The morning started back in Boston as I wrapped up two interviews at the Carney Sandoe conference. The remaining quick and jovial conversations left me excited to drive the two hours to the behemoth structure built under the stern gaze of Mohegan Native Americans and maintained by the absent-minded, ignorant, unlucky and more often than not intoxicated gambler.
Little did I know that I was hours away from becoming that person.
I buzzed down the highway with a mixture of excitement at seeing my college roommates for the first time in months and the sheer terror at what I got myself into.
The casino is off Exit 2 in Uncasville, Connecticut and after a few minutes, I drove around a turn to be awed by the mighty mirrored hotel stuck in the ground like a knife out of butter. The two immense parking structures (ironically one of the few complimentary items) were merely a tease at how overwhelmed I would be shortly. A few of the guys were already in the hotel, so they instructed me to valet my car (wait, so I don't park it myself? how does this work?), then come on up. I pulled into the valet section and a man wearing an oversized jacket resembling Chewbacca came up and took my keys. I tipped him a five and he said "Thanks man, I'll make sure to put you in a VIP spot."
I didn't really know what that meant, because I neither had to park the car, nor go get it when I wanted to leave. I did chuckle at the idea of a 2000 maroon Hyundai Elantra with chipping paint on the passenger door with a peeling bumper sticker entitled "Read to a Child Twenty Minutes a Day" parked between the Lexus SUVs and Mercedes sportsters of the high-rollers who drop a grand at the casino without blinking. "Who the fuck is this guy?" I'm sure they asked.
I walked through the glass doors and immediately felt the overwhelming weight of my gambling rookieness. Where was I? The lights, the sounds, the depressed looks on the faces of people shoving money they shouldn't be spending into the 6,200 slot machines; this was sensory overload to the maximum. This is the second largest casino in the world with 300 gaming tables, two 300-seat theaters, 100,000 square feet of the Northeast's biggest ballroom, an FM radio station, a multitude of retail stores, a full waterfall, and undoubtedly the biggest attraction this side of the Mason-Dixon line: a WNBA team.
Since the place is so massive, I had to walk for about 10 minutes to the hotel area, past the waterfall, restaurants and retail stores, lugging my bag full of clothes, my laptop and hidden 12-pack of Busch Light.
The plan had originally been to book a hotel a mile away and find a shuttle or cab service to ferry us to and fro between binge drinking and blackjack, but a week before the trip a friend of a friend's wealthy father finagled two typically 400 dollar a-night hotel rooms for 79 apiece. There's absolute truth in not what you know, but who you know instead. This made me happy because though I was aware I'd be losing money to gambling, $17 was a paltry amount to drink and be merry with old friends.
I walked in the door, dropped my bag and was immediately greeted by body length pillows smashed into my face via ambush. I said my hellos and cracked a beer at 4:15. The Saturday night mayhem had begun.
I have to reiterate that apart from dabbling in poker, I am completely a newcomer. This was my first time walking into a casino, let alone sitting at a table throwing money around. I was immediately filled with the kind of anxiety I had taking math finals; confused at what I was looking at and the inability to figure out what any of the numbers meant.
Truth be told, I felt pretty stupid. I literally had no idea how to play any of the games. I stood there dumbly, the four beers I drank beginning to affect my judgment, and watched as my friends played roulette. The table we sat at had a $15 minimum, so that meant you needed at least 15 chips on the 'outside' (i.e. Red, Black, Odd, Even, 1st 12, 2nd 12, 3rd 12, etc.) and if you wanted to up your odds, 15 on the 'inside' (spreading out chips over the 36 numbers, zero, double zero, etc.).
With any gambling, there is always the element of luck involved, so I sat down at the table, pulled out a 20 and gave it to the 'roller'. She gave me the chips and I followed the lead of my buddy next to me: all on black. The roller rolled, then swept her arm over the table like she was brushing snow off the hood of her car and with her best former prostitute smile and smoker voice she said "no more bets, boys." The ball spun around and around. And fell.
Just like that, I was down 20 bucks. Fuck. My gambler-roommate kept chirping about a positive attitude and beginner's luck, but I saw neither in the immediate future. I shook my head, pulled out another 20 and this time spread it out on the inside numbers seeing if I'd hit.
Minus 40.
Come onnnnn, I thought, you gotta be kidding me.
