Short Changed  I'm at a casino with others. Playing nickel slot machines, I have just lost three hours or three days wages. I'm leaving with a man. I see two nickels in a slot machine coin tray. I drop them in the five-card draw poker machine. I go for it all, holding an eight and ten of hearts. I draw three eights. My four eights pays 46,000 nickels. In order to cash out I must first put down one ace, which means to choose a red or black ace. The ace is for approval, it seems. It makes no difference on the payout, but has to occur. I do this, and want to cash out. The hopper on the machine, which I know as the kicker, is empty. A man from the casino comes around and I try to get him to help me with my payout. He won't help or pay me. He says I was in the group of three guys who were loud or had caused trouble earlier. I argue honestly that I wasn't part of that. He still won't cooperate, so I grab him by the t-shirt with both my fists and threaten to expose his unfair treatment of me by announcing the man's actions to all the people in the casino. He seems to change his mind, then. I have given him a time limit, and he returns in a minute with another man who starts to unlock the machine. This doesn't come to fruition. It takes too long, or the man doesn't pay me. I turn and yell to the people around me about the incident that has just occurred, and how the man discriminated and was unfair to me even though I wasn't in a bad group. A few people turn and look at me, listening. Their reaction is not strong. No one is rallying behind me. One woman asks about my statement. I explain to her what happened. Not only is she unsympathetic, but she also says I'm gay, like the three guys. I'm flustered and mad: none of us are gay! I leave out a door, crossing a road. I say to a woman that 'quite' is not a word that gay people characteristically say, but that people from Australia do. I say this to her as if she's dumb for not knowing it. I walk down concrete stairs around the edge of a building. There is a woman in front of me. I may walk too fast and step on her heels. I don't go around her, though the steps are wide enough to do so. I see my classmate Sara Henry, who looks a lot like my classmate Heather Beckers. She is in a gray car full of people. They seem to be going to school. I go inside the building. Two young men are painting the floor blue in places, using long dowel-like sticks with mop-like heads. I steal a stick, wrestling it away from a man. I run, trying to spread the blue paint all over the floor, or track it on the floor. I trip over some large pies that are red and blue in color, and try to spread them all over the floor. I come to a stairway that doubles back. Students of the play Grease are on the stage in a rehearsal. I run up the stairs, disrupting the rehearsal. I yell at and threaten the director and the actors and actresses. I say emphatically that the play sucks, the acting sucks, and that they're doing it all wrong.