BIG CASINO

(This one is for Josh, a.k.a. Starbuck11, who requested it some time ago and gave me a start by asking for it to be set in a casino that involved slots – now there’s a Freudian thought! This story is total fiction – a lot of the stuff I write either happened to me or to someone I know, but this one is completely new – a Virgin, just for you, Josh! I hope you like it and that it’s good enough for you – if not, give me another idea and I’ll try again!)

“Yes, mother…Yes, I’ll take care of everything myself…No, mother, nothing will go wrong…Yes, mother, …”

Tom was on his side of the bed talking to his mother – AGAIN!!! – and I was on my side of the bed, fuming, as usual.

Tom and I had been together for about 3 years, but up until about a year ago, as far as his interfering, dominating, controlling, bossy, bitchy old bat of a mother knew, we were only “roommates” – Tom wouldn’t come out to her - “Oh, I can’t possibly tell her, she’ll have a heart attack!” was his whining cant. When I told him last year that if he didn’t tell her I would, and that I’d move out the day after I told her, he finally gave her the good news. She didn’t die – unfortunately – but she did go into orbit, and had been working assiduously to break us up ever since. Her latest gambit, which came to light about a month ago, was to sign up for a weekend bus trip with the other seniors in her building, to some casino someplace and insist that Tom go with her. She had called tonight – just in time to bring to a screeching halt the bit of romantic canoodling that I had just gotten off to a good start – to discuss details for the trip, a few of which were mixed in with her whining, worrying, and general kvetching.

I was all set for Tom go off by himself to take his mother gambling, along with the rest of the blue-haired old biddies from the senior complex where she lived, but for some idiot reason he insisted on me coming along. “It’ll be like a honeymoon!” he crooned at me, a silly smile on his foolish face. Casinos are not my thing in the first place, and I considered it a mark of how little he knew or cared about my likes and dislikes that he would EVER think of this little soiree as a ‘honeymoon’!

The appointed day came – all too soon to suit me – and we parked his car at the senior complex, and boarded the bus, along with his (already) whining, screeching, complaining, and overreacting mother – to see her in action, you would swear that Leona Helmsley had risen from the grave. I was first up into the bus, ostensibly to help her up the steps, and I saw that there was a single jump seat just behind the driver, so I quickly grabbed that. With Tom and his beloved mama seated directly behind me, I did not escape all the fumes from