City Lights

On and off for the last three months I've been sharing a bed with eminent environmentalist, Doctor David Suzuki. I didn't recognize him at first—he just lies there, naked, asleep, smelling of seaweed. I thought I'd picked up a sushi chef. He has a wicked snore, that of a deep sea mammal.

Suddenly he wakes and hands me an energy-saving light bulb—I don't know where he produces it from, I'm too embarrassed to ask. Following a brief chat about the Tar Sands, hurricane Katrina and the benefits of a dolphin-friendly bed mattress he slips out, still naked, through my half opened bedroom window. I hold my breath for fear that the neighbors might see him.

Then I wake up.

A dream like this wouldn't be so bad if I was a crusading environmentalist, a fearless eco-warrior or even female but as I lie in a pool of my own sweat, or is it sea water, it suddenly occurs to me—maybe it's a sign, maybe it's a message—is my attitude towards the state of the environment too lax, should I hit the high seas and scream abuse at Japanese whalers, am I gay? I never really recovered from my first trip to Las Vegas.

I stayed at the Wynn Hotel—how could I possibly lose? There was enough light bulbs in my bathroom to power Bolivia. If I unscrewed half of them I'd still need sunscreen. Someone on the street tried to sell me their mother.

There's a disarming honesty about Vegas—a child-like innocence, an unbridled pomposity. It doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not, except, maybe London, Paris or New York but as a city, it's a single-minded proposition—oblivious to the concerns and hang-ups that paralyze the rest of the world and it's that that makes it the envy of most other cities. Everything is a commercial venture—from having lunch to taking a dump because time is money and taking time out to sit on the toilet is time you can ill-afford to waste.

I understand how someone might consider going without eating, sleeping, pooping because when I'm finally ensconced among stetson-clad oil millionaires and gold-digging divorcees, witnessing my chips disappearing faster than the polar ice cap, I'm not thinking about the street kids in Mumbai, the starving nomads in famine-ravished sub-Saharan Africa or my ozone-killing bathroom. I'm thinking—how the f**k can I re-mortgage my house, remotely, without my wife knowing; what's the likelihood of selling my car on eBay in the next ten minutes, or why the hell didn't I get fitted with a colostomy bag?