I want to go home. I am a guest of Mr. Frank Clearwater at the Stolichnaya Indian Casino in South Dakota. Right away a disclaimer is in order: This casino has absolutely nothing to do with the Russian vodka of the same name. This Indian tribe— thirty-two members and counting— appropriated the name and incorporated themselves as an official Indian nation for the sole purpose of opening a casino thirty miles west of the Harzen Mines. Everybody knows that. There isn’t a lot of hemming and hawing, but any discussion of Indian history finds a definite vagueness about tribal origins. Who knows what the name was before they changed it to Stolichnaya?!
Frank is an old Army buddy and obviously he means well, but nothing is quite as it seems. When I arrived in the afternoon of December 15, they told me the casino would open on the 17th. Now they say we’ll open on December 19. I’d be lying if I said we’re in a blizzard. The temp is a blustery, windy 40 degrees. I trudge across rock-hard prairie in store sample snowshoes from Arctic Winter Apparel. The snowshoes are made in Taiwan. I’m wearing thermal pants and a thermal, padded jacket, both in designer black. I have set up a tent guaranteed to – 40°, but we’re at the other end of the thermometer. I am out of doors playing games to avoid spending time in the casino.
The baize tables are set up for craps, the roulette wheels are polished, the chandeliers shine brightly with nary a burned-out bulb. Even the dining room occasionally serves food. However… The women in this tribe are only five feet tall. Wide in the hips, tiny breasts, stumpy-legged, their figures don’t correspond to anything in the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Decked out in beads and Santa’s elves costumes, they flounce around the main floor with nothing to preoccupy themselves but cat fights. The men are drunk. Once in awhile, one of the cooks will suddenly become inspired and prepare a feast. “Come quickly, paleface, there is turkey dinner!” a child astride a horse signals me. Hightailing it back to the main building, I too stuff myself to satiation. Then a day or two will go by where all we have to sustain ourselves are packets of oat meal and hot coffee.
Frank, meanwhile, is trying to educate me.
“Why do you live in concrete blockhouses?” I ask.
“We need to open the casino before January 1st,” he answers, a slightly different question. “Otherwise we miss out on the Indian grants for 2013. The government built the blockhouses, so that’s where we live.”
“Do you still know how to make teepees?”
Apparently I have insulted my host! Gathering a building party, he takes me out back, just beyond the concrete apron of the parking area, and directs construction right then and there of a teepee. When I start to apologize, Frank says, “No, no, kemo sabe. A teepee will look good for the tourists.”
Taking me down the road a full fifteen paces, Frank says “And this is our Wedding Chapel.”
“¿Qué? ”
“Why should Las Vegas get all the wedding business?” he asks rhetorically. We go inside. I can only admire the tidy rows of tiny pews.
“Do you only plan on marrying midgets?”
“We’ll expand later as business picks up,” he promises me. “Oh, here’s Pastor Daniel!”
Dressed in faux papal raiment, the pastor weaves his way down the aisle and vaults clean into the third row of pews.
“Ouch! That must have hurt,” I suspect.
“He does have a fondness for the grape,” admits Frank.
We get Pastor Daniel laid out on the floor, at which point he proceeds to shake the rafters with his sonorous snores. We decide to let him sleep it off, quietly closing the chapel door on our way out.
Frank also provides an explanation of Indian names. “Indian names,” he points out, “depend on what catches a father’s eye. The previous generation were a little irresponsible in that respect. They would go to the cantina to celebrate the birth of a new baby. Whatever caught a brave’s eye on the way back to his wigwam became fodder for naming.”
Frank’s Indian name is “Buffalo Turd Drying On Prairie.” And his is one of the better names.
One night the cooks include “buffalo taters” among the food selection. Just about to dig in, I find out that “buffalo taters” are the sexual organs of male buffalo. “Catch ya later,” I laugh, shoveling mine back onto the serving dish.
Writing this, I’m purposely avoiding one of those “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” laments. It’s already been done. I’ll settle for a cogent narrative.
In 1862, government surveyor John Hamilton spelled the demise of the Indian way of life in the Dakotas. Standing erect on the seat of a Conestoga covered wagon, he surveyed the miles of endless steppe. Not seeing anyone, he declared, “A land without people for a people in need of more land!” Legend has it, a prairie dog then spooked the oxen pulling the wagon, jostling Hamilton off his feet. Falling to the ground, the poor man hit his head on a rock. He spent the remainder of the journey laid out in the back of the wagon with a major concussion.
