Human Zoo

I was lying on the ground of my 23rd-floor Las Vegas hotel room, sorting through a kaleidoscope mind of what I had just witnessed. Surely our rock band, Mild Heroes, with a focus on music that excites and entertains people in the San Francisco Bay Area could find purpose and inspiration from these swirling hordes. Carnal faces of swarming masses chasing dragons below my window on the strip. Shuffling degradation hand-in-hand with opulence and excess. Souls expressing their reptilian freedom; no inhibitions. Operatic voices calling out to the gods of their own making, laying money at the feet of Zealots with clear channels of connection to the chaos. 

A man in a full tuxedo stood by the Bellagio fountains, taking a picture with his father, who had obviously drunk himself to oblivion before the nuptials had even begun. The two asked a passerby to snap their picture as the lighted waters erupted behind them, all the while ignoring the pleas of the bride, her flowers long ago lost to the drive-through chapel, tattered train in her hands. 

“You always do this,” was all I heard her complain. She asked me for a cigarette. Then before I

could answer, a street performer on a break handed her one and lit it. His painted face beckoned and she followed, her groom now smoking weed with his inebriated father. And there she went, down the strip, getting convinced to stand with the painted-face charlatan as a bonus for his “act” promising all the money and fame that a guy living out of his van could muster. It didn’t seem to matter to her. She was gone with him, smoking and sucking down his lies. 

As I turned the corner, dirty bare feet stuck out of a cardboard home surrounded by the acrid stench of bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Twenty “dirty dog” vendors with hot plates filled to the brim with street meats, onions, and peppers lined the massive and ornate stone archway that led to some of the strip's most expensive stores, the likes of Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, and Cartier.

I’d had enough; the smell of drugs and the sounds of Mickey Mouse imposters beckoning alongside showgirls and prostitutes would surely stain my dreams for weeks. So, I turned back under the artificial lights of the Eiffel Tower, only to be met by a zombie in a hoodie, lurching to the rhythm of his own haggard breathing. I offered him the bottle of water I had. His eyes looked unseeing, skin hanging off the bones of his face. Another zombie wandered towards the mausoleum I had just come from. It was a dead scene full of action. It was a HUMAN ZOO.