You’ve Got to Know When to Hold Them

I try to use Las Vegas the way it was designed to be used. Several years ago I spent a weekend there for a wedding. The wedding was a very neat little affair for a couple of very beautiful people. This story isn’t about that wedding though, nor is it about Las Vegas. But I think Vegas makes a pretty good backdrop for a story, don’t you? And weddings are nice. I think starting a story with a weekend in Las Vegas sets just the right kind of tone for the rest of the story. I hope you agree. 

I initially had a date arranged for this wedding. This story isn’t about her either. We were going to fly there together and spend the weekend playing together but as the wedding date approached I had a change of heart and ended up going to Vegas alone for my friends’ wedding. It was a great weekend. I drank and mingled with old friends. I drank and mingled with new friends. I drank and gambled. I drank some more. I spent way too much money on a nice room I barely saw. By Sunday I had become particularly close friends with one particular machine in a back corner of the casino floor of the MGM Grand. 

This past weekend my sister was telling me about a new guy she is seeing. This might be what this story is really about. She had a bad breakup a little over a year ago. It had been a very long and serious relationship she thought would last the rest of her life. That’s a devastating breakup. She has been on her own all this time doing a fairly remarkable job recovering but still suffering more than you like to see a person suffer, particularly family. 

But there is this new guy now. I don’t know him but by all accounts (her’s) he sounds like the most incredible human being who ever lived. I interpret that to mean he is probably a decent guy. That’s good news. But more importantly she really likes him. I mean she really likes him. She hasn’t known him that long. But they really really like each other. She was genuinely happy talking about him. I don’t always see my sister so happy. It’s nice to see. 

But she is worried, and she probably should be. 

When dealing with a breakup, human beings generally have two options. The first option is to deal with all the hurt and its associated cocktail of emotions directly by feeling them. This is the painful option and no one likes it. The second option is to mask and/or avoid all of those emotions. This we all prefer to do in various ways.  

I have always been a believer in the theory of rebound relationships. Hell I once famously advertised for one, and that moment for me has been preserved on this very blog. The idea of a rebound relationship, for those of you who might be new to the world, is that while you are dealing with a breakup with one person you quickly get involved with a new person. In this way the hurt of the breakup is theoretically masked or avoided by the thrill of the new relationship. It seems simple enough, except everyone knows that rebound relationships are doomed. The reason rebound relationships are doomed, according to the theory, is that all that those negative emotions from the breakup were never dealt with, and they will invariably resurface and cause problems for the new relationship. 

This was my sister’s concern. Before she really got involved with this guy she wondered if she should. I told her to go for it because she was about ready for a rebound guy. So she did. And now she really likes this guy and she is worried about him being the rebound guy. She doesn’t want him to just be the rebound guy. This is a dilemma. 

At the time I went to Las Vegas for my friends’ wedding I was recently divorced, and I was having a hard time with it. I chose to mask my emotions. I was having some difficulty avoiding them altogether. So I drank. I always tell people that sometimes shit happens in life and the only way to deal with it is to drink for a year. I don’t mean have a couple glasses of wine with dinner drinking. I mean spend a year where the first thing you think about every day is how many hours you need to waste before you can get numb again. That was the year I was having when I went to Las Vegas that weekend. 

I never have any friends on Sunday morning. This is a fact. And it was true in Las Vegas as well. By Sunday morning the wedding crowd had thinned, the bride and groom were off to the Grand Canyon, but I had some time to kill. I killed it in a dark corner of the casino in front of a slot machine. Specifically, I found myself highly amused by a Kenny Rogers themed machine called The Gambler. It seemed quaint and trite all at the same time and in 2008 it was just too kitschy not to try. It also turned out to be located in just the right location, heavily trafficked by cocktail waitresses. 

There were actually two of them. Identical machines right next to each other. There was already a woman at one of them so I sat down at the other. I fed the machine a $20 bill and the woman started talking to me. She told me she had been at that machine all night. She said she originally fed it $100, and that at one point she had been up to six hundred, but that was a few hours ago. She said she didn’t want to stop because she knew the machine was going to hit again any moment, but that she needed to go get some sleep soon. She looked like she had been up all night. By the time she finished telling me this the cocktail waitress arrived with the beer I had ordered. I took it and ordered a second one. I tipped her a five on that first one and asked her to keep them coming. She did. I thought about how everyone in Las Vegas is always sure they are about to hit it big. I put another $20 in my machine. I consider myself too practical a gambler to completely forget how probability works. 

By the time I killed $40 the woman next to me was gone. She hadn’t won another cent. She played right up until she was completely bust. I never saw her again. 

There are times in life when the safe bet is the good bet. And there are times in life when you shouldn’t be betting at all. Sometimes you just need to make a decision and go with it. My sister was at one of those points when she asked me for advice about her rebound guy. I can see she genuinely likes him, and she is genuinely worried that he won’t last, and that she might get hurt again, because he is squarely in that rebound position.  

Years before she asked me for my advice I had cancelled a weekend date to a friend’s wedding in Las Vegas. Instead of spending time with someone new I found myself drinking alone in a dark corner of the most well-lighted city in the world. 

My sister was thinking about meeting her guy in Reno, coincidentally, on her way home later that day. He had booked a room for them to use for just a few hours before they each needed to get back to their individually busy lives before they could see each other alone again.  

I spent the day sitting at that damn machine. It did hit. By the time I caught a cab to the airport I was ahead $600, and considering I drank $800 worth of beer, that was a pretty good day. I had successfully avoided the hurt and managed to find a thrill. 

It occurs to me now that a hotel room in Reno might be a better way. I told her to go for it but be careful. The danger is real. But how can you tell someone a connection isn’t real? You know it when you feel it. And none of us feels it often enough to be able to ignore it based on superstition. 

Because, what if I have been wrong? I know it seems unlikely to me also. But maybe everything isn’t a dichotomy. Maybe there is another way. Maybe a simple connection between two people at the right time is all that matters. Maybe the hurt doesn’t always just pile up. Maybe in the right situation with the right people it just becomes unimportant. 

I am sure now that taking the chance is worth the risk. Like spending the day drinking in front of an old machine in a Las Vegas casino it is going to be a good time no matter what, and you still might come out ahead.