Another 20 on black. This time I hit, doubling my chip stack. My plan of attack and knowledge of the game was expanding on each roll/subsequent loss. I threw 15 on Odd and left 15 on Red.
The red hit. Still alive, I thought.
If my confidence wasn't dwindling towards embarrassingly low, a shorter older man with white hair in a crew cut sidled up to the table next to me and as casually as I put down a dollar-fifty for Trident gum, pulled out a wad of cash the girth of my wallet and slapped a 100 dollar bill on the table. As I scanned the table of the new high-roller and my roommates boasting multiple towers of chips, I suddenly felt like the chip stack in front of me was only designated to newcomers, women over the age of 80 and kindergartners.
The playing went on and I had cut my deficit of 60 in half. The other guys were thinking about heading back to the room to hang out for a bit before getting some food, so they were in the process of cashing out. For a strange rookie reason, I felt emasculated asking for 30 bucks back and decided to put it all on Black and the 3rd 12.
"I got a feeling guys, I'm likin' this pick," I said.
The beginner's luck, that emerged for so fleeting and brief a moment, was gone. The ball's final resting place was double zero. 37-1 odds. Douchebag.
I walked away from the table, hungry, now down $60 and in need of a cold beer.
The group walked back through the hordes of people sitting in the comfy seats anchored to the floor, cigarette smoke lazily spewing out of their mouths with their eyes locked onto the flashing screens, hitting the buttons rhythmically as if hypnotized by the ever-present arcade music. God this is sad, I thought. Young, old, white, black, Asian, Non, handicapped, physically able. They were all there. All shoving money into the one-buttoned bandit in hopes their numbers would align and their money supply would be replenished.
Back at the room, more zinging and drinking of beer took place as we figured out the plan for the night. The more intrepid gamblers were getting fidgety and needed to return to the floor as soon as possible to get their fix. The less enthusiastic ones (me and, well, me) wanted to find some place to get food in our stomachs before the debacle with Mohegan continued. After some quick calculations, the group miserably determined that by 7 p.m., it was down $1,035. If there was anything that could have been a gloomier outlook for the rest of the long, long night, this was it. You couldn't help but laugh at the seven recent college graduates (including one current college senior) collectively losing over a thousand dollars they don't have. What's even more heartbreaking is that all that money lost is essentially my monthly paycheck. I died a little bit on the inside and opened another beer.
Once Tom and his buddy came, the group was complete and the unbridled chaos train was picking up speed. More beer and liquor was ingested, the effects manifesting themselves through a slew of inside jokes, zings on those not present and general observations about the casino or each other. A decision to get food was quickly made after a late night scuffle was predicted when I loudly asked if my six-foot-six roommate was wearing a calculator watch. In my defense, at a quick glance the black squarely-shaped watch on the humongous white wrist looked nothing but a place to crunch numbers. The soon-to-be rowdy drunk twenty-somethings were getting stir crazy.
It was time to leave.
Dinner happened to be at the Michael Jordan 23 Sportscafe owned by, uh, Michael Jordan. Eight or nine of us waited out front after putting our names on the list. Only a few minutes had passed and we were seated. As we walked in a cute blonde walked by us with her party of three and both in a bitchy and somehow elegant way snapped, "Well it's good our table was usurped by those guys." Usurped! Holy shit, this girl had to have majored in English. That's a word too big for our last president. I wanted to both applaud this girl for a tremendous use of vocabulary and laugh at her impatience in her face. Either way, we got the table.
Filling all the requirements of a sports bar atmosphere with a full bar, restaurant tables, cute waitresses and MJ nostalgia covering the entire place, we split up the tables to a handful each. Tom and his friend were behind the eight-ball, so they went off to lose some money.
Though that period was a bit foggy to recollect, the grilled chicken on a focaccia roll topped with onion, tomato and bacon slathered in barbeque sauce with a side of sweet potatoes fries and a pickle was nothing but sublime.
As Eric secretly wrote Rick's number on the bill with 'Call me!' next to it, we collected our cash and headed out for more gambling. Well, they would gamble...and I just watched and kept drinking. I found Chris at a crowded blackjack table, chirping it up with the rest of the strangers around him, keeping the good vibes and doing generally well. As he raked in chips and kept hitting, I sat back and added nine and seven on my hands.
