Gambles WIthin Gambles

Everything is quiet in my gray apartment, except the sound of me washing my clothes in the bathroom sink. I wash them with dish soap because I’m out of laundry detergent and it’s not exactly what I want to spend my loose change on. I blow dry the clothes for several minutes and hang them on the towel rack. I hate the fact that the outlet for the blow-dryer is right next to the mirror, as if I’ve forced myself to do this. 

I sold all my other clothes for money to gamble. That Fluorescent Mecca- the casino, was slowly sucking out all the physical things that I thought were necessities, so in this way, it was humbling. Living life as a minimalist wasn’t so bad, except when my then-boyfriend, John, and I had nothing to eat. The only thing that was important to us was getting high by sitting in front of those flashing slot machines and blacking out until the casino robbed us of our money by the time the sun had started to come up.  

We’d go hunting through our gray couch for pennies and I’d check my bank account on my phone vigilantly to see if any of the funds from my freelance writing gigs had gone through. After checking twenty times in a couple of hours, the transfer I’d been waiting for finally showed up as a deposit. I smiled manically at John. There was a God! I had three hundred dollars. We went to the casino later that night. We rejoiced, thinking of the ample possibilities ahead, and spent the day doing monotonous chores with more vigor than we would normally have.

On the way to the casino, I stared out the window into that dark, gray Seattle sky. Sure, I felt a tinge of guilt spending all my money gambling, but what could I do? John and I were stuck in this neon prison that we had become accustomed to. All other lights in life paled in comparison. 

Where did the three hundred dollars come from? Well, I helped ghostwrite a section of a financial self-help book I found on a freelancer site. Professionally, at least, I was deemed a “finance expert,” but the high I got after sitting for several hours in front of the slot machines superseded everything. When John and I drove up to the entrance of the casino, everything else, the struggle, the pain, the loss of our child, just melted away. 

The carpet I walked on was the thick tongue of this exotic creature with its red and purple designs splayed every which way to disorient us. The cigarette smoke that drifted through the air was overwhelming, but the rough tongue of the amoeba was built to withstand the ashes that constantly rained over it. And like an angler fish lures its prey, the sophisticated light fixtures that hung from the ceiling convinced us to continue our path without any resistance. 

The casino breathed - there was a certain rhythm to it. Even though the machines had different tunes playing on repeat, it was a seductive symphony that morphed all those jingles into one thick song of silence after a while. I dissolved onto the casino’s tongue the same way Xanax dissolved onto your own tongue and everything was complete. The high was in place. 

Sealed off from the rest of society on sacred Indian grounds, I got the luxury of being able to float off in time and space to buy some time. Society doesn’t give you enough time to grieve or dwell on what needs to be processed, so casinos remain full. People die, hearts get broken, babies get miscarried- and it’s back to work on Monday. 

I stuffed bill after bill into the thin-lipped, plastic mouth of each slot machine by the minute to ensure that the fluorescent lights, sounds, and screens would not stop breathing as long as I was there. Like all living organisms, the casino has a voracious appetite to ensure its survival and its guests are more than willing to support the casino so that its symbiotic relationship can thrive.

I lost that three-hundred dollars I got from that writing gig to gambling that very night. I felt guilty. To escape the guilt I had to gamble some more. To afford to gamble some more, I had to blog for finance sites and wait for those deposits to come through. I called a spade a spade and knew what I had devolved into. It wasn't until we'd lost our furniture, our apartment, everything, that I decided to get some help.

To say that the gambling was over when I left the casino would be a lie. Gambling had already become my preferred form of survival. I worked small jobs here and there in a terrible part of Los Angeles, always in poverty. I spent every single dollar invested in trying to find a literary agent, trying to get the materials and software I needed for the literary industry, using the printer at Kinko’s and buying their envelopes to send off my manuscripts to possible publishers. With nothing in my savings, it turned knots in my stomach living like this. 

For some reason I became fixated on the fact that if someone ever attacked me or I fell and one of my teeth came out, I would have no money to fix it. This was my greatest fear and shame regarding not having a savings account, I couldn’t insure my teeth. I’d have dreams all the time of them falling out only to wake up intensely relieved that they were still there. To lack teeth would only solidify the appearance of the degenerate I felt I was becoming.

Although I rented a room in one of LA’s worst neighborhoods, all I could do was cling to the gamble that the perpetual loneliness and low quality of life would improve if just one thing, my screenplay, my book, my collection of poetry, would make it. I’d bite my nails so hard that I’d draw blood because I knew the odds were not in my favor, but just like when I was in front of a slot machine in dreary Seattle, there was the impulse- no, instinct- that compelled me to keep going, hoping that by going all in on my passion, it would pay off. 

Here is the more likely scenario, the dreadful reality that most likely awaits me if nothing hits. As the years go by I continue to shield myself from social gatherings and potential lovers even though what I’m writing is complete crap. I do this through my forties and fifties and realize I never hit all those milestones that my peers did, never moved out of my family’s house, met someone to spend my life with, had a kid. Instead I’ll try and cheer myself up by commending myself on how noble it was holding on to my passion as long as I did, but that won’t be enough to clear the tears that begin to pool under my eyes at night, knowing I failed. 

Then I might play with the thought of suicide, knowing that without solid attachments in my life, no one would miss me anyway. I will loathe myself for spending 75% of my existence in front of a computer screen. But suicide would just be another gamble to deflect the current gamble I’d be in after all, what if something of mine does come to fruition, but I die too soon to see it? The stakes would be too high for me here. So, although more than likely a future of regrets awaits me, I still have to power through, because the gamble that I may produce something great- something big enough to expand consciousness and add a little color to this graying world, feels like it’s well-worth the risk.

Monica Viera is a Latinx author from East LA