“Justice is swift,” say the Indians.
A wily chief of the previous generation canoodled a willowy blonde into being his wife— one of three, the other two coming from the indigenous clan. The result is the tallest member of the Stolichnaya, Swift Wind Mitchell. The first time I met him, I only got a partial view. It was when I went to the lavatory adjacent to the mezzanine. Crapper stalls proportioned for squat Indian braves, Swifty was using the stall at the end, the door wide open, his knees, shins and black leather boots sticking out for my inspection.
“Nice boots!” I commented.
“Him USAF fighter pilot,” Frank later informed me, reverting to tribal syntax. “Him 24 years old. Him originally called Breaking Wind, but name changed when he become pilot!” It made perfect sense that they would be proud of Swifty, he has a regular pay check.
Nice as he is, some of Frank’s idiosyncrasies get on my nerves. Every night, he counts all the silverware, not concerned that we have stolen any, but worried we have accidently thrown some silver plated fork in the trashcan. Three loaves of wheat bread on a shelf over the knife rack, Frank instructs us every morning which one we should be using for the day. To prevent any one loaf from getting staler than the other two. He keeps sending squaws to my room. But not for what you might think. They are there specifically and only to give me foot massage. Period.
Since we’re still vacuuming carpets and making beds in prep for the Grand Opening, Swifty and I get assigned mattress cover duty. “Drunks throw up,” Swifty explains laconically. “But not on our mattresses they don’t !” Before housekeeping comes in and makes the beds in each room, we pull a waterproof white latex cover over each jumbo-size mattress and zip it tight. “Very nice, but too small to use as a condom,” Swifty assures me.
“You must be a USAF fighter pilot,” I reckon.
Grinning, he doesn’t deny it.
While wheelchair accessible, someone forgot to put a handrail in front of the casino for people with canes. In a mad rush, four Indians and I spend all day outside in windbreakers, jeans, work boots, gloves and baseball caps, using a blowtorch to soften up the soil and a posthole digger to make holes, a mountain of wooden posts awaiting plantation. “It doesn’t need to last,” I point out. “Next summer you can put in something permanent, with nice blocks of cement anchoring each post and all that good stuff. This is for now. Anything you sink into the ground ain’t goin’ nowhere!” My companions grunt in agreement.
How many Indians does it take to dig a posthole? How many you got?
Considering the size of our garbage, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we attract feral cats and coyotes.
Prejudice hurts. Frank’s wife Sunflower is as emotionally scarred and neurotic as he is. “Mrs. Persecution Complex,” she’s sure we are all ganging up on her. Since she spends more time at the kitchen door than anyone else, the cat population sees her as some kind of god. In homage, they leave her a prize catch: a nice big juicy rat carcass. “These cats are terrorizing me,” she complains, “leaving dead animals on my doorstep!”
“They’re sharing.”
“Let them go share with someone else!”
Listen, nothing surprises me. For four years, I was married to Veronica a k a “Mrs. Johnny Appleseed.” Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and weddings, she gave each lucky recipient a plant. A growing, thriving green being in need of constant care and attention. The salespeople at Herman’s Plant Farm knew my Veronica well. Finally, my next door neighbor Tom said, “If your wife gives us one more fucking plant, I’m going to get a rifle and shoot the bitch!”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “When you say ‘the bitch,’ do you mean Veronica or the plant?”
Meanwhile, the sun beats down relentlessly on South Dakota. In the middle of trucking away dirt in a wheelbarrow, I am confronted by the first normal-looking person I’ve seen since I arrived here. Her name is Charlotte or “Charlie.” She’s the blond, 14-year-old daughter of the mural painter they have brought in from San Francisco. “What ya doin’?” she drawls, hands on hips.
“Why aren’t you in school?” I counter.
“Christmas break.”
“Oh goody!” I sneer. She laughs.
Your normal teenager, Charlie prances around the casino, flirting outrageously. Mostly with me. Dig it! An Indian casino needs an Indian mural. Native art. So they get a bearded hippie white guy high on marijuana and paint fumes to come paint it. At what point does “authenticity” enter their picture? I wonder.
