CREATIVE ESSAY 2.0

The spectrum of neon lights gleamed over the everchanging expanse, while drunken ghostly figures past me, their faces briefly lit by the artificial madness, and then suddenly lost from my mind as they blended in with the unadorned masses. My pace picked up as I passed a block where there was a shooting a day ago, the flashing lights fusing into the background blazing aurora lighting up the surrounding air, and past the street preacher trying to rally people to their supposed redemption. The ‘cesspit of depravity’ is what my father called this city, I’d rather call it home. To the observer from the high-rise hotel widows, overlooking the boulevard, lights, casinos and the span of the uninhibited horde, the stampede of tourists sever stopped, the city was never silent. I weaved in and out of the masses, often against the flow of faces heading to their next station to spurge their ill-gotten gains, and sate their desire to lose themselves on the strip.

The backdoor was barely lit, with only the celadon fire escape casting a synthetic light brazing the handle, it being the only light that manufactured any sense of perception in the alleyway. Through the door, I descend into a world of hungry eyes and the boulevard’s bullion thrown at us and inserted onto us. I’m far too young to die, but tonight my ego would overthrow my conscious, or at least it would appear that way to the audience, effeminate hands reached out and grabbed my cloths, ripping off what little covered my body leaving only revealing patches of fabric leaving little to the imagination. Off to the back a group of bachelors obviously enjoying their last night of freedom from their boyfriend, spouse or husband to be. It was quite unheard off from where I came from but here it was commonplace, where love was free from the judgmental eyes who repulsed at the sight of men having affection to each other, their love to last forever, or until the divorce a couple months from now. All the eyes in the room drifted centre stage at me the coveting and thirst just about breaking their skin as it tore them apart, apart from reality, apart from the outside world and their boyfriends, husbands and spouses. The veneer of a masculine commodity removed me from myself, the fictitious setting and people and being I was there and then. The curtain went down, and I was thrown back to myself, and the fraudulent psyche I embraced was gone, left to disappear into the ersatz Vegas lights. My cynical mind kicked in, over a one hundred pulled in, in one evening just in tips alone, mostly from the bachelors, who’s intoxication seamed to get the better of them and their wallets, the insobriety of the woman in the room cause them to have a crack at asking me for a night of intimacy, as they slurred every 4th letter and forgot what their friends name, who they were with during the festival from social stigmas. Now the idea of kissing a woman didn’t repulse me, I had done a number times in the past, but it was just not my preference. I dressed myself according to the algid desert air, though the light illuminated the avenue, it did not warm the frigid desert, I fumbled open a pack sticking a smoke in my mouth and lighting it, the exhaust mixed in with my exasperation, the nicotine cascading through my lungs unhindered, exuviating the ego, and weighing it down, my conscious now finally in having authority over my intuition, with an inclination towards my mattress, had drawn me to the car lot, my muted steps inconversable by the concrete plateau, deserted of all human life, yet still full of motors, off all shapes and sizes, a metropolitan expression of the city, involving all variety of life.

I returned to suburbia, the reticent houses full of the life and body of the actual Las Vegas, the, suburban families, with their loving husbands and wives and children, somewhat like my childhood, though the place I grew up in was much small, a cramped Utah rural interwoven, all centred around the local Mormon chapel. Everyone listened to the bishop, but also knew the bishop’s business, even the whiff of a rumour that the bishop’s son was a ‘homosexual’, a blasphemous transgression against our lord and saviour must be stamped out. It worked for some time but when I was seen with another man, it was the last straw, for my father and the community. My family denounced me in an anathema, they were anathema to me. I remembered my past habitation, the ruckus that me and my brothers and sisters made, it was never silent. Bouncing on our trampoline, defying gravity with every bound we’d make, playing Pokémon cards, trading the holographics with each other and arguing over who had the shiny Charizard first, and running down to the creek, stripping down to our underwear and southing our skin from the blistering midsummers sun. I was truly carefree back then. Of course, when they found out who I actually was, my true being lay in the atmosphere burned by them, rescinded from their lives, especially from my father. I was a pariah, the black sheep in the flock, that followed the shepherd. It was all too much, I retreated to the metropolis, the only place they wouldn’t come for the fear that they’re faith would be extirpated.

I beheld the majesty of the Vegas life; the dishevelled crimpled blanket torn over one of the corners of my mattress. The half-closed blind limped down, closing the rooms window to the outside world and removing the exhausted and hollow face that reflected of the dark window. My footsteps echoed allegories of past single nights of ecstasy, then the walls echoed apathy resulting in deserted rationalisations that I was isolated from the outside world. My solitary conscience collapsed onto the bed exasperated at my psychosis, a fixation with the past. I couldn’t just move on, it was my roots, my nurturing and my growth, all the joyous childhood memories seemed like a fantasy compared to the loathing he had for me. My mom tried to convince him he was misguided, treating his own son abusively, but the patriarch had the last say. The blood ran down my mom’s nose, my father’s hand still bloody after she defended me. Her affectionate, and tender voice, tears in her eyes, told me I could stay, but it was too much I fled without even a goodbye. She was the only one who trusted me. I could always remember the taste of her cooking the, captivating and enticing aromas, resulting in a caramelized bliss to the taste buds. She would always put an extra one aside for me. The angel in her eyes reflected the person she was and continued to be.

She was the one person I genuinely loved, who disregarding of who I was, loved me and I cherished her.

My phone lay down on the place I rest my head, perhaps it fell out my pocket, I couldn’t think less of it, the nerves, built a citadel of anxiety, which only nicotine could collapse. With the suspension of the smoke dissipated at the ceiling, my hand steadied and press the numbers that etched themselves into the back of my imagination. The phone buzzed, the char in the end of my smoke glowed lethargically, the inverse of my pulse, eventually with the sudden realisation that this was it. The other phone answered. A gentle and sensitive tone reverberated throughout the room, “Brendon”.