Bad Beat

    Every gambler has war stories about their bad beats. There are literally millions of them. They are both glorious and tedious, depending on your mood or perspective. So here's mine from tonight.

    I've got the Seahawks minus 6.5 against the Eagles on Monday Night Football. There's about 18 seconds to go in the game and the Eagles have the ball on the Seahawk 40, down by 14. I can see it coming, but I convince myself that my second sight is mere paranoia. Carson Wentz drops back to pass and chucks a Hail Mary into the end zone. The Seahawk defender knocks it down, but into the waiting hands - single hand, actually - of a Eagle receiver. I don't even remember who it was. There are 11 seconds left. My heart drops, but I remind myself that the Eagles can still win this thing, they can still tie the game in regulation by kicking the extra point, successfully performing an onside kick and somehow completing one more Hail Mary to end the game. So of course they won't go for two. That wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. If there was no time on the clock, okay: maybe they would do that. But not with a legitimate, if remote, chance to square the game up. I breath a little easier.

    Of course, for whatever inexplicable reason which I will never in my entire life comprehend, the Eagles go for two. They run it in successfully with literally no resistance from the Seattle defense. The Seahawks end up winning the game by 6 points, and I lose my bet by the hook. I was betting fairly small, but that's just not the point. 

    There is no glory without defeat, no pleasure without pain or love sans hate. That's the lesson from tonight folks. I'm going to sleep easier knowing that my suffering is both profound and utterly banal. 

RIP Maradona

This time, I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. To me, he was the greatest. And surely he was an eagle among functioning addicts, soaring higher and farther than most of us could ever dream. His end is our end. Fly on, Diego. 

Condo Conversion, Chapter 6

           I kept nodding off at the wheel. Redwood City is a good hour and a half drive from Rohnert Park, and that is if there's no traffic. Today, of course, there was traffic. When I reached Petaluma I saw the sign: Rohnert Park Five Miles. I was there but I wasn't. This made me even more tired. And when I'm really tired every minute spent concentrating feels like ten. I slapped myself across the face to stay alert, but it did little good. The car sputtered violently. I couldn't be out of gas already, could I? Dear God, I thought, not now. Was there ever a good time?

           Finally, I arrived.  I left everything in the unlocked car: jacket, briefcase, case file.  I was hustling to the door of my little bungalow apartment when she came out of nowhere: Marion.

           “Well hello,” she said with a strange smile on her ashen, withered face.  “You must be my new neighbor.”

            I did my best to fake it.  “Hello, Dear.  Why yes.  My name is Peter.”

            She held out a shaking hand and I took it.  She began talking.  I wasn’t really listening, but some of it sunk in.  She was ninety-two years old.  Her grandchildren visited her regularly, as well as her son.  She wondered if the rumors that the apartment complex was going to be sold were true.  I told her I didn’t know, even though I probably knew more about it than she did.  She kept talking.

            “I guess it doesn’t matter much from my point of view,” she said.  “When you reach my age you don’t think too far off into the future.”

            That made sense to me.  It must be liberating in a way, standing on the edge of the abyss, when every day really could be your last.  There was nothing left to defend, even your own existence. 

            She kept talking and I stopped listening.  All I wanted to do was jack off and go to sleep.  It had gotten so pathetic for me that I actually visualized it like I used to visualize fucking.  Me jacking off.  Afterwards, the land of dreams was only a few moments away.  I could hardly contain myself. 

            But I didn’t want to be rude.  What if today was her last day and her final human interaction was with me?  I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I was inconsiderate.  She had lived through world wars, raised a family, been somebody important to other people.  I had nothing to do all day.   Nobody relied on me. 

            There was a pause in the conversation and I took it.

            “Well Marion, I guess I’d better be going, then.”

            “It has been so nice meeting you, young man.  It would give me the greatest pleasure if you would join me for dinner one night.”

            I was tired and had to extricate myself from the conversation.  And who was I to turn down a free meal, anyway?  “I’d love that,” I said enthusiastically.

            “Good.  Tonight at six thirty.”

            “I’ll be there,” I replied.  I had seven and a half hours.

A Quote From Eknath Easwaran

 "Even the most confirmed addict, whether to tobacco or alcohol, can get a fierce thrill of satisfaction when he walks away from them."

A Quote From Alan Watts

 “Man is in a certain sense redeemed by his passions.”

Condo Conversion, Chapter 5

I was running out of money when Lars called ten days later.  I felt as if my desperation permeated every aspect of the conversation.
            “Pete, I’ve got a case in Redwood City for you.”
            “What is it?” I asked.
            “A DUI.”
            “Why don’t you want it?”  His firm specialized in DUI’s, five grand for the first few hearings and associated motions, ten grand more if you wanted to go to trial.  Steep.  But they were among the best in the business.  Despite their prices, I believed they fought the good fight. 
            “He can’t afford our fees.”
            “What can he afford?”
            “Fifteen hundred: you do the early hearings, convince him to take whatever deal they’re offering and you’re finished.  His arraignment is tomorrow.”
            “I’ll take it,” I said.  I hardly had the gas and bridge toll money to get to the courthouse in Redwood City.  But Lars assured me the client would greet me with a check when I arrived.  Hopefully it wouldn’t bounce, like numerous others had in the past. 
            Lars and I had entered law school together eight years earlier.  We had been, I would say, contemporaries and equals.  Neither one of us showed much drive to compete for the best grades.  We both had an interest in criminal law.  But at the same time we were more interested in women and partying than the rigors of academia.  But we had our talents.  We did well in moot court and could hold our own in classroom debates.  Both of us graduated and passed the bar exam on our second try.  There was no shame in that.  There are people I went to law school with who are still trying to pass the bar and are on their tenth go around. 
            Two years ago he was calling me for advice on how to get cases when you didn’t know shit and had no connections.  We were basically in the same boat then, each of us trying to establish a private practice as young attorneys.  But since that time he had taken an unpaid position with the Public Defenders office and had gotten hired by a criminal defense firm in downtown San Francisco.  He had half a dozen trials under his belt, one of which he had won outright.  He had surpassed me as a lawyer in every way.
            And while that fact bothered me a bit I didn’t hold it against him. He had always been decent to me and I responded in kind. And anyway, here he was, bringing me business. Fifteen hundred bucks was a big score for me. Shit, my rent was only five hundred a month.  
 