“We own the casino,” Frank points out. “That makes it the real deal. This is the Indian way.”
Miss Bossypants, Charlie takes to shoving her left hand in my face, fingers splayed, barking commands like a Sergeant-Major: “Come to dinner!”
“Frank says they need you in the office!”
“The shower curtain in my room is stuck! Come unstick it!”
“Shaving your head only makes you look younger. It doesn’t change your actual age!”
“Hey, mister, your fly’s open! Hee hee hee! ”
Raiding the children’s library, she sits in the lounge in the evening bouncing her foot, reading aloud children’s fairy tales with licentious innuendo in all the wrong places. “Jack and the Beanstalk ” she’ll say, giving me a knowing look.
“Little Miss Muffet sat on a… tuffet…
“Jack and Jill went… up… the… hill…” implying unspoken shenanigans of an unseemly nature.
Hey, we like each other! We also have the lounge completely to ourselves since her daddy Mark and all the Indian braves are crowded into the teepee out back smoking pipes of peace. “Come sit here,” says Charlie, scrunching up in her leather chair.
“Don’t be ridiculous! We’ll be sitting on top of each other!”
“I can sit in your lap, daddy!”
Her constant teasing has me noticeably engorged. This greatly amuses Charlie. Standing up and marching to my chair, she plops innocently into my lap, a giant grin splitting her rose-petal mouth. “Oops, what’s this?” she asks, brushing my crotch with her fingers. “Oops! Daddy, it’s alive! What’s in there?! ”
“What do you think is in there?” I grouse.
“Let’s look!”
“Let’s not!!!”
I mean, even South Dakota has laws.
*
Like flies on a cow pie, the casino begins attracting some very strange birds. First to arrive is Eduardo Ramirez, ostensibly from Cartagena. “If you’re from Colombia,” I ask him, “why is your accent East L.A.?”
Whatever his mumbled answer, I never get it. He does give me his card:
Spiritualist Van Gogh
Turning it over in my hands and examining the pristine back side, I ask, “What exactly does being a Spiritualist Van Gogh entail?”
“Coming to the Way of the Paint,” he exclaims, his left eye drifting disconcertingly off into space.
“Which you do how?”
“Such questions!… Mumble…”
“What’s that?”
“YOU SNIFF THE PAINT!” he shouts loud enough to disturb the coyotes in their lairs. Piqued, he proceeds to unload a backpack full of aerosol spray cans.
“Okay, okay, I get it!”
Next comes Baroness Van Pelz, just in time for me to inform her “We’re not open.”
“Look me up online,” she suggests in a throaty baritone, her Boston Terrier peeing on the black rubber welcome mat, made in Brazil. Once I google her, I indicate to Frank, “Jesus! She’s worth so much money, we should rent her a room!”
“I’m leaving my entire estate to Fluffy,” says the Baroness, busy signing the hotel register at the front desk.
“Good for Fluffy,” I reply, handing her a magnetic keycard.
“Come, Fluffy,” she says, leading the Boston Terrier to the elevators.
Eduardo and I exchange glances. Hearing his dog whistle, Eduardo is visibly salivating.
With Mark of San Francisco supine from an overdose of cannabis, it falls to me to find a replacement muralist. “I do it, I do it, I do it,” insists Eduardo, brandishing an entire suitcase of paint in spray cans, “if you put in a good word for me with the Baroness’s dog!”
“It’s a deal!” I lie, desperate.
“What should I paint?”
“Paint what Mark was painting,” I propose, showing him the sketches. “It’s Custer’s Last Stand. There’s Sitting Bull. There’s Custer…”
“He was gonna paint him like that? With an Indian brave slicing Custer’s throat with a Bowie knife?”
“It’s a representational depiction,” I explain lamely.
“Oh! Representational art!” enthuses Eduardo. “This I know! I can do this!”
“Please do!”
In a 16-hour methamphetamine rush of spray paint, Eduardo finishes the mural.
With more than a little trepidation, Frank, Sunflower and I unveil it before the rest of the tribe.
It’s good!!! Yellow and white cotton fields as far as the eye can see. Indians picking baskets and bales of cotton. In the distance, on a hillock, General Custer ruminates, gazing toward the clouds. The entire left side of the painting is a single giant Texas longhorn steer, floating in a glorious cloud of white light.
