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Dear Harry,
You would hate Las Vegas.
There are so many places I’ve gone over the last few months that you’d hate. The cheap roadside motels, the kitschy tourist attractions, the dive bars I’ve frequented.
That’s something I haven’t been all that forthcoming about. I mean, there’s plenty I do during my days that I don’t talk about on here. Some of its mundane but some of it is…
Well, I have a ritual, of sorts. Before I leave a state, I find a bar—usually a dive bar, but sometimes I go for the really fancy hotel bars if I’m in a city—and I pick a bottle from the very top shelf and I pour myself a finger of whatever it is and I toast to all the people who have passed through that state, that city, that bar; all the people who are no longer here for reasons that I don’t understand and it’s…well, it helps keep me grounded, I think. Doing that in each and every state I go to. It’s the closest thing I’ve had to praying in a long time.
You’d like the hotel bars, I think. Maybe you’d find some of the stops I’ve made silly or unappealing, but there are things about this whole winding road trip that I think you’d enjoy. Fancy hotels being one of them.
I’m staying at Caesars Palace right now because…of course I am. It’s the most iconic hotel on the Strip and I don’t have to pay anyone to stay at it.
I’m actually not sure if it’s the most iconic, it’s just the first one I saw that I recognized the name of. As much as you would hate Vegas—and you would, you would hate it—I do think you’d appreciate just how plush the beds are and the soft hotel robes and the truly top shelf liquor they’ve got. My stately toasts aren’t the only time I pour myself a glass of something, obviously, so I will definitely be partaking tonight, once I’ve figured out how to route the power to a record player in this place.
I shouldn’t be surprised that the one place I’ve been to that has multiple buildings lit up in power is Las Vegas. Whatever grid they’re on, whatever generators they had running the lights and the slot machines and the stages, well, they’re clearly powerful as hell, because huge portions of Caesar’s has power. Currently, I’m talking to you from my hotel room. Well, apartment more like. It’s got a fucking staircase in it. A little balcony that overlooks the living room, where there is, I kid you not, a grand piano. And everything is really…pink, for some reason.
It is the biggest and nicest hotel room I have ever been to by miles. And there’s a record player here—with a huge, phenomenal sound system, but for some reason that’s not working, I think because some of the outlets in here are dead. Once I get off the horn, that’s going to be my project. Well, maybe my project for tomorrow, it is pretty late.
I took a big break in the middle of the day today and sat out on top of my car just…looking over the desert. Nevada really is something else, like being on another planet. And then to have Vegas just pop out in the middle of nowhere, like a mirage—it’s a real trip. Beautiful, in its own way, but weird. And weirdly exhausting too—you see Vegas long before you get to it, which makes driving down the road toward it feel like you’re not moving at all. You can see it, you can see your speedometer all the way up at eighty and the city isn’t getting any closer. It’s like you’re standing still.
All in all, it’s been a pretty tiring day. And I’ve got lots to explore tomorrow so…I guess I’ll go now.
Goodnight, Harry.
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