“Take me home tonight, I don’t wanna let you go ‘til you see the light, take me home tonight…” 

The words came shooting with flavored rum-infused spittle from the mouth of the mayor of his own garage in Jurupa Valley on a sweltering 91°F Saturday night in downtown Las Vegas a little over three and a half years after Biden took office. 

I try to get Jenna’s attention while we wait for Jake to finish his bathroom break at the Golden Nugget, where he’ll spend a whole month living before working the VIP check-in at EDC the following year, but she’s transfixed on the Arizonan pensioners holding on for dear life as they take $68 zipline rides for five or six football fields down the strip while a pre-taped video of Bon Jovi belting out “It’s My Life” broadcasts across the behemoth-like LED screen that covers the entire length of what’s marketed as the Fremont Street Experience. 

Callie comes back from the fried Oreo stand and offers one to Jenna before it’s knocked to the floor by a caricature of Richard Nixon wearing an oversized Life Is Good shirt, who falls to the floor and covers himself in his own Electric Blue Lemonade from Fat Tuesday. The clone of the former president apologizes profusely while his wife and son pick him up, and he jokes he’s sweeter than any cookie we could buy before sauntering off to put in for his chance to win a brand new Ford F-150. 

Jake finishes up and steps outside before immediately dragging us into one of the millions of gift shops that line the block, stepping over broken shot glasses with weed-leaf bikini prints falling into the grates where the never-used roller shutters are supposed to land. We shuffle through rows of poorly printed graphic tees and ashtrays to the back of the shop, where we find the liquor section. Callie opts for a White Claw, her first of the night, while Jake rummages through boxes and manages to find a bottle of Don Julio. He reasons it’ll be cheaper than buying drinks when we head to the Tao nightclub later on, which we’ll be getting into for free because he managed to finagle us passes from a promoter when we got turned away from the beach club earlier in the day for showing up at five in the afternoon. 

We end up being only three places back in line for a shop with beehive-level activity. Callie insists on paying for the tequila because she owes Jake for something back in Merced, and he’s not saying no. It’s not even a minute before we step out of the gift shop that the bottle’s opened and being passed around without regard for the finer points of open container laws. I take a

pull and don’t flinch, which appears to impress a delegation of Miami Dolphins fans, who start clapping and whooping it up while pointing at me. I pass the bottle back to Jake, whose sixth sense for amusing conflict sets him running towards a hyped-up crowd and yelling for us to join him. We push our way to the front and come up on what the Dying Gaul would look like wearing a headless Mario costume and wiping blood from his face. A cheering 19-year-old with an Edgar cut is jumping into a crowd of his friends, who’re illuminating his face with phone flashlights. The LVPD is absent from the scene, and I think they started scrapping just for the hell of it. From a legal standpoint, that’s mutual combat, and I’m not sure if anyone can get busted for that under Nevada law. 

Callie says she wants to get a slice from the Cake Boss vending machine up the street, and we’re pulled into a sea of sunburnt scalps with Oakleys set backwards to protect against the gaze of non-NBA fans from trying to figure out if the number on the back of the jersey really matches up with the player’s name. I never knew LeBron wore numbers 69, 420, and 777. We wander slowly down the six-lane human highway that spans the length of Fremont Street, which is bookended by a decrepit hotel that must have served as a rush of dopamine straight into the hearts of postwar Americans and the Heart Attack Grill. 

We float down the stream, and it occurs to me that I signed up for all this. I’d taken three days off from work because I’d heard about a concert out in the desert, and I wanted to go. Two days before, Jake told me that he’d scored a room for cheap and we could tag along with him if we wanted; we’d just have to pitch in for food, drinks, and weed. Jenna hadn’t ever been to Vegas, and all her impressions of the city came from movies like Dodgeball and Looney Tunes: Back In Action. We came to the consensus that there’d always be more concerts in the desert, and we wouldn’t come up on comped rooms in Vegas very often. So off to Nevada we went. 

I snap out of the daydream and realize we’ve been corralled into one of the several stages on the block where local bands play four or five-piece versions of hits from the 2010s. A carbon copy of Mark McGrath wearing a Von Dutch t-shirt is trying to get the crowd to sing with him, and I start doubting anyone else in the crowd has routinely listened to pop music since the first Bush administration. Mark makes eye contact with me right when the prechorus kicks in, singing “She’s nothing like a girl you’ve ever seen before, nothing you can compare…” 

The edible I took earlier kicks in right in the middle of the line. My eyes go from pearly white to a feverish red. Mark seems to notice and gives me a big

toothy smile, and I notice his canines are covered with fake single-tooth gold grills. I look at Jenna, and her edible must have kicked in at about the same time. We look up at the ceiling display in unison and are met with a video of a surfer gliding down the face of a crystal blue wave, carving left and right while the white water bites at his heels. He goes up to the top of the wave, shoots into midair for a second, and flicks his hip up and in the other direction, landing back on the wave. 

I feel glass on my chest, and Jake’s pressing the Don Julio into my shirt. I figure tequila’s a stimulant, and I take a small pull. Mark points at me and screams into his microphone: “If you’re getting lit like this guy right here, make some noise!” A good portion of the crowd lets out guttural screams from the bottom of their bellies, right when the wave on the overhead screen crashes. I look down and Mark’s pogoing while singing the song’s chorus, giving his vocals an odd vibrato. There’s flames shooting out from behind the drummer, who’s been sweating profusely for the length of the song. A production assistant runs on stage and tries to pour some sort of brightly colored frozen cocktail into his mouth, although much of the drink ends up staining his bright white Famous Stars And Stripes t-shirt. 

Jake grabs the tequila bottle back, takes a pull, and says we’re gonna head back to the hotel. He’s got a friend in Vegas working as a line cook at the Bellagio’s buffet, and he hasn’t seen him since he picked up a misdemeanor for a smash and grab in East Hollywood right after graduation. There’s no word on if he did any time and burned his contacts back home or if he just skipped town; Jake met plenty of guys on the run from the LAPD when he was in college and his description of this kid’s fitting the bill. Callie takes a big pull from her White Claw and offers the rest to me, and just before I finish it off, I notice Jenna sweating bullets as the band starts their cover of What Makes You Beautiful. I pass her the tallboy and she knocks it back right when the strobe lights start to go off. 

Jesus fuck, it’s like a star exploding. Smoke shoots from the fog machines and Mark wants to know who’s single tonight. Sweat rolls into my eyes and stings me back awake. An Uber’s being called and I’m making promises about a Venmo that might not come until tomorrow at the earliest. Jake takes another pull from the Don Julio, looks at his phone, and yells about the Uber being up the street already. Jenna grabs my hand and pulls me from the show and we start sprinting up the block. We’re weaving through a crowd that’s never going to go away.