“Is great!” comments Hare Running With Tail On Fire. “What it means?”
With bated breath, we turn to Eduardo. “Is representational,” he explains serenely, a successful artist at peace with the world. “Is the last thoughts of General Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn: ‘Holy cow, where did all these cotton-pickin’ Indians come from?’ ”
As Fluffy’s dog walker, I now make the formal introduction. Listen, she and Eduardo get along like a house on fire! Within a day, they’ve published the banns. Less happy is the Baroness. “How can anybody marry a dog?” she gripes uncomprehendingly, marching angrily into the Wedding Chapel.
“We-ell-l-l,” explains the sheriff, making it sound like a word of three syllables. “It’s this new Obama legislation, legalizing marriages between consenting adults in non-heterosexual relationships.”
“Yes?” asks the Baroness.
“I just told you,” says the sheriff. “They’ve legalized marriages between consenting adults in non-heterosexual relationships. It’s all legal. That don’t mean I like it none.”
“The dog is four years old,” babbles the pastor, drunk as usual, weaving before our eyes. Grabbing onto a pew to keep from falling, he adds “That’s way past the age of consent in dog years!”
“I don’t mind them getting married!” replies the Baroness shrilly. “Fluffy knows her own mind. What I object to is the two of them consummating the marriage! Who knows where this young man has thrust his ding-dong!?”
“I find that offensive…” complains Eduardo.
“Woof!” says the dog.
“Not my problem,” says the sheriff.
Needless to say, I lose my job as Fluffy’s dog walker.
*
The tribe knows they need to pipe in music. It says so right on page 3 of the “How To Run A Casino Handbook.” Unfamiliar with the nuances of elevator music, the Stolis have chosen Gustav Mahler as their auditory muse, providing some range in their choice of ambience:
Ponderous (molto bene) – Symphonies 1, 2 and 3
Boring (langsam) – Symphonies 4, 5 and 6
Screechy (purgatorio) – Symphonies 7, 8 and 9
Totally nuts (scherzo) – Symphony 10, conducted by Eugene Ormandy
*
What a difference four days make! Grab the skis and snowshoes, it’s a teeth-chattering 8° outside and snowing.
Opening night! Under a strident moon, wolves howling, members of a dozen Indian nations from up and down the West Coast come east to check out the competition. We also have Islandic tennis pro Sigúr Isaksson and his stunning girlfriend as our guests, lending international élan to the gathering, even if they arrive flat broke and we must comp them both the room and free chips. Purgatorio Mahler groans quietly in the background. Charlie, my little minx, comes dressed in a tartan skirt and cashmere sweater, butterscotch-colored kneesocks and weejuns, her flaxen hair pulled back in a ponytail. Nose in the air, small hands clenched, she stalks the premises like a tigress. Our medical staff consists of Dr. Horatio McPherson, M.D., who proceeds to get falling down drunk, telling me, “Well, I’m bored and certified, so I guess you could say I’m board certified!”
For the sheriff, it’s a quiet night: Only one domestic dispute on the floor of the casino, as well as expelling an itinerant priest who calls himself Willie Graham. His schtick is performing a benediction over the slot machines in the name of Christ.
Warrior braves stand two deep at the bar imbibing alcohol by the bottle, before stumbling to the gaming area and staring glassy-eyed at the spinning roulette wheels or the bouncing pairs of white dice. The croupiers and dealers are all Indian squaws. Every one of them either ignores this exhibition of boorish behavior or shuts down her table and leads the miscreant into a corner— or an available broom closet— for a quick bout of surreptitious lust.
What would Opening Night be at a casino without a mathematical genius from M.I.T.? Who, using superior algorithms, intends to break the bank. Spiky hair, an ill-fitting suit, way too much dandruff and eyeglasses like Coke bottle bottoms, ours is straight out of Central Casting. Name: Richard Robinson Claverhouse. “I’m putting everything I own on red,” he exclaims gleefully. As the roulette wheel clanks out a bright green zero, Poor Richard deflates like a toy balloon.
Then there are the four merry Jamaicans dressed in après-ski and knit caps, very tall, enormous pearly white teeth, huge hands, who swing their arms to warm up and cadge drinks off the trays of passing waitresses. They say things like, “Dis place be aw’reet. So glad t’ see you, mon! Is demon cold out. We passin’ by, we hear good things ’bout dis place. Yo’ got a car? You gi’ us a ride to Rapid City!”
