Men, I rolled into Oklahoma, driving on the Will Rodgers tollway as dusk was falling. I pulled off the tollway in Miami, Oklahoma, a border town with three or four Indian casinos. I happed to pick the smallest one because it served as a Miami Indian cultural center. It had a narrow hallway filled with slot machines and a slightly larger room for more slot machines. When I went to take a wee, I walked through a multipurpose room where Okies and the ones who love them were country dancing to a fairly cool prairie band. A long table of wallflowers checked me out as I sauntered by them, but I didn't want to pay the fiver to stay and dance with them. I didn't find any of them attractive, so I didn't go for one of them.
When I walked into the casino, a dark haired woman wearing it long, wearing blue jeans for her jacket and her trousers, caught my eye. She was playing a keno like game, and I touched her shoulder and asked if I could sit down. She said ok, and so I did. She had eaten up most of a twenty over the last two hours, and since she was down to her last five dollars of credit, when I bummed the first of many cigarettes off of her, I decided a few seconds later to run a dollar into the bill counter.
Men liked this woman, who I call Heathen for the sake of this story. The security guard gave her pony tail a yank, and she was wearing a camoflage hat she had borrowed from a fishing buddy, with a real hook glued to her bill. She had loaned her spare car to a couple she thought was her friend, but she had to go pick it up tonight because they had failed to make the payments. Another friend had disappointed her because that friend had borrowed 100 dollars with no repayment made in a timely manner. She tells me about her wonderful daughter, her lovely and supportive father, and her plans to drive her new Cougar up to Kansas City to redecorate a friend's new home, for a nice decorator's fee.
People were calling her right and left, and at first she hadn't picked up the phone. But the phone was too persistant. She kept offering me smokes, pressing the screen keno balls and the play button, and talking to people, keeping a conversation going to me. Before hanging up with a fellow I think had called himself Bob, she said, "Well, take it to the lab !"
I started to talk about her hot tub, "Wouldn't it be nice to sit in your hot, hot water and drink a beer from a cooler packed with cold, cold ice?" I suggested.
"That sounds really good," she answered.
"Do you have a cooler?" I asked?
"I live on a farm," she said.
Right then, the security guard who had pulled her hair butted in and informed her, "Hello, there's a woman in the back office who needs to speak to you. You can make an application for a player's card." And she went off with him.
I finished smoking the last cigarette she had given me. This time she had taken her keys, purse and cigarettes. Twenty minutes before, she had left them on the machine, as if she knew I would keep them safe. And I did. I went to the johnny, and then I went looking for a free Dr. Pepper.
The security guard stuttered when I asked for a free Dr. Pepper. "They're only for people who are gambling." "Okay", and I gave him a dollar and he gave me fifty cents back. I caught a glimpse of Heathen, who was sitting at the same kind of machine, only taller, with a tall stool instead of a chair. I had noticed a number of the machines had somewhat pretty women plunking down coins, but some spider sense told me not to go talk to them. For some reason, spider sense didn't talk loudly enough for me to stop what I did next.
So I walk over to her at her new machine and say, "Hey, I'm leaving. Nice to meet you."
"Hey, nice to meet you too."
I do this all the time, and I'm rarely denied. I hold my arms wide and ask, "Can I have a hug?"
She tittered. "I'm not the huggy sort." And so I left the casino. No big deal. She wasn't the huggy sort.
So I go out to my car, checking in on the dance through the window of the multipurpose room door. My spider sense said to keep on going. And I did. But not fast enough.
I was jotting down notes in my journal, sitting in the front seat of my car, when a pair of man stopped my my window. One of them held up a badge, shiny, no leather backing, to my window. I roll down the window.
"Hello sir. Can I have a word with you? You can sit there or you can step outside." So I step outside, always wanting to cooperate with the law. Even if I haven't verified the lawman's status.
"Sir, were you bothering a woman in the casino. Something about asking her for a hug?"
"Well, I was talking to a woman. But I think I left when I noticed I was starting to bother her."
"So where are you going?"
"Off to California to take a job. I'll be heading off on the Tollway."
"Sir, do you have any identification upon you?" Always wanting to cooperate with the law, even if the law doesn't look old enough to have graduated from police academy, I open my wallet and give him my Michigan Driver's License.
"I'm betting you're from Detroit. That 'Love Detroit' bumper sticker is a giveaway, isn't it. I don't know what it's like in Detroit, but here in Oklahoma, we don't ask strange women for a hug."
He lets this sink in. I give him a look of profound understanding. "Sir, you can come over to the tribal police car or you can stay right there." His friend was watching me from the hips on up. You can always suss which way a guy is going to run by keeping an eye on the hips. I decide to stay right in front of my driver's side door.
The young man starts up the tribal police car, puts it in reverse, backs it up, and then pulls it forward to get a better look at my license plate. It also blocks my truck from going into reverse. He runs my id, and frowns at me through his open police sedan window. Nothing, not even an arrest warrent due to failing to pay a Texas or New Mexican seat belt violation ticket. He runs my plates. Nothing, and he frowns at me with a bit of a scowl at the corners. He hadn't caught me riding dirty, and I knew my record stood as clean as a basketball coach's whistle. After all, every job I get now comes with a piss test, a credit check and a criminal background check nationwide and several states, and I get a new gig almost every three months now.
So he puts the tribal police car back into place, and walks over to his backup and me. He hands me back my driver's licence, and I put it back into my wallet and I put my wallet back into my back pocket.
"Sir, I'm sorry to have bothered you. But you are barred from entering the casino. I bet you shouldn't be asking women for hugs in California, either. You're better off going to a strip club."
"Thank you, sir", I offer.
It didn't take me long to find the tollplaza, and I accelerated up to the Will Rodgers tollway speedlimit, a generous 75 miles an hour, and I didn't stop again in Oklahoma until I almost ran out of gas in downtown Tulsa.
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