Where We Beat the Heat
My Car: There's a moment in July when you get into your car at 2 p.m. and the air in there is so thick with heat you can't breathe and your skin actually begins to pucker up and curdle and everything is too hot to touch, the door handle, the steering wheel, the stick shift, and somewhere right at the peak of that misery, you get a chill. Starts in the scalp. Works its way down the back of the neck to the spine and down the shoulders. Now I know that's dangerously close to heat stroke, my friends, but I like it. It's so hot the heat pushes the button for the body's internal air conditioning, as a warning sign, too much, way too much, as a reminder that it's plainly idiotic to be living in the Mojave Desert as if we're rattlesnakes or rocks, trying to carry on a civilized life under the oppressive weight of a sun getting so close it wants kill you. The chill carries on throughout my body for a moment, in my 130-degree car, and I turn the ignition, crank up the A/C, and sweat, returning to a normal body temperature. Sick. Wrong. Fabulous.
The Library: I've never been to Hell and don't plan to, but my guess is it's like Vegas in summer, minus the eternal suffering. Hell has the Lake of Sulphur. We've got Lake Mead. Hell has a boisterous, forked-tongued leader who speaks out of all sides of his mouth. We have Mayor Oscar Goodman. Like its purgatorial counterpart, Vegas is easy to get to but can be hard as, well, hell, to leave—particularly if you've spent all your money. And both places are hotter than 10 vats of frying fish grease.
But at least you can escape Vegas' heat, if only temporarily. (Hell apparently doesn't have a check-out option). One of my favorite refuges is the library. Any library will do—Summerlin's is particularly snazzy and the Las Vegas Library, with the Lied Children's Museum, is as kid-friendly as they come. I prefer the small-by-comparison West Las Vegas Library, a Frisbee toss away from where I grew up. I've been a regular there since graduating from college in 1996.
Before I assumed the role of media Messiah, I got my fix in the library's media room. Jumping from Sports Illustrated to Black Enterpise to National Geographic and from there to the Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice, Las Vegas Sun, Review-Journal and New York Times, with in-between stops at Jet (to fawn over the beauty of the week) and Essence (again to look at women), I often lost track of time.
I'd long had the hots for the Internet. So when I got my library card, I surfed with a stalker's ferocity. It was mostly media and research content. (For Patriot Act disclosure purposes, I did hit a few black matchmaking websites). If not for my growing sense of uselessness and dwindling reservoir of financial support—mom helped subsidize college, she wasn't about to support a grown man—I might've moved in.
Once I got a job, I conducted as many interviews as possible there. I got a kick out of people's trepidation: Where is that? Is it in West Las Vegas? How far is it from Martin Luther King Boulevard? Translation: Is it safe? Will I make it out alive? What are the nearest escape routes?
Conniving, yes. But it changed some perceptions about the area. (I'm happy to report that none of my interview subjects got shot, stabbed, raped, carjacked or beat up by gang members or drug addicts before, during or immediately after their visits).
As the years past and I moved jobs and residences, I dropped in weekly to chat with staff, surf the 'Net, peruse a book, skim a magazine I didn't subscribe to, attend a meeting or scan the bulletins and community billboards for story ideas (where I learned of the New Black Panthers' plan to march on the Strip for economic justice and that the Soul Brothers was a black motorcycle club and not, as I thought, a Blues Brothers tribute act).
The library has become more than a refuge from Vegas' hellfire heat. It's my very own think tank, where I can formulate my worldview without intrusion or criticism. Each time I visit, I leave with more than I came with.
Higher Elevation: Up there, in Kyle Canyon, where God reclines, some 7,717 feet above Las Vegas' scorching city streets, embraced by the maternal Spring Mountains, and in the cool of the altitude—I retreat to the dining patio at the Mount Charleston Lodge, an oasis in the Southern Nevada desert, whenever the heat in the Valley makes life unbearable. Which, in reality, is summer-long.
Up there, the sun doesn't blind, men's backs don't dampen, women won't lose their natural sangfroid and air conditioners aren't even necessary. Furthermore, eating and drinking are unrushed (which is a good thing, because the top-shelf cocktails are a delight, and the half-pound hamburgers do take time), and conversation is unoppressed, spread out like a cool and heavenly breeze across entire afternoons, just as summertime chats were meant to be.