"There is a place you want to be...go there"-Billboard on the way to JFK

All of my travel stories start with "I never wanted to go there but..."


I never understood the big deal about Vegas. To be honest, I never really thought about it. I mean, I knew it existed, but that's about all. It was a dot on the map with a name by it-it had about much reality for me as say Skokie, Illinois or Gnome, Alaska or any other number of town/cities in the US which I don't contemplate.


It must have been a relief for Eric. To tell someone he was from Vegas and see an utterly blank expression. No glazing over with glee at the prospect of slot machines and glitterified strippers. He told me stories about the neo nazis in his schools. He told me about how his mother would go to the store to buy groceries for dinner and disappear for three hours playing video poker. He told me about the black widow spiders and people cooking to death in their cars.


He told me how much he hated it, and how afraid he was he would end up there because, "everything is so easy there." It

The only reason I went to Vegas. The only reason I stayed in Vegas. Him.



And now I was going back to Vegas. Not to be with someone, but to escape. To escape my family. To escape my exponentially increasing social failure. To escape another year having to listen to roadkill stories while trying to prepare roasted parsnips and carrots while my aunt eats the ingredients off the chopping board.


In the car on the way to JFK, there is a billboard that says "There is a place you want to go...go there."


"Where is that?" I wonder.


Paris? Pompeii? St. Petersburg?


No, not so much a place I want to go, but to a person.


No, not so much to a person, but to a feeling.

I was in Las Vegas, the last time I was there actually, and I went to a birthday party with Eric's mother. Eric wasn't even there because he had to work that night. So there I am at this birthday party in this elite room at the top of Mandalay Bay. There's a Tom Jones impersonator singing "Sex Bomb" and we are drinking expensive bottles of champagne. His mother is trying to convince to move there by telling me that, "In NYC, you are one of thousands of smart people, but here you would be part of the elite." Trying to sell me moving there because this is where the stupid people are. But everyone was kind to me, refilling my glass, offering me advice and connections, complimenting my outfit. I'd just gotten the call that I was going to be teaching, really teaching, my first full class at NYU. Eric and I had our plans for getting married. As twilight fell, I went out there on the terrace and watched the sun set. And I couldn't tell where the stars ended and the lights in the city began. In that moment the universe seemed filled with so much possibility, so much surprise. I looked out at the night feeling loved and wanted and thought "If an one had ever told me that I would be happy in Las Vegas. That I would be in this city at all, never mind happy, I would have told them they were fucking crazy. And now here I am."

I hadn't been back since then. Since things fell apart two months after that day. I wanted to go back to that feeling-that promise, that rush, that beauty. But I don't think JFK has a ticket there. I only know where that feeling wasn't likely to be found.

At the restaurant at the airport, I arrange myself. For the plane ride, I bring my Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I alway try and read something to prepare me for my trips: Paris to the Moon by Gopnik for Paris; I, Claudius for Rome. But there isn't a lot of Vegas based literature-no Jean-Paul of Circus Circus unless you count Wayne Newton. By the end of my second glass of wine, I'm tipsy. Some might call me drunk, but my standards are different.

Before I get on the plane, I see a guy wearing a t-shirt with a centaur. The centaur has a bow and arrow. Like me, this guy is a sag. Beneath the mythical archer, bow drawn, is the inscription "Without Fear."

You can't buy symbolism like that.

I get on the plane.