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Story

      “Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize, just as I did, that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

      —Morpheus, The Matrix, 1999

      Josh’s Story

      In 1999, Lisa and I saw the movie The Matrix. It’s the story of Neo, a computer programmer, who learns that the world he lives in is nothing but an illusion created by computers to subdue people. Throughout the course of the movie, he fights, with the help of others, to free himself from this web of deceit, called “The Matrix,” and live free in a true reality.

      Science fiction isn’t really our thing, but for some reason the film haunted us. It had nothing to do with its elaborately choreographed fight scenes and cutting-edge special effects. It was that Lisa and I had each been brought up feeling as if our lives were predetermined, or programmed for us, and we’d both always felt frustrated by the pressure to conform. We just couldn’t shake the feeling that we were, in a sense, in our own matrix, and both of us felt the urge to break free.

      I had been that kid in class who maddeningly questioned everything my teacher (and my parents, for that matter) said. Never content with simply doing what I was told and accepting the boundaries set for me, I drove teachers so nuts that after a while, they’d eventually look at me and say, “Please, just be quiet and do your work, okay?”

      It was a kind of torture for me to sit in school for hours, and that played out in my grades, which were usually low, if not failing. I felt like I was outside with my face pressed up against the window, but no matter how hard I knocked or yelled, no one noticed me, so I never could join their conversation.

      At the schools I attended in Southern California, I began to develop a reputation among teachers, who described me with words like “disruptive,” “doesn’t apply himself,” and even “learning disability.” My parents heard these words and took me to medical professionals, who put me on medication that would help me to calm down and “focus.”

      I became convinced at an early age that I just wasn’t cut out for school, and since I already felt like I didn’t fit in, I embraced it, became almost proud of it. If they didn’t want me to fit in, then I didn’t need them. I did whatever I could not to fit in. I skipped a lot of school, was referred to by the A students as “a slacker” and “a stoner,” and eventually just quit school altogether. If putting in twelve years of school, attending four years of college, and getting a “good job” were their formula for success, then, I figured, I just wouldn’t be successful.

      But I had come from a family of nightclub owners, so I had access to another world – a world I had often overheard the adults talking about, and which my classmates had never seen. At age 11, I had my first drink, and finally, finally, I felt like I fit in. In this world, there were people like me, people in pain, people who had been unfairly labeled, people who didn’t fit the mold. In this world, we’d found a way to deaden that pain and eliminate our stress. While this world felt comforting and familiar to me, it was also somehow thrilling. And since it had been good enough for my father, I believed that it was meant for me, too.

      My dad, who has, to date, owned a total of fourteen nightclubs in California, Hawaii, and Las Vegas, hired me when I was 19 as a bar back at Dylan’s Dance Hall and Saloon in Vegas, where I stocked the bar with liquor, ice, and supplies. It was a menial job, but I absorbed every bit of information I could. I worked hard and became the master of my work. I took pride in keeping the bars fully stocked and delivering three cases of beer at a time, zig-zagging though the crowded nightclub. I knew that if I did a good job, I could work my way up to bartender, make good money, and attract the older girls who came to drink there. Playing in that adult underworld, I felt like I could win in this world.

      Lisa’s Story

      Although Josh had never done what he was told to do as a kid, I, for the most part had. My mother was from Vietnam, and had married my dad who was an American soldier there during the Vietnam War. After his tour of duty, my mom left her homeland, her culture, her family and friends to begin life with my dad, who became a deputy sheriff in South Dakota, so that one day my brother and I would have a better life. For her, this American Dream was synonymous with a good education and job security, the kind that led to a good, stable salary and a retirement package.

      My mother had grown up in a country that didn’t offer the same opportunities as we have in the U.S., and who therefore pushed me to have the life that she herself had never had. I did just as I was expected –I earned good grades in school and enrolled in a journalism program in college, all the while wondering what else was out there.

      When I was a young girl, I went out to run errands with my mother one day. I was always curious about buildings and certain one’s in town always caught my attention. I pointed to an office building with beautiful architecture. “Whose building is that?” I asked.

      “I don’t know, rich people’s,” my mother said.

      This only led to more questions from me: “Who are the rich people? How did they get that building? How can we be rich and get a building, too?” Although I didn’t yet know how, I intuitively knew that I would travel the world and have money some day. So I questioned my mother’s beliefs about success because, from my early experience, I also knew that my family didn’t have what most rich people had. While I had a pretty good upbringing, lots of friends and was happy, I knew there was a bigger world out there. Success, I had already began to see, was elusive and tenuous. I watched my parents work hard for very little reward; we weren’t able to do a lot of extra’s that cost additional money. Money was tight and they couldn’t seem to get out of the cycle of working paycheck to paycheck.

      According to my parents, college was the way out of that cycle, at least until I found a different answer, so that was the path I took. With two years of college under my belt and $300 in my pocket, I left my small town home in South Dakota, determined to taste some freedom of my own. I wanted to see something new and exciting – for my best friend and me that meant Las Vegas. With no job or any sort of a plan, I enrolled at UNLV, put a deposit and first months rent down on an apartment and moved the big city. It took a couple months before I got my first job at the Children’s Museum. I had run out of money, had borrowed from a friend to pay rent and was starting to worry when this position came along. It was a great first learning experience (although I probably didn’t say great at the time) in dealing with the emotional roller coaster of money. A few months later I got a second job at a local bank.

      And as “good girls” from South Dakota do, I also partied hard. Nearly every evening, I went out drinking with my girlfriends. On one such Friday night in December 1993, I walked into Dylan’s, where Josh had begun working as a bar back, and boy he was mesmerized (that’s a story for some other time!). We didn’t actually meet until 1995 (he had been sending me free drinks for 1.5 years), but we fell deeply in love very quickly, and five years later, we were married.

      The Vacuum

      Josh’s Story

      Las Vegas is the world’s largest vacuum. Time doesn’t exist there – just look at any casino and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a window or a clock. That town sucks up everything in its wake, including your sense of personal responsibility, your decorum, any financial control, or your ability to keep your urges in check. It’s where you go to lose yourself, your money, or anything that’s important to you. That’s why “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

      You can’t become a responsible adult when you grow up in that environment. Well, at least I certainly couldn’t.

      At Dylan’s, my job included filling the house with thirsty customers, controlling inventory, ensuring our customers had the best possible experience, keeping the cash registers ringing, and, most importantly, guarding the cash. It was why I had a handgun, and it was why I continued studying martial arts. I had begun to be a martial athlete at age 17 when

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