The drop of a dubstep song and the scent of tequila: Las Vegas. A place where they pump extra oxygen into the casinos and clubs to keep you wide awake and dissipate the scent of cigarettes. I called it “home” for less than two years, but sometimes I feel I lived two decades inside them.
I like to believe that my life in Las Vegas made me a better person. It taught me so much about human interaction, the highs and the lows of life, and how you never know exactly what somebody else’s personal struggles are, no matter how perfect their makeup or how thick their wallet is. Living and working in Las Vegas was a study of the human condition – and how I can make someone’s day or night tremendously improved by my influence. Continue reading Right Place, Right Time→
Lately I’ve noticed a slew of news stories referring to a “bad batch of Molly” killing young partiers in the mostly north-eastern United States. This is a tragic story. Drug overdose is a tragedy. But the media compounds these tragedies further through their irresponsible misrepresentations of the facts.
I really wish the news media would stop using variations of the phrase “bad batch of Molly”. The drug they’re referencing is called MDMA, but this is not MDMA. It’s being represented as such, but it’s not. I’m skeptical that there are even traces of MDMA in this shit, but sure, maybe there’s some. We haven’t even gotten the toxicology reports back yet, but that doesn’t stop the news from blaming Molly because the victims allegedly thought they bought Molly and everybody’s got a fetish for speculation over facts. But MDMA is not what’s killing people here.
People are dying from shitty drugs sold by sketchy people because they have no way of knowing what they really are. Because they are illegal. And people are scared to ask for help, or ask the right questions at all, because what they’re doing is illegal.
Stories like this make many people decide to double-down on our wasteful and useless drug war. Hell, as the Obama Administration decides not to pursue intervention in states legalizing cannabis, how else will law enforcement keep their funding up? These terrible stories beg for “something to be done”, and it looks like we’ll see further crackdown on party drugs. But the War on Drugs is wrong on a number of levels – and yes, I absolutely blame the War on Drugs for these deaths.
Dear reactionary news media, go find the real story here – that government prohibition of recreational drugs makes them far more dangerous – and please leave Molly alone.
So, the context provided in the entry before this one should explain that I’d followed love to a strange set of life-decisions. After having planned for over a year to move from Boston to Los Angeles, I finally did, and a year later I left to drive haphazardly across the country. Because of a Boy. Seriously, read that damn entry first.
So I left Los Angeles on June 3rd. It was very hard to do. My stuff was in storage, my birds were in their travel cage, there was less money in my bank account than I’d hoped, and I was very, very, nervous. I had just moved to LA a year before. I’d been so excited to start my life there. I kept looking at my favorite restaurants, favorite haunts, thinking to myself that I’d be back in two months, that I’d just settle right back in, hopefully bringing the Boy back with me.
The only way I was able to leave was by reminding myself I’d be back soon. Reminding myself that I had an adventure to go on, and that I’d be home again before I knew it. That the time would fly by.
So I drove to Las Vegas. I checked into my hotel room at The Artisan, a hotel I’d stayed at many times before and have stayed at many times since. I spent the next two weeks working – booking tables, selling bottles, hosting parties, Go-Go dancing, bar-tending private parties, gambling even, all cash and quick. The plan was to make as much money as I could fast, and to head East.
A few days before my expected leaving date, I met Ghost. Ghost has a real name, but I don’t feel like using it, as few people know it and by keeping it close I feel it makes him still belong to me in some way, even though I’m giving away this story. Continue reading Love (Found & Lost) Along the Road→
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anais Nin