Fearless and Loathing in Las Vegas

That's a pun on a book I've never read, but I think I saw the movie!

When I started this ‘stack, I didn’t want it to be one of those rambly self-indulgent one that (mostly) girls do about what they’ve been up to and how they felt about it. So far, I think I’ve delivered on that promise. But I saw Taylor Swift over the weekend, so, this is about that! Delete if it ain’t your bag.

A week ago, my friend Dana put out feelers that she was looking for a companion for a trip to Vegas to see the Eras Tour. That weekend. She’d previously purchased tickets for Swift’s LA concert in August (I have a ticket to that, too, blessings from Gaia) but she was itching to go sooner, and to trade her pricey seats in for something more reasonable. She’d planned to take her husband to the LA show, but he wouldn’t be able to make Vegas, so I became the lucky recipient of a last-minute seat and a spontaneous road trip.

At the In-n-Out in Barstow, midway between LA and LV, we could immediately spot the other Swifties. Half of them were, like us, making the pilgrimage, and the other half were on their way back (this was Saturday; Taylor played Friday, too). I asked a couple tired-looking, merch-adorned Zoomers if they were to or from and they said from, and that we’d have the “time of our lives” that night. Same held true when we got to the hotel. Group of girls in red lipstick + sequined jackets = going to Eras. Group of girls in booty shorts + tiaras = bachelorette party. Group of girls in crop tops + knee-high boots = bachelorette party going to Eras.

After we changed, Dana and I were ridiculously, obviously identifiable as well. I’d ordered two colorful dresses from a probably unethical fast fashion site and lent the one that was, shall we say, an aspirational size to Dana. It’s important to buy clothes that don’t fit sometimes. We covered our eyelids with glitter and our décolletage (pro tip: rub on the sticky sparkle gel from Claire’s first, then sprinkle the hardcore stripper glitter on top of that) and started drinking in the room (pro tip: if you’re driving, just bring a bottle of vodka and a can of seltzer with you. Literally no reason to pay minibar prices). Dana got excited and spilled some of the purple glitter, but on tile not carpet, so no big.

The crowd was what you’d expect. Moms and daughters, dads and daughters, gay boys in Junior Jewels t-shirts. Very excited but not too rowdy. And without getting on a soapbox about gender issues (please see last week’s missive for that), can I just say that the Allegiant Arena usually hosts Raiders football games, where I imagine there is a healthy mix of people who identify as male and female. For Taylor Swift, though, it there were probably nine girls for every guy, and instead of designating a handful of men’s rooms temporary women’s rooms or gender neutral, like any normal, rational operations manager would, the stadium enforced the binary. Dana literally got kicked out of the line for the men’s room and had to wait twice as long for a women’s stall, even though going to the men’s room when the women’s line is too long is a time-honored tradition and frankly a fact of life. Can we sue over this? Please advise.

In line for $13 hot dogs, I stood in front of a college student (gay boy, Junior Jewels t-shirt) who said he’d loved Taylor since he was five, and he used to throw tantrums whenever his mom turned off Fearless. This was his first concert, of any kind, ever, and he’d flown in from college in Alabama to see it with his mom. He told me he was #21 on the list of Spotify users who had streamed the most Taylor Swift last year. His favorite album was Speak Now, that’s when he really fell in love with her. I hope he had a good time.

In case you’re not caught up on what an Eras is, let me explain what happened before and at the show. Taylor released her album Lover before the start of the pandemic, and had to cancel most of the performances she would have done for that album cycle. During pre-vaccine lockdown, she released two albums, Folklore and Evermore, then dropped her most recent record, Midnights, this past October. She also re-released two of her older albums, Fearless and Red, including never-before-heard tracks, in the interim. So, she had a lot of ground to cover for this tour, and decided to make it basically a Greatest Hits night: 3+ hours (44ish songs) spanning (almost) her entire career. She’s announced plans to write and direct a feature film soon, so while I don’t think she’s retiring from touring and music altogether, my take is that she wanted to kinda do a recap before taking another long break (her last tour was in 2018).

