Postcard

Vegas isn’t big enough for the both of me.

 

The squalid rebel with a cigarette in hand and a finger on the button ready to detonate deteriorate decimate debilitate. Eyes ablaze, amazed the hazy craze leaves me unfazed. Drawn from the hotel by the spell of all they sell. Nervous notion fuels locomotion and I flit from club to club up elevators down stairs through doors and velvet ropes one moment sweating it out on the dance floor with a blonde hanging on my leg the next on a rooftop ready to see if I can sail all the while knowing that if I follow that spilled glass off the railing I will next meet air, pavement, hell and coffin flies. Suddenly I am on the pavement yelling taxi taxi taxi and am off to the next hour. There is such a thing as time travel. For then I open my eyes and am lying under an umbrella of palms next to a pool and hear myself asking what hotel are we at. I blush briefly at finishing a sentence with a preposition and I close my eyes again and dream deep of air conditioning and showers and fresh clothes and sex and toys in the attic and baseball cards and betting slips and fascinating transactions with go-go dancers cashing out confidence and laughter a dollar at a time. One orangecreameruminfuzedslushy with two straws and then I am shirtless in the sun at a different pool on a different day slathered in coconut somethingorother and baking quite pleasantly, literally and metaphorically. Yes. My umbilical cell is still with me. I check it for messages and time.I can’t tell the difference between them because they both start with a one and have 2 numbers after them. Close enough, I deduce.

 

And then, there’s the other me who worked out, brushed my teeth, knew when to hold ‘em and fold ‘em and made it to the airport with nary a scratch. You know what ultimately did me in? I ate a bad cheezebooger on the Continental in-flight “meal”. Food poisoning. Ever puke in a Newark Airport men’s room? It sets off a free radical chain reaction in one’s mind and belly. Puking in a NewarkAirport men’s room is enough to make one puke. So I puked. And then puked at the thought of puking in a Newark Airport men’s room. And then I puked at the thought of the thought of puking in a Newark Airport men’s room. And so this curious fractal equation went on in exponential repetition until I was just once again the squalid rebel with a cigarette, fresh faucet water splashed on my face and pulling myself together and falling into a limo to be delivered home. Nothing like a good vacation. Viva.