Fat Old Woman in Las Vegas: Gambling, Dieting and Wicked Fun (4 page)

As a young woman in the ’60s, I was expected to spend my hours daydreaming of the perfect husband while learning to use Aqua Net to perfection. Girls were not supposed to consider for a moment to attempt doing what the boys did, and especially not what the men did.

There were other reasons I never considered getting a tattoo. One, I am scared of needles or pain of any kind. The second is I’ve never made it to my goal weight. What would happen to the butterfly tattoo I longed for when I finally lost weight? Would the artistic image shrivel into a wrinkled, old moth? In almost every area of my life, anything of beauty was put on hold until I reached that magical day of perfection.

Perfection never happened. But medication did, lots of it. And, because of them, I have no choice but to slap on a few tattoos.

Currently, I am on six different pills a day. I swallow one batch in the morning and the next round at 6:30 p.m. exactly. A few of the pills are the difference between life and death according to my doctor. To make matters worse, the medications need to be taken at precisely the same time, every single day.

At home, I have no problem being on time with my meds. Two separate alarm clocks are set to remind me, as well as an iPad alert. But when traveling, I often forget to take my pills. If I do remember my pills, it is way beyond the scheduled time. If it is three hours past my scheduled time, according to my doctor’s instructions, I have to skip the pills and wait for the next cycle to begin, all the while crossing my fingers I don’t die.

Traveling in my case always means roaming about in a casino where it’s impossible to hear an alarm or cellphone. And because this trip meant being alone without a husband or a friend to remind me, I had to find someway to remember to take my meds.

Then it hit me.

Tattoos! One on the front of each of my hands! My hands are always in view while gambling. Or if I’m not at the slots, I’m scooping out goodies from the buffet onto a plate. Both diversions kept my hands directly in my line of sight.

I wasn’t willing to get permanent ink, but I’d heard of temporary tattoos, which I knew nothing about. I didn’t know how long they’d last, or if they’d start peeling off in the desert heat. I certainly didn’t want ink dribbling onto the sidewalk as I strolled the strip.

So, I headed to the place I learn everything these days, YouTube. I entered the words ‘temporary tattoo’ in the search bar. Thirty-eight thousand nine hundred videos were available. I doubted if there were any videos uploaded by seniors who wanted tramp stamps to remind them to take their Warfarin. I quickly skipped over the videos with the DIY instructions of drawing your own image. I have zero artistic skill.

I placed my cursor over the search bar again, and entered Claire’s temporary tattoos. Over twenty-eight hundred results were listed, uploaded by girls nine years of age and up.

I clicked on one featuring two adorable young girls who each, not so carefully applied six tattoos to their faces, and eight more on their arms. I chuckled at their kiddish attitude, not realizing I’d end up doing basically the same thing. Why waste a perfect good temporary tattoo by letting it linger in the bag?

They instructed me to remove the sheet of tattoos from the package and cut around each tattoo. The next step would be pressing a wet cloth on top of the tattoo for ten seconds. The moisture from the cloth would activate the glue and ink in the image and stick the image to my skin. Then I merely peeled off the paper. According to one of the girls, I was to do the same thing over and over until I ran out of tattoos. The other girl explained the tattoos would last for days or until your mom made you wash them off.

The process seemed easy enough. Two weeks before I left for Vegas, I headed for the mall and purchased two packages of tats. One package included colorful stars, hearts, moons, and feathers, plus a few peacocks or two. The second package had no color at all except black. Skulls, crossbones and pirates. When I got home, I slipped them into the bag, planning to open them once I was on the road.

If I did it before hand, I’d probably never stop putting them on, just like the nine-year-old girls on YouTube. I am that much of a kid at heart.

Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport is a ten-minute drive from our home. From there, a flight to Las Vegas is roughly three hours and twenty minutes. Any day of the week, I can be in Las Vegas in less time than it takes to watch a Martin Scorsese movie. Instead, in order to reach my gambling mecca, I travel two thousand plus miles by a combination of car, train, and shuttle bus.

Taking Valium, drinking tequila, or undergoing hypnosis never helped ease my fear of flying. Marrying an air traffic controller didn’t help either. It wasn’t that Steve brought home tales of terror during his twenty-seven years at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport. He didn’t. During his tenure at MSP, nothing dangerous happened under his watch. Nothing. Nada. Not a single incident could justify my position that if God really wanted us to fly in a machine capable of spiraling downward at four hundred miles an hour, he’d have made the earth a bouncy castle.

In fact, the safety record at MSP multiplied my anxieties. It bolstered my ‘if not now, when?’ OCD thought process. My fear of flying—or rather my angst at sitting in a cushioned seat thirty-three thousand feet off the ground—was mine alone.

From early childhood, I’d wallowed in every air disaster I heard on the evening news. My brother worked at Chicago’s Midway Airport. If a crash happened, I’d wait anxiously for him to return at night. He’d tell me horror stories of body parts strewn across the tarmac. I’d scream and put my head under my blanket. Whether these memories are true or not are up for discussion. I was a writer and fantasizer before I came to the age of reason and reality.

