On Tom Wolfe’s ‘Las Vegas (What?); Las Vegas (Cant hear you! Too Noisy); Las Vegas!!!’

Lights, casinos, naked girls, night, big limos, loads of booze and drugs, – these are the associative images popping up in my head, when I hear ‘Las Vegas’. So, schizophrenic ‘Hernias’ and ‘buttocks décolletage’ mixed up with handfuls of amphetamine and meprobamate drawn in the litters of alcohol in Wolfe’s piece didn’t surprise me, I have expected something like this. The place where everything is bright, loud and fairly straight forward not to complicate the process of ‘senses’ isolation’ undergone by some drug intoxicated individual experiencing ‘consciousness expansion’.

But ‘old babes’?!!! Old babes were a complete shock to the system! I rather conservatively visualise the granny (aka old babe :)): a) knitting, b)cosily watching some soap on TV, c) writing memoirs/novels/detectives, d) gardening, e)playing lotto/bingo, but not hanging out in Las Vegas maniacally pulling slot machines handles. Not LIVING in Las Vegas! This city, as I perceived it, could be a home, actually not even a home but a ‘temporary base’, only for some glamour girls, crazy musicians and casino stuff. I have never thought about Las Vegas’s residents (does such a term exist???). Well, clearly I was wrong: there IS life in Las Vegas! And ‘old babes playing the slot machines are part of its permanent landscape’.

There might be a zillion of reasons why Las Vegas is attracting ‘old babes’. Nostalgia, finally gained freedom from preconceptions, boredom or simple addiction, - I have no idea. However, the fact pictured by Wolfe in the 60s is still valid: majority of casino-goers and gamblers are in the ‘over-something’ age group. Well, at least some fun to look forward to :)