Arriving at Las Vegas airport, the first thing you notice, jingling at you coquettishly, is the slot machines. Gambling at an airport? Can it be, you wonder, that there are visitors to Vegas so desperate to start wasting their money that they can't endure the half-hour wait of getting to their hotel? America, you muse to yourself. The decadence ... the depravity ... And then something strange happens. You think: well, I am in Vegas after all! And you saunter over to one of the machines and you put a coin in, and then a few more. And then, having run out of coins, you go in search of the change machine.
I despair of Las Vegas, yet I also love Las Vegas. I stand in awe of its muscular vulgarity, and I pay grudging respect to its knowledge of human nature. It's a city that knows what you want and gives it to you, with a discount buffet thrown in.
The lowest impulses of humankind are here made physical. Lust, greed, sloth - they're all catered to. The city's tourism slogan, 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas', is a sly reference to adultery. The mere existence of the place is an eloquent sermon on the weakness of the flesh. The strange assortment of buildings that line the Strip, the multi-storey hotel-casinos that are shaped like a medieval castle (the Excalibur), an Egyptian pyramid (the Luxor), a Roman skyscraper (Caesars Palace) are the civic buildings of an invisible government more controlling than any Taliban: the government of our secret appetites.
And so, when I agreed to write a book about weird American cults and subcultures, I decided to use Las Vegas as my operations base. I lived there on and off for several months, staying at a weekly apartment complex called the Holiday Royale. To be fair, my main reason for staying in Vegas was its location, conveniently close to several stories I was chasing, and for its affordability. But if, during my off-hours, I chose to unwind with the occasional visit to the Strip, then where was the harm in that?
I spent my first week finding my feet. I got in touch with my one Vegas contact, a man named Majestik Magnificent, who styles himself 'Michael Jackson's personal magician'. With his help I bought a car. I got it registered, made a few phone calls. On Friday night, as a reward to myself, I hit the Strip. I drove to the Mirage, a mega-casino of indeterminate tropical theme. In the gaming area, the air was thick with the music of the one-armed bandits. It was like a factory floor. Gamblers worked the cranks in a condition of mute anaesthesia. All the big hotel-casinos have a gimmick. At Treasure Island, it's a free pirate battle that takes place every two hours. At Paris, Las Vegas, it's the half-size replica of the Eiffel Tower. At the Mirage, it's an artificial volcano, which explodes every half hour.
The Mirage also used to feature performances by the strange German magic duo Siegfried and Roy. For years, Siegfried and Roy were famous for using rare white tigers as part of their stage show. Then in 2003 a seven-year-old tiger named Montecore bit Roy on the head during a performance. 'People were shocked, like, "That tiger went crazy!"' the comedian Chris Rock later joked. 'That tiger didn't go crazy. That tiger was crazy when he was cycling around on stage wearing a little hat! That tiger went tiger!'
Siegfried and Roy have since stopped performing, but they still gaze down from posters around the casino. Over-made-up and overcoiffed, they look as though they've been 'plastinated' using the corpse-preservation technique pioneered by fellow German Gunther von Hagens. In a glassed-off den overlooking the gamblers, one of these rare white tigers - though not, I suspect, Montecore - prowled around. The den was designed like a sultan's seraglio, with a swimming pool and an ornamental tiled alcove and stylised white sculptures of palm trees, rather than anything a tiger might actually like to live in.
One of the side effects of the ram pant development of the Strip is that the old heart of the city, which lies several miles north, is now struggling to compete. Famous from countless postcards, the four blocks of Glitter Gulch were recently revamped - pedestrianised and roofed in with a computerised light display and dubbed 'the Fremont Street Experience'. Outside these four blocks, where the casinos end, Fremont Street trails off into an area of low-budget motels and weather-beaten characters - hobos, drifters, guys in dirty jeans riding children's bikes.
One afternoon, thinking I might be able to improve on the rates at the Holiday Royale, I drove downtown to check out some of the low-budget motels. They have names like Lucky Seven's and the High Hat and old neon signs. Inside the rooms, the bedside tables were grooved with cigarette burns. At the Ferguson, one of the pillows was stained with blood. A guest, a blond-haired man with a newly broken nose, offered to sell me a colour fax machine for $20. 'I'm a mover,' he said. 'Someone gave it to me as a tip.' I opted to stay where I was.
Las Vegas is best known as Sin City. So powerful is its erotic hold that even the suicide bombers of 9/11, though consecrated to jihad and the promise of 72 virgins in the afterlife, couldn't resist the lure of the earthly paradise that is the Olympic Garden Topless Cabaret. A dancer named Samantha later remembered Marwan al-Shehhi when she was shown a photo. She said he spent $20 for a topless dance and didn't tip more. 'But he wasn't just a bad tipper,' she said. 'He killed a lot of people.'
After a short-lived phase of trying to brand itself as a family friendly resort in the mid-1990s, Vegas has now abandoned itself to its core value of lust-driven entertainment. Billboards advertising strip clubs are everywhere. There are nightclubs with names like 'Flirt' and 'Bikinis' whose adverts imply that three-way sexual intercourse with the model-calibre clientele is a regular scenario. The Chippendales are featured nightly at the Rio and the Holiday Royale was overlooked by a huge billboard advertising an Australian troupe of male strippers called the Thunder from Down Under. (I could never see the poster without thinking of flatulence.) Harmless enough, you say. But to stumble outside first thing for a bottle of milk and a newspaper and be confronted day after day with the same spectacle of bronzed and brooding Australian man-meat does eventually get old.
