No restroom At The El Cortez - A Story Of Rejection In Las Vegas at 3 am
The air on Fremont Street was thick, a mixture of desert dust and human desperation. I shouldn’t have been there. Not at 3:00 in the morning. This street, everyone knew, was a modern-day Sodom, a marketplace where flesh was sold and souls were bartered away. My spirit felt heavy, defiled just by walking through it.
But the body has its needs, and mine was desperate for a mikvah of its own—or at least, a restroom. Las Vegas, in its wisdom, provides no public relief in the dark hours, so I was cast out, a stranger in a strange land, searching for a moment of basic dignity.
A friend had once told me that the casinos were like the cities of refuge in the Torah—open to all, sojourner and native alike. With this thin hope, I approached the gilded doors of the El Cortez. They swung open, and I stepped from the oppressive night into a jarring world of artificial day and clattering noise.
Immediately, I was confronted. A young woman, her face sharp and her uniform—a striped tunic of white and black—looking like a twisted parody of the priestly garments, stood in my path. She demanded my identification.
My heart sank. I am a man over thirty, but to hand my identity, my name, to a stranger in this place? We live in a wilderness where identity thieves and cartels roam like the shedim of old. I told her my age, hoping truth would be a sufficient shield.
“I am an officer,” she stated, her voice flat. I had not known the casinos employed real officers of the law. I had assumed they used their own guardians, like the private armies of old. To avoid a machloket, a needless dispute, I relented and showed her my I.D.
The moment she verified my age, her spirit changed. The neutral mask shattered, replaced by a sudden, inexplicable aggression. It was as if my truthfulness had offended her. She insisted I leave.
“Why?” I asked, my voice calm despite the pounding in my chest.
Upon hearing the question, her anger flared. “You’re being argumentative.”
“I only ask again, why must I leave?” I was not seeking this place of clanging idols and flashing graven images. I was only a sojourner, seeking a moment of relief to preserve my basic humanity. “This is private property,” she declared. “Leave now or I will trespass you.”
A strange peace settled over me. To be “trespassed”—formally cast out for the crime of seeking a restroom. It felt like a badge of honor in this place.
“Then trespass me,” I said.
And she did.
I walked back out into the neon wilderness, the official decree of my banishment hanging in the air behind me. But as my feet carried me further down Fremont Street, a fiercer conflict began to rage within my soul. I lifted my eyes to the heavens, my heart a whirlwind of questions for the Holy One, blessed be He.
Adonai, why have you brought me to this Las Vegas? This city feels like the very throne of the sitra achra, the other side, built by witches and controlled by demonic powers. Its foundations seem laid in greed and its walls plastered with lust. How can a soul survive here? How do you expect a poor man, with little more than his faith, to navigate this devil’s playground without being crushed? It is a furnace, and I feel the heat threatening to consume me.
The silence of the night offered no immediate answer. But as I walked, a verse from the prophet Isaiah echoed in my spirit, a whisper beneath the garish lights: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you." (Isaiah 43:1-2).
I was not in a physical Babylon, but I felt its spiritual weight. Yet even in Babylon, Daniel’s God was with him. Even in the fire, a Fourth Man walked. My banishment from the house of idols was not a defeat; it was a reminder that my citizenship is in another Kingdom. The journey is hard, the street is dark, but I am not alone. The search for a place to relieve myself led me to a profound truth: in the midst of the enemy’s playground, I am still called to be set apart, a light, even if all I can do for now is walk through the darkness, trusting in the One who goes before me.