Curious, I ask how they got here without wheels.
“We snag a ride, mon.”
“Do you work?” I ask, emboldened by their party-hard demeanor.
“Sho! Clear we work. We work for Bose, all of da highs an’ none of da lows!” they guffaw, punching each other. An in-joke, apparently. They seem pretty high already. I tell the staff to keep them out of the hotel wing, visions of them rifling rooms, taking showers, squatting and generally raising Cain floating like sugar plums all through my head.
“Hi-i-i-i-i!”
Wherever I go, this happens. There’s some sexy, incredible, eligible lass who smiles, flirts and comes on to me JUST WHEN I’M TOTALLY ENGAGED IN OTHER BUSINESS. “Hi!” I say. I love this lady! Thirty years old, great brown eyes, gorgeous nose, high cheek bones, wide mouth, round little chin, a sweet figure in a cheap fake fur jacket, nice hands, pink gloves, bleached jeans, brown leather western boots. She sports sandy, windblown hair. Arching her blond eyebrows and laughing at me, she stands there waiting while I silently curse myself for pulling security. And, of course, I get called away to explain house rules to a group of 20-something frat boys. This always happens!
When white men in suits proceed to inspect every inch of the facility, I naturally assume they’re the Feds. It turns out they are lawyers representing the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, here to ensure that we in no way perpetrate the coinage “Redskin” in either our décor or our activities.
At precisely 10:32 p.m., with military precision, the front doors swing open and bearded young men in kaffiyehs, bearing AK-47’s, flood the casino, stamping their feet and shaking off snow. They smell of jasmine, sweat and hashish. They also seem momentarily bewildered by the scene. Gracious as always, our serving staff offers them hors d’oeuvres: pigs-in-a-blanket, bacon wrapped asparagus on a toothpick, pulled pork fritters. Our visitors, Muslims, are not amused. Their leaders quickly organize them into groups, instructing them in Arabic to put an end to this nest of Satanic, despotic idolatry. Even when the intruders physically intervene— grabbing the ball off the roulette wheel, seizing the dice— the Indians go right on drinking and carousing.
“We hereby declare this area as the Islamic Republic of South Dakota!” decree the insurgents, hoisting the yellow and green flag of Hezbollah atop the espresso machine. Even this outrage scarcely makes a dent in the bacchanalia. Only when they begin blowing up the Mercedes automobiles parked in the back lot, do the Indians go on the warpath.
“Come with me,” says Frank. Opening the door to the kitchen, he counts heads, then arms us with pig-stickers, butcher knives dipped in swine blood, sides of bacon and various dismemberment utensils. Our two most intrepid young warriors, Robin’s Egg Atop Coyote Poop and Plays With His Thingy, exit the larder wearing the heads of wild boar. Turning out the lights, the wily redmen stalk the heavily armed militants, slicing throats, stabbing and castrating with vehement determination. Many an Arab extremist is sent into the waiting arms of his 72 virgins in Paradise.
“Git some! ” enthuses Frank, the banzai call of soldiers since the reign of Alexander the Great. Rarely have I witnessed a more unequal battle.
Nary a shot is fired before an eerie silence descends on the premises, the air pungent, sticky with blood.
“Indian anger knows no bounds,” say the Stolichnaya.
Weary, I sit on a twisted barstool and drink coffee while the Stolis collect scalps. Charlie climbs out of a pantry and offers me a slice of lemon pie, but my mouth is so cottony, I find it impossible to eat.
“I’m not going to die without losing my virginity!” Charlie announces, obviously traumatized, clutching my hand. Since the elevators are out of service, we trudge up three flights to her room. Locking the door and putting on the chain, we undress, my trusty pig-poker— with its scimitar blade— always within reach.
I do her. Therapeutically. To great acclaim, her rosebud mouth plastering me with kisses. “Can’t we move to a state where they let you get married at, like, thirteen?” she asks me conversationally.
“So now you want to marry me?”
“I’m just sayin’…”
*
Flying home, momentarily B.B.E.— Befuddled By Events— I forget and try to pass through airport security with an honorary Indian tomahawk in my shoulder bag. This is seized by the TSA with a great deal of consternation.
*
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