Story: Beer and Betrothing in Las Vegas

We are twelve hours behind high noon and it’s cooling in the Mojave Desert night, nearing the California/Nevada Border and so far the only lights are stars. We won't let these suffice, we have expectations and all the heat and hallucinations in the desert can’t deter us.
Twenty-eight hours earlier we had just arrived in Big Sur, California amongst the old growth red woods. We were a group of nine Australians, traveling from Canada, through the USA and into Mexico. We had just finished our last bit of cash-in-hand work for the whole journey - It was now playtime. Shaun and Luke, no good for each other’s livers, decided we should go to Las Vegas, tonight. They had already found a young girl, susceptible to their devilish charms to drive. Quickly the remaining two seats filled with couple, John and Robyn. Tanish and James feared such hedonism and decided they’d meet us in LA. That left Nic, Paul and Myself.
We set about trying to convince people that Las Vegas was great this time of year. Our incentive package was paying for petrol, accommodation and some gambling money. All they needed to supply was the car. Eventually Nic found Derik, an ex-(Grateful) Dead-head that lived in the hills of Big Sur in a Yurt, kept chemicals out of his body and lived soulfully off the land. We didn't expect Las Vegas to tempt him but by lunchtime today we were in his truck, listening to The String Cheese Incident or some shit on his stereo and an endless supply of joints to numb the tight squeeze in the back seat.
The road to Vegas from Big Sur is long. You drive south nearly to Los Angeles where you then head north-east to Bakersfield, famous for not much other than making it into a Bob Dylan song and suburbs of trailer parks. We avoided Death Valley, circling underneath it, as vultures overtop looked disgruntled.
The desert out here gets surreal at times. Hallucinations and oases could occur on the hypnotising, straight highways. This was Hunter S Thompson's bat country, The Roadrunner and Wyle E Coyote's territory. Power plants and generating stations sit out here with the large robot-like cable towers marching in a straight line across the desert, in one direction they march to Vegas - in the other to Los Angeles. To help the robots' cause, oil derricks mine the desert, with the obedience of a Vegas hooker and constancy of a gambling addict, or vice versa. The smoke in the cabin is billowing out the windows as we blaze more than just trails. I'm sure I see one of the robots turn and ask for a puff. LA and Vegas, these two magnetic poles of both neon and noir suck power and water dry from surrounding areas for their nihilism. All around California and Nevada power shortages had been occurring - Mojave Indian ghosts in the machine. Grids closed for hours at a time to conserve energy, so that Las Vegas and Los Angeles can still operate in chaotic normalcy. We pass through real ghost towns with buildings like blank old bed sheets, I presume it is these Indian Desert Ghosts that ran the sheriffs out of towns and reclaimed the desert. People were once here for gold prospecting with the western boom. Now it seems all the Americans that wanted to be on the west coast have driven route 66, got their kicks and moved on. When the sea breeze blows through LA its smog rolls over the Hollywood hills and high-rises and into the flats of east California to create an even greater heat by blanketing the desert. As the afternoon sun drifts onward over the plains towards Utah and Arizona, amazing orange and brown hued sunsets are filtered through the smog.
The smoke inside the truck was getting thicker and affecting all of us. I get to thinking, "Why would Derik, a person that lives like a Native American, complete with sweat hut and rock arrowheads want to take us to Las Vegas?" and that’s when it hit me.
"He's to sacrifice us to Indian Desert Ghosts, our blood, like water on this thirsty land. The cracks in the ground were their dry veins. No one would miss us until the rains came, and washed our bits shiny for vultures and them darned bats to find! Jesus Colin, pull yourself together man." I looked to my compadres squashed in the backseat. Fortunately they hadn't seen any of my thoughts. "Everything is cool, capiche`" I tell myself. We've been in the desert too long. I look out the window and try to clear my mind - concentrating on my blackjack game.
As we approach the city, signs are counting it down by the mile. Paul announces "I see the light". The pot has worn off by this stage so this is Las Vegas. I could feel something in my back-pocket squirm, it was my wallet cowering into my ass crack.
We take a punt that the car load, now ten hours ahead of us are at the medieval Excalibur casino/hotel. When we found the room they are sound asleep after being awake for 40 hours. We stir them up and our virgin enthusiasm and chance reuniting encourages them back down to the roulette table. Although they really need no encouragement, their addiction is apparent already. Tongues are dry, eyes’ bloodshot, numbers are either red or black. “Bring it on,” I think.
All is not as it seems though. The group is not as Nic, Paul and I have left it.
There has been a marriage earlier in the night. Now John and Robyn are a serious item but not yet at this extreme. No, Shaun and Luke had exchanged their vows on video. We are stunned, needless to say. These boys, while being friends for a long time, have never shown anything other than friendship to each other. We have the story recited back to us. After tiring of drinking and gambling, they see only one thing left to do. Get married in Vegas, "that’s what you do!" With both their girlfriends back in Australia they have no one to marry but each other.
After Elvis was too busy they went to one of the cliché-titled chapels, "The Saloon of Love," or something like that and stated to the wench behind the bar that they were to be wed.
Unfortunately the celebrant could not wed the two boys as it is illegal to be gay in Nevada. Well Luke and Shaun understandably laughed off this statement and said "that’s fine, because we aren't gay, we just want to get married." The celebrant seemed to think they were making a mockery of the institution that is the shot-gun wedding. Surely marriages based on less merit than friendship had been forged in this God forsaken town. So we were late for the ceremony but made up for lost time, gambling away. A great thing about gambling in Las Vegas as opposed to your local RSL is that while you remain gambling, all drinks are free. Providing you're not doubling down, or betting it all on black you can happily drag out the process of losing for quite a while.
We staggered our way through the super casinos; New York, New York (with Statue of Liberty), the Bellagio and Paris, again taking advantage of the free drinks while gambling policy. Our visions of lights were blurred long into the Vegas night like a long exposure photograph dragging us towards and between neon signs. The lights were beacons to daiquiri and leopard motif carpet.
Derik, who didn't feed us to the Indian Desert Ghosts after all, failed to tell us that he was an ex-blackjack addict. While I’m gambling with five-dollar chips he is rolling high at the four hundred mark before losing it all. I come out 60 bucks down, the wedded couple is lucky, as are John and Nic. Robyn didn't partake and Paul stopped when his winning streak ended and settled on breaking even.

Las Vegas is where high rollers and trailer trash come together to take in the gaudy delight of everything fake. The more you spend, the more you enjoy it, the brighter the lights the more your eyes gleam. But the whole emotion is ephemeral, if ever real at all.
The air too is false. Recycled oxygen churns over and over like a five-dollar chip changing hands. And because the heat in the desert is near unbearable, air conditioning coerces you to stay within the belly of the beasts.
Once making it outside the mixture of heat and alcohol causes pacifying Prozac numbness, the cartoon buildings play tricks on your mind. You begin to believe the whole town was built by carnival folk who discovered greed. Maybe Hunter S Thompson was right to go on an ether binge and walk the way he did, bracing him for the unexpected. The man-made oasis could be flipped upside down like a snow dome and you would understand why, because you're in Vegas baby.
Though you may not realise at all as the casinos have no windows, no clocks and no chance of news from the outside world entering that may hinder the gamblers' habitual patterns.
We couldn't take it. For us, this processed entertainment and packaged environment had an expiry date of two days. We got on the next bus for Los Angeles. Why Los Angeles? Because you can't just stop, you must wean yourself off bad taste.