There's No Place Like ... Well, You Know

Here are some things that normal people like and I don't: Most soups, Ben Affleck, American Idol, sushi, that guy with the long hair from Lost, Jolly Ranchers, Desperate Housewives, Chex mix, the movie "What Women Want," watermelon, watermelon-flavored things, grape-flavored things (but not grapes), and Las Vegas.

I've never understood the "Vegas, baby!" thing or the gaudy allure of the Strip. I've never been one for clubbing or for buffets other than breakfast or for nipple tassles on my cocktail waitresses (I like my cocktail waitresses like I like my coffee: without nipple tassles, thank you very much.)

Most of all, I've never been able to wrap my head around the idea of gambling money---and that, I'll think you'll agree, is a fairly big setback for someone trying to see the appeal of Las Vegas. Honestly, when Sean and I spent a few days out there back in February 2002, I lost twenty bucks on the first day and was miserable for the rest of the weekend. That money had been fed---in 25-cent increments---into a large blinking, whirring, flashing machine, and the fact that it was gone forever made me so incredibly mad. Did I have a cheap Old Navy shirt to show for this twenty bucks? I did not. Did I have a distended stomach from an overambitious brunch? I did not. I was a poor starving student who'd just fed twenty bucks to a machine. And that is when I started building up a grudge against Las Vegas, a grudge that lasted until last Sunday afternoon. Las Vegas had robbed me, you see, of my twenty dollars and then it had given me food poisoning from the buffet at Circus Circus.

Or perhaps, looking back, I was just mad because I'd overtweezed my eyebrows again, decided (ill-advisedly) on a slightly midriff-bearing shirt, and was appearing in public with a man whose facial hair called to mind the mid-to-late 90s, even though we were well into the second month of 2002:

But something happened when I took my second trip to Las Vegas a few days ago. For a start, it was a work trip, which would have quashed any plans to wear another midriff-baring shirt had I had any in the first place (plans or midriff-baring shirts, actually. Of which, of course, I had neither.) Something happened and this is what it was: I had a ton of fun. I stopped disliking Las Vegas. I suddenly saw the appeal.

Perhaps it's a bizarre personality quirk of mine that I actually prefer PowerPoint presentations to packed nightclubs, but I had kind of an awesome time in Vegas. For a start, the hotel we stayed in was a lot nicer than the fleabag roach motel Sean and I got for a bottom-of-the-barrel pricetag back in 2002. And the private cocktail party at the Wynn was a whole lot more enjoyable than the all-you-can-eat buffets I'd hitherto thought were the only dining options in Vegas. Seriously, there was some spinach and sage ravioli at that party that I was considering dragging into a 24-Hour Wedding Chapel so it could make an honest woman of me. The perfectly crusty olive bread could have been the maid of honor. The exquisite mini cheesecake could have been the best man.

And yet you only have to leave somewhere else to remember how much you love it when you return. Arriving back in San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon---with its fresh air, its cold sun, its dearth of lines and cigarette smoke and nipple tassles---I was hit by a strange feeling as I exited the airport: I was home. In my short two-month residency in the city, I'd not yet left it---not on an airplane, at least, not for a different state---and my initial reaction upon joining the shuttle bus line was relief. And then, walking home from work this evening, I saw the famous San Francisco Twins outside of H&M. They were wearing their leopard-print jackets and posing for pictures with awestruck tourists. I reached, instinctively, for my camera, and then thought better of it and kept walking. I felt like a local, finally, and a local would never take photos.