            The alarm went off at six o’clock but I was already awake.  Whenever I have to get up early in the morning I can’t rest properly.  They call it sleep anxiety.  I used to be a chronically late person in college and before.  Now I’m paranoid about tardiness, oversleeping.  Lateness is one of the hallmark insults of our age; nobody likes being on the receiving end but we all seem to do it.  It shows how little respect we have for one another and ourselves.  A culture can often be assessed by its observance of the little courtesies.  And I don’t generally think much of ours.
            The Volkswagen sputtered and shook as it has a habit of doing in the mornings.  Of course, I had the steaming cup of Starbucks in my right hand as I drove with my left.  The burning liquid shot out from that tiny hole in the plastic top and splashed on the cuff of my shirt.  Great.  I hadn’t been out of the house for five minutes and my shirt was already soiled.  The essence of futility.  It cost a buck-fifty to dry clean.  I have a hard time dealing with the little things. 
            I stopped at a red light and looked into the car next to me.  A pretty woman was sitting in a black BMW smoking.  She took a long drag of the cigarette and blew out the window.  As she did so, her eyes closed and a look of utter tranquility came over her countenance.  Satisfaction: her little piece of contentment.  I eyed the burning cancer cylinder lasciviously.
            I had given it all up six months earlier.  Well, everything but drinking, of course.  That was inviolable.  I had quit smoking: cigarettes and dope.  I had quit cocaine and all the ancillary drugs that would dart into my life from time to time.  Although I had been pondering this move for what seemed like an eternity, the decision, looking back on it now, appeared sudden and capricious.  What was the point?
            My hope had been that my lack of motivation had stemmed from sixteen years of drug abuse.  Maybe if I quit, the reasoning went, I would gain clarity and the inspiration to become somebody: the person with all that potential, the person my parents always wanted me to be.  I’d have more energy, exercise, think positively, fuck on a regular basis.  I’d be a member of society instead of the guy living comfortably on the periphery, a Pluto in the cold depths of the outer solar system: sometimes a planet and sometimes not. 
            But the reality was far from the ideal, as is the case with most things in life.  There were a number of positive aspects that were evident from the start.  I didn’t wake up vomiting three mornings out of seven.  That was nice, because I was getting really tired of that.  My paranoia was reduced by eighty percent.  The nosebleeds stopped.  I no longer spent time crouched over dirty urinals trying to snort that insidious powder.  I slept well and felt refreshed when I woke up in the morning.  I experienced and remembered dreams again, and realized how much I had missed them.  These little changes were very nice. 
            However, as time went by I noticed that certain other things did not change.  My place in the solar system, my irregular orbit around the sun, remained the same.  I didn’t become more engaged, more enthusiastic about my possible identity as worker, earner, head of family, member of society.  I was in fact more comfortable than ever with my peripheral role.  Instead of desiring more money, responsibility, possessions and authority I found that I was relatively comfortable with less.  I reread Walden and got far more out of it than the first time. 
            It soon dawned on me that the drugs had been holding me back, only not in the way that I previously believed.  Before, I thought that there was an achiever inside of me that was waiting to break out, but was being restrained by my bad habits, a Prince Hal just waiting to become a King Henry.  The truth was that this person within was a figment of my imagination; I had always been averse to the notion of a regular life.  Even as a child, I can remember a cold feeling of detachment from the goals and ambitions of the other kids.  “I want to be a pro baseball player,” one would say.  “I’d like to be a movie star,” said another.  I never wanted to be anything but free to do my own thing.  For a short spell, I thought I’d like to be a Catholic priest, which was for me the equivalent of wanting to be a philosopher, but this notion withered even before puberty.
           
