What Happens in Vegas: No Longer Unknown

First of all, it's Las Vegas, not Vegas, baby. Three syllables = the place. "Vegas, baby" is a construct that serves casinos and hotels and movie theatres. It's an expensive illusion for the visitor who can easily blow through thousands of dollars in a 24 gamble-and-party cycle, only to fly home hung over and penniless. If that's your idea of a good time, more power to you, but I think most people are harboring the illusion that this time, they might take the house.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" captures the real experience. Read Hunter Thompson's novel, or see either the Johnny Depp or Bill Murray movies.

Let me save you some time and money. If you play the game, you'll lose, sooner more often than later. That feeling that your luck has got to turn may be true when job searching or romance-hunting, but in a game of chance, your odds on the first roll are the same as they are on the last--bad odds. It's the illusion that your break is coming that keeps people at the table until their rent money is gone. 

How do I know? I lived there for eight years, age 8-15.

Nothing makes one a feminist faster than reaching sexual maturity in a town that perfected "woman as commodity." Seeing young women today volunteering for the role of commodity breaks my heart. Luckily, neither of my clever, talented nieces are heading down that road. For every would-be Lindsey Lohan, there's a teacher-in-training, a writer-perfecting-her-craft, a scientist, a mathematician...

What does Las Vegas have to do with the unknown? Well, I'm in Las Vegas right now, locked up in a discounted hotel room, finishing my first mystery about a fraud investigator who follows a trail of missing casino millions that leads right back to her own checkered past. I've been trying to finish it forever--new role at work, house purchase and other disasters have been too time consuming, so I set aside five whole days to just Get The Darn Thing Finished. My cheering section can only be expected to generate enthusiasm for so long, after all.

I realized that although I know a lot about gambling and Las Vegas history, and what it felt like to grow up in a place so violent that cocktail waitresses had to be escorted to their cars at end of shift, certain basic realities were missing. Like what it's really like to play in a poker tournament. Take a wad of cash to the pit and try to leave with more of it in my pockets than in the belly of a slot machine. How to play 21 at a real live table.

So I did all of that today, starting at 8:00 AM, when the real gamblers are still asleep. I wanted as few witnesses to my mistakes as possible!

My beginner's luck at the 21 table let me double my $100 stake in about ten minutes. A  pit boss (they let women be pit bosses now! Not just keno runners!) came over to watch the poor dealer. My first time, so I kept doing little things wrong. But they let me keep my winnings, so I must not have been that bad. I did remember to tip my dealer.

And oh, the poker tournament! First I had to take a lesson. I was the only woman in the place. Poker junkies, jonesing no doubt, circled the practice table like sharks, waiting for me to get out of the way. Turns out casino poker is very different from the shouting-match style games I played with my brothers.

Did you know they have low-stakes tournaments? $40 bought me in. I was the second person to go bust, not bad for my first game.  I played the slots for a while, cranked it up to $70 net gain, and then left the floor to finish todays' writing. The experience left me jangled--it's hard to think straight in the pit, even if you're just gambling for research. I can see how people get addicted.

I discovered that for me, slots are boring, 21 moves too fast (insurance?! double down?! all the options are so confusing!), and poker is just hard work with free drinks. I work in software, so the free drinks don't impress me.

The tournament lasts about 2 hours, and the most you can win in low stakes is $400 ($40 times ten players), unless someone goes bust in the first hour and they let him buy back in. You can't shout or laugh or smack the other players on the arm, you can't really have much fun at all, and to win you have to concentrate so hard. Ugh.

So now I know more about the gambling experience than I ever wanted to. Experiencing a thing is so different from knowing the statistics, or observing the aftermath from a safe distance. I'm still not sure how to get gambling scenes into my novel, as my heroine doesn't like gambling any more than I do. Much more fun to bust card cheats and embezzlers than to sit, stone-faced, at a table and wait for a lucky hand.

Tuesday morning I jump on the plane and head home to my beloved San Francisco, with a novel that should just need a fast copy edit before I can finally start submitting it to agents. Looking forward to the next unknown for me, Getting An Agent. Speaking of gambling!

What experiences have you had, things that took you from unknown to known?

Comments

[Camille Minichino]

I've done nothing so all-immersing (new word) as you, Mysti! (Unless you count 18 years in a convent so I could write a mystery with a nun protag.)

Mostly, CONGRATULATIONS on finishing! Make that copy edit fast because we are all waiting!

[Mysti]

Camille, 18 years in a convent counts!!!! I'm just a tourist, if you'll pardon the expression, compared to that!!!

Back to work on the WIP now....dying for it to be a FW (finished work!).

[Susan Shea]

Mysti, What I remember about my only (2 day) trip to Vegas was the omnipresent sound of slot machines ca-chinging. Drove me nuts. Even though it was 110 degrees outside, Tim and I wound up sitting in the modest shade on a park bench at the replica New York casino.Reading mysteries, of course. (Why did we go? To see what the place was like and to see the Cirque show with the water.) All of this means I salute you extravagantly for doing that research.