After a month or two, I gave in to the city ethos and bought tickets for Zumanity, the 'erotic cabaret' which was then the latest offering of the French Canadian acrobatic entertainment juggernaut Cirque du Soleil. There are several Cirque du Soleil productions in Vegas: O at the Bellagio, Mystere at Treasure Island, and just this year they have added Ka at the MGM Grand.
Zumanity is at the New York-themed hotel-casino called New York-New York. Among the attendees I spotted Ice-T, the rapper turned actor, with a buxom young companion. When you get down to it, the show is acrobatics performed by people with no clothes - and there's nothing wrong with that.
Among the many hats worn by Majestik Magnificent - in addition to Jackson family spokesman, magician, and showbusiness manager - was that of sexual tour guide. Everywhere he went Majestik carried a small photo album of naked women who, he claimed, were available for orgies. He whipped out the album as I was enjoying a vegetarian pad thai with him and Joe Jackson one lunchtime. 'Why do they do it?' I asked. 'They like to party,' he said. He began singing the praises of a nightclub on the outskirts of Vegas called the Red Rooster. 'They walk around with no clothes,' Joe said.
For a long time, I resisted the urge to visit the Red Rooster. But late in August, near the end of my time in Vegas, more as a student of human nature than out of personal interest (or so I told myself), I called Majestik and said I was ready. I met him at the MGM Grand. My girlfriend happened to be visiting, so she came too. Majestik's date was a willowy Russian dancer named Elena, who was then performing in an erotic revue entitled La Femme.
The Red Rooster was at the far eastern side of the city in a dusty scattered area of highways and light industrial buildings. A sea of cars surrounded a private house. I'd been expecting an Eyes Wide Shut ambience of elegant decadence - code words and exclusive VIP rooms. In fact, it was about as erotic as Herbie Goes Bananas. Middle-aged, out-of-shape couples sipped soft drinks. A saggy woman in a see-through chain-link dress grooved slowly on the dance floor. Off to one side was a row of four booths with holes in the doors at crotch height. They were crudely stencilled with the legend 'glory holes', and designed for the purposes of anonymous fellatio. Upstairs was couples only. In a back room, a man and a woman were watched over by five or six others, who were clothed. It was a little embarrassing. Downstairs, Elena was looking queasy. 'I don't mind something like this if it is more ... classical,' she said.
A few weeks later, I packed up my things and said goodbye to the Holiday Royale, moving to Los Angeles. I made only one return trip, to vote in the presidential election, since Nevada was (no pun intended) a swing state and I wanted to make my ballot count. With its relentless hucksterism, its 24-hour pitch via billboards and neon, Las Vegas can wear on your nerves. And yet it is an adventurous place, a city of vast energy. Everyone has a story. People move there to hustle, to escape their past and to make a new future.
It can take its toll on you, but the saving grace of Las Vegas is its proximity to the desert. What can feel like the most overcrowded and oppressive city on Earth is transformed by a short drive into an eerie, empty wilderness. Red Rock Canyon, a national conservation area, is less than an hour west; slightly further away, to the north east, is Valley of Fire State Park. These millennia-old rock formations are a reminder of the recent lease on the desert that Las Vegas has, and the fragility of its hold.
With the fastest-growing population in the US, one of the lowest vehicle-occupancy rates and huge overconsumption of water, it may be that Las Vegas is an eco-catastrophe waiting to happen. The urbanologist Mike Davis has written: 'Las Vegas long ago outstripped its own natural-resource infrastructure.' While I was there, the New York Times published an investigation suggesting that the levels of rain that had allowed the rapid growth of the city in the 20th century were anomalous - a 100-year blip in a long history of drought. Las Vegas may have been built on a massive miscalculation - a gamble. One day the elements that have performed so obligingly for so many years will rear up and, like Roy Horn's tiger, bite the city in the head. But until then I'll keep enjoying the show.
Come on down - it's showtime!
The Excalibur (00 1 702 597 7777; www.excalibur.com) has rooms from $49.95 midweek and $239.95 on Saturdays. All accommodation prices are based on a maximum of two sharing a room and are exclusive of a 9 per cent Nevada hospitality tax. The Excalibur's Tournament of Kings show, with medieval jousting and the Knights of the Round Table, runs twice nightly and costs $55 per head, including dinner.
The Luxor (00 1 702 262 444; www.luxor.com) has rooms from $79.99 midweek and $289.99 on Saturdays. The a cappella Toxic Audio off-Broadway show runs nightly and costs $40, with no dinner.
Caesars Palace (00 1 877 427 7243; www.caesars.com) has rooms from $140 midweek and $320 on Saturdays. Throughout October, Elton John is performing in the Colosseum. Prices start at $116, including Nevada's show tax. These are not dinner shows.
The Holiday Royale (00 1 702 733 7676; www.holidayroyale.com) costs from $160 per week for a studio room.
The Mirage (00 1 702 791 7111; www.mirage.com) costs from $109 midweek and $279 on Saturdays. Danny Gans, comedian and singer, appears nightly. Tickets $100.
Treasure Island (00 1 702 894 7111; www.treasureisland.com) has rooms from $89 midweek and $269 on Saturdays. Cirque du Soleil's Mystere show runs nightly and costs from $60.
New York-New York (00 1 702 740 6969; www.nynyhotelcasino.com) has rooms from $79.99 midweek and $339.99 Saturdays. Cirque du Soleil's Zumanity runs nightly and costs from $65.
Virgin Atlantic flies direct to Las Vegas from Gatwick six times a week. Return prices from £486 including taxes (08705 747747; www.virginatlantic.com).
· Louis Theroux's new book, The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures, is published in hardback by Macmillan
