Think of it as kind of a This Is Your Life for stewbums and degenerates.

“She hated me because she had to work nights to feed a kid rather than partying on the Strip. She gave me one of Maxie’s guns and told me to either go out and rob somebody or shoot myself in the head. She didn’t care which because she said I didn’t have the guts to do either one.” — P Moss, “Machine Gun Joey.”

Discontent. Discontent with change. Discontent with station and circumstance. Discontent with New Vegas. Seventeen times P Moss crawls into the venal, unlit corners of Vegas, and 17 times we come away with sordid, nasty stories of people trapped in their own lives, trapped by their own faults or trapped by forces well out of their control, desperate to break out.

“I think that’s how most people in life are. Whether you’re stuck in some kind of trouble or whether you’re just some schmuck who has to fight traffic every day to go to work. I think most people are trapped in their shit. A lot of them are aware of it. A lot of them are not aware of it. A lot of them are just resigned to the fact that that’s how it is. Whether you’re talking about murder or fucking chickens or whatever you’re doing, it’s really no different from the poor sap who has to fight traffic every morning just because if he doesn’t he’s going to lose his house and his wife and his dog,” Moss said.

“I see a great similarity in the extremes of these characters to the everyday life of pretty much everybody. Even the people in life who say they’re happy are probably deluding themselves. And good for them. If they actually can feel that way, good for them. I just think people to one degree or another just aren’t.”

The Double Down Saloon and Frankie’s Tiki Room owner is the first-time author of Blue Vegas, a lean collection of vignettes that also marks the debut of CityLife Books. Blue Vegas rose from the ashes of a novel Moss — a former screenwriter until he found the end of his rope in the Hollywood process — was composing before an ending proved elusive. The final entry in this collection, “Peace,” was that novel’s start, in fact.

Snuff films, strippers and crooks all find their way onto the page, though Blue Vegas isn’t without its touching(ish) moments. “Parallel Lines” is about a rookie coke user mixing lines with his dead wife’s ashes to assuage his grief. “The Chinaman” — which Moss calls the only happy story in the book — is a testament to the comfort of a gambling routine. “Beautiful Stranger” explores the fine intersection of role-playing, prostitution and marriage. And “Unconditionally” involves live chickens interrupting extramarital lesbian sex — but in a heartfelt way.

Notably, though, these quick peeks into these characters’ lives are a study in stasis. Change, if it comes, is implied. There are moments of clarity, some shocking, some small, where the subjects are able to see their lives for what they are. But often the redemption they seek is denied. Lessons are not learned.

“Mostly, they’re going to fall right back into their shit. The perfect example is the economy right now. Wall Street, the casino companies, everybody. It’s like a year ago, they’re all greedy and everything is good so they imagine it’s always going to be good. Now they’re in bankruptcy and borrowing money and getting bailout money. Everything is totally fucked,” Moss said.

“And you know eventually things are going to get back around to being OK, but these guys, even these guys who suffered the worst, or their malfeasance and greed made it the worst for everybody, they’re going to get back to when times are good again and they’re going to do the same fucking thing all over again because they’re this fucking greedy and no one will have learned a lesson for this. It’s not excusing these fucking people, but I think that’s the human nature of things. On the small level, a person has their personal stuff and their eyes get opened, but they’re going to slide right back and they’re not going to have learned.”

Underneath it all, is the beating heart of Las Vegas. “Career Moves” is perhaps the signature piece in the collection. It’s the story of a pickpocket living in a Dean Martin past pursued by a screenwriter desperate for the tale that’s going to put her back in the game. It’s also where Moss most clearly articulates his thoughts on the changing landscape of the town.

“I think the Old Vegas was just a great place to people for so many individual and collective reasons, and I think it’s just become another shitty place. Yeah, I really don’t like the new Las Vegas at all. I respect the old Las Vegas,” Moss said. “There’s always going to be enough in the air to justify feeling that way. No matter how much I may not care for this town and the direction it goes and what it’s become, it’s still Las Vegas. There’s still enough of whatever it is in the air that makes this place special. These days, I don’t know what that is, but I know it’s in the air because of what it used to be.”

If you don’t love the seedy side of life, you’re probably not ever going to. It isn’t really something that can be learned. Some of it comes from curiosity. Some of it comes from pride. Maybe it comes from genuinely loving cheap beer.

For the most part, though, it comes from a desire for something authentic. For Moss, his fascination with the underbelly started early.

“Ever since I was in high school. I was 17 and would tell my parents I was going to basketball practice or whatever and man, I’d go downtown and try to find, not necessarily Skid Row, but not really nice, and try to find a place where maybe I could go in and get a beer or whatever. Or go into a massage parlor and just watch these fucking people,” he said. “I loved it. I don’t know why that appealed to me so much. It might be because of watching old movies. I think that may have had something to do with it. I was drawn to it. I was a regular, very average suburban kid. I think I realized early on how boring that was. So these things became interesting to me.”

The release party for the book is 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Double Down, with the Swingshift Sideshow (late of Freaks) and DJ Rex Dart. It will be considerably more entertaining than a release party for, say, Dan Brown’s latest.

In the meantime, Moss already is back at it, working on a novel and armed with lessons learned from that first aborted start. He wouldn’t go into detail, except to confirm it was fiction, set in Vegas and that it would have something to do with crime. Oh, and that it was going to revel in the nasty.

“I know whatever I do next needs to top this. Whatever I do after that needs to top that, or there’s no point in doing it,” he said. “There’s a lot of sex in this novel. A lot of unique sex. It’s not just ‘Oh, she’s hot. Let’s fuck her.’ I mean, some really unique things and the ‘why.’ You’re asking a whole lot more questions than you are in a compact story.”

By Jason Scavone

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