Oxygen bar, Vegas (2026 flashback)

Elizabeth Ellen

 

I thought I wrote something about the oxygen bar in Vegas

I thought it was my idea after we got back from Vegas that we would all write something about the oxygen bar

Me, Mira, Chelsea, and Chloe

I remember waiting for Mira to send her thing about the oxygen bar but she never sent it

 

I don’t know how many years ago it was we went to Vegas

That’s not true, because I think it was right after Trump was elected the first time

Because some ppl were talking about that

Mira and Chelsea, probably

 

Chloe and I are less political or more unaffected by things generally in the culture

 

I remember sharing a room with Chloe because Chloe and I always shared a room and Mira and Chelsea always shared

 

So come to think of it, Mira would be the most likely candidate to have stolen the tampons

Just saying

 

I remember the day we walked to the mall in Vegas, going to the bathroom and accidentally peeing on my thong and having to remove it and throw it in the tiny trash can made for tampons

 

I remember we bought new underwear at victoria’s secret and I didn’t think Chloe and I would be the same size but according to her and Chelsea we are

 

I remember watching concert footage of The Boss in bed with Chloe and drinking whiskey which was our thing when in hotels w each other

 

I remember watch SATC in Mira and Chelsea’s room earlier in the day

And taking Polaroids of the four of us in bed together

 

I can’t remember much about the actual oxygen bar

 

I started laughing really hard “out loud” at different points reading both Chelsea’s and Chloe’s oxygen bar essays just now

 

I texted Chloe something about her essay

I couldn’t text Chelsea cuz it’s supposed to be a surprise for her bday –

Putting everything up on Hobart including the oxygen bar essays

 

Reading the essays tho just really made me miss hanging out with Mira and Chloe and Chelsea and traveling with them and having my girlfriends in the same city with me

 

I know this anecdote doesn’t fit in here but I don’t want to leave Mira out so I just want to say I remember another time traveling in a van with Mira and Chelsea and Mira’s ex bf who was also the ex bf of Grimes

 

I remember that was the only thing interesting about him

 

That he was Grimes’ ex bf

 

Otherwise, he was p insufferable.

 

The Oxygen Bar

Chelsea Martin

 

We walked what the concierge said was 1.5 miles from our hotel (which felt like a mall to me, and also had a mall inside of it) to an actual mall (that was, I think, also a hotel), but it felt like 10 miles because in Las Vegas you can’t just cross the street when you arrive at an intersection, you have to turn the corner, climb some stairs, cross a bridge, climb down some stairs, then turn around and go back to the street you were trying to walk down. I learned about the aspect of streets of Las Vegas the night before, because we had taken a taxi to another hotel (this one wasn’t a mall – OR WAS IT?) and walked back to our hotel (mall) afterwards. That night, I’d worn my platform creepers, which feel very comfortable but I develop hip pain if I walk in them too much. So the next day, mall day, I wore my Very Practical shoes (they’re even grey) to walk the 1.5 miles to the mall (or whatever).

I decided well before we arrived at the mall (not sure why I feel I keep having to parenthetically qualify that each mall was also a hotel and vice versa but I just do) that I would NOT be walking around the mall. The hip pain I had developed the day before had worsened a lot on our walk, even in my Very Practical Shoes, and I was going to find a bar and I was going to buy an outrageously-priced hefeweizen and I was going to look at my phone for a couple hours while my friends bonded without me.

So when we finally go to the mall, I found a bar. But it was a weird one that only served very tall and skinny frozen margarita things and had only four barstools. Once I saw that bar, I suddenly knew, the way you suddenly know things that should have always been very obvious but you were somehow too blind to see it, that what I wanted was a sports bar. A margarita kiosk was not going to cut it.

Ahhhh the thing is, I really like my friends. I’d been looking forward to this trip. I wanted to hang out with them in the mall (it’s just occurring to me right now that we should have just gone shopping in the mall inside our own hotel). Even as my hip pain grew worse and worse, even as I was silently planning to ditch them for alcohol and a chair, I was actively dreading the moment the weekend would end and I’d have to return to the friendless Eastern Washington hellscape I’d been living in the last six months. It’s very hard to make friends in a new city when you’re not a very friendly person and are also fully committed to making no effort to change.

The night before, we had watched the episode of Sex and the City where the girls go to Atlantic City.

