The Vegas Journals: Prologue

 

The genesis of my time living in Las Vegas has roots that stretch back to the summer of 1998. As summer dawned, I was 20 years old and my life had been a river where the waters grew increasingly choppy. The wheels had been set in motion long before though.

Flashback to June 1996, my high school graduation. While all my friends had planned to head off to college, my road was going a different way. I had started a relationship with a girl a few years younger. This meant that she was still going to be in high school. I was 18 and my perspective on life was far different than it is today in my late 40s.

I had liked girls, and had a couple that were considered the middle-school version of ‘girlfriends.’ I had never had what I considered a real relationship. This changed my worldview. I enjoyed the feeling of having her in my life, it made me reevaluate my plans. Before her, my plan was to go off to college. I had been a very good student throughout my school life so college was a natural next step. Falling in love, or at least what I thought was love, that presented a problem.

As I said she was going to still be in high school. Having never felt such strong emotions I was hesitant to let that go. In hindsight, I wish I had realized that my odds of ending up living happily ever after with this girl were extremely thin. In doing research I have found a few studies stating that roughly 2% of high school relationships end up in marriage. 2%. That means in contrast that 98% do not make it, at least to marriage.

In my mind though we would buck the trend. So I made the choice to not head immediately off to college. I had worked hard throughout school so my mother understood and said she understood me wanting to take a break. Don’t get me wrong, I did want to go to college and make something of myself, but the idea of losing my relationship scared me. I honestly felt I’d never find anyone else so I had to stick around.

At first, things went smoothly. I took a semester off and started going to school at the local community college. Plus I had a good relationship so life was good. I love our community college. In fact, I’m writing this currently sitting on the 2^nd floor of the college library. However, up to and including my senior year of high school my plans were to go off to college, as in away from home. I had big aspirations of going to the University of North Carolina, or the University of Nevada Las Vegas(UNLV). My plans didn’t involve a ten-minute commute to the community college.

I didn’t see it at the time but I had sealed my own fate. I made the mistake of taking my foot off the gas. What I mean is I had spent years studying and working hard at school. Once I lost that structure and routine, by my own choice, it was never the same. Being a boyfriend was more important than building my own life.

I think part of the issue stemmed from an unstable childhood that was rife with emotional and sometimes physical trauma. I had a father who couldn’t have cared less if I had food, clothing, or medical care. This was evident by his refusing to pay even less than the minimum for child support. You know, the money you give to ‘support’ your child?

The male that I grew up with, my mother’s second husband, was abusive and demeaning not just to me but to my mother as well. I was often told that my feelings and problems were ‘petty’ and didn’t matter. When you are 11, or 12 years old the problems you face might be small in the grand scheme but to you, they matter. So being told my feelings didn’t matter scarred me in a way I still feel to this day.

The bottom line is that I was in search of love. When I found what I believed to be love I pushed everything else off of the table and focused solely on that. The problem there is the fact that when you build your entire identity around a person they will inevitably let you down. Not because they don’t care but because they are human, as we all are. I wanted this girl to justify my choice to not go off to college by being beyond perfect. That is not reality.

Let’s come back around to the summer of 1998. My mother’s second husband was out of the picture thankfully. A new man had come along who was the stepfather and male role model I had needed. One storm was gone but several more were on the horizon.

The house my family had been living in for 9 years was being sold and we couldn’t afford to buy it. In all, I had lived on the same street in the same neighborhood for 14 years. Now as June ended we were leaving. The worst part was that my family didn’t have a place lined up. This meant that we all had to go our separate ways at least for the time being.

I ended up spending the summer living at my Nana’s house. When I look back now I am so grateful that I had that time with her. I also thought it might be a way to develop a bond with my father as he still lived with his mother in his early 40s. What ended up happening was he decided he needed a change and moved out to Las Vegas within a few days of my arrival.

To clear that up, my father didn’t move because I was staying there. He was in the midst of his mid-life crisis, much like I feel I am today. He felt he needed a change and moving out to Vegas where my Uncle Eric, Aunt Emma, and Cousin Patrick lived made sense.

I still remember waking up in the morning when he left. He hadn’t bothered to say goodbye. Instead, he left a note taped to the television in his bedroom. I don’t remember all of it but I do remember him saying ‘things were going to be getting better for all of us.’ It gave me hope but that was fleeting.