            There was a large group of people standing out in front of the twin wooden doors of the courtroom when I arrived.  I was five minutes early for the official start of court, which meant I was probably thirty minutes early.  Court starts when the judge says it starts.  Most judges take their time and start late, wasting the valuable time of the public that pays their salaries. This always pissed me off.
            Since I didn’t know what my guy looked like I just blurted out, “Is there a Tyler Green here?”
            A nice looking kid, early twenties, emerged from the crowd.  He was six feet tall, athletically thin, had pale white skin and thick, curly, blonde, almost yellow hair.  He looked like a young version of the guy who starred in the 1970’s TV show “The Greatest American Hero.”  I almost mentioned that to him as he offered me his hand to shake, but I refrained.
            “I’m Tyler,” he said.  “You Peter?”
            “I am.  Sorry to meet you under these circumstances.”
            “It’s not your fault.  I’m just glad I could afford your services.  That reminds me.”  He stuck his hand inside his white collard shirt and pulled out a bank draft (not a personal check!) in the amount of fifteen hundred dollars.  He had even spelled my last name correctly.  He handed it to me and I put it in my back pocket.  I immediately liked this kid.
            “Thanks,” I said, trying to be casual, trying not to let him know that this money was my life’s blood.  Ninety-nine percent of attorneys would have had a contract for him to sign, something stating exactly what the fee did and did not include.  Most attorneys would have covered their asses in case the client bitched to the State Bar later on.  I never bothered.  This was the apex of foolishness, but I just couldn’t be bothered.
            “So what’s going to happen today?”
            “It’s simple.  Today is what they call the arraignment.  It’s when you plead guilty or not guilty.  We’re obviously pleading not guilty.  The deputy district attorney in charge of your case will give me initial discovery – that’s some of the information they have gathered against you, the police report and what not.  We’ll set a future court date and we’re out of here.”
            “Will it take long?”
            “No.  I’ll try to push my way to the front of the line.  Once court starts it probably won’t take fifteen minutes.”
            “That’s great, cause I’m so hungover I can’t believe it.”
            I already knew that.  He reeked of it: that smell of last night’s latent booze still coursing through his system.  It’s a strange, familiar smell, almost metallic. 
            “Tough night, huh?” I inquired.
            “The toughest.”
            “I know how you feel.”
            We sat down on a bench outside the courtroom and waited.  We got to talking about the arrest, what he had been doing that night, what blood alcohol test the police had administered: all the basic B.S.  Then we got to talking about real things: his girlfriend, where he went to college, what he was doing for a living – it turned out he too was unemployed.  He really was a nice kid.  He even inquired after my own life, which is rare.  Most people only want to talk about themselves.  My father once told me that if I ever wanted someone to think that they had just had a wonderful conversation with me I should let them do ninety percent of the talking: some of the best advice I’ve ever received.   But Tyler was different.  He was genuinely engaged.  Time flew by pleasantly. 
            The courtroom was opened and the crowd flooded in.  We stayed back and took our time.  Hungover people don’t like crowds or enclosed spaces.  I knew that all too well. 
            As I had promised, I pushed my way to the front of the docket and had his case heard second.  Defendants who have an attorney generally get heard primarily; the unrepresented rabble waits to be called by the Judge.  The appearance was uneventful. Tyler had chosen a blood test and the results weren’t in yet, so I served the deputy district attorney with an informal request for the results when they arrived.  I had Tyler out of there in ten minutes, initial discovery in hand and a court date eight weeks off.  We walked outside together.
            “Thanks man,” he said.  “It went just like you said it would, and real quick.”
            “Piece of cake.”  I handed him one of my cards.
            “See you soon.  I’m going home to get some sleep.”
            So was I.

Addict Recommends: (Film) A Dream of Kings (1969)

The primary criticism against this film is that Anthony Quinn essentially reprises his performance in Zorba the Greek. And to some extent, I can see where the two roles overlap somewhat. This observation, however, does not detract in the least from the significance of this film, especially from the point of view of this blog. On the contrary, any similarity between the two characters only lends heft and validity to the importance of A Dream of Kings, a movie which is largely overlooked.

Quinn portrays Matsoukas, a larger than life fellow determined to suck the marrow out of his existence. He spends all his nights carousing, getting drunk and gambling in the backroom betting parlors and card rooms of Chicago. He sleeps in late and seems to work in his job as an abstract personal “counselor” (basically he gives sage advice) about five minutes a day. Although a heavy gambler who suffers severe and sometimes terrible swings in fortune, he is a strict man of honor who revels in his great losses with the same appreciation as he does his wins. He is beloved by his cohorts – who feed off his energy – but despised by his wife Caliope (portrayed by Irene Papas, also of Zorba fame) who resents his freedom, his exuberance and most of all his ethics and ability to abide an elevated, if complicated, code of existence. She probably also resents his philandering, which of course he executes with gusto and panache.

Matsoukas is the father of three children: two sweet, healthy girls and a boy who is terribly ill and is diagnosed with mere months to live. Our protagonist, however, refuses to accept the word of doctors and science, knowing in his heart that if his son could only breathe the clean air of Greece and walk Mount Olympus, the strength of his warrior ancestors would enter his body and cleanse him of all sickness. In the tradition of great characters in narratives like these, (Axel Freed of course comes to mind) Matsoukas believes that the power of his will is strong enough to overcome any obstacle, regardless of the odds against.

Unsurprisingly, Matsoukas lacks the funds to travel to his homeland and cure his son. And so he stakes it all – his marriage, his friendships and his honor – on a desperate scheme to make the dream a reality. It is a grand story and a solution straight out of ancient mythology, set in the small and gritty life of an outstanding yet ordinary man.

Addict Recommends: (Film) Mississippi Grind (2015)

         Although there are no genres of film I enjoy as much as movies about gambling and addiction, the ones about road trips come pretty damn close. (Some of my favorites include Lolita, Easy Rider and The Blues Brothers.) So you can imagine my glee when I came across Mississippi Grind, a movie which combined the elements of gambling, drinking, womanizing and the epic American road trip in one compelling package. 

