We had an early flight out of Reno Airport so, to avoid rushing, we left Tahoe the day before and checked into The Nugget Casino in Sparks, Nevada. After settling into our dated room in the Casino Tower, I said to my wife, “Let’s hit the slots.” Not being stupid, I wedged a chair under the knob of our room’s connecting door and had Natalie throw the lock when we left.
“When I call you,” I told her, “You’d better answer.”
“Okay, Dad,” Natalie said, happy to be left alone with her iPad.
I have gambled in casinos before, mostly blackjack and poker with reasonable success. This time out, however, I wasn’t in the mood to hit the tables and just wanted to spend an hour or two playing the slots with my wife. When we walked into the casino, however, Annie was agog at the high limits.
“$25 a spin?” Annie said.
“There are $5 and $1 slots,” I said.
“No, we’re hitting the penny ones.”
“It’s never, ever a penny.”
“I don’t want to lose money.”
Sighing, I went over to a penny slot and, after feeding it money, it whirled, jingled and flashed. My wife said, “We won!”
“We lost.”
“Huh?”
“The least amount you can bet on this machine is thirty credits, that’s 30 cents. We ‘won’ ten credits but really lost 20 cents.”
“That sucks.”
“Intermittent rewards, babe,” I said. “That’s how they hook you.” Eventually, we tired of this con and went to the $1 slots and after going up and down, I placed the max bet – and lost.
“Let’s go to another machine,” Annie said.
“Okay,” I said. “But let’s go for one more dollar.” This time Lady Luck smiled on us, and we hit for $103. Damn, if I’d only placed the max bet again.
“We’re done,” I said. “Let’s go get a drink and quit while we’re ahead.”
Finding a bar, I ordered red wine for my wife and a Bloody Mary for myself. Feeding a dollar into the video poker machine in the bar, I played for a couple of nickels a hand. When I didn’t get a check, however, I asked the bartender, (Who was the spitting image of my friend Jimmy Noonan of WWE & Supertroopers fame ) what that the deal was. “If you’re gambling the drinks are free,” he said, flatly. Duh. How could I forget?
“See honey?” I said. “Two drinks for one dollar wagered. That’s how places like this get you.”
“Uh huh,” my wife said.
“Look at all these people at the bar,” I said, pointing to the patrons staring into Keno machines, their faces oblivious and lit with a ghostly glow. “Where have you seen that before?”
“I dunno,” Annie said. “Where?”
“It looks like people staring at their cellphones.”
“You’re right.”
“Those bastards at Facebook and Instagram took their design cues from slot machines. Intermittent rewards and little dopamine hits. That’s how they got billions of people hooked to their gizmos and spending money. Compared to what those guys rake in, Vegas might as well be a lemonade stand.”
I’d only drank half my Bloody Mary because Annie quaffed the other half along with her generous pour of wine. A lightweight drinker, I knew the booze would hit her like a freight train. Signaling the bartender, I asked for another drink. “This one’s mine,” I said.
“Sure,” Annie said with a faraway look in her eye. I could tell she was falling under the casino’s spell. When we were in Vegas a few years ago she won $500 at slots but eventually lost it all. Uh oh. Then a guy walked up next to us and called out to the bartender. “Hey!” he yelled. “You hear what happened to Frank?”
“No,” the bartender said.
“He got fucking murdered!”
“No shit” the bartender said, his face devoid of expression.
“He was fucking around with some quiff and, well, he got what he got I guess.” You meet such lovely people in a casino.
“Let’s go,” I said, leaving a fiver on the bar. Just the day before some lunatic shot up a Reno casino and I wasn’t keen on listening to stories about homicide.
“Let’s play a little bit more,” Annie said, so, we hit the slots again and lost twenty bucks. “All done,” I said, “We’re still up eighty bucks. In this town, that’s a win.”
“You go upstairs,” Annie said. “I’ll try my luck some more.”
“No way,” I said, “If I leave you down here, you’ll be selling your blood by morning.”
As we made our way to the elevator through the casino, I thought of how I loved going to Atlantic City when I was younger, or when Las Vegas seemed like a great adventure. But now, seeing the glazed eyes of patrons mindlessly pulling levers and pushing buttons, I thought of the first lines from Ian Fleming’s book, Casino Royale. “The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning,” he wrote. “Then the soul erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.”
At five the next morning, I was chatting with our Uber driver on the way to the airport when the topic of the recent shooting came up. “People in there just kept gambling,” he said. “Like nothing was happening.” Sounds about right. A guy I knew saw his father drop dead of a heart attack in a casino. He told me as the EMT’s were doing chest compressions, the betting never stopped, and people hardly looked up from their cards. But then again, people often react the same way with their cellphones, not even sparing a glance for someone in distress or, worse, filming it for social media likes – which makes me think profit driven tech bros will only be happy until the entire world has been turned into an unfeeling gigantic money hoovering diabolical casino. Talk about soul erosion. Talk about nauseating. You think you’re winning with all the free stuff and entertainment your apps give you, but you’re really losing. Talk about revolting – but when you want to see a freak show, nothing beats a casino.
But does my daughter have to grow up in one?