THIS GLOWING (2)

The blog interface wants me to categorize this post, but I’m not sure how. I’m still processing my time away. Meg Elison visited during my second week at Writing Downtown. This was a huge deal. I first met Meg at The AWP conference in Tampa in 2018—the only one I’ve attended. I saw her several times wearing striking tailored dresses, and one day, at the top of the Convention Center’s institutional stairs, I summoned the courage to compliment her dress and ask her name. I saw her again briefly at Worldcon in San Jose that same year, but we didn’t really strike up a friendship until late 2019. We made a date to go for steaks at the next Wiscon, and being forced by the pandemic to postpone was yet another bitter pill in a truly terrible year.

Most anyone who knows me knows that my life and career are undergoing a massive shift. Meeting Meg where/when/how I did reflects the nature and intensity of that change, how it’s ramped up over the past few years. We waited almost exactly for years to spend time this way. She’s dear to me.

I think it’s fair to say that Meg is in the midst of a shift of her own—this season she’s got works nominated for all the major awards, and I’m excited to see what comes of this and what she’ll do next. Anyway, while Meg was in town, she took me to the Golden Steer steakhouse—a former mob hangout right by the strip, and we ate oysters, steaks, all of it, and drank very strong dirty martinis. The best photo I have of her that night is one where her eyes are closed, but I don’t care. That date was everything I’d hoped for.

Afterwards, we raced over to Area 15 to browse Omega Mart. Omega Mart is a Meow Wolf project situated in an old airplane hangar right by the strip. I love New Orleans, I love the culture and the art here, but we don’t have anything on quite this scale. The Mart is a medium-sized grocery store that has been infiltrated by alien biotechnology. I enjoyed the exhibit quite a bit. It’s loudly colored, and the mystery element is wrapped up a little disappointingly in a straightforward faux-Lynchian video exhibit, but I think even that 80s-style lameness was note perfect. The experience lends itself to repeat visits as there are so many details to the art and mini exhibits. A lot of the imagery is top-of-mind, the metaphors bald, but I like the idea of a not-quite-right supermarket attached to pulsating wetware, alien prisms, and vacuoles of domestic life. Reminds me of me, just a little.

We also attended a comedy show at the Cellar located in the Rio Hotel and Casino. I didn’t take many photos there as it took us a long time to find the actual theater, traipsing back and forth across the casino floor. I hadn’t been to Las Vegas since I was 13, on one of my family’s R & R trips to the States from Surinam or Tunisia, so I hadn’t really spent time in a proper Las Vegas Casino—even a slightly-shabby aging outfit like the Rio. The last Casino I’d visited for more than a quick restaurant meal was a run-down place in Puyallup, WA. The place was full of cigarette smoke, and old folks pulling at the slots. The worst thing about it was the air of mingled desperation and resignation that pervaded the place like radio static distorting a single. I didn’t feel any of that at the Rio. I god the sense that the building itself was tired, that it had served long and wanted rest, but even that impression was not overtly negative or repellant.

Having Meg visit showed me that I hadn’t acclimated to the altitude as fully as I’d thought. We didn’t do much walking around, but what we did do found me short-of-breath and too-easily tired. I had wondered before we went whether the Cellar would be anything like the one in New York, or whether it would be a theme-park-style Vegas version, and it was definitely the latter. The Covid protocols were strictly observed, from seating to mask use, which was good to see, but not essential, as Meg and I were both fully vaccinated. The show itself was okay—sets by four comedians whose names I can’t remember. The host out-shined them all. His material was old-school, maybe a little dated, but his performances turned those weaknesses into strengths. Better than the performance was the show itself—going to a proper in-door comedy show in a black box theater for the first time in . . . honestly, I don’t remember the last time I did that before the pandemic.

While she was in town, I had a chance to introduce Meg to Scott and Drew at Writer’s Block, and show her the apartment in case she wants to apply to Writing Downtown herself. I’d love to be able to visit her while she’s in Vegas working there.

Meg says Las Vegas looks awful by day. I wouldn’t know. Most of the time we were there, my attention was on her—even when I wasn’t directly looking at her. Meg is like a Christmas ornament that never looks out-of-place. She made the heat and bright worth it. She made the shortness of breath and the press to arrive on time a pleasure. There’s more I could say, but I’ll leave it there. I’ll be back next week to wrap things up? We’ll see.