Las Vegas, Nevada
Do I contradict myself? Very well then; I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.
As I drove south on I-15 from southwest Utah, through a little corner of Arizona, and finally into Nevada, I watched the Las Vegas skyline slowly appear into focus amid the dense desert haze. Las Vegas, under normal circumstances, would not have been at the very top of my list for places to visit in the van: between my struggling bank account and my shaky attempts to stay soberish, I’m not the ideal clientele for The Strip.
But this stop had been planned for four months as an excuse to keep me on pace to reach Los Angeles by the end of April and was planned for one reason only: to watch a gay, masked cowboy perform in a sparkly rhinestone suit. What better place to see Orville Peck perform than the sparkly rhinestone suit capital of the world, Las Vegas?
Las Vegas is a city of contradictions. It’s a flamboyant entertainment destination in the middle of nowhere. It’s a desert-locked sea of water features and pools amid an impending drought. It’s a former Mormon fort now known for its access to the most “sinful” activities we get to indulge in on Earth.
But that’s the beautiful thing about Vegas: it knows what it is and allows space for its multitudes. Despite the perception that the thousands of elaborate fountains scattered throughout the Strip must be wasting precious reserves of water, Las Vegas has become one of the best models for water conservation in the southwest(1). The only reason “sin” exists in the city is to better regulate and tax it. And despite being a place that I mostly associated with benders and excess, I was there to embrace balance.
The first thing to know about Orville Peck is that his name is not actually Orville Peck. Using a pseudonym and a mask, the mysterious cowboy chooses to be an anonymous celebrity – an embrace of contradiction on a fundamental level. His latest album, Bronco, was released in segments over the course of the preceding months, giving my cross-country road trip from the East coast to the Southwest desert from February to April the perfect soundtrack. The album starts with a galloping percussion and the lines:
Buddy, we got major blues
Another suitcase in your hand
I hope you brought your walkin' shoes
’Cause it's quite a ways from what I understand
With lyrics detailing the pain and freedom of nomadic life, elaborate stories of queer longing, and never quite feeling like you fit in anywhere, the alt-country album hit me at the exact right time in the exact right circumstance. I’d light up as he listed off the places we’d both passed through - Reno, Denver, Mendocino, Daytona - as if we had shared that experience. And I felt a deep kinship with his relationship to relationships.
Always said “I should work on my escape”
Have a heart too long, it’s bound to break
Bronco was my top album of 2022 and Orville Peck was my top artist.
So, of course, this event required a costume – not just a cute concert outfit, but an all-out Vegas getup. When I arrived in town, I immediately went searching for thrift shops to find The Dress. I had a vision in mind: something red, and shiny, and sexy, and bold. I’d tried dozens of thrift stores I found along the way at roadside Goodwill’s or the occasional high-end consignment store, but nothing satisfied my craving for that perfect fit. I was convinced I would find a magical red dress for this show, and The Red Kat Vintage called out to me.
One way I like to test the limits of my own beliefs is by imagining a perfect item of clothing - something specific and rare - and then trying to find it thrifting. I’ll write something down like “black suede coat with fringe across the back; cropped, but oversized enough to layer under; less than $150” and scan through racks and racks of coats looking for the exact one I had in mind. It doesn’t always work the first time, of course, and I never let myself buy it if it didn’t fit the description exactly. Whether I “manifested” it or not, that coat did eventually find me, and I was convinced this dress would do the same.
I walked into the thrift store and poked around a bit before asking the woman behind the counter if she had anything to recommend.
“I’m pretty sure I have exactly what you’re looking for!” She walked over to a rack and pulled out a bright red sequined dress with fringe dripping off of the shoulders and down the sides with an attached choker-like neck. It wasn’t just bold, it was abrasive. “The only thing is, it might be a little tight. But you should try it on anyway!”
The last thing a curvy woman healing from over a decade and a half of disordered eating wants to hear is that a magic item of clothing might be a little small. But, I’d asked the universe for a perfect red dress, and here it was. I had to try it on.
In the dressing room, I struggled to wriggle into the costume-quality polyester dress. The first attempt failed as I could not pull the dress up over my hips without hearing the faintest tearing noise (unclear if it was real or imagined). On the second attempt, I managed to pull the dress over my broad shoulders and unrolled it down my body like I was casing sausage. Despite how wildly uncomfortable it was to watch my own body squeeze into a cheap dress, once the zipper landed in its final position, it clicked.