This is like our trip, I said before I turned it on on my laptop. But it’s kind of a sad episode. Carrie forces the girls to be together this specific weekend that isn’t convenient for any of them, Samantha is obsessed with her boyfriend the whole time and doesn’t really hang, Miranda alternates between being called fat by strangers and being too tired to hang, Charlotte is depressed about her age, Carrie gets mad at Charlotte for wanting to talk to guys, then immediately ditches Charlotte to buy candy, then goes back to her hotel room and gets all philosophical about love for no apparent reason. If we know the house always wins, why gamble? What the fuck are you talking about Carrie? Fuck off.

Well, I realized I was being kind of a Carrie Bradshaw shitfuck. 

So I followed my friends into some shops, I don’t remember which ones. Elizabeth and I playfully argued about what size underwear Chloe needed. Mira and I went to the bathroom probably twelve times because that’s our special thing we do together. We all took selfies under a ceiling painted to look like the sky. We got lost because we are stupid and it was fun. We laughed at a store called PINK that was a bland men’s clothing store. Then someone said, “We should try the oxygen bar.” I looked and I saw cylinders of bubbly colored water and I saw people milling around looking at junky looking massage tools and I saw CHAIRS. There was so much love for the world in my heart at that moment, but I acted nonchalant about whether or not we went to the oxygen bar because I was trying desperately to be less of a Carrie.

The woman tending the oxygen bar gave me use this plastic vibrating massager thing, which I used on my hip the entire time, and it felt good. Also the chairs felt good. I looked at my friends, Chloe and Mira on my right, taking shots of some herb tincture the woman gave us that Elizabeth and I didn’t want to drink, Elizabeth on my left, bravely experimenting with some kind of electroshock therapy system that was hooked onto each of us without our authorization. I breathed in the oxygen, which felt really bad because it is pretty much just cold wet air blowing into your head through an uncomfortably positioned tube. Also it blows air up into your nose even if you’re not trying to breathe it in at that particular moment. I sat in my chair for twenty minutes and felt nothing but love and joy.

I couldn’t help but wonder, when it comes to oxygen bars, are they really anything more than a place to breathe?

OXYGEN BAR

Chloe Caldwell

 

Vegas is made for waiting. A quarter of the time we were in Vegas, I was in line waiting to sit at the restaurant, get into Britney Spears, go to the bathroom, purchase an item, use the ATM. Vegas is a money eating machine.

 

While we walked through the mall at Caesar’s Palace we spotted a sign across the way that read Oxygen Bar. I feel like that’s something you’d like, Mira said to me and I laughed, it was true.

 

While we WAITED to do the oxygen bar, we walked to Victoria’s Secret because I needed underwear. There was a longer than necessary argument about what size underwear I am. EE insisted I was a small, Chelsea agreed with me I was probably a medium. You can try them on in the dressing room over your underwear, EE said. I was apprehensive and she exclaimed, I used to work here! I tried them on and was a medium, that shit runs small. I got five for $27 lace boy shorts. EE bought some cotton thongs and Mira got a sports bra or a shirt. I forget what Chelsea got.

 

We walked back to the oxygen bar after accidentally walking in circles three times. The woman told us it woud be another few minutes. Mira and I sat on a bench nearby and talked about Twitter. We talked about the oxygen bar too, and Mira said, I feel like the oxygen bar is made for people like us, for people who can feel like they’re doing drugs without actually doing drugs.

 

We took our seats and the people manning the station barely explained shit to us, just started going down the line of the four of us with various massage tools. My favorite one was the head scratcher, though I was worried, of course, about the state of my hair, because Vegas is also made for static. I’ve mostly given up on hair products so brought zero with me, so had nothing to help the static which was slowly taking over my life.

 

There was a remote control connected to the seat and we could control the strength of what felt like electric shocks going into our backs. I chose shoulders and lower back. The air going up my nose was beginning to give me a headache. You and your headaches, Elizabeth later said to me; when I travel I am prone to popping a lot of Advil and the sign of a true friend, I’ve recently learned, is when they know you need an Advil before you even know you need one.

 

The woman running the oxygen bar, when asking her what it “does” listed a bunch of ailments it is good for: fatigue, hangovers, jetlag, headaches.

 

I consider myself to be the one in the group who can “handle” my drugs most easily, besides maybe Mira, so I was surprised when I noticed I seemed like the one who liked it the least. We left the oxygen bar and walked toward the exit but some dresses in the BeBe window caught our eyes, and Elizabeth said, Let’s just look.

 

I’ve known and traveled with EE for five years now, and we’ve never been high together, never smoked pot together. In Bebe we were high, felt light headed like we would faint. But I also had that annoyed and irritated feeling you get off of bad cocaine, or Ritalin or Adderall, or, my least favorite: Concerta. We all tried on half a dozen dresses. I liked a green one that Mira tried on, and she chose a different dress ultimately, so I got the green one.

