I'm a window seat girl, I'm more selfish than considerate I guess. Some people don't like to be trapped in, I don't care budging myself out. I'm a window seat girl in the hopes and prayers that I might catch a glimpse. The considerate control freaks take the aisle seat, it's the thinkers and the dreamers and the better sleepers that take the sides of the plane. Shame on the person who chooses practicality over seeing themselves impossibly dancing on the clouds. There have been three such flights that have changed my view on the world, or better yet, they have delivered me a view on the world. One was over Buenos Aires—the wildest landscape mixology between natural and man-made that I've ever seen. The next was into Newark over Manhattan. The purity of the man made and the extent that we can go. The third was the flight into the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada. I saw it coming, from the darkness there was light. In the distance, far below us, the dusty light was unmistakable, not sprawling like a city usually appears, but condensed and somehow colourful, as if Times Square was just the offspring of its far wilder and more successful parents. It originated from this barren landscape. If there's a purity in Manhattan's skyline, from the moment that desert artificial light came into my view, the impurity made itself clear. This is not supposed to be here, but we will persist nonetheless.

Las Vegas is the most honest place I've ever been. When everyone is pretending, something naked and barren begins to appear. Like the theatre. I don't trust those who don't like Vegas, it's as if they're too scared to speak to their underside. I want to separate the good from the bad, the wild from the scared, the ones worth your time and the ones you'll leave behind. I like places at their extreme, I've said this before. Mountains with air hard to breathe, children more plentiful than my neighbours could handle. Before I got sober, I liked drugs that made my body vibrate, and now, I have extremely good sleep. I like that America has few rules, very tightly enforced, so when I smuggled my way in there, I felt freedom, temptation and ambition as I've never known, and then the wrath of its power when I got caught. It's all a game. And then there's a place that makes illegal activity encouraged.

The American way, the ambition to have what cannot be had. I love it, I drink it in, I want to dress the part, watch those who are genuine and watch the ones who are watching, their efforts ready to imitate. Broke but bursting with enthusiasm to be witness of a car crash that keeps unfolding. The many facets of humanity's worst, and the money you need to pay for entry. Tasteless and cashed up. Drunk and horny for more. The reason I don't like people who don't like Vegas is the arrogance in it. A pretension that whispers that they are better than it. Like women who pretend they don't think about their weight or fathers who say they don't watch porn. I like the honest ones that want to be loved, want to be adored, want to be licked, kicked and loaded. Most of all, they want to win. In Vegas, I know I'm not the only one, and there's community in that.

Two men. A credit card and a promise to pay back the one who earns more. One man already, a chip on his shoulder and no one to ever talk to about it. Too much cologne and too little attention from the opposite sex. So they left where they came from, only for a night, and they talked about all the possibilities the night could bring. They wear shirts tucked into their pants, a little extra flesh expands from the belt but if the air is held it can broaden the chest and pull in the stomach. Downtown, $1 tables. $1 tables, and if you're patient enough, the whiskey comes free, and the cigarettes keep you going until the long wait for the next flimsy plastic cup is delivered, free pour, lots of ice, browning lime. Sports bets lost, but the cocaine helps them move on, bigger things to see than the Dolphins on the TV above the bar. The men aren't sure if the reason these two women are with them now in their hotel room is because they so gallantly shared their baggy or because in Vegas, their performance of high roller has been communicated correctly and these girls, far better looking than they could ever get, are excited by these well-played, well-to-do men. Either way they're playing a little half-assed game of Black Jack in their hotel room upstairs. Ice filled and ice melting in the bucket, filled from the station down the hall. Pockets emptied as one girl sits upon his lap, cigarettes shared and lipstick reapplied, the girls giggle and the boys try not to make eye contact with each other. The man with the chip on his shoulder, his chip is being mended by the powder he keeps ingesting, he feels good. He's all in, Rolex and heart on his sleeve, it's late or is it early. She likes the look of the emblem on his car keys. She doesn't care who wins, she takes him off to one room and the others are left to make jokes, then make out. The cigarettes are left burning out and the smell lingers. The girls are gone when they wake up.