It was great. And a little crazy. Neither of us had ever seen her live before, and for me the feeling was…uncanny. Over the years I have spent hours, maybe even days of my life looking at pictures and videos of Taylor (including her turn as a CGI kitty in Cats, bad movie, not her fault), and here she was, very small and far away, but still, in the flesh. Imagine if Mickey mouse walked into the room. You’d recognize him, but…aren’t you supposed to be on a screen? Or the president. Like, I know you’re a real person, but how are we in the same room at the same time? There’s also the fact that at 5’11 with long blonde hair and a sparkly body suit covering her lithe but strong frame, she looked quite a bit like a Barbie that had started walking and talking and singing.

As she rocketed through her previous albums, a few tracks here and a few tracks there, she also changed outfits, as did her dancers. It wasn’t at all disjointed, but we didn’t really sit in one feeling or style too long. It was more of a sing-along, Taylor Karaoke Night, feat. Taylor. And oh my god, she was having the best time. On stage, over the years, Taylor has been fierce, professional, intense, over-dramatic, a try-hard, cheesy, hyper, solemn, sweet, vulnerable, sexy, awkward, cringe, angry, happy, sad and more. But even in her best performances (OOTW at the Grammys, ATW at the Grammys, WANEGBT rock version), she was never cool. Never chill. Never relaxed. She is by her own admission an anxious person and a perfectionist. In her words, “not a natural.” But at Eras, she was confident, a pro, so comfortable in her own skin, I was suddenly struck by the thought that, at 33, Taylor Swift might finally be…kinda…dope?????

She still had little moments of “acting,” but they weren’t so forced. She didn’t pause to make sure her moments landed, a tic she’d picked up as a teenager that stuck with her through her twenties. She was no longer obviously insecure and, having thankfully addressed the eating disorder that left her exhausted by choreography in the past, energetic. She’s a better dancer now than she’s ever been, and also recognizes that she will never be a good dancer: moves were purposefully added to key moments throughout the show, and worked for her skills. I also think, and I know it’s not super feminist to correlate her art with her romantic life, but having a long-term boyfriend (slash probably secret husband) really suits the gal.

In between screaming and crying (I shed tears over “All Too Well” (Taylor’s Version) (Ten Minute Version) and “August,” and probably would have cracked on “Cornelia Street” if she’d played it), I was analyzing the hell out of the show, and I think I figured out what went right: she didn’t have to campaign. She doesn’t need to sell any more copies of Fearless or get people to watch the videos from Speak Now. Lover, Folklore and Evermore have won all the Grammys they are ever going to win. Nothing left to prove. The 1989 tour was a fever dream of special guests and surprise cameos in a desperate attempt to keep an 85-show tour from getting stale. With reputation, her comeback, the pressure was on, and she was experimenting with hip-hop. This time around, the only challenge is to put on the best show possible. She’s Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden. She’s resting on her laurels, and she’s damn comfortable. Posting a throwback with the comments turned off and the like count hidden. The pressure was off.

Near the end, instead of playing a track from her debut album, she told the audience the story of recording tracks from Evermore at Marcus Mumford’s home studio, when lockdowns had shuttered every other studio in England. That was how Mr. Carey Mulligan ended up singing harmony on “Cowboy Like Me,” and then she brought him out to do it live. They were charming, she made fun of the way he sang “day-umn.” And when the song was over, Taylor told 60,000 devoted fans that Marcus had a long walk back to the lift that would take him off-stage, and could we please scream the entire time?

Obviously, the crowd obliged, and when Marcus paused halfway down the runway, I think he was testing us to see if we’d stop. We didn’t. Even in the best case scenario for his band, I don’t think they will ever sell out a football stadium, and certainly not with the kind of crowd that will shriek on command. He was having…dare I be so sincere?…a special moment.

Anyway. My theory was confirmed in the last portion of the show, Midnights. It had the most “produced” intro, with Taylor “swimming” under the stage, then appearing in a cloud before magically teleporting to a platform (the person in the cloud was a body double). The screens were filled with pre-recorded videos instead of a live feed of Taylor, as they had been through much of the night, and while she was still smiling, gone was all the off-the-cuff banter, and the self-aware mugging returned. Midnights is new and its legacy is still unwritten. She was back in publicity mode. In a way, it was reassuring. The old Taylor wasn’t really dead after all.

