I don’t remember exactly how we got from the Las Vegas airport to the hotel, but I remember the man we met along the way.
My sister, her three children, my husband and our two children walked up a sidewalk toward the hotel. I took pictures along the way.
I stop to take lots of pictures because they don’t cost money and I can’t trust my memory. At the time, I posted my world view in squares to Instagram. Too bad I didn’t write about this encounter in my journal at the time. Then again, we were busy. After the four-hour flight from Atlanta, we had to check in at the hotel and make it to a mini golf/wedding chapel on the first floor.
I saw the man shortly after I saw the bright blue dumpster with a yellow happy face. “A kind word is never wasted,” the sticker read. Underneath, some jerkface wrote, “Suck a dick, bitch.”
Despite being with five children ages 13 and under, I raised my iPhone camera, purposely zooming in because I didn’t want to photograph what I assumed was an unhoused man. He was picking at his dirty fingernails as I averted my eyes and kept the family behind me.
He saw me, too. He thought I was invading his space, his privacy, and he started yelling.
I wanted to stay calm despite my rising anxiety. This man was not mentally stable and I know this because my husband is 6-foot-4, has big bones, lots of muscle, and probably weighed 275 pounds. But the unhoused man pursued our group.
As I scooted behind the dumpster, he moved to my right and I encouraged my sister and kids to go ahead of me. The hotel entrance was a minute away. We just had to keep moving, but the kids froze with fear as the man started yelling about my taking his photo and insisting that I show him my phone and delete the image.
If he were less aggressive, I might have opened my photo album and proved it.
I can’t remember his exact words, but he complained that he wasn’t a pedophile and some other things that didn’t make much sense. He began rooting around in his backpack, saying he had pepper spray. We didn’t know what he had, but I faced him as the kids and my sister walked past me, up the hill.
I was ready to lunge at him had his hand exited the bag with any sort of weapon. Russell was right behind me.
We just had to get to the doors and security would keep the man away from us.
It was my 45th birthday and Russell and I paid $500 to have Darth Vader in a crooked helmet perform a vow renewal ceremony. This was our second renewal and we did it because I wanted a Vegas wedding.
This time, we went Sith.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
We chose Sith names. I believe I became Darth Matricula; Russell could explain it better. I don’t remember his Sith name. I’m kind of an asshole. I guess that’s why I stop to photograph explicit graffiti and put my family at risk.
I empathized with the man, though, and I knew the main difference between him and me is that I have a home, a safe place to thrash around crying and lamenting my life. A place to pick at myself in private and avoid judgement by those who don’t know what it’s like not to have a place to breakdown.