There I stood, looking at myself in the mirror, in a perfectly-fitting red sequined dress. My brain slipped effortlessly into a panic and started pointing out every single element that felt out of place: it was so short, I didn’t know if it fully covered my ass; the shoulders were tight and I felt like I was one big stretch away from Hulking out of it entirely; it gripped my tummy tight enough to show - god forbid - the indentation of my belly button.
And then it sunk in even more: not only would I have to wear this dress out in public, but I’d also be going to a concert alone in this dress. Everyone would see the indentation of my belly button, and I’d have no distractions from a big group of friends to prevent me from caring.
The universe had given me exactly what I asked for – it would have been arrogant of me to let the voice in my head win over the will of the entire damn universe. I loved how it hugged my waist and how the red fringe fell perfectly along my outer thighs that tickled me when I danced around. I loved that it was impossibly gaudy, and cheap, and absolutely captured that vintage Vegas charm I had envisioned since buying the tickets four months ago.
I poked my head out of the dressing room and timidly asked the woman behind the counter “uh, I’m sorry about this, but can I ask for some advice? I’m supposed to wear it to a show tomorrow night and I just, I don’t know…”
She seemed eager to advise “of course! Let’s see it.” The owner was joined by a young Gen Z woman wearing the most impossibly trendy vintage outfit. She introduced herself as Aspen.
I stepped out of the dressing room and into the shopping area, with one arm resting low across my stomach.
“I said, let’s see it!” she said again, indicating that I should lower my arm and show the dress in full. “Give us a spin!”
They watched as I awkwardly stepped into the light and gasped: “IT’S PERFECT!”
“Really?” I asked, warming up a bit more. I twirled around and let the fringe lift and fall again against my legs. The tightness of the dress started feeling less oppressively constricting and more impressively tailored as if it were just for me. “I mean, if I bend over, you can basically see my –”
“Don’t bend over, then!” the younger woman interjected. “Plus, even if you do, who cares? This is Vegas: you’ll stand out if you’re not in a skin-tight red dress.”
She was right. And that was the whole point in wanting to see this particular show in this particular place. “Fuck it, you’re right. I’m gonna go for it!” The women cheered and woo’ed my decision – even in the context of being sold something, their genuine reactions affirmed me. I did another little twirl and the women clapped for our collective decision.
Before I reentered the dressing room, another shopper – a man – decided to include himself in this conversation. His eyes leered at my body from head to toe in what felt like the slowest, most lingering examination of every ripple and curve of my body. I felt his attention like a glaring spotlight on an already well-lit stage. “I think it looks really hot!” he added.
Another contradiction to live with: the tension between wanting to wear something attention-grabbing and the reality of having attention directed at you. Women in particular feel this discomfort often, especially as it relates to the clothes we choose to wear. The world loves to ask us to think about what we wear. “What were you wearing that night? Of course you were cat-called, look at that outfit! Why would you even wear something like that if you don’t want attention?” I’d already accepted this contradiction as inherent to the condition of being a woman: it’s not your fault if someone assaults you, but it’s your fault if someone assaults you.
So what you say, Big Blonde?
Is that another whispered plan?
I’ve been around long enough to know that you can’t trust a man
But ah, Daytona Sand
The two women working gave him a quiet glare. I replied, “thanks.” and turned back into the dressing room.
When I reemerged, the man had moved on and I continued my conversation with the owner and Aspen. “What show are you seeing, by the way?”
“Orville Peck! He’s playing at the House of Blues tomorrow night. But I’m going alone, which is probably why I’m feeling skittish about this dress.”
Aspen perked up: “no way! I’ll be there too! Would you want to meet up beforehand? My friend and I have floor tickets. Might feel better to wait in line with people you know!”
I felt another contradiction arise in me. The whole point of this show, even my time in the van overall, was to be alone. I wanted the van to be something that challenged my codependency and need for constant distraction. If I said yes, wouldn’t that just be another coping mechanism for hedging my own insecurities by not being alone at this concert, in this dress? Yet, I wanted to be social and I wanted to make friends.
We exchanged numbers even though I wasn’t keen on meeting up. I wanted to feel awkward in this dress if that’s how it was going to feel. I ignored my own advice and didn’t embrace the contradiction. At first.
Later that afternoon, I drove the van to a small park in a residential area to meet up with a few other vanlifers. The day prior, I’d noticed an account I followed – a young woman around my age and her husband – post about being in Las Vegas. I reached out on a whim to see if they’d be interested in meeting up.
