Gambling

It was ten o’clock on a Friday night in San Diego when my boyfriend said, “Let’s go to Vegas.”

We were unemployed students, broke except for his financial-aid money, but he assured me our winnings would more than cover the cost of the trip.

I had never gambled before, having been raised in a family that considered gambling a lower-class behavior (along with divorce and drinking). But I was taking charge of my own life now, and I decided there was such a thing as “responsible” gambling.

When we arrived at the casino, buzzers and bells and lights saturated my senses. We headed for the blackjack table. I was stunned by the minimum bet: twenty-five dollars. “Trust me,” my boyfriend said. I watched as he won twenty-five hundred dollars in fifteen minutes. It was that easy. Why hadn’t I tried this before?

I was ready to leave, but instead we went to the next table (where he lost) and the next (where he won a little) and the next (where he lost again). Our pile of cash was shrinking.

We hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours, so we got a hotel room. I collapsed into bed, but my boyfriend whispered that he was going to play a few more tables. I awoke each time he came back to the room for more money.

By morning our winnings were gone, but he wasn’t done. Shaken but still a believer, I ran to the ATM to withdraw a hundred dollars. Each time I returned to the ATM, I thought of how easily he’d won in the beginning.

Eventually there was nothing left. We had just enough money to buy gas for the long drive home. According to my boyfriend, it was all my fault: I had jinxed him. He’d never lost before.

Anna Marie Van Bonn
Flossmoor, Illinois

I had my first lesbian affair in my junior year of college. No one from my hometown knew about it. During spring break, I decided to tell Wendy, my best friend since seventh grade. If anyone could accept me, it was she. Still, I was nervous. There was always a chance I’d lose her friendship.

Wendy and I were riding on the train downtown when I proceeded to tell her about the affair, omitting names and pronouns. Eventually Wendy asked a question using the word he. “Well,” I replied cautiously, “the ‘he’ in this case happens to be a ‘she.’ ” Wendy stared hard at me for a minute, then turned and looked out the window. I was shocked and hurt but said nothing more.

Over the next fifteen years I tried unsuccessfully to gain Wendy’s acceptance. Though she expected me to support her through a string of boyfriends and eventually a marriage, she kept her distance from anything related to my love life. When I invited Wendy to meet my partner, who had moved across the country to live with me, Wendy replied, “Can I pretend the two of you are just friends?” I laughed, thinking she was joking. Then I realized she wasn’t.

I later wrote to Wendy and explained that I was still the same person I’d always been and expressed disappointment that an intelligent woman like her would choose to nurture her prejudices rather than examine them. I told her that I needed her to respect me, or the friendship would be over. In her reply Wendy was furious that I would threaten to end our friendship because of this and bitterly assured me that I would never find another friend like her.

Amy L.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

My father was a fun-loving, hard-working guy. He drove a semi and lived for Friday-night “club meetings,” when my parents and their friends would get together for card games. The women would play Tripoley and watch television. The men would gather around the kitchen table with their cocktails and play pinochle, joking and laughing long into the night. The money didn’t matter as much as the thrill. They were healthy and strong, at the peak of their game.

One by one the members of the Friday-night club died, until my dad was the lone survivor. He started going to the casino. Even after his health declined and he began to use a wheelchair, he could still play cards. His gambling debts mounted, but he continued until shortly before his death. Those card games were his connection to the life he had lived, those Friday nights in a house full of friends.

Cynthia Durante
Okanogan, Washington

My uncle always gave the best presents, like a wind-up toy motorcycle and a handmade silk box kite. In 1949, when I was ten, he gave me a present I didn’t recognize at first, but I could tell from my mother’s gasp it was something I wasn’t supposed to have — and therefore a really good present. It turned out to be a miniature roulette wheel with a green felt betting cloth and a pamphlet on rules and odds. I quickly tested the wheel to see if the odds given were accurate. Several hours later they were confirmed, and I put the wheel in the closet.

One summer day, looking for something other than the usual board games to play with my friends, I pulled the roulette wheel out of the closet and showed them how to bet, using beans and matches. It sparked everyone’s interest, and we soon switched to pennies. A few weeks later I had several coffee cans full of coins.

When the kids started grumbling about not winning, I switched to blackjack. The coffee cans continued to fill up. Soon most of the kids within a three-mile radius were scrounging around for Coke bottles to turn in or lawns to mow so they could get back in the game. We played on a table in the garage with a light hanging over it. I wore a yellow vinyl eyeshade and kept semiregular hours.

I was in the middle of a deal one Saturday morning — the ten-to-twelve shift — when the garage door opened, and there stood a dozen adults with wide eyes and slack jaws.

I was forced to close my casino, but since the parents couldn’t figure out who had lost what, I got to keep the money.

To this day I don’t go to Vegas. I don’t like to be on the other side of the table.

Doug Colville
Cotati, California

Unlike my mother, I’ve always played it safe. When she took me clothes-shopping, she liked hot pink. I chose brown. At five I knew I wanted to be a nurse. She was still not sure what she wanted to be. At twenty I met the man I would marry. At twenty she had joined the navy.

Before my wedding I thought it would be good to travel with my mother. I wanted to see Paris. She booked us on a cruise to Bermuda. On our last night I agreed to go to the casino with her. We put one quarter in the slot, and fifty-some quarters came shooting out! Overwhelmed with our good fortune, we called it a night.

I enjoyed telling friends the story of our good luck, until the first time my mother heard me tell it, when she quickly corrected me. “Oh, no,” she said. “After you went to sleep, I went back and lost it all.”

Lucy G.
Florence, Massachusetts

I grew up in Las Vegas and worked in twenty different casinos on breaks from college. I’d walk the floor or sit in a booth, making change for people playing slots.

One place I worked was the then-snazzy Riviera Hotel, the first casino to have its own wedding chapel. One night I saw a groom sitting at a nickel video-poker machine with his bride on his lap, both of them still in their wedding outfits. She happily supplied him with nickels from a plastic cup while she ate a hamburger with ketchup.

I also worked at the Aladdin, which had gone bankrupt and was always on the verge of closing. I had the graveyard shift and wandered the floor of the once-beautiful casino, a change belt at my waist. Sometimes a Marilyn Monroe impersonator would float in, so beautiful and blond and elegant in her white dress. She’d quietly order drinks and play the slots, going through racks of silver tokens, unwinding after a long night.

S. Solomon
St. Paul, Minnesota

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