_katy perry sings about this stuff so it's real

What is Vegas really? To me, it seems like that strange horse of a pill that you so #casually take from the manicured hand of a radiating angel at a club, because nothing with a halo could every hurt you (or is that just a sorority glow-stick headband?). That pill, unassuming as it may be, and terrifying all the same, as it gets lodged in your throat whilst you chug down your Amaretto Sour (you thought Appletini might be too gay tonight) is just as much of a mystery as the city itself. It kind of sits there in your throat, allowing you to ponder both death and elation, the thought of throwing up and the promise of a random, wild DIY porno, and finally the pangs of regret and the boner of excitement because you're living on the edge of [the] glory[hole]. This is Vegas. Do they make, "I survived" Tshirts here?

Call it what you will, but Vegas is absolutely a rite of passage for the horny, belligerent, boozy, sleazy, fun-loving, ragtag American twentysomething. It's like every good Christian boy's first experience with choking their chicken, it feels soooooo right, but there is that strange chest pain that wreaks of punishment from the unknown, omnipresent one (and by that I mean Mom, if she finds your AOL password and your favorited porno sites).

Vegas is an inexplicable adult play-place that in a drunken stupor I proclaimed to be the Disneyland of addicts, whores and all who want to come and throw away their morals and incomes to a place solely based upon aesthetics and the lack of antiseptics (I can be quite didactic when hammered).

BUT I FUCKING LOVED IT.

Sure, my beer shits lasted a little longer the next [few] day[s] than normal, and yes, the overwhelming moral rift that shook me to my core for the latter term of my hangover stayed with me just about until now, but don't we need a place like this?

I am fully aware that Vegas, in essence, is not unlike any other city in the Red, White and Blue-Balled, but it has somehow been pedastaled as a version of insanity unparalleled in any other Amurican town. I'll take it.

So, Vegas, this is a thank you. Your a hard to swallow pill at first. You sat in my throat as I chugged down a $1500 bottle of Smirnoff that is upcharged just so that I had a place to sit and feel "with-it." You made me regret my decisions as I purged your toxins at a gas station off of the 15 where they sold freeze-dried crickets as a 9 calorie snack. You gave me so many many "Sarah Palin's invading Ke$ha's closet" types (for which I am grateful) when I did my late night casino rounds, scouring the floor for a visor-toting, Keno-playing grannies. But above all else, you helped me to not remember a single thing I did, so no tweet, no post, no text shall leave your sacred city limits, but instead be rebirthed into some other idiotic twentysomething who steps in cocky and takes the seemingly harmless pill from the face of an angel.