LITMIR.BIZ

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series episodes. James Bond. Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair. Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in tuxedos. All from before my time, but recaptured thanks to modern technology on my VCR. I watched them because I loved them. I loved the smoking jackets and the dinner jackets and the martinis and Manhattans and the slinky women with false eyelashes and real breasts. Those were the days.

      Those were also my only exposure to casino gambling.

      Now, Jerry had made his needs clear: he wanted to look good. He wanted me standing next to him while he played blackjack. He wanted me to massage his shoulders at tense moments. He wanted me to order drinks for him, and then kiss him as I passed them over.

      So this combination added up to one single assumption in my mind: go for glamour. I will be the slinky woman leaning over the hero in the tuxedo, while his steely gaze holds that of his adversary in the final moment before turning over the winning card. Yeah, well, like I said, I’m a romantic.

      The only problem was that everybody here had signed on for a different movie. I was in Casablanca and they were in The Cable Guy.

      Jerry was wearing maroon sweatpants and a t-shirt that read, “I Heart N.Y.” Nearly everybody around us seemed to have gotten the same memo that he had. I saw polyester. I saw – I actually saw, no lie – t-shirts on a middle-aged couple that read, respectively, “Old Fart” and “Old Fart’s Wife.” The snazzier dressers were into jeans.

      And I, on the other hand, was wearing a little black-nothing dress from Lord and Taylor along with seamed stockings and high-heeled black fuck-me shoes.

      Oops.

      The food arrived, and was what you’d expect in a steak house in a casino. I was glad I that had followed Jerry’s suggestion – it’s really hard to fuck up lobster. We ordered a bottle of domestic white Zinfandel and Jerry made a joke when the waitress opened it, something about the ones at home all having screw tops. I tried to pretend that I was somewhere else.

      He also watched her walk away with eyes that missed nothing.

      “She’s got a great ass.”

      I dutifully agreed, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was still worried about my dress.

      Jerry pursed his lips. “Bet she digs chicks. I can always tell. She was checking out your tits.”

      Small wonder, as mine are the only ones showing within, oh, a ten-mile radius. She was probably wondering how much my dress cost. I said half-heartedly, “Do you think so?”

      He nodded vigorously. “Hey, I wonder. Maybe she’d like to join us later, when she gets off work. I’ll bet she’d get off on me watching her tongue you.”

      Okay. We need to interrupt this broadcast. I’m going to say something that may burst a few bubbles, but what the hell. You know how there are all these urban myths out there, like the alligators living in the sewers and the kids who put the cat in the microwave and it exploded? Well, there are specialized urban legends. There’s a Catholic urban legend that says Mary Magdalene was a prostitute (I looked into this one; thought I could use a patron saint). News flash: she wasn’t, but we like believing it so much that we ignore little things like facts, evidence, that sort of thing.

      Well, anyway, there are sexual urban legends, too. Different ones for men and for women, of course. And, guys, I’m here to tell you: We don’t get off on you watching two of us having sex together. In the privacy of our own intimate moments, we generally do not strap on oversized dildos and encourage our partners to engage in a plastic blowjob. I know that’s what you like to see. I know that’s what you want to believe. But if you are ever sitting and watching two women doing that, you need to know that they’re doing it solely for you and you’d better ask yourself why. You’ll pay for the show, one way or another.

      At least when callgirls do it, the payment is unambiguous.

      So I looked at Jerry and said, doubtfully, “Uh-huh.”

      “Yeah,” he said, addressing his steak. “We’ll have to check her out.” Please God, I thought silently, please God, don’t let him make me ask her.

      As it turned out, once dinner was over, Jerry had other things on his mind. Maybe there is a God, after all. “Time to win some serious cash,” he informed me, and we proceeded into the casino proper.

      I thanked Mary Magdalene for my reprieve, just in case.

      * * * * * *

      I know a little less about blackjack than does your average five-year-old. It’s cards, okay? It’s one of the games that the steely-eyed men in dinner jackets used to play on my VCR.

      It became obvious very quickly that my understanding the game was fortunately not necessary. I was there in a strictly ornamental capacity. And if I had misjudged how others were going to be dressed, at least I wasn’t far off in their responses to my choice of clothes. Of those people who were not intently absorbed in the play of cards on the tables in front of them, it became immediately clear that the men all wanted me and the women all hated me.

      Par for the course.

      So I watched Jerry settle at a blackjack table and nod to the dealer; the cards were dealt and I tried to look slinky rather than bored. I have to say that Jerry seemed to do rather well, so well in fact that he turned to me soon and gave me a hundred-dollar chip. “Here,” he said, loud enough for the table to hear, “go have a little fun for yourself.”

      I took the chip – I’m no fool – but hesitated. He looked up impatiently. “Go play roulette,” he urged. “You’ll have fun. Come back when you’re finished.”

      “If you’re sure, baby,” I said automatically, but I was starting to walk away even as I said the words. Three hours with him and I was already needing space.

      I didn’t play roulette. I cashed in the chip and put the money in my bag (small and sexy and expensive, another faux pas, since most of the women I saw were carrying large vinyl bags into which they could pour their winnings from the slot machines) and wandered around to satisfy my genuine curiosity about the casino.

      My friend Irene had had a lot to say about Foxwoods when I told her I was going (“just with a friend, nothing special”). “Oh, my God, Jen, do you know about that place?”

      I think I’ve made it fairly obvious that I did not. “No,” I said.

      “It’s supposed to belong to this Indian tribe, they got all this land and these loans because of some sort of payback for white people having taken everything from them.”

      That much I knew. “So? That seems fair.”

      “Maybe,” Irene continued, excited now. “Except that it turns out that the guy who started the whole thing was a dirtbag. There aren’t any Pequots, they died out years ago, and this guy – Skip something – got his family declared a tribe without having to prove it, the way all the other tribes had to.” Irene shrugged. “I actually think the idea is good, too,” she said. “I think that there should be some accounting. It’s just that the right people should benefit, not some scumbag out to make an easy buck.”

      I was thinking about that as I walked around. I saw a lot of pseudo-Indians, that was for sure: all the cocktail waitresses were dressed in colorful fringed suede dresses and had headbands with single feathers stuck in the back of them. I’m not sure about the authenticity of the feather, but I am pretty sure that no Native Americans would have recognized the length of those dresses (as in barely covering the ass), nor certainly the fishnet tights and high heels that went with them.

      Hiawatha meets Moulin Rouge.

      I wandered in and out of several rooms filled with people intently staring at cards or dice, and eventually I got back to Jerry, only losing my way once, which was a pleasant surprise. He hadn’t moved, although I saw that several faces around the semi-circle of gamblers had changed.

      He noticed me peripherally. “There you are. Get me a drink, will you, hon?” he asked. Then,

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