Stromae

I learned about the Belgian artist Stromae from my Dutch friend, Lottie, when we were in Kolkata, on the way to a rural Indian village for the wedding of the brother of my Indian husband, Sushil, who I lived with in London and who I met on holiday in Mumbai with my Vegas friend, Russ.

It's a preposterous sentence.  But it's true, and the gist of which I said to (my German friend) Jan during one of our YouTube blackholes.  While the provenance of my knowledge of Stromae is an important factoid in TLOS, the reason I recall this particular blackhole conversation is that I remember telling Jan how I wish I could say this sentence to my seventeen-year-old self.  That with all of its compounded layers I could let him know that, as trapped as he felt then, as much angst as he had about the possibilities of the future, it was going to be OK: to tell him 'you are going to have a lot of adventures, and life is gonna be a lot of fucking fun'.

Now, my dissatisfaction with Las Vegas as a hometown is no secret.  But as the city and I both change and grow, it's become more of a trope than anything visceral.  The Vegas of today is not the Vegas of then, and being gay anywhere is different from how it was in post-Reagan America.  Understandably, the time and place are conflated to a degree in my psyche.  But Vegas no longer makes me 'itch' after a few days; now it's just like any other city, with its good, its bad, and its legendarily long traffic signals.  But this anytown is my hometown.

So as I started to approach my 50th birthday and think about how I wanted to mark half a century of life, the only thing that came to my mind was returning to Vegas - 50 just seemed like the time to go back to where I'm from.  So last month, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, groups of my friends and family from different places and times of my life came together for dinners, drinks, a whole lot of tomfoolery, and good vibes and love all around.  It was perfect.  And it was great to show my hometown to so many people for the first time.  You understand someone a bit better, I think, when you've been to where they're from.  And now they know this Vegas boy a little bit better too.

xo from the fifth floor,

Shaun

Hello, world!

Keeping it classy on Fremont Street.

America, fuck yeah! 🇺🇸

A very Vegas lunch - "a touch of Parisian charm" on a man-made lake in a master-planned community in Western suburbia.

Tomfoolery in action.  With a few very notable exceptions, most of the people I love most in life made it.

Lottie, of Stromae fame, taking in the local charm of Boulder City.

Me just after the birthday song at dinner.  Now that wasn't so bad, was it?  Didn't hurt at all.  Perhaps it was the margaritas...

One cannot have a milestone birthday without an elevator selfie.

The last ones standing (somewhat).

Shaun H. Coley ~ Archway ~ Islington ~ London N19 ~ UK ~ shaunism.blogspot.com