 

By the time we left the mall and entered the cab my oxygen-bar-induced annoyance had faded and back at the hotel EE and I split a diet coke while changing into our new dresses to wear to Britney Spears.

 

In conclusion, I don’t recommend going to an Oxygen bar. Go to a normal bar.

 

 

VEGAS – OXYGEN BAR (original - found on old desktop computer!)

Elizabeth Ellen

 

Omg no. what was it? What q did I answer too dykey? Do another quiz. Still get Miranda. Wth. I guess I’m really a Miranda. Wow. I was so delusional. Thinking I was a carrie or the other two.

 

MIRANDA

You’re logical and rational. You don’t have time for games and your friends really appreciate your frankness and honesty. Just be careful not to come off too cold and inflexible as you go after what you want. Your strong sense of direction is enviable, but remember life’s a journey.

 

You got: You are a Miranda!

You WISH you were a Carrie, but alas, you are a Miranda.

 

Chloe and I asked our hotel concierge how far a walk it was to the Venetian and she said “almost four miles.” I didn’t say anything in front of the concierge but as soon as Chloe and I were out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel I said, “She’s nuts. I looked it up on my computer at home (I don’t have  a smart phone so every trip I take is still planned for in the way you would plan for a trip in 2007) and it’s 2.7 miles.”

Chloe and I sat on the sidewalk in the one sunny spot to wait for Mira and Chelsea who had gone back up to their room after lunch. It was seventy degrees, but only in the one sunny spot. It was approximately 55 in the shade and I was wearing shorts.

No one else was wearing shorts. Most people were wearing jackets.

Once Mira and Chelsea met up with us and we’d walked a couple blocks, we soon realized why the concierge’s assessment of the mileage and my assessment differed. Her assessment included all the walking up and over street intersections and the long way around corners that Vegas implemented as a way of preventing drunks wandering into the streets and getting plowed down by cars years ago. You can’t walk a straight line in Vegas. Literally. The up and over method of walking The Strip added a full mile to our walk. It was fucking bullshit. We all four agreed.

We passed several bikini-clad women and a diaper clad man. We pushed our way through crowds, climbed stairs at each new street section, and stayed mostly in two pairs, which switched pairings every couples blocks.

At one point Chloe and I found ourselves going up an escalator, Mira and Cheslea riding closely behind us.

“Shhhh,” I said. “They’re making a deal,” I said.

I’d been trying to overhear their conversation since we got on the escalator. It was something about writing a TV pilot or having a large Twitter following or both.

“We should be making deals,” Chloe said.

“Healthy competition,” I said.

“I don’t have any Twitter followers,” I said

“I just shut down my Twitter again,” Chloe said

“I actually do have an idea for a pilot, though,” I said

“Let’s write it later in the hotel,” Chloe said

“Okay,” I said, turning to smile at Chelsea and Mira, feeling secretive and knowing

We felt dirty, like we needed to change our clothes and wash our hair, by the time we made it to the Venetian and hour after leaving our hotel, Mandalay Bay.

-bathroom in casino/basement – accidentally somehow pee on my thong/underwear, take off and put in trash receptacle

-walk around inside mall –Venice canals

-should have gotten a boat ride

-went and got a smoothie that “tastes like ice cream” cuz no fro yo place

-bath bombs place

-V.S. (no way Chloe same size pant as me)

-Oxygen bar (mine full force, water up nose sensation/zero instruction, sitting by Chelsea)

-BEBE store….i wanted to try on everything this curvy blonde with a sugar daddy (who disproved of every dress); ended up buying two she’d tried on;  a red and a black

-go back to hotel via taxi

-eat Pringles and a diet pepsi

-Britney, bitch

-Chloe was supposed to meet up with some TV actress who followed her on Twitter and who was also allegedly at the show but after the TV actress said her fellow concert goer was sick

-I had promised the ladies we would get buffet

-I’d been told VEGAS never sleeps

-I’d seen Nicolas cage in Leaving Las Vegas which confirmed this (also confirmed…suicide)

-but when we finally found the buffet inside the hotel after twenty minutes of asking various workers and bystanders and circling…it was closed

-so we waited in line ten mins at Gordon ramsey’s burger joint for the best burgers and worst French fries I’ve ever had

-no one was talking, all too tired, bitchy

-even chloe wasn’t talking

-drinking tea w honey like a singer

-the best part was later, in our hotel room, I got the only bottle of bourbon in the mini fridge for me and the only bottle of scotch for chloe and we got in bed. The mini bottles were two shots each. Found an old bruce springsteen concert on some off MTV station. “must be the end,” I said. .