         The story centers on two characters: Gerry and Curtis. Gerry is a down on his luck real estate broker, played perfectly by the King of the down and outers Ben Mendelsohn. (Whose work in season one of “Bloodline” sets the standard for portrayals of the dirt-bag functioning addict.) Gerry runs into Curtis – played by Ryan Reynolds in a role with real depth – in a casino in Iowa one night. Gerry is almost immediately drawn to Curtis, and the two end up getting drunk at a local bar. The next day, they win a bundle at the dog track, only to lose it back quickly. While getting drunk yet again, Curtis explains to Gerry that “Machu Picchu” time is fast approaching. This is his slang for time to hit the road and get lost. The two become so inebriated that they are thrown out of the bar while trying to play pool for a thousand dollars a game. Outside, Gerry is stabbed by a mugger who incorrectly believes he possesses a wad of cash. 

          After being threatened by his female bookie Sam, to whom he owes a tidy sum, Gerry realizes that Curtis is right and it really is time to hit the bricks. They plan a road trip south through the cities and towns of the Mississippi. They will gamble their way ultimately to New Orleans, where a high stakes poker game awaits. Curtis stakes his newfound friend, who pads his bankroll by stealing the office petty cash. In a scene which is both touching and heart breaking, Gerry fills his cat's bowl to the brim with cheap dry food. It is one of those scenes that makes us wonder when in the world he will come back. It also reminds us of the age old truism in fiction, that Chekhov’s gun must always be eventually fired. The cat, as is good and proper, also returns in this narrative. 

          Their journey takes them to St. Louis, Memphis, Little Rock, Tunica and of course the Big Easy. Along the way they encounter hookers, gamblers, tough guys and losers. They frequent back room card games, bet horses at the racetrack and live out of seedy hotel rooms. Money is won and lost. Expectations are disappointed, fulfilled and exceeded in a full and glorious display of the capacity of human nature. What more could you ask for?       

          Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck – a rare film making duo – were inspired to make this movie by their experiences on riverboat casinos in Iowa. But their command of the language of the gambling narrative is masterful and complete. They even have a scene where they feature, in an interesting if taciturn role, writer/director James Toback, who wrote the original screenplay for the greatest gambling movie of all time: The Gambler (1974), featuring James Caan, Paul Sorvino and Lauren Hutton. (See my recommendation for this legendary film in these archives.)

          The directors avoid employing the now tired, moralizing, cliché ending. Instead, we are granted closure both unexpected and (perhaps) unrealistic, but which somehow works perfectly. Ultimately however, the film proves in conclusion what we already knew at the beginning: that gambling isn’t strictly about winning or losing, plusses and minuses. It is about the highs and lows of the experience. It is about the knowledge that there is never “enough.” And more than anything, this movie stands for the proposition that at the very end of it all, to the chagrin of addicts of everywhere, the best we can ever hope for is to break even. 

Condo Conversion, Chapter 4

         I hadn’t been laid in ten months.  And as is the case when you haven’t been laid in a really long time, I got to thinking about the last girl I had been with, Allison McRooney.  I was walking around Rohnert Park, trying to get a sense of my surroundings.  It was very flat, with wide boulevards that could accommodate far more cars than were in fact using them.  Having moved from crowded San Francisco, I liked that.  There is a surplus of space in Rohnert Park. 

          But the dominant impression is that it is flat.  Flat like we were taught people believed the world to be before Columbus, even though they didn’t.  Flat like a football field.  I walked over to the Safeway, then back around to the Raleys, then over to the Albertsons: three supermarkets and dozens of retailers and restaurants in one gigantic superplex.  Residents of this archetype of urban sprawl called it “downtown.”

          An angry old man rolled by in his electric wheelchair muttering something to himself.  On the back of the chair, on a flexible pole about three feet high, there was a little orange flag waving in the wind.  I recognized him from the day before: he was one of my new neighbors.  A moment later, a young handicapped woman rolled by in her electric wheelchair going the opposite direction.  Two young skateboarders cruised by me, hopping their boards nimbly over the curb.  A pattern was emerging.  Rohnert Park was a place built for rolling through.  This explained the endless number of shopping carts that littered every corner of the town.  Maybe I should get a little chair for myself, I reflected.  It might help me fit in.

           The thought of Allison’s gigantic breasts continued to haunt my mind as I aimlessly trolled the aisles of Longs Drugs.  And her ass; God it was huge.  When she was on all fours it was like looking at two Virginia hams sitting side by side: a glorious vision, it used to make me hungry with lust, all that magnificent, surprisingly taut, perfectly proportioned flesh.  

            She used methamphetamines.  She must have been the biggest girl in the world who used as much meth as she did.  Who knows how much bigger she would have been if she didn’t?  But her habit was one of maintenance and not absolute excess.  She was able to hold down a good job as an investment banker and appear to the rest of the world as if she were relatively normal.  She took two big hits in the morning before heading off to work, would rush home for a half-hour lunch of two more, and would be home at about eight o’clock after a few drinks with her coworkers and smoke a few more hits before getting three hours sleep.  On weekends she would catch up on her slumber, staying in bed until long after noon.  It was amazing, really, how she balanced her entire life around that little glass pipe.  

            I was mainly into coke at the time, but would indulge with her now and again to try to attain some spiritual connection.  People on speed can only relate to other people on speed, and I wanted desperately for her to relate to me.  There were times that she told me she loved me.  Once she even wrote a poem for me, proclaiming her love as infinite.  But I knew that it could never be true, even when I didn’t.  She needed an asshole to push her around, let her know she wasn’t worth shit, and I was basically a nice guy who wanted to tell her she was precious.  It was doomed from the start.  Still, it stung like a motherfucker when she left.  I have only been in love twice in my life.  She was one of them.  

Condo Conversion, Chapter 3

3

The day after I settled into my new place, I was invited to dinner by another old friend, James.  I have known him since I was about ten years old.  Most of my best friends go back that far. 

