I spent my five hour Spirit Airlines flight to “Sin City” wedged in a middle seat between two rows of a drunken bachelor party, which I attempted to remedy with Spirit’s “BuzzBallz special”–two canned margaritas and some pretzels. We made our rocky landing around 11 pm, three hours later than when we were supposed to arrive. Before the seatbelt signal had been switched off, my classmates aboard ordered Uber XLs to take us to Planet Hollywood, our budget hotel that had been orchestrated through one of those mass booking platforms called LVIN for the fall break of our senior year of college. 

Once at the casino-hotel, we waited in an agitated line to check in at a lobby kiosk that spit out our room keys. 

I hustled through the Maze Runner-esque halls, dropped off my bag, squeezed into one of the three Zara mini dresses I packed, bought a Celsius at the lobby’s convenience store, and caught up with my already drunk crew of friends who arrived on earlier flights. 

Within our first seconds entering the club on night one, my girlfriends and I were ushered by a paunchy man to the front of the line. He said he’d take care of us and that there was no need for us to wait. We walked into a smoky, dark room with purple lighting and shiny decor. A silver bar that looked like a starship cast faint reflections of our bodycon-clad silhouettes and plastic pumps. 

We followed the club official’s head through the crowd, forming a chain of gripped forearms as we weaved in and out of middle-aged men and bottle girls. I gasped upward for air, inhaling the vapors of sweaty bodies, vanilla perfume, and fog machines. The man brought us behind a velvet rope into a secluded table section where we took a seat at a booth. Our guy friends lingered on the outside and watched with a mix of amusement and awkward glances before heading to the bar to purchase the cheapest beer on the menu, defeated. It was clear to all that we weren’t in Charlottesville anymore. 

The next day, at a beach club, one girl invited the rest of us to join a bachelor party’s cabana. I went and chatted with Johnny from Long Island, BJ from Long Island, Patrick from Long Island. It was entertaining and we got free stuff. I asked them where they’re from, then poured myself a drink. They asked me about what I was studying in school. I ordered a platter of chicken tenders for myself and my friends. We bantered and I learned about the groom’s wife, his cousin’s carpentry business, and the best man’s snowboarding season in Oregon. They had to know we were just there for the drinks and snacks. We had no interest beyond that, and I don’t think they expected otherwise. My boyfriend laughed from the other side of the mauve rope as I’d sneak out and pass his friends melting drinks.

While the Vegas men gambled and the UVA boys hit the casinos, the women were playing their own game. We were operating on how to spend the least and walk away with the most. It was a gamble, and it required strategy–determine who you’re willing to mingle with and what free liquor they have.

Every girl seemed to have her own range of comfortability in rolling the dice. Some stayed away from the clubs, saying they felt creeped out by the looks of older men and didn’t need to throw themselves in the way of it. Others were determined not to spend a dime in Vegas, and many succeeded. Some saw it as a get in and get out mission. Others were more tolerant of the close-talkers, leaning into an evening at a table. I watched in perplexing admiration as a Jefferson Scholar convinced the party of Canadian men to order the most expensive tequila, clocking in at $1500, in addition to the five-foot Grey Goose.  Another computer science major danced barefoot on the table. Another accepted a $100 bill from a man–for what, I’m not sure. These were bright, well-educated, independent women. Many were in serious relationships. Many of their partners were there. But we were cosplaying strippers for a weekend. Was this wrong? 

“Absolutely not. My boyfriend is cheering me on and I’m flexing on him. Free is free,” said one at the pool in black wedges and her mom’s old string bikini from the 90s. 

Another friend admitted she enjoyed feeling like she was draining the wallets of slimy men and cheating them at their game. 

Another said she felt remorse for robbing the men of their money on some level, for taking their alcohol with such blatant disinterest in them. 

A Commerce student assured her, “the basic law of economics is that if a transaction isn’t mutually beneficial, it won’t exist. This wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t a mutual transaction.” She argued that those men still get something from 10 seconds of our attention. I thought about my unwillingness to chat at a table that night and wondered what they could possibly gain from my saying I’m from DC before making my exit. Maybe after you walk away, two drinks in hand and never to make eye contact again, they still feel that they participated in your fun.

One girl, who had also accepted physical dollar bills, complained about the blisters on her feet from her sky high heels as we stood in line to enter a club the next night. A man walked by in baggy jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers, and hair that looked like he had just rolled out of bed.