That relationship I had made the centerpiece of my life? It had been steadily going downhill. My own frustration with not having gone off to college like my friends combined with the shock that she wasn’t perfect was a ticking time bomb. In a bit of sweet irony, and probably karma for myself, my girlfriend chose the week after I moved from my childhood home, had the family dog put down, and had my father move across the country to tell me she thought we should break up.

Looking back now it’s like my raft was bouncing off of rocks and rumbling over waves but I was too busy looking up at the clouds. Then when the raft flipped over I was surprised. I hate change. I somewhat fear change due to the unknown. It is a problem when change is coming and you choose to wear blinders. So how did I react to all of this change?

I got my eyebrow pierced. I dyed my hair what I thought was blond but was closer to orange. I began wearing hemp necklaces. Once I turned 21 a few months later I began to find alcohol as a new girlfriend. I changed myself so radically and thoroughly as a coping mechanism. The biggest change was still to come.

Things felt out of control and yet constricting all at once. I drifted aimlessly. I worked doing food prep and cooking while still going to college. I ‘fell in love’ with any pretty face that came close. I was angry at the world because I had chosen the wrong path and was now in a dark alleyway when what I wanted was to be on a hillside overlooking a beautiful valley.

A Quarter-Life Crisis is defined as a period of uncertainty, anxiety, and self-reflection often experienced by people in their early to mid-20s to early 30s. It typically arises as individuals navigate major life transitions and grapple with questions about their identity, purpose, career, relationships, and overall direction in life. I met mine starting in July 1998.

After drifting for well over a year I decided to do my first bit of real traveling. I bought a ticket and hopped on a flight out to Las Vegas in January 2000 to visit my father and the rest of my family. Unbeknownst to all of them I saw this ‘visit’ as a dry run for a move out there. In fact, Las Vegas would have had to kick me in the nuts as soon as I landed for me to have changed my mind.

What the trip ended up being was a sensory overload. Coming from a relatively quiet area like Cape Cod, Massachusetts nothing can prepare you for the sights and sounds as you step foot in Las Vegas. From the moment I got off the plane and walked into the airport, it was a feast for the senses.

A harbinger of things to come happened within minutes of my arrival. The sounds of slot machines were everywhere. It was like a video game menagerie of bells and whistles. Naturally, I had a ‘when in Rome’ mindset. I had to play at least one slot machine, right?

On my first play, the first coin I dropped in, I won $100. In my 22-year-old mind gambling was easy, after all, I just won $100 on a quarter. This was a bad sign that will become a running storyline throughout my Vegas Journal.

My trip was filled with fun. I stayed with my father at his apartment on West Charleston Boulevard. The area where he lived was far from The Strip that most people picture when thinking of Las Vegas. It actually looked closer to the town of Hyannis, Massachusetts which was the next town over from me. Well, Hyannis on steroids.

I was overwhelmed by all of the stores and restaurants. I loved the warm and dry weather in the winter there. I also had not missed the community college mere steps from my father’s apartment. I also had my Uncle Eric, Aunt Emma, and cousin Patrick not far away. It felt like a no-brainer.

I don’t remember if I stayed for 3 or 4 days but the bottom line was that when I was packing to go back to Cape Cod I knew that was only going to be temporary. Las Vegas was to be my new home. There was so much potential. There were so many new sights and new opportunities. I had to get away from the choking Quarter-Life Crisis I was living in back home. What better way to shake things up than by creating the ultimate change in my life?

When I returned to Cape Cod I let everybody know that my plan was to make a permanent move to Las Vegas. To better prepare I decided to wait until Labor Day to actually leave. That would give my job plenty of notice to find someone to replace me. It was also a bit of a safety net in case I changed my mind. Honestly, I had no plans to stay on Cape Cod but part of me was hesitant.

For all of the changes I had gone through in the preceding year and a half none of them had been as drastic as moving 2,700 miles away across the country. I think in the back of my mind I knew I could always come back. I think I also knew that I could change my mind and people wouldn’t think less of me. However, where I was in life at that time I was hyping this move up as success or bust.

That’s where we’ll leave it. Heading toward the end of the summer in 2000. My move to Las Vegas was solidified and impending. I had a roof over my head at my father’s apartment. I had opportunities for work, school, and an overall better chance for success. What success meant to me I had no idea. In the immortal words of my father upon his own move to Las Vegas 2 years earlier, things were going to be getting better for all of us.

The view of Las Vegas from the airport in 2000.