            James had married Jenny, his high school sweetheart.  There weren’t many couples from way back then that had made it this far; I was happy to see them happy.  They made a handsome couple.  James was an all-American looking guy, six feet tall, symmetrical features and a full head of dark brown hair.  Jenny was only a little shorter than him, long curly brown hair, porcelain skin and a slender, lithe figure.  Although she had given birth to their first child, Chloe, only half a year earlier, she had immediately regained her figure.  James was lucky. 

            It used to make me uncomfortable, being the unattached guy going over to dinner at the married couple’s house, especially without a date.  Sometimes I felt like I was missing out, and that secretly they pitied me.  But I had recently gotten over my insecurities.  I was happy with who I was becoming for the second time in my life, the first being my wild adolescence. 

            Jenny held Chloe in her arms and then handed her to James while she stirred the pasta sauce.  I love pasta.  Then he carried her around for a while rocking her back and forth in his arms.  I played with her a little, too: lightly pinching her soft rosy cheeks.  She smiled at me.  Most babies like me, and animals, too. 

            James put her down for a moment and she scurried around the house on all fours.  We were drinking beer, following her around, making sure she wasn’t getting into too much trouble. 

            “You’ve got a cute kid,” I observed.

            “She’s a handful,” he responded.  There was an uncomfortable silence.  I could tell he was deep in thought.  “I gotta ask you something, Pete.”

            “Go ahead.”

            “I want your honest opinion.  Don’t pull any punches.”

            “All right.”

            “I feel like I’ve become boring, one dimensional.  I love Chloe, more than I can tell you.  But ever since she was born, it’s as if a part of me shut down.  All I talk about is the kid now.  Remember those long talks we used to have when we were young, drinking until all hours of the night?”

            “Those were good talks.”

            “They sure were.  We solved the world’s problems back then.  I never have conversations like that anymore.  It’s just eat, shit, work, feed the baby, clean up the baby’s shit.  I feel like time is speeding up, as if I’m hurtling toward nonexistence.”

            I understood where he was coming from.  Often I’ve observed the very phenomenon he was describing manifest itself in the lives of other comrades.  What is it about having a child that robs some men of their creativity and vitality?  Was it always this way?  Or is it a more recent development in contemporary life, the result of increased demands?  Not all fathers turned out like this.  But many of them did. 

            “That’s nonsense,” I told him. “Your existence is more relevant now than it has ever been.  You have the privilege of being responsible for another life.  What could be more important than that?”

            “You’re right,” he responded, pleased.  “Thanks.”  He patted me on the back and took a long drink off his beer.

            And I wasn’t placating him.  I had meant what I said.  It’s strange how two competing ideas can be equally true in the same instance.  One of life’s tradeoffs.

            Dinner was great: green salad with vinaigrette, walnuts and bleu cheese, penne in a thick meat sauce and good red table wine.  We were all sitting around the living room finishing off the second bottle, my elastic stomach bulging with fullness.  Chloe began crying from her crib in the bedroom and both parents excused themselves for a moment.

            “Take your time,” I said, semi-comatose.

            There were a number of magazines resting on the coffee table.  I picked one up; it was the spring circular for “Terracotta Shed, Bed + Bath.”  I began flipping through it.  Inside, there was the bathroom collection: the “classic console,” “accessories,” “monogrammed towels,” and “fixtures and sconces.”  It looked like nice stuff, very expensive.  “Obtain the bathroom of your dreams,” the magazine exhorted.  In the back was a price guide to all the products, complete with serial numbers to help the buyer place orders.  This guide was several pages long.  Here and there an item was circled: the “double console,” the “linen closet” the “mini vanity” and the “full length mirror.”  Also completed was an order for towels, monogrammed of course.  There was a neat little section where the buyer wrote out the appropriate letters and then chose from a variety of fonts.  It was Jenny’s handwriting.

            I soon left.  The baby was screaming.  It was good timing for all.  I promised to return soon.  Nice people.

            I went home to my tiny new apartment and looked around: tattered reading chair, 1980’s era love seat and cheap overstuffed bookshelves.  A true bachelor’s home, it declared “NO WOMAN HERE!”  I went to the bathroom to take a leak.  Afterwards I washed my hands and splashed my face, ruddy from wine, with cold water.  I tried to imagine the items from the bathroom collection in my inadequate space.  Nope, it just wouldn’t work.  I was glad.  I liked my apartment the way it was.  Inadequate: it reflected the way I felt about myself and about the world I lived in.  I threw a porno entitled “Dirty Sluts Young and Tight” in the old-school VCR and turned up the volume.  Good thing those seniors don’t hear too well. 

My Kind of Seminar

           This makes me think I’ve been missing out on something all these years.

Condo Conversion, Chapter 2

2

            I had just moved out of the city.  San Francisco is truly beautiful, but after ten years I just couldn’t take it anymore. 

            I was essentially unemployed had been living with my parents for three weeks.  Imagine that: thirty-two years old and living with my parents.  I was looking for a permanent residence.  My Mom took me to a few she found in the local paper.  Cute places, nice bungalows in Sonoma County with neat little yards in the front.  She didn’t know what I wanted.  She wanted me to get married.  I wanted to get laid. 

