I walked with Chuck and expressed some of these thoughts to him. He commiserated, but insisted that he was not yet ready to throw in the towel. “This is not the end of me, Mike. I’m gonna get back on my feet, and when I do, I sure as hell won’t take things for granted like I did before.” I then reminded Chuck of what he said he would do if he won a million dollars. He just laughed and took a pull from his cigarette.
When we finally arrived at the “picnic” after nearly an hour of wandering (”under a bridge somewhere” is not the most helpful direction in a big city), my throat was parched and my head was pounding. I was able to drink a couple of bottles of water, but I was dismayed to see a line of roughly a hundred people awaiting the promise of a meal. Chuck believed that the front of the line was located where a sermon was being performed. Unfortunately, this turned out to be false — it was in fact the END of the line. We endured the boring and soul-numbing sermon for nothing, and when it finally came our turn to be served, the best of the pickings were long gone. I felt physically ill when I saw our remaining food choices — cheese pasta, cheese sandwiches, Pepsi, and Chee-tos. I forced down the soft drink, begged another bottle of water, and said a prayer that I wouldn’t wretch my stomach’s rancid contents.
We got back to the camp at around 7:45 or 8 PM, and the sun was mercifully all but a memory. I lied down and tried to ignore the throbbing in my head and turning of my stomach. The ever-helpful Chuck offered me more Night Train and cigarettes and even some pot, all of which I politely declined. I dozed off thinking of nothing but that T-shirt and its world-weary axiom.
At around midnight, I woke up and instantly knew that I was going to vomit. With knees buckling, I very slowly stood and began shuffling up the street away from the camp. My headache had grown from a dull throb to a full-blown migraine, an electric spike shoving through the base of my skull. I doubled over and coughed and hacked a dry heave for maybe thirty seconds. Every wretch made my headache more agonizing, so I was enormously relieved when an ungodly eruption of pasta and goulash spewed from my mouth onto the Vegas sidewalk.
It occurred to me that there was a very real chance I might be dying — sunstroke, dehydration, or food poisoning seemed the likeliest culprits. With all of the bemusement I could muster, I sort of chuckled at my own meekness — it had taken less than 36 hours for Sin City to almost kill me. Even those who had advised against my experiment conceded that I might last at least a few days. Interestingly, my body had not been damaged by an attack from a homeless person, as many people had warned. Indeed, I had felt no anxiety whatsoever in their presence. It was the natural elements of the city itself — and the ultra harsh circumstances intentionally inflicted by city officials, led by Mayor Oscar Goodman — that did me in.
I took my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 9-1-1. I wasn’t sure if this action was going to mark the end of my experiment, but I felt that I needed some immediate medical attention.
An ambulance came and took me to The Valley hospital. After about 30 minutes, I vomited again, to which the attending nurse commented, “Hmm…That looks like the stew they serve downtown.” For some reason, I didn’t want the guy to know that I was living as a homeless person, so I told him I had eaten dinner at the buffet line at Circus Circus (a very plausible lie).
Unsurprisingly, the physician who attended me insisted that I needed some expensive tests, beginning with a CAT scan. I agreed to this simply because I thought it might give me an opportunity to catch a few minutes of sleep. The physician then stated that he thought I might be having an aneurysm, and he needed to perform a procedure called a lumbar puncture (or a spinal tap). I don’t know much medical jargon, but any procedure with the word “lumbar” in it sounds way too f*cking expensive. I told him I felt certain that I was dehydrated and not having an aneurysm, and he responded that I knew no such thing. I then asked if I had the legal right to leave the hospital, to which he replied, “Yes, but you have to sign a waiver stating that you are leaving against medical advice.” I signed the waiver and walked out of the hospital at around 4 AM.
I’ve done some catastrophically stupid things in my life, but leaving the hospital in the sad shape I was in is at the top of the list. And the fact that I had no idea where I was and didn’t know how to get back to the camp made matters worse. For the first time in my life, my body was so depleted that I felt unable to simply put one foot in front of the other. It was like trying to walk underwater. My throat burned from vomit and my head felt like a canoe. sh*t.
I took out my cell and called my parents. They agreed to Western Union me some cash, but they’d be unable to do so until 10 AM. I realized what this meant — I would have to shamble up and down the Vegas streets in a state near death for the next 6 hours.
And that’s what I did. I tried asking for directions back to the camp, but I was too exhausted to walk for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I found a bus stop that offered a little bit of shade, but as soon as the sun came up, its glare beat directly down on my head. I found it nearly impossible to stay awake, but every now and then, I would see a police car drive by and I would snap my head to full attention. I remembered the hooker’s comment that the cops would arrest anyone who loitered at a bus stop. I had no money in my pockets, so according to Vegas law; my very presence on the streets was a crime. I began to feel real terror that I might get arrested, a scenario only slightly more appealing to me than physical death.
Until perhaps 8 AM, I would sit at the bus stop until the bus arrived, stand and lurch a few steps away, then return after the bus had left. I felt desperately in need of water, so I staggered over to the nearest casino/hotel, hoping against hope that my uneven gate would not lead to an arrest for public drunkenness.
Inside the casino, I asked one of the porters if they had a Western Union, and much to my relief, he said yes. But unfortunately, a casino is only a hospitable environment to those who are spending money. I had none and couldn’t just sit and stare at a slot machine to kill time. So I walked into a bathroom with the intention of hiding in a stall for a couple of hours.
After drinking countless handfuls of water from the tap, I sat miserably on the toilet and drifted in and out of consciousness. The bathroom was equipped with a PA system which blasted an inane assortment of bad 80’s tunes by bands like Huey Lewis and the News and Air Supply. When you’re squatting and slowly dying on a toilet in a Vegas casino, a song like “Hip to be Square” seems sadly appropriate. I wished for cyanide capsules almost as badly as I wished for a 60 ounce Big Gulp.
After maybe an hour, I was jarred from my stupor by a loud pounding on the stall door followed by a deep voice that bellowed, “Security!” I guess that someone found it a little suspicious that the same pair of shoes could be seen in the stall for an hour without so much as a flush (this makes sense — the function of a bathroom is, you do your business and you leave). I opened the door, and this big burly behemoth with real alarm on his face asked me, “What’s the problem, sir?” I felt certain that I was about to be arrested, so I used the truth as my only defense.
“I’m waiting for a Western Union, man, and I can’t wait in the lobby. You have to spend money to be out there, and I don’t have any.”
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