Escaping Sin City, but not all the sin

Another business trip, another American Babylon.

I don't apply that title to Vegas with indignation. While on the trip, I wrote to my daughter that "90% of this place is awful. 10% is fantastic," and there's much of that awful 90% that is enticing to me (hint: the parts that don't involve booze, snort or poker), so enticing that I wrote to another friend, "Hate it here (except for the food) because it becomes strictly a question of willpower, not one of immediate availability, compelling attractiveness AND willpower."

But I will say that I did a little better on this trip than I did at my last Vegas convention.

Last time, I spent a couple of late nights wandering the Strip, sort of hoping, I think, to "accidentally" come across some kind of trouble, if it threw itself in my path. No, I didn't end up at the Bunny Ranch or Crazy Horse, but on the open casino floors of both Planet Hollywood (in the area called--surprise!--the Pleasure Pit) and Bellagio, I came across undie-clothed damsels poledancing on platforms hoisted above the slot machines. The arrangement was to a strip club what the Swimsuit Issue is to Playboy: No outright nudity, but fleshy gyrations a-plenty. So I lingered a while, until my rationalizing slowly waned, and I left.

This time, oogling was more or less limited to legwatching, and --relative to the abundant opportunities-- that was fairly bridled, as I would most often avoid The Second Glance with the crude-but-effective mental mantra, "Sure, they're nice, but my three children didn't enter the world from between them." Nevertheless, I admit to having cast many glances and several stares at the Carnevino hostess on my last night there -- maybe as a last, carnal hurrah indulgence-for-mediocre-behavior before flying out the next morning?