I was raised by my mother, who had a sense of foresight developed to the highest levels. She made a predictable world for me, with the dog kept outside and a furniture color scheme that was two shades of ’70s-era umber. The family’s gift for combining soothsaying with traditionalism soon made long-sightedness a childhood lifestyle, most of which I spent envisioning getting to life’s grand, conventional landmarks (first job, first house, first child). The burden of unfulfilled goals can wear on you; it’s something like hearing that “”Are we there yet”” yapping when all you’re trying to do is get there faster.

But by my teens, my mother, who had just survived a bout with cancer, told me to do life differently. Enjoy your journey to wherever you’re headed, she said, since most people are usually too full of being hollow.

So for someone about the means – with little regard for the end – who drops books casually without care for finals, who cooks a lot but hardly eats, I should have stayed away from the ultimate “”now”” place (Las Vegas) during the ultimate “”now”” time (New Year’s).

Las Vegas during New Year’s is a place where, from the in-casino bookie arenas to buffet tables, the strip becomes a four-mile vacuum of all control, responsibility and morality. Excess is easy when the options are so endless and certain: cocktail, now. Cigar, now. Prime rib, now. Hooker, now. David Copperfield, now (for $80 and over). I got the exact same Long Island Iced Tea on a single block for one price, but from three different casinos.

In this town, every second counts for something – a second you could miss drinking a yard-long, shopping around, getting your hair done, seeing a celebrity. And since Vegas is a city gone hyper – crazier drivers, brighter lights, with more skin, less clothes and money enough to solve world poverty – even missing one thing means missing a lot.

Case in point: I could have met Michelle Trachtenberg. Although the chance to club with the starlet of “”Buffy the Vampire Slayer”” seems laughable to other teens who have already freaked Lindsay Lohan and/or have been cussed out by the Game, my wide eyes can be excited by even the lowest rungs of star quality (I saw Christian Slater once). So as the guilt set in about my big-name blunder, dreams bloomed and blew past me.

I could have seen Britney Spears get shit-faced and weak-knee it out of a club. I could have elbow-rubbed Pamela Anderson. I could have met Chicago. Yes, Chicago.

And that’s how Vegas gets to you. Over time, the guilt accumulates over missing any of the city’s flowing gaudy glamour. Then, when all you want to do is be back somewhere safe, the city turns on you. The tips get too big, the tits too large and those lightsaber noises from the Star Wars slots are egging on your hangover. Soon, the grandmas at the machines turn into retirees wasting away their social security checks, right next to the fops, snots and yuppies that drop college payments on the craps tables.

Washing away 19 years worth of sin with a five-day concentration of even worse sins was not a redeeming experience. But before damnation on the third day, I remembered my mother’s advice, and let the city flow through me. Then, Vegas wasn’t about Britney or how to get to her/see her/touch her boob. Vegas was about marquees in lights, the $500,000 pastel-colored fireworks show and the people heading every which way.

Vegas was especially about the reported thousands-strong crowd, during New Year’s on the strip, where I was sandwiched inside bubbled crowds of humans, smashed together street-side into bottlenecked alleys and curbs.

My joy had become less carnal and more atmospheric. It’s then that I realized I could have my own slice of genuineness in a world as lit up and soulless as Las Vegas. So after smoking out in the Fatburger bathroom, watching the Bellagio water show for two hours, experiencing every block of the strip drunk then re-experiencing it high, I finally had the other side of Vegas.

So I’d want to impart onto any prospective Sin City revelers that the exorbitant, sinful life definitely feels shallow, but it is a fucking good vacation. So ride out any moral or ethical scruples, and when it all starts to boil, look at the lights or the desert sky to get your own piece of real. Or find a bathroom.