 “That’s just fucking obnoxious,” she scoffed, as she tugged on her skintight, coral dress. She went on to drink champagne worth 12K that night, for free. 

Another friend who had spent the summer studying in Israel where she said she often had to yell at men to stop touching her when she was at bars, had lost all patience for men at nightclubs. She told me that she thought the girls enjoying the Vegas night scene the most must also be the most desperate for male validation.  

I felt a little defensive. Was she right? Surely I didn’t need CJ from Toronto to tell me my eyes are really blue. I was just trying to profit off a situation that I couldn’t change anyway. I was embracing cultural immersion, accepting the nature of the beast. But I wasn’t turned off by the compliments, either. Was the attention addictive in some way, like everything else is designed to be in Vegas? 

On my last day, I was ushered to a cabana the moment I walked into a beach club, this time with just one other friend, Clara. A bouncer stamped our hands, asked us if we wanted drinks, then guided us to two men sitting alone on the opposite side of the pool. It was the first time we were the first to arrive at a table and were not accompanied by a 4:1 girl to guy ratio. The men stood up and shook our hands. One immediately prefaced, “let’s not be weird about this. We don’t want to freak you guys out.” He had bloodshot bug eyes that didn’t blink. “We just tipped the security guard $20 to bring over some girls. We don’t do this often.” I didn’t really believe him, and I didn’t appreciate his honesty, either. They paid for me to be ushered here? For what? That felt different than a free drink, for some reason. It felt like employment.

Maybe it was my mounting hangxiety, but all of his mannerisms irked me. There was something about him that made me feel out of body, like I was watching myself in the first minutes of a thriller movie. He proceeded to comment on how uncomfortable I looked, as if to address his creepiness. “Look at her, she’s looking at me like I’m some monster,” he quipped to my friend. He poured Patron into a long glass and joked, “just so you know, we roofie here.” It didn’t land. Clara and I turned to each other with a knowing look, grabbed a Fiji water from the ice bucket, said nice to meet you and bee-lined to the central bar. She ordered a $47 cucumber cocktail called “Botanical Babe” and slapped her debit card down. “I’ve never been more giddy to sign a check,” she beamed.

It was these moments that poked through the Vegas veneer, like when we’d slowly regain vision after the smoke guns blasted white clouds of CO2 in our face each time the beat dropped during Diplo’s set.

I was struck by the blatant hedonism of the adult playground. When I walked through a casino, which was everywhere, all the time, it felt like I was walking through the Black Market. When you’re looking for an exit, you get the slots. When you’re looking for the door, surprise, you get another bar, or a Gucci store, or a Starbucks, or a Taco Bell where you can get married. In every attempt to escape you are led to spend more money. Everything you’d ever need is a few steps away, so you’d need never leave. Everywhere is a guide to scratch every itch–bars, casinos, strippers, caffeine, massage chairs–look no further. Every room reeks of residual cigarette smoke. Every vice is enabled and encouraged. I walked over cards splayed on the floor that advertised naked women. Was I complicit?  

But despite the artificiality of it all, there was still something that felt real: women’s bathrooms. Amid the skinny mirrors, myriad rows of vanities, and the attendant offering a selection of sprays, deodorant, wipes, and mints for a tip, a faint sense of solidarity lingered in the perfumed air. The Women’s restrooms were still rife with drunken banter, “slay queen” compliments, and girls crouching under stalls to look for their friend’s earring. They reserved a certain power in their exclusivity in an otherwise male-dominated space. They provided privacy in a place where all you feel is looked at. The golden-lit mirrors reflected our faces and the faces of the ones in line behind us and the ones that came before, and it all seemed to say back at you, this is a reminder. This is all a game. Good luck. 

By the end of my trip, I went from feeling powerful and savings-savvy to ready to run to my gate. The thought of going home, even on the non-reclining plastic Spirit seats, got me through the shakes of watching the sunrise in the Vegas airport having been at Taco Bell Cantina just two hours before. I listened to the round bloop sound effects of the sea of slot machines that surrounded our gate. Even at 6:30 am, people were betting. The Spirit desk agent charged me $65 for my carry-on and asked me how I liked Vegas. I said I had a lot of fun and no regrets. She smiled, “so will you be back?” I smiled back, “probably not.”