Making friends on the road is incredibly weird. Making friends as an adult is incredibly weird. Prior to vanlife, I’d incorrectly assumed that making friends on the road would be easier than “real life.” I pictured informal campsites filled with friendly, outdoorsy peers who would be more than happy to welcome a newcomer into their communal fire circle to swap stories of life on the road. As it turned out, most people tend to keep to themselves and their existing caravans.
I messaged Carissa on Instagram and we decided to meet up at a park in the northern suburbs of Vegas. I parked next to a van that looked like hers from her social media (not unlike looking for your date in a restaurant and comparing them to their Tinder profile). She hopped out and gave me a big hug: “it’s so good to meet you! You’re just in time, I’m just finishing up making this lunch if you want some!” Of course, we were quick to get along.
There is a lot to talk about between two people who built their own vans with nothing but YouTube and sheer bisexual audacity. We joked about how annoying the electrical work was and how dangerous some of our gas lines looked, but overall, everything was running smoothly. Most importantly, we bonded over our shared reasoning for starting vanlife: we wanted to explore a new phase of freedom. We wanted to learn about ourselves.
After a first successful friend date, we decided to meet up the next day and explore the Strip together.
Seemingly everything about the Vegas Strip is a contradiction. Despite the elaborate exteriors of palaces and skylines, most of the walking is done inside the hotels, seamlessly moving you from Paris to Venice without ever seeing sunlight. Even the concept of gambling is fraught: there is no such thing as free money.
Carissa and I started on the south end of the Strip and worked our way up. We waited a respectable amount of time before we caved and found some very tall frozen daiquiris, though not without trepidation on both our parts.
“I don’t really drink, to be totally honest,” she admitted. “But I figured, while we’re here, right?”
I hadn’t drunk much since the height of the pandemic. Of course, that peak sat atop an already tall mountain of drinking, but if you ever find yourself with the ability to drink two cocktails and a bottle of wine by yourself and still “not feel it,” you may want to consider sobriety. And keep it on your radar if a trend in your family seems to be “I stopped drinking around 30” with no real explanation as to why.
“Yeah, I’ve been cutting back a lot, too. I just don’t like the way it makes me feel anymore,” I said as I ordered a giant frozen cocktail.
You can kill a lot of time in Las Vegas without having to actually do anything in Las Vegas. We wandered for a few hours through a maze of oddly-engineered pedestrian pathways, tunnels, and hallways that felt like less of a hall and more like an entire store that you have to walk through to get to the next building – a never-ending gift shop. It astounded me how much everything cost, and even worse, how everything cost something.
As we meandered through the buildings with no particular plan, sipping our giant daiquiris, we started to bond over our similarities beyond the van. Most notably, our shared experience transitioning from devout Christian youth to spiritually-hungry adults.
She took a big gulp from her never-ending frozen drink. “It makes sense that we’d be interested in astrology. I don’t think I could ever believe in nothing, even if I don’t consider myself a Christian anymore. It’s similarly comforting.” She giggled a bit, “I’m really starting to feel this drink.”
I completely understood the sentiment. “I couldn’t believe in nothing.” I took a similarly big gulp from my daiquiri. “I don’t like who I am when I believe in nothing.”
It felt appropriate to discuss losing my religion as I teetered on the edge of drunk. The two for me, canonically, love to go hand in hand.
A Wednesday child with a rented ride
And a head that’s full of woes
“Let’s get some food, yeah?” Carissa asked sweetly.
I snapped out of it: “you didn’t even need to ask.”
Back at the van later that afternoon, I strategized the most important question of the night: where to park. House of Blues is squarely on the Strip, which meant that parking would be either prohibitively expensive or notably dangerous.
I wanted the shortest walk possible in a semi-crowded area because I knew being alone in that red dress would be terrifying. Not in an “oh, can people see my belly button” sort of scary; more in a “am I going to be followed back to my home later” sort of way. (Vanlife tip: never enter your van from the sliding side door; always enter the driver’s side, lock the door behind you, and then move to the back through the interior. Never make it obvious that you live alone in there.)
I parked in a small lot with surveillance about half a mile from the venue. I awkwardly shimmied into my red dress in the narrow “hallway” of the van and felt a nervous sense of accomplishment when it fully zipped up again. The largest - and only - mirror in the van is a small 8-inch round mirror precariously velcroed to a pillar where I can see my face and not much else. This wasn’t an intentional omission but the limited view it provided me was a freeing change from the exhaustion of having to look at my body every day.