            I wasn’t going to pay those prices.  Twelve hundred dollars a month for a one bedroom: that was ridiculous.  I’d be back in some job I hated in no time.  But that’s the idea, her hidden, subconscious agenda.  If I committed to an expensive place I’d have to get a real job.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m a mamma’s boy at heart.  I love her dearly and would gladly sacrifice my life for hers if given the choice.  But she sees things a certain way.  She tells me to “get a life.” 

            “I have a life,” I respond.  “Anybody who is alive has a life.”

            “You call that a life?”

            “Yes.”

            “That’s not a life.”

            “What is?”

            “A good job, a home, a wife and a family.”

            The thought of it made me nauseous.  Not necessarily the idea of having a family, mind you; but the idea of having the kind of family she would envision for me.  She is a very traditional woman.  I am not a traditional guy. 

            But I had to go somewhere.  I couldn’t live at my parents home for much longer.  There’s nothing wrong with living with your parents.  I don’t quarrel with the notion.  The Europeans and South Americans have been doing it for generations.  But I like to live a certain way and my Mom likes to see me living a certain way.  So our purposes collide.  And like I said, I’m a mammas boy.  I don’t want to make her sad, which my constant presence in her life and the reminders it brings sometimes does.  My Dad cares, but is too pragmatic and wise to get in the middle of things.  Good for him.

            I play poker at one of the local clubs about twice a week.  Usually, I coordinate my visits with Mike Williston and The Admiral.  Mike is my oldest and one of my closest friends.  He’s also thirty-two, tall, strong, unmarried, and has lived with his parents in Marin County since he got out of college.  The Admiral is a seventy-five year old millionaire who made his money with a famous chain of seafood restaurants “Admiral Jim’s Seafood Bonanza;” hence the nickname.  Later on, toward the end of the eighties, he got out of the restaurant business and bought up a bunch of apartment complexes.  It was very good timing.  I spend a lot of time with The Admiral and Mike.

            On this particular day, I was up about two hundred bucks and in a good mood.  Mike, the best player of the three of us, was about even and The Admiral was pushing the whole table around as he has the capacity to do from time to time.   He was up about a thousand.  We were playing no limit Texas Hold-Em, two hundred dollar buy-in.  It’s a good game.  There are a lot of losers at the table, guys for whom the money only goes one way. 

            Mike was not catching cards and was getting bored with folding every hand.  When this happens, he tends to get a little goofy to entertain himself. 

            “You know, Peter lives with his parents,” he said to the lone female sitting across the table, a pretty, petite Asian in her early thirties.

            “I do not,” I responded.  “I’m just staying with them for a while.  You live with your parents.”

            “Dude, don’t be embarrassed by it.  Take it from me, you have to embrace your living situation if you’re gonna make it last.  It’s no big deal.”

            “I never said it was a big deal.  But I don’t live with them.  I’ve been there three weeks and was looking for places online today.”

            “I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Castellano are thrilled to have their baby boy back.”

            “You know that isn’t true.”

            “When I was younger,” The Admiral chimed in, “I used to be surrounded by beautiful women.  Now I’m surrounded by strange young men.”  He loved to talk about his sexual conquests of the old days. 

            Mike changed topics and began regaling the table with an awkward but hilarious personal story of a recent trip of his to the strip clubs.  We played for about another hour, during which I lost everything I was up while Mike went on a three hundred dollar winning streak.  The Admiral was getting tired: he had been playing for ten hours.  It was pretty amazing, really, a guy his age pulling those hours at the table.  We got up as a group and left.

            We walked out to the parking lot together.  The Admiral only lived a few minutes from Mike’s house, so they usually drove in to play together.  He pulled me aside.

            “You’re looking for a place to live?”

            “Yeah.”  I was glad he asked, hoping maybe he had something cheap for me.

            “I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a great apartment available in Rohnert Park, and I’ll rent it to you for only five hundred dollars a month.”

            “Is it a one bedroom?  I can’t live in studios anymore.  Too little space.”

            “Yes, it’s a nice, small one bedroom.  Perfect for you.  There’s only one catch.  It’s in a fifty-five and older community.  But once it’s been vacant for thirty days, which it has, anybody can move in there.”

            It only took me a moment to think about it.  “I’ll take it: sight unseen.”  Beggars can’t be choosers.  What the hell did I care how old the neighbors would be?  At least they would be quiet and unthreatening. 

            “Oh, there’s another catch.  I guess that makes two catches.  The complex might be sold in a few months.  Then you’d have to move out.  But if that happens, I’ve got another complex I can move you into right away.”

            There could have been ten caveats, a five hundred dollar a month apartment in Sonoma County was a good arrangement by anybody’s standards.  I didn’t feel like looking for a job and needed to score a bargain.  The Admiral had just presented exactly the opportunity I was looking for.  “It’s a deal,” I told him.  “When can I move in?”

He was thrilled.  He picked up the phone and called his management team.  “I just rented out number 127, have it ready for a move-in sometime tomorrow,” he said, then hanging up.  “See that Mike, I won a thousand and closed a transaction.  I’ve still got it.”  He was thrilled.  It didn’t matter how much money The Admiral had; he simply loved making deals.  It reminded him that he was still on top.

Opportunity Lost

          On Wednesday, July 1, near Marathon, Florida 29 bricks of cocaine with a total weight of 35 kilograms and worth approximately 1 million dollars, simply washed up on the shore. This is not the first time something like this has happened in the world. The town of Bluefields, Nicaragua was enriched beyond all imagination by repeated discoveries of such packages, castoffs from Columbian speedboats fleeing law enforcement. Well informed fisherman of the remote town set aside their cumbersome nets and began fishing for what they called "white lobsters."