It was impossible to get a ride after the show so we ended up walking back to our hotel on the Strip. My feet were killing me; I was wearing brand-new, not at all padded Mary Janes with tissues stuffed in the toe; they were a half size too big but I loved ‘em. It’s important to buy shoes that don’t fit sometimes. I took them off when we reached an indoor mall and walked around in my tights while strangers invited us to their crib and/or club.

A change of footwear later we went to a speakeasy behind a donut shop. A trio of mismatched men — one British, one elder bro and one hot guy in a suit — bought us extremely weak drinks. They said they could tell we’d been to the concert. I told you what we were wearing, right? It wasn’t exactly Sherlock-level deduction. They liked Dana because she’s from Chicago, but said I was a snob for being from San Francisco. The guy in the suit said he was an executive at the hotel but didn’t want anyone to know or it would make it awkward with the staff. We didn’t believe him. Then again, we’d forgotten our plan to pretend to be British sisters.

Needing sustenance, we went to one of the few restaurants still open: the Taco Bell Cantina. There was a line out the door, and ahead of us was what looked like a non-Taylor bachelorette party. A pretty, and pretty drunk, girl wore black leggings and a top that was more or less a purple bra, and it was far too small. It’s really fucking important to wear things that don’t fit sometimes!!!!!!! Behind us was a fella, tall and clean-looking and, as far as I could tell, sober. If I had to guess, I’d say his friends went to gamble or a strip show but he was hungry and not into it. He started talking to the drunk girl and joined her in line and by the time they got to the entrance, they’d progressed to the touch-your-back level of flirtation. Obviously, we spied on them inside. While Dana tried her first Taco Bell ever (she liked the Doritos Locos Crunch Whatever, which I took one bite of and said, “this doesn’t take like food”), Drunk Girl and Tall Guy shared a drink and a meal. When her group was leaving, they exchanged Instagram handles. Vegas is for lovers.

The only thing left to do was gamble. I had a vision of myself with a cigarette in one hand and a free drink in the other raking it in at the Black Jack table, but we were done drinking and couldn’t find the smoking section (I DID NOT SMOKE ANY CIGARETTES, MOM) and we weren’t in the mood to do math, so we went to the slot machines…

Listen. Dana and I both went to Ivies. She got a perfect ACT score; I got a near-perfect SAT score. We could not for the life of us get the slot machines to work. When we put our credit cards in the credit-card-sized slot, nothing happened. We circled the casino twice, looking at other gamblers, trying to figure out how they’d gotten the machines to work. Two heads and barely a brain cell between us.

Intimidated by dealers and waitresses, we approached a dude whose job seemed to be standing by the ATM keeping an eye on things and asked him how he might explain the slot machines to someone, not us but someone, who didn’t understand them. Apparently there’s a different slot and you put cash in that. Vegas baby, what a town!

We lost a combined total of a hundred bucks before calling it a night. Still a little buzzed but mostly loopy from exhaustion, I was absolutely over the moon as I crawled across the bed and pointed at the spill from earlier: “Dana! There’s glitter on the floor after the party!!!!!” I paused and remembered by feet. “AND GIRLS CARRYING THEIR SHOES DOWN IN THE LOBBY!!!!!!”

Those are the first two lines of the last song on reputation. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Or maybe Taylor Swift is a prophet.

On the ride down, Dana told me 1:30am would be her limit. We crawled into bed just before four. I felt pretty good about being a bad influence on her. When we hit the road again the next morning, my lips were as chapped as they’d ever been. Damn that desert air. We stopped to stand in line behind all the other lonely Starbucks lovers (not the lyric but in a way, definitely the lyric) for the most overpriced coffees of our lives. Then we stumbled on home to our cats. God, I’m doing it again!

Guess it’s Taylor’s world. And we’re just living in it. Until August at least.

Lizzie