The Poker Report

2-26-02

"Prozac For The Wicked Since 2001"

by Stephen Elliott, Editor

A little guy, 5’4" tops, with a long torso, small, skinny legs, tiny arms, elbows close to his shoulders, pale flaccid skin, a square helmet of thick brown hair almost to his eyebrows and wide rimmed specs. We played two on two. He motioned to his teammate. "Cut to the hole," the little guy said. They were beating us six nothing. The midget was a hack, grabbing my arms, leaning against my hip. And his partner was a steamroller. The midget shot two handed, favoring neither side, launching the ball from behind his ears.

It was a nice day, but it wasn’t that nice of a day. "I know you," the little guy said, holding the ball where his fingers ended just above his waist.

"No," I said. "You don’t know me." Sweat was pouring over my nose. I had been hoping to see Fox later. Bicycle out to the Sunset, have a cup of coffee. She always makes me feel better. And after that our weekly poker game, seven o’clock. I could see the little man was going to ruin all of that.

"You’re the poet," he said. "I saw your reading."

"Which one?" I asked, though I could guess.

"The one for the magazine. WatchWord Press."

He passed the ball in but I stole it from his partner and lobbed it to my teammate, a marketing executive from San Diego, who layed it in easily.

"I know Danielle," the human torso told me, waddling along on his stumps. "I’m a poet too." His shorts looked monstrously heavy for the weather, thick woven corduroy hanging an inch before his little ankles. He stole the ball from me and popped an easy shot from beyond the three point arc. It was uncanny. The little guy had a global positioning system locked into his skull.

I was being creamed by a poet the size of a hubcap. I’m not a very good basketball player. "I know Danielle," I said. "So what do you think of those?"

He looked at me like he didn’t understand. Some poet. We continued playing for another thirty minutes. I gave it everything I had and when it was all over my feet hurt and I had scored a total of three points. It didn’t seem fair, the lost youth, the long Tuesday afternoon, basketball with spectacular midgets. The little bastard. I had a looming deadline for a book review. Things were coming due. He knows Danielle, right, that’ll be the day.

"Good playing with you man," he said. I was packing up my backpack. Planning to stop and see the Arabs, pick up my mail. I think I burned my face.

"I’ll stretch you," I whispered through my teeth.

"What?" he asked balling up his little fists.

"Good game," I said.

"Yeah," he said, relaxing his hands. "And I really liked your poem."

By Chris Donahue, Associate Editor

Last night's poker game was well-attended, but marred by two unfortunate incidents. First, I lost my shirt, my luck having gone south for the winter. Second, Steve broke up with Pat. It was a sorry sad sight, and though Jon Berry can take credit for instigating the catfight, you could tell that tensions had been high between the two of them for months, maybe years.

Incredible, you'd think that two people, their mouths stuffed full of cookies brought by the ladies in

attendance, their pockets full of money won on luck alone, could enjoy an evening together. Instead, Jon Berry shifted the conversation to chess, and all was lost.

Speaking of Berry, he transformed himself from a sucker reaching for his wallet, again and again, to a master puppeteer, winning $40 in a wild game of Clue, and ruining relationships as he saw fit. The rest of us just quietly ate cookies, drank greyhounds, and lost money, though on this night my $24 gone was worth it.

By Stephen Elliott, Editor

It was a warm Tuesday night and there was a lot of screaming on the street. There was a quiet violence snaking its way through Sutro Towers, drifting past Bernal Heights, thin fingers of angry fog blowing slowly to the open windows.

Ben was in a foul mood. He got mad early because I turned over his cards and Andy walked in with a Street Sheet and declared that Cornfed Cooney would be bumming money on Ceasar Chavez by the end of the night. Andy Miller said Cooney was working for him now. Donahue called me a fuck. I told him to go back to Utah. My fucking editor showed up just past seven with a twelve pack. Abby came closer to eight. Jensen stopped by, quietly lost thirty dollars, and left.

There were cookies. Wendy with the thin mints dealt me five queens playing baseball. Abby walked in with no beers but two boxes of Peppridge Farm assortment. Why are women so much nicer than men? There was a big game of 7/27, but the sevens went three ways.

Ben said that the more I talked the more he won, but it wasn’t true, because I talked a lot and Ben broke even. It was actually the opposite, every time Ben laughed I won the hand. He chased eight four suited, and rubbed Wendy’s small row of coins. I was stacking chips with two hands, tight and aggressive. Wendy and Ben left when Wendy had nothing, two hours after Fox called to tell me she was mad at Ben too, that Ben should be a better person. And he will be, if he thinks about things. But that was after the incident.

My editor played well but drank too many beers too fast. When my editor gets drunk he remembers things that didn’t happen and forgets things that did. When he got drunk he started harping about two games of chess he had won for twenty dollars a game. It was a lie. My editor is a terrible chess player, one of the worst. I had to point out that he had never beaten me in two games of chess, that I would have thrown myself from the sixth floor window if he ever beat me in two games of chess. That of the many games we played he had beat me only one time. And the last time I played him for a hundred dollars to shut his fat mouth I beat him easily and he still owed me twenty dollars for taking back a move. He called me a liar. He wanted to round up on his poker winnings and split. He had a baby at home and a drunken, skulking face. He thought twenty-four fifty equaled twenty-five. I told him to give me my twenty and get out. He said he wanted all of the books back he ever loaned me. I said I never had any intention of reading them. He said he didn’t owe me twenty dollars, all his debts were paid in full. I said I was going to take everything he had, his truck, his home, everything, to the last penny, until he finally admitted to himself and to the world that he was a lousy chess player. I was going to do it for his own good.

Looking back on the violence of the night I remember hanging out at Boone School on the north side of Chicago. There was an Andy Miller there too, a different Andy Miller. A big kid, fresh out of the military, still wearing cami jackets with beefy, hulking shoulders. Andy Miller in Chicago once told me he could beat up anybody in our group. We were younger and listened to heavy metal but we had numbers and I said I didn’t think he could beat up Nicko. The next day Nicko showed at the schoolyard sporting a black eye and wanted to fight me. I told Nicko I was sorry, but I had thought he would be able to take him.

"Are you going to let him come back," Jon asked me. The five of us kept playing, Andy, Jon, Abby, Cooney, and myself. I poured vodka greyhounds for the remaining players. I had fresh grapefruit juice in the fridge. Jensen was gone. Ben and Wendy had left. My editor was out of the picture. The greyhounds were refreshing and we played Clue. It was nice to see Abby again. I hadn’t seen her in awhile and she was playing like a champ.

At one point in the night I was up sixty dollars. I lost a big hand to Jon, twenty-five dollars, and he cashed out even at 11pm after buying in for thirty dollars. I still pulled up thirty-five. I was sober most of the night. Steady-play covered me on my big mistake. The vodka was going to my head, there were midgets dribbling basketballs across the cement court in my mind.

"Are you talking about my editor," I asked Jon, and he nodded his head. There had been a lot of Omaha and I had won a lot of high hands. But I had never taken a low. You can’t play better than an eight when you do that. If it was another night, or a different city, a place where thirty-five bucks could go a little farther. Or a different game, like the kind rich people play, with safety nets. But I didn’t care about anything by the end of it.

"No," I told him, getting up to change the music. Life isn’t like chess, it’s not a gentleman’s game and you can’t take back any moves. In chess you force your opponent into a place where he can only lose. Life is more like poker, you lie and you fight and you win anyway you can. Life is ugly, only the women make it worthwhile. "No," I told him. "Not until he gives me my twenty bucks."

Stephen Elliott

Editor

The Poker Report