          What would you do with all that blow? I can only imagine the myriad possibilities and the opportunities that such a find would present. Certainly, death by heart attack is a possible scenario at the end of such a rainbow. But I'd like to think that a small fortune would also possibly come my way, if I handled things just right. 

          But obviously whomever discovered this once in a lifetime windfall has little in common with me. Because they called the police, who brought in the U.S. Border Control. 

          Sigh. I mean, really? Some people have no imagination. 

A Quote From Stonewall Jackson

"I am more afraid of King Alcohol than of all the bullets of the enemy."

Condo Conversion, Chapter 1

          I wrote this novella, entitled “Condo Conversion” about twelve or thirteen years ago. Since then it has just been sitting, gathering dust, digitally speaking. (There must be a hard copy somewhere with some literal dust on it.) Because it is thematically appropriate for this forum, I have decided to serialize it here. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. 

                                                1

There is no inherent honor in poverty.  Being broke doesn’t mean that you know something more than the next guy.  Financial suffering may beget knowledge of a kind, but it doesn’t infuse a man with moral superiority.  There is no implicit dignity in penury.  Comfort with indigence is not the equal of self-respect.  But poor people love to tell you just the opposite; it helps them justify their existence.  Some even wear t-shirts that declare proudly, “School of Hard Knocks.”

            But there is even less honor in mediocrity, in grinding out a living unhappily –silently desperate, detached from anything approaching a true calling.  The content bum on the street is more of a man than the chump in middle management who drives his Honda Accord to work everyday wondering where in the world his dreams ran off to and trying to pinpoint the moment in time that he finally gave up. 

            I don’t care what you do for a living.  It doesn’t really matter.  You could be a lawyer, doctor, politician, food server, heroin junkie, statesman, dentist, garbage man, receptionist, horse jockey, welfare recipient, Mafia strongman or thief.  If you are what you do, if you are passionate about your occupation, you are truly blessed.

            For many years, I searched for that one thing that I wanted to do above all others.  And when I failed to find it, I decided that I would just commit to something that vaguely interested me.  I’d bet it all on red; and damn it if I wasn’t going, through the sheer force of my own will, to fit that little white ball into a red slot.  It was a good strategy.  I did my best.  My parents, mentors, friends and neighbors – sometimes even a stranger on the street – justified my decision by telling me what a good one it was.  How could I be wrong when everybody else told me I was right?

            But the truth is all I’ve ever wanted was to be left alone: to work as little as possible, to pursue the things which truly interest me but may not garner great financial success, to ignore the desires of outsiders.  “Of course,” says the third party.  “Who doesn’t want what you describe?  But we all have to grow up sometime.”  I don’t resent this logic; I embrace it.  The majority of my life I have grappled with this eventuality with even more of Kierkegaard’s fear and trembling than I do with the abysmal eventuality that is inherent in my own mortality.  Perhaps this is because I erroneously view the latter event to be far away.  To me, life has always contained two deaths: the second is the day your vital functions cease to operate; the first is the day you admit you’ll never accomplish the things you always dreamed and decide to settle for less. 

            Alexander the Great one day in the city of Corinth came across the renowned philosopher Diogenes.  Familiar with the strange man, the Emperor deigned to speak to the impoverished cynic. 

“Diogenes,” he said, sitting high atop his horse.  “Have you no favor to ask of me?”

“Get out of my sunlight,” the philosopher responded.

Upon riding away, Alexander was heard to remark, “Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

            I’d love to be rich.  Dining out regularly and at the best restaurants would give me great pleasure.  Driving a fast, sleek automobile is an experience that I know to be exhilarating, one of the essential American joys.  Regular sex with beautiful, classy women certainly comes at a price, a price I would gladly pay if the means were at my disposal.

            But given the choice between relative poverty and a life of meaningless toil that contains no essential joy I choose the former.  My only real ambition is free time.  So, rather than compete for something that I have no honest desire for, I will absent myself from the games.  I am aware that I will never be Alexander.  I guess I’ll try to be more like Diogenes. 

Lazarus Rising and a Lesson in Persistence

            I had not seen Annabelle in several months. After we graduated she had gone up to Humboldt to attend College of the Redwoods and I was doing a semester in junior college at home. We had been thick as thieves in high school. She was the best female friend I ever had in my life. That remains true to this day. All the other women I’ve been that close with have either been family or a significant other. Annabelle and I were practically bros, if such a thing is possible. She sure talked like a dude, especially when recounting her sexual escapades. And she could party harder than any guy I ever met.

            It was Halloween night, October 31, 1992. The Jerry Garcia Band was playing at the Oakland Coliseum, in what was the guitarist’s second and final return from the edge of the abyss of existence in six years. His next foray into serious illness, three years later, would sadly be his last. It is impossible not to acknowledge here the significant role that heroin addiction played in his terrible health and ultimate demise.

On this day however, he was still with us and he was ready to roll. He hadn’t played publicly in a year, and Deadheads from coast to coast coalesced in the Bay to welcome back their spiritual leader. And although Annabelle and I had no tickets to the show and only about fifty bucks between us, we decided to head out to the parking lot to see if we could score a pair. I think we both knew it was likely a fool’s errand. But the worst that could happen is we would smoke some dope around a bunch of happy hippies. What was the harm in that?