However, it’s not the actual flying part that bothers me. It’s the height that an airplane can reach. Fear of falling off of anything higher than a barstool is terrifying to me.

Decades ago, my husband and I traveled to Chicago for a weekend of fun. I searched for a hotel near Michigan Avenue. I chose one that boasted of its atrium design and massive indoor foliage. It was the dead of winter, and anything green sounded good to me. I didn’t bother to research what a hotel atrium might look like. I figured it was an open space with lots of plants and light. What could be wrong with that?

As we walked into the lobby, my heart clinched. The atrium ceiling was twenty-five stories high and every single room was visible from where I stood. The landings encircled the atrium, floor after floor, with only a chest high glass railing on each landing to protect guests from tumbling to their deaths. Plus, the only way up or down included a ride in a glass elevator.

Second floor
, I thought to myself,
I can handle second floor. Maybe the third. But, no higher, definitely not.

My husband gave the receptionist our names as I stood there plotting a getaway if lower rooms were not available. I thought of announcing that I planned on filing for divorce immediately. My unexpected proclamation would let me walk out of the hell I found myself in, my head held high in perceived self-justification. That little lie of marital disharmony seemed way more appealing than taking a ride in a glass elevator.

I watched as one of four elevators travelled the atrium’s twenty-five floors. It amazed me that not a single passenger treated it with the respect that a Wes Craven amusement park ride for the acrophobic deserved. Not a single occupant was pounding on the door in terror as the lift moved silently up or down.

Standing behind my husband I leaned in close and whispered, “Ask for a lower floor.”

He said to the clerk, “Do you have any rooms high up?”

Steve doesn’t support my phobias. Nor does he pay them any attention, whatsoever.

“We have a room on the twenty-third floor,” she responded.

“Great,” Steve said, right before I kicked his foot.

I briefly wondered if I could get both our cats in the divorce settlement.

My husband walked quickly to the elevator as I trudged slowly behind, trying to decide if I could get him to walk up the emergency stairs to our room. In the old days before we had sex, I could get him to do anything. Now I have to buy him a Lamborghini to get him to mow the lawn.

Apparently, my anxiety was evident on my face. With a hint of disdain he asked, “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the elevators too?”

Generally, my answer would be no. I am not afraid of elevators, at all. They’re a piece of cake, unless they are made with glass and I can actually see what is happening. It’s easy to forget you are one hundred feet above ground when you’re enclosed in a steel box.

I didn’t bother to answer.

We stepped into the small, crowded space. A loud, bored - with - his - wife’s - phobias sigh escaped from his clutched throat. I closed my eyes and didn’t dare open them. I could feel the elevator move upward, stopping every few seconds to let someone on or off. Finally, the door opened and I heard my husband say, “Let’s go.”

Miraculously, we’d arrived safely at the twenty-third floor. I made my way out of the elevator, my eyelids squeezed tight. When I knew I was planted safely in the hallway, I opened them, expecting a wave of relief to comfort me. Instead, a panic attack took hold of me, the likes of which I’d never experienced.

A few feet ahead of me was the glass railing that ran along the atrium side of the hallway. It easily came to the top of my chest, yet I could envision myself tumbling over it and rapidly crashing into the marble tile, twenty-three floors below. My body would splatter like red pellets from a paint gun.

Realistically of course, that wouldn’t happen. Not unless someone hoisted me over the railing. I quickly calculated my husband’s strength potential. Nah, he couldn’t lift me even if he wanted to … a scenario growing more likely by each passing minute. But someone else could lift me. Some unknown bodybuilding hit man lurking nearby who …

Or perhaps I would defy the law of physics and accidentally fall over the railing all by myself.

Even if I didn’t fall, being that high up still scared the bejeebees out of me. Once again, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to figure out a way to get to my room. I placed my palms firmly against the wall behind me. I edged my way, step-by-step, inch-by-inch, as I slid my outstretched hands along the wall. I looked like Spiderman’s obese mom out for her daily constitutional.

When we finally made it to our suite, I stepped inside knowing I would not be going out of the room until we checked out on Monday morning. I had just blown hundreds of dollars on a fun-filled mini vacation, only to spend the entire time in a hotel room, alone. I didn’t expect Steve to stay inside the room with me. It wasn’t fair. It was his vacation, too.

After a few minutes of his balking and lecturing me on the stupidity of my fears, I pointed out that just because I was a prisoner in the hotel didn’t mean he would have to be one. He was free to do whatever he wanted to do in Chicago, but he had to do it on his own. He could go to the action movies he’d like to see, eat at the health food restaurants he’d never enter if I was anywhere within his radar, shop at stores where nothing was on clearance. The city was his for the taking.

His eyes lit up the moment he ‘got it’. He could act like he would act if he were single once again. To this day, as far as my husband is concerned, the weekend I spent trapped inside a twenty-third floor room, is one of the best vacations of our married life.

