Reader's Guide

Oh hi. If you were thinking of reading my most recent Vice column -- and why wouldn't you do this, it's pretty okay! -- why not do yourself a favor and read this paragraph first. It fell off the draft, but it really helps with understanding what I was trying to do:

To get to where it is always happy hour, you first have to go where it's always 4:51 AM and you're transitioning into that brutal, my-body-is-inside-out half-sober hangover, aka the bus ride to Atlantic City. And even before that there’s Gate One at Port Authority—fluorescent lights buzzing eight or so inches overhead, buses coming and going on only the faintest approximations of their schedule (“Load and go, baby, load and go” the bus line guy says when asked why the 10 AM bus left 20 minutes early), a clucking and confused line of flat-affect South Asians and pleasant, chatty retirees and Russians, so many Russians. The line is full of poker faces, even if most are going down there to sit dead-eyed in front of the slots until hopping a late bus back, but even if they are poker players, they are assuredly not doing is going to Atlantic City to play a sport.

Okay, good, now go here and keep reading. Keep reading until you get to the anonymous commenters making rape jokes or whatever. Then you're done.