AP Photo/Curt Hudson
He has been in the same spot, in front of a video poker machine, for five hours. He stares vacantly at the screen. Its glare casts a blue tint over his face; his hand is poised over the buttons, rhythmically tapping away at them. His oversized fisherman’s vest hangs deceptively loosely over his bloated frame. He’s wedged into one of the hundreds of swivel chairs that face the endless rows of machines. Beneath the cowboy hat that sits forward across his brow, grey hair sprouts out around the top of his ears. His gut nearly reaches the machine.
He has already fed $800 into it before the big payout happens. When it does, he shoves an entire packet of chewing tobacco in his mouth, his cheek bulges from the mass.
“Finally,” he says.
He has just won $2000 on a royal straight flush.
P, 61, came to Atlantic City from Long Island City, where he left behind a recovering heroin addict brother, an ailing mother and an estranged wife with a cocaine dependency. He’s at the Taj Mahal Casino every weekend. The staff knows him. He has a favorite machine. For 36 hours, this is his palace. His safe haven; where the only thing demanding his attention is that terminal. He holds on to a minute glimmer of hope, that this time, things will be different. This time, he’ll go home a winner.
***
From behind the pane of glass in the information booth at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, an exasperated conductor says, “You wanna go to the casinos? Bottom level, Gate One. You buy your tickets there.”
The Academy Casino Express route from New York to Atlantic City runs daily. The gate for the Atlantic City route is at the far end of the tunnel. It’s the only one that has a ticket booth right next to it. There’s no need to book in advance, you’ll be able to find a seat without having to wait too long. A man in pinstriped trousers, a velvet jacket and a bowler hat approaches the ticket desk, “Is there any discount or money back included?” “No,” is the answer. Frequent riders can in fact join the President’s Club, which means they get casino credit thrown in with their ticket. But for someone who just shows up, they pay $36 for a return fare.
On a Friday evening in early December, dozens of people gather around the gate, waiting patiently for their voyage to begin.
A man with long black hair and a leather jacket reads the complimentary “Fun and Games” magazine, studying the section on the rules of blackjack. Not everyone is there to gamble. A young girl is making her way to New Jersey to see a concert. “Tiesto is playing,” she says.
The bus is packed. Couples and pairs of older women sit at the front chattering away, smiling to their fellow passengers as they board. A few of them are wearing sweaters and jackets with the names of the casinos emblazoned across the front.
The lights on the bus are dimmed and the engine rolls.
After about three hours – short enough to make the trip bearable, long enough to feel you’ve well and truly left the city far behind – the highway gives way to an open expanse and across the horizon, the casinos come into sight. Huge beacons, illuminated by lasers, beckon. The hypnosis begins miles before the bus even pulls up to the casinos.
***
The wide boulevards of downtown Atlantic City are lined with factory outlet stores. Towering behind the imposing Ralph Lauren complex, the casinos loom. They all bear the same gigantic, neon-red signage denoting the name of their establishments.
The bus pulls right up to the first casino and deposits its passengers five feet from the entrance. Some stop for a quick smoke before heading straight inside, where paisley carpets greet them; chandeliers hanging from glass ceilings dazzle, and pounding music drowns out thought.
There is an unspoken, yet discernable, hierarchy in the casino. On a mezzanine is the bar, overlooking the blackjack and roulette tables. Behind it, artificial smoke illuminated under the UV lights envelopes the rakish DJ, who stands on a raised platform, looking down on an empty dance floor. Tables line the space, all marked with “reserved” sign. Chris Noth laughs with two friends at one of them, smoking a cigar. Those who weren’t granted access to this inner circle stand at the perimeter, leaning against the ledge, looking in.
At the tables, the high rollers flash wads of notes, indiscriminately pulling $50 notes from the pockets of their designer jeans and throwing them down on the green felt. The women around them are sparkling. One woman has sprayed glitter into her hair; the flecks glisten like dewdrops on a bird’s nest.
The necklace around one woman’s neck looks like it’s weighing her down. She sits at the bar, a diamond adorned hand wrapped around a cocktail. Her husband signals to her from the blackjack table. She looks at him, shrugs, and then returns to staring intently at her drink.
Rows and rows of slot machines spiral further and further back into the room. It’s quieter down here. Middle-aged women dominate this part of the casino. They sit by themselves, transfixed on the task in hand: feeding cash into the machine and pulling the lever. A wrinkled hand emerges from beneath a fur coat, red talons claw at the buttons. Some have automated scooters next to them. One: an oxygen mask.
It is in this section of the casino that P sits.
***
At the end of the row of video poker machines, behind the Wheel of Fortune multiplayer game and in front of the slot machines, P plays. He arrived at the Taj Mahal earlier that afternoon. Knowing the exact time he’s been in the chair is tricky – there are no clocks anywhere.
