What’s worse? The war in Ukraine or your hotel’s wifi? The right answer is not the popular one.

This is not to say that I should have known better and come here earlier. No, you have to be ready for this place, unless of course you were born here and have been immersed in it your whole life.

I say you have to be ready, because Vegas finds a way of zeroing in on your vice. Finding your deepest weakness and exploiting it by offering you what you think you want while painlessly extracting its own needs.

on the corner
of Casino Center and Colorado with the studded thongs and the leashes around their slim necks and those high- waisted hot-pants hiked up to that sinched waist terrified by the possibility of beauty, while forgetting what
it might
be
...slowly
losing
life

As we stand on the precipice of 2021, maybe it's time to look hard at those risks and determine to throw caution to the wind. I mean, seriously, what have you got to lose? Death is inevitable, life is a choice.

Las Vegas is an entire city located in an entire state founded on hope. Hope for a better life, hope for a lucky day, hope for a taste of glamour.

A MONTH LATER AT WORK, JUST BEFORE LUNCH, CHUCK BURST FROM HIS OFFICE into the area where Lou and I sat. He ran his hands through his short hair, clawing his scalp.

“Fucking Jesus!” he said.

Lou and I swiveled our chairs toward him and leaned back ready for the meltdown.

“Department meeting!” Chuck said. “Now! Cuba Café! Neal, you drive!”

“I can’t. I have to get gas.”

“Good. Get it on the way back.”

SHORTLY AFTER THE HEIGHT OF AMERICA’S FLAGRANT PATRIOTISM FOLLOWING 9/11, and just before the dawn of The Great Recession, there existed a wonderful Italian restaurant called Bella’s Ristorante. It was built into the foothills of the Black Mountain Range just outside of Las Vegas in Henderson, Nevada, a few short and dusty miles from the Strip at the edge of a wealthy suburban subdivision. My best friends Chuck Keller and Lou Bergman adored the place.

Now new to the Mojave, I’ve had to come up with a few new hacks to make life just a bit easier, the transition a bit smoother.

“Don,” the focus shifts to me. “What do you think of her answer?”

What? Do they want me to criticize her strategy? In front of her? Is this how this is going to go?

At the time of this writing, my friend and former Chicago-based poet, model, and musician, Dana Jerman is residing in her new home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her husband, co-editor of Literate Ape, longtime storyteller mainstay, and man with a complicated relationship with his feet, Don Hall is just three days out from loading up the last vestiges of their Chicago life — forty years between the two of them — into his Prius to make the drive west and begin a new adventure in a part of America Joseph Smith once referred to as a “great place to do anal with child brides and legally take money from the Jews.”