{"id":98727,"date":"2016-06-08T10:30:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T14:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=98727"},"modified":"2016-06-06T18:09:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T22:09:38","slug":"all-in-oklahoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/06\/08\/all-in-oklahoma\/","title":{"rendered":"All In: Oklahoma"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second part of \u201cAll In,\u201d by Eric Neuenfeldt, will be published\u00a0tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Martin<\/a>

Martin Hyers and William Mebane, Vegas<\/em>, 2008, color photograph.<\/p><\/div>\n

There are more than a hundred casinos in Oklahoma, more than there are in Germany, more than in Canada, the UK, or in all of Central America. Within half an hour, I can drive to at least seven of them. Fifteen miles to the north, just before the Kansas state line, two massive casinos sprawl on Indian land. One has a hotel. To the southeast is Osage Casino, which was once a small, smoky trailer. To the south are 7 Clans Paradise Casino and Two Rivers Casino. To the west are Tonkawa East and, right off I-35, the newer, larger Tonkawa West Casino. I remember reading a few years ago that Oklahoma was the nation\u2019s second-largest gambling market, with nearly four\u00a0billion dollars in revenues. Thank God for tribal land, Oklahomans say. No need to plan a vacation to Las Vegas anymore, not when you can stop at, say, the 7 Clans Deli Mart\/Travel Plaza on Highway 77 just outside of town, a convenience store that has more than a hundred slot and video-poker machines inside.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma has plenty of large casinos\u2014with hotels, restaurants, valet parking, and players who wear suits with loosened ties\u2014but I liked the small, gritty places. I had a theory that most of them had looser machines, which paid out more frequently. I favored one spot in particular, a dim and smoky casino in Tonkawa that played loud rock music. It\u2019s the size of a small warehouse, tucked away down a desolate road in the country with open plains stretching out for miles. Wednesdays it had cash drawings every hour after five in the afternoon, but it was never very crowded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Martin<\/a>

Vegas 000924<\/i>, 2008, color photograph.<\/p><\/div>\n

When I first found the casino in Tonkawa, I was new to the area, having just taken a teaching job at the college nearby. I liked the casino not least because I knew nobody there. Some people have told me that casinos are the only places they like to go by themselves; they can have a drink and play slots and meet people easily. But for those of us who are antisocial, who visit casinos in large part to forget our jobs and our problems, there\u2019s nothing more irritating than running into someone we know and having to make small talk.<\/p>\n

I once asked a friend why he liked to gamble alone. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be bothered,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to go on my own time and get into my own zone. It was like a different state of mind.\u201d He told me that he knew someone who didn\u2019t like hitting the jackpot because it meant the machine would lock up with a \u201cCongratulations! Jackpot Winner!\u201d message splattered across the screen until an attendant came over.<\/p>\n

The machines\u2019 animations, their music, all their ringing and noise make it easy to forget about life. My friend said that he walked into a casino one morning. Hours passed, and soon it was dark outside. When he finally lost all his money, after midnight, he realized that he hadn\u2019t eaten all day.<\/p>\n

I can exist in that zone, even in Las Vegas, where I used to go before the casinos were built here. I\u2019ve stayed at the MGM on the Strip several times. I\u2019ve stayed at Caesar\u2019s Palace twice. I\u2019ve stayed at Circus Circus and Bally\u2019s and Treasure Island and downtown, at the old Plaza. Each trip got worse: the more I went, the more I found myself sneaking away and playing alone. Once, back in 2001 or 2002, someone close to me advised me very earnestly not to go. I went anyway, with a friend. We stayed at Caesar\u2019s, and, after splitting up one evening, I lost track of time. He found me playing dollar slots late in the night. \u201cWhere have you been?\u201d he asked. \u201cI thought we were supposed to meet at the bar two hours ago?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Martin<\/a>

Vegas 002324<\/i>, 2008, color photograph.<\/p><\/div>\n

At some point I quit going to Las Vegas, mainly because in Oklahoma you can gamble just about anywhere. Most of the people who frequented the small casino in Tonkawa that I liked were working class. One young woman I saw several times was a slender Native American who looked to be in her twenties. The only reason I noticed her was because she carried a small stuffed teddy bear whenever she visited the casino. She played a machine near me once, but I never spoke to her until we bumped into each other at the used-record store downtown. She didn\u2019t have the bear with her. When I said hello and asked whether she\u2019d been to the casino recently, she stared at me as though she couldn\u2019t place me. \u201cNo,\u201d she finally said.<\/p>\n

