen part of the traditional Las Vegas garb, induced either by beginners’ betting anxiety, an alarming number of chain-smoked cigarettes, or in this case the boring culprit – relentless, sweltering heat? Caravan rolls into Vegas in small, AC-less rental cars, all our members united by the same sticky, miserable wetness.

Our travels begin far removed from sheltered shopping malls, giant slushies, and all manicured Vegas infrastructure designed to keep the sweltering heat at bay: at the Valley of Fire State Park.

Swiftly, we park and shield ourselves with sunnies and baby-brimmed hats. It feels impossible to traverse the aptly named Valley of Fire as the heat beats down on our necks.

Standing under the merciless sun, sweating bullets, we excavate, unearthing Vegas. The sedimented past comes into focus, that is, the bones upon which the flesh of Sin City was laid.

The Before: naked desert.

Like undressing Vegas, in the desert we conceive of it without the decorative layers of simulacra.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Las Vegas desert was entirely submerged with the very thing all of us desperately craved as we beheld it — water. A bursting sea once swept over now-sizzling Paradise.

The truth of Vegas’s material situatedness contextualizes our Quixote-esque descent into the city.

Feverish, Vegas is hot, I am hot, and everything is sticky, plastic even. The hood of the car melds, bending to the heat. Someone wonders if an egg could be cooked on the dashboard. To keep myself from sleeping I am thinking of rain, an ocean, my imagination haunted by the ghost of water.

The only shelter is indoors — the casinos.

Lightheaded, we float into the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel-Casino. The crisp, air-conditioned breeze pleasantly stings our noses. Supposedly the casinos maintain cool temperatures to keep gamblers awake, their senses sharp. We gasp for it, swallowing air as though each breath was not enough.

Paradise feels far removed from its namesake — a grotesque abstraction standing in its place.

The city is a flamboyant carnivorous plant, by design. Latent with deliberate distraction and kitschy excess, I imagine principles of architecture were kicked to the curb, rather, its construction guided by the maxim “why not?”

Ten roman columns, with six gaping lion heads circling each, decorate the entrance to one casino; towering ceilings with four massive chandeliers furnish interiors already crowded with an excess of ornaments chosen for their form over function.

The botanical gardens at the bellagio are the first “green space” we encounter. It certainly is green, but most of it is an amalgam of faux floral arrangements, poorly-disguised potted plants, plastic rocks and trees, enormous ceiling-scaling flaxseed animal statues. The interior decorators seem to have taken their liberties with the word “gardens.” What is a garden anyway?

The truth of the matter is that Vegas is a well-designed lamp and visitors are all June bugs in summer. Quite literally flocking to shiny casino machines, the overstimulating pulsing music, and the bright neon signs which entrance the eyes.

The hypnotic spirals on the carpet lure us toward the infamous slot machines. The gambling floor reeks of cigarettes, the machines emitting a cacophony of jingles, explosions, pings, pops, and electronic music. As we snake around them, Paradise’s notorious gambling allure reveals itself to be a grim sight. Gamblers, mostly middle-aged or elderly, sit gaping and unmoving, swimming in their screens.

I am reminded of the infamous casino sequence from the 2010 film Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Percy, Annabeth, and his satyr sidekick Grover are lured into the Lotus Casino. The trio eat sugar lotuses and party for what only seems like a few hours, losing any sense of urgency for their quest.

However, they soon come to find those few hours inside the casino cost them days in the outside world.

The scene was based on the lotophagi myth from Homer’s Odyssey, a people who lured sailors to their island and fed them enchanted lotus flowers which dissolved any desire to leave the island.

While casinos are ordinarily meant to retain curious visitors, the decrepit expressions of gamblers trigger a visceral reaction in me — get out. There is plenty of crisp air to breathe, yet I can’t help but feel a sense of suffocation.

‘Fake’ is too simple a term to describe Vegas — the city demands language which encapsulates its problematic, precarious nature. The whole city is an assault on the senses, a crude collection of spaces: predatory design and architecture which disorients.

Undoubtedly, people are stuck in this city, but the question is: who?

Vegas, as a venus flytrap of a place, is not a new idea. It depends on the perpetration of addiction, and it preys upon those with a predisposition to it. Ordinary people have infamously wasted away in its halls, and even celebrity figures, like Elvis have signed away their freedom with artist residency contracts.

This exceptionally sticky city is also known for its ability to entrap people for not just a weekend, but for a good portion of their lives: not just tourists who decide to blow a paycheck or two, but artists bound to the city by contracts, workers who immigrated there to send money home to their families, and new residents of Vegas who swear they’re “not stuck” in the city.

We escape the Bellagio and barely make it inside Area 15, in fear of our tires popping on the burning highway.

Amid the blaring music, one young woman manages a line outside a gift shop, unphased by all the lights. She looks weathered around the eyes but smirks lightly as her coworker cracks jokes beside her. Jeany is a part-time student and nearly full-time employee at Area 15 for the past year. She tells me about the children she babysits at her other job at the casino next door.

“It’s crazy, parents can leave their literal babies, just like a few months old, with strangers to go and gamble. They go to different casinos, you know ‘cause each one’s got a time limit. Then they end up leaving them for up to five, six hours to gamble.”

We laugh at the absurdity of it all. She tells me she’s not stuck, that she’s got plans to “quit Vegas cold-turkey,” as in leaving for good. I wish her luck.

I spoke earlier to another, older woman working at the same location. “Yeah, it would be nice to leave, but the money’s for my family.” She’s been working in Vegas for the last ten years. I hope Jeany can leave sooner.

There is even a darker side to people being stuck in Vegas: abductions are abundant. According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, around 200 adults are reported missing every month.

One man working a flavored oxygen stand in the Luxor Casino leans in hesitantly when I ask him about it.

“There’s lots of kidnappings around here. So many abductions, you girls should really be careful.”

“We’ll stay in a group.” I try to reassure him (and myself).

“It doesn’t matter if you’re in a group. They’ll be in a group too.”

“Y’all probably didn’t know, the city tries to keep it hush hush, you know? So people keep coming back here and spending money.”

It was chilling to imagine the same adult amusement park having such a seedy underbelly. I thank him. He tries to sell me the oxygen for the fourth time. Waving the tubes in my face he shouts:

“It’s like the stuff they give you at the hospital, but blue raspberry.”

As the sun sets, we hope that the temperature follows suit. But here we are in the dark, sweaty as ever. Amid the chaotic flashing lights and blaring music of the Strip, I picture what was there before. The rusty Valley of Fire. Then the ocean, the waves frozen into the distant cliffs.

There is something undoubtedly erotic about the eroded rocks, their smooth texture proof of the water and the wind loving so rapturously, they return again and again to kiss the cliffs.

A love affair; something stuck forever, and something visiting. Of return, of passionate attraction. A sort of fated stickiness.

Vegas, I decide, is a sticky city. As we drive away, I can’t help but feel a sense of relief, imagining we have escaped the sweet, dripping jaws of some fatal carnivorous plant. Or mythical Greek beast.

Words: Sasha Shahinfar

Photos: Apollonia Cuneo