We arrived in the parking lot about an hour before the show was to go off and we wandered around. Disheveled female fans held up one finger and melodiously uttered the word “miracle” in an attempt to obtain a free ticket. Dealers coursed through the crowd whispering their wares: doses, shrooms, weed. Annabelle and I stopped and smoked a bowl and enjoyed the scenery. A guy walked by holding a filled nitrous oxide balloon. There was a buzz in the air. You knew it was going to be a grand event.

We tried to buy some tickets but everybody was selling them for a hundred or more. Darkness fell quickly and soon it was seven o’clock, only half an hour from the scheduled show time.

“Well Annie,” I said, trying to sound philosophical about the whole thing. “Maybe we should just take off then.”

“What are you fuckin’ talking about, man?” she replied in disbelief. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“You want to just hang out in the parking lot for a while? We could suck down a couple balloons.”

She looked around and then up at the arena. “Nah man. We’ll just go up there and sneak in.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Don’t be a pussy, man,” she retorted, sounding disgusted. “Let’s head up.”

The Coliseum sits atop a great mound, the base of which was largely encircled by a steep hill which was entirely ice plant. We walked up the hill with some difficulty, as the greenery is thick and somewhat difficult to maintain footing upon. But with some effort we made it to the top and were along the side of the arena. And as it was dark and we were pretty far from the crowd and security on the walkways nobody had really noticed us ascending. And indeed, we were against glass doors which opened from the inside when an event was over. Of course, that did not help us at the moment from the outside, where these portals of egress were nothing more than flush glass.

Unbelievably, a guy wandering around on the inside, a common fan, walked up to one of the doors three or four sections down from where we were standing. He turned around and slumped against the glass where he began to eat a hot dog. He wore a Dijon mustard yellow corduroy jacket. Annabelle and I hustled down to the door he rested against and knocked. I could see security down the long hallway, but they were pretty far away. The guy turned around and looked at us.

“Let us in bro,” Annabelle pleaded.

The guy looked left and right and saw no resistance. So sure enough he pushed the bar which opened the door and we slipped right in. It was ridiculously easy – the essence of simplicity.

“Thanks bud,” I said brusquely.

We slipped by him and hustled, but did not run, inside to where the crowd was gathering. It was probably three quarters full at that point. And we were in the clear. It was the perfect crime.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and my heart sank. Of course there was no way it was all going to work.

I turned to see our gatekeeper, smiling. I only recognized him by the jacket because I had never gotten a good look at his face. He was older than us, but only by maybe ten years or so.

“I’ve been involved in a lot of cool shit at shows,” he said. “But never anything like this.”

Annabelle hugged him and I let out a triumphant scream. I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pushed him back and forth in a kind of bonding gesture. The next thing I knew a roar went up from the crowd and Jerry began singing, “How Sweet it Is To Be Loved By You” by Marvin Gaye.

“Shit, I gotta go find my people,” he said. “Have an awesome show.” And with that, he turned and walked away.

A Quote From Edgar Allan Poe

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

Uncool Addiction

          I always had a healthy relationship with video games growing up. Like most kids, I enjoyed them, and spent a fair amount of time in the arcade at Straw Hat Pizza playing my favorites Gauntlet and Spy Hunter in the 1980’s. In the 1990’s, my girlfriend and I had an obsession with Galaga – which was by then an old game – and would play every time her mom took us to Ted’s restaurant in San Anselmo, which was often. In the 2000’s, while living in the Ingleside neighborhood of San Francisco, the homies and I would stay up until 4:00 am on a nightly basis getting high and playing NBA Jams, NHL 97 and Sled Storm on the Play Station, our eyes glazed over with weed and strain from looking at the television too long.  It was tough to wake up on time many mornings after these marathon sessions.

            After my tenure at the Ingleside house however, I gave up on video games. They seemed to be a thing of my youth and a wasteful pastime. They also seemed singularly uncool and certainly not a hobby I would find in people I admire. I’m pretty sure Charles Bukowski. Pete Dexter and Cormac McCarthy weren’t big video game players.

            And then, about four years ago I discovered Sim City for my Iphone. Sim City is what it sounds like: a city building game that continues the tradition of the old “Sims” series, which I never actually played. To keep it short: essentially, the player has a bunch of tasks they have to complete so that they can earn money and other game currencies and build up their city, thereby increasing the population which creates more taxes and makes it possible to build more buildings, sporting arenas, casinos, beach boardwalks and so on. The goal of the game? Basically it is to build a cool, well functioning city with a lot of people in it.

            Here’s the rub. The game moves at a painfully slow pace, especially when you make more progress. Tasks get exponentially harder as the game goes on and your city becomes bigger. Why, you ask? Simple: so that the game creators can get you to pay actual, real-world money in exchange for Sim Cash, the most difficult currency to acquire in the game, and the key to shortcutting all the painstaking work of building.

            So I’m ethically opposed to paying my hard earned money for game currency. That just seems ridiculous. In addition, it feels like the minute you do that you have ruined the challenge. I mean, anybody can buy their way to success, right? So I set out years ago to play the game the right way, without paying a dime. My goal: to build a city with one million inhabitants.

            I’ve probably put on average an hour a day into this motherfucker. And it’s been almost four years now. So lets call it 1200-1400 hours just to be reasonable. I think about that and it makes my heart sink. I could have written two novels in that amount of time. I could have put those hours into my work, and who knows what kind of payoff I might have seen. But no, instead I put my life’s effort into this meaningless game. Why? It doesn’t get me high; it offers nothing but frustration and, ultimately, existential dread in miniature.

            As it stands today I have 985,855 Sims living in my city. What will I do when I hit a million? I’d like to believe I’ll just put it down.