After she left, I told the guy who was working at the store about the stuffed bear. \u201cI wonder if it was for good luck or something,\u201d I said. \u201cStrange to see an adult carrying a stuffed animal in public.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to go to the Osage Casino every fucking day,\u201d the guy told me.<\/p>\n

Another time, I sat next to a fifty-something woman at the Tonkawa casino who smelled of urine and smoke. I was playing a slot machine called Kaboom, one of my favorites. It\u2019s an animated, noisy, five-reel game in which the symbols drop down from above, one reel at a time. The game moves fast, and it\u2019s addictive enough that I rarely paid any attention to anyone else. On this day, however, the woman, who was playing at the machine next to mine, leaned over and apologized for her cigarette smoke. I\u2019m sure she\u2019d seen me fanning the smoke, but still it struck me as odd, and a little invasive. Most people who smoke in a casino don\u2019t care about their smoke bothering anyone else, and they certainly never apologize about it. I told her I didn\u2019t mind. Later I noticed that the woman kept rubbing the screen of her machine and whispering to it. I knew what she was doing because I\u2019d done it, too. You want to comfort the machine, to loosen it up. At some point she started praying aloud: \u201cPlease, God. Please, God. Please, God.\u201d<\/p>\n

People who play slot machines persistently usually want to avoid some aspect of their lives they don\u2019t want to think about. I asked my friend whether he ever touched the machine\u2019s screen or if he talked or prayed while playing. He said he used to pray. \u201cOne time I was at a Comanche casino, and the chairman of the casino came up and asked if I was doing any good,\u201d he said. \u201cI told him no, and he told me to pray to the Great Spirit. It didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>

Vegas-010222<\/i>, 2008, color photograph.<\/p><\/div>\n

The same friend told me that he once played slots near a guy who kept falling asleep at his machine. \u201cHis head would lean forward and hit the screen. Then he\u2019d wake up and start punching the button again. Then his head would lean forward and hit the screen. Then he\u2019d start punching the button again.\u201d I\u2019m sure that this has been happening in Vegas or Atlantic City for years, but it\u2019s still relatively new here. My friend calls it an unrecognized epidemic. I\u2019ve seen people slumped over machines late into the night. I\u2019ve seen them snap awake when a security guard nudges them and makes them leave.<\/p>\n

One afternoon when I was in my late twenties, I drove to a casino in Concho, just outside Oklahoma City, and played until I could barely stay awake. When I left, it was past midnight. I know this: I didn\u2019t think about loneliness or about sitting in an empty, dim apartment with poor insulation. I didn\u2019t think about my job or girlfriend. I know that my heart jumped a little each time I hit a bonus on a machine. I know, too, that I avoided going to the restroom because that meant walking by more machines, and I was broke, and walking by more machines was too much of a temptation. I pissed in a paper cup on my drive home.<\/p>\n

\n

Brandon Hobson is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Deep Ellum\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Desolation of Avenues Untold. He is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, and his writing has recently appeared in\u00a0<\/em>Conjunctions, <\/em>NOON, and <\/em>The Believer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second part of \u201cAll In,\u201d by Eric Neuenfeldt, will be published\u00a0tomorrow. There are more than a hundred casinos in Oklahoma, more than there are in Germany, more than in Canada, the UK, or in all of Central America. Within half an hour, I can drive to at least seven of them. Fifteen miles to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[22560,14227,379,22557,5468,22556,22554,772,22555,15857,22559,22558],"class_list":["post-98727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-caesars-palace","tag-casinos","tag-gambling","tag-gambling-addiction","tag-las-vegas","tag-martin-hyers-and-william-mebane","tag-native-american-casinos","tag-oklahoma","tag-oklahoma-casinos","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-osage-casino","tag-slot-machines"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAll In: Oklahoma<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On the loneliness and desperation in Midwestern casinos\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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