The Return Of Jon

It's been a year since the last time Jon Berry has come to play poker. He was one of the founding members of the poker night back in March, 2001, when Jon, Ben, Cooney, and I, took a razor to our palms and clasped our bloody hands, and pledged always to gamble, to live our lives like an inside straight, to square up to the table and declare threes and nines are wild, never mind the cost. That was before Jon married Alice in a southern Chinese province, a ceremony attended by members of the Chinese Democracy party and Falun Gong. Alice has applied for U.S. citizenship since that, and Jon stopped going outside.

Jon showed up with long, shaggy hair and a goatee. "Doesn't matter how I look now," he said.

Sugartits

Young Gideon didn't show so we were short a sucker. Cooney doesn't come by much since he smacked his head on a low steel beam. Ben's been losing since he started dating Wendy. Geoff, the poet (really) showed up late and with six beers and a losing strategy. He raises fifty cents on the river with nothing but a high card king and it costs him a bundle. But he makes a living as a poet, has a sheaf coming out in the New England Review, was recently awarded an NEA grant to follow his Stegner Fellowship, so odds, the rules of the game, the easy road, all of these terms mean nothing to him. Donahue arrived in a bright red shirt, shiny like a school boy. He was looking toward the usual path until he took a sick game of Clue, hammering Jenson for twenty dollars. Jenson who never did a mean thing to anybody, beaten senseless by his old college roommate.

Everything was going great. I was winning like crazy. I had rainbow stacks to my collarbone. Mostly I took yards in Omaha. I went high and low, the cards talk. I swept pots like my arms were vaccuum cleaners. Blue chips, black chips, pink chips. I knew Geoff was a poet, and I knew Donahue doesn't fold. And I knew Ben wasn't the player he used to be since Wendy started dressing him. And I knew that China had done a new and horrible thing when they sentenced Wang Bingzhang to life but I wasn't going to think about that until the morning. I was drinking fast, and having a good time. And then I called Abby "Sugartits" and everybody kind of stopped and looked at me funny. I'm not sure where "Sugartits" came from, at first I thought Ben had said it. She was the only girl at the table. And I knew I had done something wrong, and that I shouldn't have opened my mouth. I had, perhaps, been feeling a little bit too good.

Abby turned away from me. She had been losing big all night. I looked down into the felt. I thought I would wait until later and then I would apologize. But instead, Abby ran out of dough. So I started pushing money in her direction. After all, I was flush, and what good is money if you can't buy friends. A few dollars later Abby said she forgave me and that I shouldn't worry about it. So I stopped giving her money and she left shortly after. And so did everybody else, they all wanted to get home to watch Real World. Except for Geoff, who stuck around for a bit, and explained to me how it was one makes a living as a poet. A strange formula, that I can't repeat here.

Stephen Elliott

Editor

The Poker Report

	Arrived	Brought	Gain/ Loss	Year to date
Steve, The Editor of The Poker Report	N/A	N/A	+ $21	+ $26
Ben, The Search Engine Consultant	6:30	6 Budweiser	- $8	- $17
Jon, The Jedi Knight	6:30	6 Budweiser	- $3	- $3
Jenson, The Engineer	7:08	Burrito, 32oz. grape Gatorade, 6 miller	- $9	- $7
Abby, The Grantwriter	7:10	6 Heineken in keg shaped cans	- $10	- $10
Donahue, The Landscaper	7:54	Bright Red Shirt	+ $13	+ $13
Geoff, The Poet (really)	8:02	6 Bass	- $4	- $4

Wendy, The Interaction Designer	N/A	N/A	N/A	- $1
Cooney, The Carpenter	N/A	N/A	N/A	Even
Gideon, The McSweeneys Intern	N/A	N/A	N/A	Even
Martin, The Famous Novelist	N/A	N/A	N/A	+ $3

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