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.