I sat on my bed, fully dressed and made up, for a few minutes to psych myself up. I didn’t want to feel that anxious about wearing a dress I knew I looked good in – but did I look that good? Were those women just being nice to me because they wanted to make a sale? Was Carissa flattering me when she complimented the pictures I showed her because she wanted to be nice? Or worse, did I look too slutty? Would I be leered at and catcalled as I walked down the half-mile stretch of the Strip needed to make it to the venue? Would I look weird and lame standing alone in this stupid, elaborate getup?
As I found after months of being in the van alone, I have to coerce myself to do things scared. If I didn’t do things scared, I wouldn’t have been able to do much in the van at all. Deep parts of my subconscious were begging me to change, minimize, and quiet down: but I am not my thoughts. A sentiment that only feels like a contradiction.
By the time I arrived at the House of Blues and rounded the corner, the tightness in my stomach gave way to a softening exhale as I saw the crowd. Everyone waiting to enter the venue was decked out in sequined cowboy hats, fringe masks, and flamboyant Western wear. I took my seat on the balcony and debated getting a beer to take the edge off, but the show started just before I had a chance to begrudgingly debate myself about it.
As the concert bounded on electrifyingly, Orville Peck took a moment to introduce what he called his favorite song. “This is the last song I wrote for the album, and I didn’t know if I would release it. It’s a song about the temptation to run away to escape your problems, staying a rolling stone.”
I knew instantly which it would be as it was also my favorite song on the album. There’s something so gratifying about knowing your favorite song of an artist is also their favorite song – like you’re in on a secret with them. I sang along from the balcony:
“And wouldn’t it be nice if I could sleep in my own bed?” the Hexie Mountains said …
“And wouldn’t it be nice if I could let the dead stay dead?” the Hexie Mountains said …
But wouldn’t it be nice if I could hold it off again?
Wouldn’t it be swell if I could get things off my chest?
“Maybe you’d learn to live with what’s inside your head,” the Hexie Mountains said
The show ended with another galloping crescendo with the entire audience yelling the words along. I had long abandoned my awkwardness of being alone on the balcony and spent most of the show standing, alone, dancing. I had one more hope of getting a picture of myself in this dress at the venue after I’d finally fully embraced how I looked.
Just then, as we filed out of the concert hall, I spotted someone familiar in the crowd of loud and sparkly concertgoers. “Aspen!” I called out.
The young woman from the vintage shop turned around: “oh my God! The dress!! It works perfectly!” She ran over and gave me a big, tipsy hug.
She introduced me to her friend in attendance and I asked the two girls if they wouldn’t mind taking a picture of me. The Gen Z’s jumped immediately into action.
“Okay, let’s have you stand here in front of the marquee. Give us a few poses!”
I laughed and put my hands on my hips, contorting around clumsily. As her friend continued to take pictures from my iPhone from varied angles - most notably, from a full-squat position to create an upward angle - Aspen moved my position around like she was styling a Barbie. “Try this,” she’d say, and move one arm to one hip and one arm above my head.
They laughed and cheered and hyped me up to keep posing and moving around. “Bend over a little! Whoooo look at that booty girl! Look back at me!”
How odd that in a crowd of hundreds of people, all in distractingly bright outfits, I would run into Aspen again. A little sign from the universe that people are brought into your life at certain times for reasons we may not know at the time. Even if it’s just to take a thousand pictures because the person who sold you a dress loves to see you happy in it.
Contradictions can either be seen as opposing forces that create an uncomfortable tension between each other; or, as differing dimensions that add complexity to something. By allowing space for contradictions within ourselves, we give ourselves permission to be more than one thing at a time. To believe in both science and magic. To contain multitudes. To be a glamorous cowboy.
About six months later, I was making an impromptu stop at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky on my way back East. I truly did not want to stop given that I was on day four or five of endless driving and just wanted to be done. I parked in the very busy lot and planned to pop into the visitor’s center, get my passport stamped, and leave.
As I walked out of the visitor’s center, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw an unexpected face: Carissa. Somehow, despite neither of us posting about or knowing the other person would be in that part of the country, let alone that specific National Park, we ran into each other on a day so busy that I could not purchase a ticket to actually tour the caves. We hugged and laughed at how bizarre our timing was.
The universe is cute like that sometimes.
perfect perfect perfect 🫶🏻