A Gamble

“Make me a drink that tastes like Detroit.”

It’s early still, a little after 7 o’clock on a Saturday night. I’m by myself at the counter of a cocktail bar in downtown Detroit, the only patron. I’m fresh off a day-long academic conference up in Ann Arbor and on a whim drove down to Detroit because I had never been.

People say this is the worst city in America. A hellscape of abandoned construction and overgrown lots. I asked the guy back at the hotel bar where I should go on a Saturday night if I wanted to experience Detroit. He points me here.

Well not right here exactly. I doubt he knew about this bar. I don’t remember the name of it, but they were supposed to have a good whiskey list. They do, but after chatting up the barback for a quarter of an hour she invites the bartender over to make me something special. He asks what I want and I tell him. He gives me a taste of Detroit.

The day before, I went to pick up a rental car from the airport in Syracuse where I live. Syracuse is not big or interesting enough to be in the running for worst city in America, but no one wants to live here just the same. I’m a little giddy because I haven’t been on a trip by myself for a while and I always love trying out new cars that I don’t have to take too much care of. Whitney and I negotiated a mid-level rental — since I was getting some funding from my department for the trip we could afford to splurge a little. The guy at the counter gave me the keys for a black Dodge Charger. Whit hates it, and to be honest I do a little too, but only in the way that I also hate butt rock from the 00s — because I knew that I should.

So I drove that brawny bit of automotive nationalia nine hours to a hotel halfway between Detroit and University of Michigan. The conference was small, but had a couple names that I desperately wanted to introduce myself too. This also contributed to the giddiness, that awful game of networking — the balance of supplication and self-aggrandizement that I still can’t get the hang of. Anyway the conference is short and successful. I have pizza with one of the names — but I don’t think she’ll ever remember mine. I get back to the hotel around dinner time.

I feel brave. I feel energetic. And I feel bored. So I drive down to Detroit.

The hotel bartender suggested I try to find parking somewhere near the casino. There’s some open lots he says that aren’t too expensive. This is what I do. The Charger sounds great flaring around at low speeds on Detroit’s wide, broken streets. The weather is mild, spring just warming up. I see a lot, I pull in. The attendant meets me and asks for cash, which I don’t have. He looks around like his bookie’s on the way before leaning in and telling me that his competitor’s lot is across the street. I let my eyes follow to where he’s pointing. It’s an empty lot, no other cars at all, but the gate’s open.

“He’s gone for the weekend, so there won’t be a charge. If you’re headed back tonight, just park there.”

I thank him and head on over, put the car in park and step outside.

I‘m past giddy now. I feel flush. Greektown Casino is a block away, right across the street from this gothic mass of a church. I’m scrolling through Yelp. Bar, bar, restaurant, strip club, casino, restaurant….

So I head over to the casino because I’ve never been to one and what the hell. Something’s going on at the church though. Parishioners are spilling out its open doors. They hold pamphlets or books, I’m not sure, and a couple of them are wearing purple fringed shawls. One comes up to me and invites me in.

Look, obviously some kind of holiday is happening, but I’m not Catholic or whatever this is. I’m just happy for the hospitality, and I go in.

The nave of the church stretches, purple and gold, from the huge double doors, through high-backed pews to a painted plaster altar of Mary stooping over row upon row of flickering candles. Half a dozen kids are up there wearing light jackets and holding long matches, lighting their own candles under the watchful eye of the Mother. A few old women sit in prayer off by themselves. It’s not a full house, but it’s welcoming all the same. A woman at the front is handing out the matches those kids have. She looks at me, smiles, and invites me to light a prayer.

The light in here, I should mention, is incredible. It’s soft, warm, low, and bright. Even though the ceilings are lofted and even though the weather is warm, you feel while you’re in there like the second you step outside, you’ll see your breath.

I accept the offer, light a match and kneel like a pagan before Mary. I do not pray, but I leave that church a christened pleasure boat, champagne and soot dripping from the bow.

It doesn’t feel right to gamble so soon after receiving Mother Mary’s grace, so I skip the casino and head on over for that taste of Detroit I mentioned earlier. The drink he makes me is good. Rye, punt e mes, bitters, and black pepper. It’s spicy, dry, ugly, and gritty. It’s a variation on the Toronto, which is already a variation of the Manhattan, my bartender explains, but he’s not so ostentatious as to name his own version in kind. Like I said before, the bar’s empty, and after a couple drinks I ask the bartender for a recommendation on another drinking hole. He sizes me up and recommends a place a few blocks up.

“Kind of a hipster spot, you’ll like it.” So that’s where I head.

The walk over is wonderful. The night has fallen completely now, and the temperature drops enough to pinch my face. The part of Detroit I’m in is the part that feels like Batman. Huge, sweeping buildings that look like they weigh more than a mountain each. Everything is concrete, and hard, hard pavement. Nothing looks designed with human bodies in mind. The whole city is an overdetermined monument to a magnate’s idea of indomitable.

I do, in fact, end up liking the hipster spot.

Two drinks later I’m tipsy and decide it’s time to gamble. Because I’m a good boy and because, despite the tenor of this story, I’m risk averse, I withdraw twenty U.S. dollars from the ATM and promise myself that’s all I’ll spend. Whit and I are both grad students, we can’t be blowing money and I certainly can’t afford another vice.