It’s past 11 p.m. when the win happens.
The dealer comes over and hands him a slip of paper to sign, the W2G form, an IRS regulation requiring gamblers to report winnings over a certain amount to be assessed for federal income tax. Then the dealer counts out the cash of his winnings in hundred dollar bills. P tips him $40. “It’s important to always tip the staff,” he says.
P started playing seven years ago, when his father-in-law brought him to Atlantic City for a charity event. He’s been coming back, on and off, every weekend ever since.
He used to bet on horses at the track, but says he stopped after losing “the biggest bet of his life.” P put $6000 dollars on a horse and lost. He says the race was fixed. After the race, P rampaged through the track, in an attempt to pull down the enclosure that housed the losing horse. “I was very annoyed,” he says.
Now P plays at the Taj Mahal. He plays poker exclusively. Although he used to do so at the tables, he has recently been playing on the machines because he says it’s cheaper.
P says he has a “marker” with the casino – a running account, which when he arrived earlier that afternoon, he paid off: $3300.
He has a favorite machine that he returns to every week. But once the machine’s paid out it’s “dead” as far as he’s concerned. He shifts over to the next one, feeding his winnings back into the slot.
“Coming here is an escape,” he says. “At this point, the reason I do it is pure stupidity.”
He says he is escaping what waits for him at home: his drug addicted brother. Who, he says, looking after is very difficult. He is constantly analyzing what his brother tells him. “An addict will lie to you,” he says. P has already seen the destruction drug addiction does to a family. Both his sister and another brother died from overdoses.
In 1997, he says, he separated from his wife after discovering she had a cocaine addiction. “I found a hair clip in one pocket, and a bag of white stuff in the other,” he says. P says he couldn’t “compete” with his wife’s addiction. In the end, she asked him to leave, but P says he wouldn’t have been able to stay any longer.
His brother, who had to move into P’s apartment, has had extensive surgery as a result of his addiction. He is on Social Security, but P says that isn’t nearly enough to support him. P’s mother was also living in the apartment, but she recently moved into the brother’s house because she can no longer manage the stairs to the second floor.
During the week, P works in theatrical haulage. It was no coincidence the TV actor Chris Noth was at the bar. “Law and Order” held a party for the crew and P says he was invited because he drove the camera truck on the set for eight years. He carries a signed photograph of the two of them in one of the deep pockets of his vest.
P has a 30-year-old daughter. She works in building management. She was privately educated from preschool through to college, which P paid for. On occasion, P has brought his daughter with him to Atlantic City. He once even brought his brother.
The drive back home, he says is “depressing.” He thinks about the money he’s spent and asks himself if that money would have been better used going toward his wife or daughter.
***
Stephen Block, a gambling addiction counselor, says that men like P with whom he works all show similar traits and patterns of behavior. The psychological process is built on a dynamic of remembering the win and forgetting the net loss. The gambler will return to the casino and remember winning $2000, but will forget the tab of $3300 with the casino.
“Gamblers are ritualistic,” Block says. Some return to the same machine. Some carry lucky charms or other superstitious beliefs.
Block, who has offices in Brooklyn and Staten Island, brings personal experience to his work. He gambled for 20 years before seeking help for addiction and hasn’t gambled for 37 years. “There is life after gambling,” he says.
An integral aspect of Block’s recovery is his commitment to attending Gamblers’ Anonymous meetings. He attends two meetings a week one of which he has been going to for the decades he has remained out of the game. “Recovery doesn’t stop,” he says. “You have to maintain it.”
All the gamblers that Block works with have sought his help because they have reached some sort of crisis. When someone does seek Block’s help, he tells them about his past and finds that his patients are glad to be working with someone who understands what they are experiencing.
Block estimates that only five percent of people with a serious gambling problem that require intervention of some sort seek help. Over the 35 years he has worked with gambling addicts, the biggest change he has noticed is that gamblers seeking help are getting younger. The profile of the gambler, and the societal response to it, he says has remained the same.
***
Outside the Taj Mahal, the grand, worn-down boardwalk is empty. Men harangue passersby to take a ride to the next casino in their motorized carts for a couple of bucks. The icy ocean water laps the sand, the sound drowned out by the nostalgic music pouring from the speakers above one of the closed diners.
Back inside the casino, at the far end, lies the portal back to the city. Weary gamblers are dotted through the Bus Transportation Center. They’re all asleep. Hoods, hats and caps are pulled up and over their eyes, their heads tilted as far down into their chests as possible. Arms are folded. There’s no music in the corridor. It is the only quiet place in the casino, a contemplative spot.
A bus pulls into the terminal. The sleeping mountains rouse and board the bus that takes them back to the city. But for P, and many of the rest of them, this isn’t the end of the affair. They will be back next week.
Follow Anna on Twitter: @annacod
Leave a Reply