I really should never be allowed to bet money. I would most likely get kicked out for bringing a TI-83 calculator to the table and suffer the morbid embarrassment of looking not like an idiot savant as in Rain Man, but just an idiot.
A few of Chris's friends from Bristol were in a bar somewhere in the casino so we tried to rally the troops for a meet and greet. One of the guys brought some cigarillos so we decided to smoke them on our trek to the bar.
I did forget to mention that smoking is allowed in the casino. Granted there are smoke-free spots, but the vast majority of places we went were infested with smokers. Save for about 16 states (Texas and Alaska included, surprise surprise), most of the remaining 40-something states have some version of smoking bans either in public places, restaurant/bars or both. So not only is the Mohegan tribe fueling the gambling addictions of hundreds and thousands daily, they want to get you drunk with the complimentary drinks (the only thing free other than parking) and give you emphysema all at the same time. I had to change my shirt during the night as I smelled like a carton of Parliament Lights. I realized it was a pointless maneuver though because 15 minutes later I smelled exactly the same.
We puffed on the cigars as we made our way towards the bar and were on our way in when the bouncer told us we'd have to put them out.
What?
I don't understand this place. You can smoke while throwing away large amounts of money that go directly towards the maintenance, additions and general upkeep of the joint but as soon as you make your way into a smaller venue with more people per square foot then the rules all change, even though you still give them dollars upon dollars. No-go. By the same token, I walked into one of the many restrooms and saw a No Smoking sign at the door. I mean, I can understand them barring this because of the awful smell that would inconvenience people taking care of business, but if you're going along those lines they should ban pooping. Just a thought, Mohegan. If you had a suggestion box, it would be filled.
We moseyed into the bar and got our 'one beer at a time rule' beers and congregated around some seats. Scanning the group, we looked more like a bunch of alcoholics in withdrawal that had just lost a shit-ton of money than a bunch of youthful, vibrant college graduates that had just lost a shit-t0n of money. There were countless girls in short dresses running around, but we chose to sit and sulk from the mental and physical burden of gambling our money away. We looked more in need of antidepressants than a cute-girl-conversation.
What we needed was a rally.
If you could add one more rule to the casino, the bars closed for good at 1:30 and ironically this was our rally. We were forced out to find entertainment elsewhere and remembering we still had copious amounts of beer back in the room, the group of slowly recovering zombies had a plan.
The rest of the night wasn't very momentous. More beer was ingested, a liquor bottle or two was passed around, random people were invited into our room by one of the guys prompting me to hide my laptop so it wouldn't be stolen. Somebody not in our group threw up in our bathroom. A digital camera was out in full force. I developed a splitting headache, ate some Ben & Jerry's ice cream and watched Chris play craps for a little bit, drunk off his ass. I remember standing there miserable as the people at the table kept calling him "Cellophane" because of the lucky wrapper on his cigar. He turned to me at one point and said: "This cellophane is givin' me some luck bro! I'm chewing the hell outa this cigar though. I keep swallowing little pieces; startin' to feel sick." He returned to the cheering table and didn't come back till 6:15.
I was in bed at 4:30.
The next morning was not unlike any other morning where I was up late drinking lots of beer, getting less than six hours of sleep the night before: miserable. We all slowly came to, collected our things and said our goodbyes. I gave my ticket to the valet for him to retrieve my 2000 maroon Hyundai Elantra with chipping paint on the passenger door and a peeling bumper sticker entitled "Read to a Child Twenty Minutes a Day" from its temporary VIP parking spot. I gave a goodbye peace sign and drove off the reservation, leaving behind the 60 dollars I lost and my inhibitions about going to a casino. My trip to The Sun had officially come to an end.
The 90 minute drive home was spent pondering all the crazy shit I did. all the money my friends and I gave to the casino and the epic nap that was in my near future. I later found out that Rick, Chris and Mike stayed to gamble until 2 p.m. and Rick ended up winning $1,000 on roulette. That made me happy because although it wasn't me, I was still pleased that someone won something this weekend.
I learned though that I needed to cut my losses, be pleased it was under $100 and keep the positive vibes. Because Chris was right, you could either spend the whole night sulking that you lost money or hang out with good friends you haven't seen in a long time, drink some beer and have fun. And who knows, maybe you'll win some cash after staying up till 6 a.m. and earning a table nickname because of one piece of lucky plastic.
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