I am a lamb in a stampede on the casino floor. It’s tacky and roiling. The blackjack and poker tables terrify me, so I hunker down near the old folks with high waists and dying cigarettes. I put five dollars in a nickel machine. I look for instructions, find them but do not read them because it seems like the machine is going to handle things for me, pretty much.

I wager a nickel. Pull the lever once. Win fifteen cents, lights and sounds go off, it feels good, and I max my next bet.

I do not know what the max bet is on a nickel slot. I do not know the max payout.

I pull the lever.

A riot of colors now, cascading and caterwauling. I look up and I see a list of the top winnings for the week on this particular machine. The spot third from the top is blinking:

$233.57

I have won two hundred thirty-three dollars and fifty-seven cents. An old lady is looking at me as I slam the CASH OUT button until it spits out a receipt. I take the receipt over to the machine and, miraculously, it deposits $233.57 into my waiting hand. I shove the money, like a thief, into my pocket and speed walk off the premises.

I was in the casino for less than ten minutes. Detroit, Mother Mary, or that Motor City Cocktail took my nickel and gave me a couple c’s for my trouble. I don’t feel tipsy anymore. I am radiant.

By the morning I will be retrieving vomit-soaked hotel towels from the cup holders of my rented Dodge. I will be worrying about whether the rental agency, or worse, Whitney will notice the distinctive smell of chili dog and bile in the floormats. But right now, I am gliding. I am floating. I am all magnanimity.

So, I head on back to the first bar.

It’s packed now, to the gills, with patrons. If I was back in Syracuse, I’d have left. But I’m in Detroit, and I’ve got cash, so I get to the bar and shout over the noise.

“I WANT TO BUY EVERYONE HERE A ROUND.”

“WHAT?”

“I WANT TO BUY EVERYONE HERE A ROUND!”

The second time I shout, the bartender recognizes me from before. He’s blitzed with orders, and he thinks my name is Jared, but he’s smiling now. I explain what happened at the casino. There’s an old-looking brass bell behind the bar that he rings, and I mean rings. Everybody standing at the bar counter pauses. The bartender shouts “THIS ROUND’S ON JARED! HE WON BIG AND HE’S NOT FROM HERE!”

The rest of the night is a Baz Luhrmann montage and I’m Ewan McGregor. Everybody is buying me drinks in return for my trouble. I’m laughing with strangers, I’m explaining what video games are, I’m talking about porn stars and Christianity. I bounce back over to the hipster spot, do the same thing there and end up closing the joint out with two new friends whose names I wouldn’t have remembered a minute after hearing them. They might be hipster drinks but they are hitting me hard and I have to get home tomorrow to Syracuse.

Now I’m wandering back in the general direction of my car. The plan is this: get something to eat, get in the car, lock the doors, and sleep it off until I can drive back to the hotel my department is paying for. On the way, I find giant corporate art and, in a trash can next to a piano, a colorful umbrella that I retrieve in case it rains.

Across the street from the piano is a hot dog place that’s not just open at 2 a.m., it’s busy. I head in, order a chili dog and fries to soak up some of the drunk. On my way out, there’s a panhandler who asks for money. I sit down on the curb next to him and offer him my fries. We share the meal, we talk, and I realize either I am transcending this plane, or I need to get to the car fast.

I make it. I unlock the thing, get inside, and pass out.

The next thing I see is the pavement. I’m hanging out of the car door in the same parking lot. There is vomit on my shirt, in the footwell, on the ground outside the car, and, yes, filling the cup holders. I wait as long as I can before driving the thirty minutes back to the hotel, puking twice along the way. It’s 5 a.m. before I get back to the hotel room and checkout is at 9, so I run the bathtub, put my shirt in, run back down to the car with hand towels that I, madly, stuff into all the crevices I can find, before taking the hardest four hours of sleep I’ve ever had.

It’s morning, but my hotel is in no-man’s land. There isn’t even a Walmart to offer cleaning supplies, so I settle for a six pack of wipes from the gas station and a 25 cent vacuum for the car. It takes me two hours, but I wipe down every inch of that stupid Charger. There is a little bit of black pepper on the shift lever.

The cleanup works. The rental service never charges me for damages, the hotel never calls me for the towels, Whitney doesn’t even notice the smell.

It’s a miracle.

I’m trying to remember the whole night on the drive back. There are more gaps in the recollection than I’m comfortable with. There’s this one conversation I had with a Detroit native at the first bar I bought a round of drinks for everybody. This dude was just completely taken with me. He bought me three shots of Willets, not a cheap whiskey, and he wanted to know everything about me. What I was doing here, what I thought of his city, whether I liked the cold, and what I’m doing in an English program.

He asks me, “ Where are you from man?”

He asks that after I had been talking about how cool Detroit seemed. How much I’d wanted to visit for so long, and how welcoming everybody is. I wonder if he’s asking because he doesn’t here people talking his city up all that often. I wonder what answer he’s expecting.

“From Syracuse,” I tell him. “Syracuse, New York.”

“Aw damn. I’m sorry man.”