∞

Catching the Train

Amtrak’s Empire Builder, originates in Seattle, and arrives daily at the St. Paul Amtrak station, a thirty-minute drive from where I live. The train continues East to Chicago where it arrives an hour too late to catch the connecting Southwest Chief, heading to Los Angeles. Consequently, if I chose to ride Amtrak from my hometown, I’d have to spend a night in downtown Chicago, adding to the cost of my trip, both ways. Instead, I drive three hundred and eighty-six miles to Fort Madison, Iowa where I board the Southwest Chief on the same day I leave home.

Driving from Minneapolis to Fort Madison, Iowa is a no brainer for me. It’s a pleasant seven-hour drive through Iowa farmland and includes the possibility of two casino stops along the way. A gambler’s road trip doesn’t get any better than that, unless you add a buffet, which I always do.

With a recent stroke hovering in my background, and the possibility of another one clouding my future, making the trip alone was a bit more worrisome than usual. This time, I asked my husband if he’d like to go at least part of the way with me. I sweetened the deal by suggesting he bring his bike and ride with me to Northwoods, Iowa where we could spend the night at Diamond Jo’s Casino and Resort. The next morning he could cycle the one hundred and seventeen miles home.

Yes, we are that different.

Steve agreed and I was thrilled. One less day alone on the road sounded good to me.

∞

It was two in the afternoon when we checked into the hotel at Diamond Jo’s. The lobby sparkled with cleanliness. The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies drifted over from the free coffee bar. From the registration desk, we could see through glass doors to the hallway that led to the hotel rooms and the large indoor pool. No one was swimming. No one ever swims at a casino hotel pool. The average guest wasn’t there to stay healthy.

My husband and I headed up to our second floor room. The wife in me won over my urge to ask him to carry the luggage to the room while I dashed to the casino. Instead, I trotted along, pretending I had little interest in discarding him to begin my gambling.

The double room with two queen-sized beds was large and spacious and featured a large, flat screen TV, microwave and refrigerator. A free USA today newspaper was provided as well. I feigned interest in reading for a few minutes. Nothing caught my interest. Nor could it. A few hundred yards away bells were ringing and jackpots were being won.

I fluffed the pillows and propped them up on the bed. I leaned back, opened my laptop and clicked on the internet. I checked out the Amtrak website to see if that day’s Southwest Chief was running on time. It was, and I made the assumption the next day’s train would be on time as well.

Steve walked to the window and looked out across the parking lot. He said, “Hey, I think the history center is open across the street. You want to go?”

“Not really. Do you mind if I stay here and wait for you?”

I am not a good liar.

He responded, “Yeah, right. I’ll find you in the casino when I’m ready for dinner.”

“Well, if I’m not in the room, when you get back then maybe I ...”

He didn’t bother to acknowledge my cover-up but grabbed his jacket and headed out of the room.

I gave him five minutes to reach the elevator and leave the building before I bolted toward the door. It was good to be alone to do what I wanted to do, and to do it by myself.

I could never be married to anyone who expected me to spend every single moment with him. Nor would any man or woman want to spend every single moment of his day with me. Of that I am sure.

I refer to us as married yet monogamous singles. When we are on vacations, we have breakfast together then go our separate ways, meeting again for dinner and later, a show. We live our day-to-day life exactly the same way.

For a gambling woman married to a non-gambling man, this is the perfect arrangement. I would hate it if he wanted to tag along with me to the slots. Or if he insisted on sitting next to me as I pressed the same button a thousand times over. I’ve seen husbands who sit quietly holding their wife’s purse, hour after hour. I’d give up gambling before I’d do that to my husband.

Three hours later and fifty-eight dollars richer, I was sitting at a Walking Dead slot machine when my husband walked up to me.

“How you doing?” he asked.

“Good,” I answered. “I won enough to pay for the buffet.”

Already I was a winner and Vegas still lay ahead.

∞

By 7:00 a.m. the next morning, my husband was standing outside the hotel preparing for his ride back home. I stood at our hotel room window and managed to catch his eye and waved a hearty goodbye. As soon as he pedaled off into the sunrise, I rushed to open my makeup bag.

Inside were the two packages of temporary tattoos I’d purchased. I used my manicure scissors to carefully cut around them. I planned on using two at a time, one for each hand. I brought the extra, just in case one fell off. I grabbed a wet washcloth and sat down to experiment.

I chose a colorful blue and green peacock design for my right hand. I placed the design on the top of my hand and pressed down with the wet washcloth. I counted to thirty Mississippi and removed the cloth. I carefully peeled back the paper. The image was actually quite lovely. My hand turned from an old lady’s claw to an art exhibition. I choose a heart for the top of my left hand.

And then, well, I couldn’t stop. The skin up and down my arms suddenly seemed barren and wanting of decoration. What the heck? My conservative husband was nowhere to be seen. I was alone. And it was pre-Vegas, right?

I added another tattoo, then another and before I knew it twenty minutes had passed. I had eighteen tattoos plastered across my body: on my forearms, thighs, tits and stomach. I had to resist, unlike the two nine-year-old girls on YouTube who chose not to resist, placing a few on my cheeks.