The Poker Report 6/19/01

"Peepin’ in Your Window Since 2001"

Prelude

Monday night poker. A scorcher of a day we gather at Jon’s new apartment to toss some cards around and stack chips.

Hold the record. Let me back up a little to the origins of this weeks game. Saturday I was on a date with a girl named Jenny. A nice girl with thick brown hair and a big ass. A fresh out of college girl, old enough to know what she was doing, young enough to deny it.

I brought Jenny out with Ben and Abby to watch Dee’s band play at El Rio. That was my first mistake, one of many.

Dee’s band was good and Ben and Abby were smiling and well behaved but their minds were filled with evil plots and filthy designs.

It was my second date with Jenny, which is a lot for me. And everything was going smoothly enough. We talked about her youth in Santa Barbara and her father’s cell phone habit. I told her about the time I spent in the pen for running a string of prostitutes down Halsted Street. We were like two children with one ice cream cone, sharing.

I walked her to the bustop. It had gotten cold. I tried to keep her warm. I kept my hands clean. I made like a gentleman, the kind that wears wife beaters and earrings. And when she got on the bus, all five eight of her, legs and hips and shoulders and a daddy with a cell phone habit and a bad temper, I turned to walk back to the bar.

That’s when I noticed Abby and Ben hiding and giggling around the corner. Call it: 13 year old KGB. Abby said, "I saw you kiss her." Ben said, "I saw you kiss her." By now the bus was well on its way to the cities better neighborhoods where that sweet young girl came from. And I could see why. How many perverts do they have in the rich neighborhoods hanging around street corners trying to live vicariously through your cheap feel?

I said, "You’re both sick." I said, "There is something very wrong with you both." I said, "One day the world will swallow you whole. Then what’ll you do?"

Abby laughed. Ben snickered. Abby and Ben went back to Abby’s house to watch movies. I went back to the bar to drink myself into a stupor. I went back to the bar to drink until I forgot that fine young woman and the indigent children of the Mission District’s darkest night.

That was thirty-six hours ago on a long, broken Saturday. Poker night came early this week. I show up ready for Ben and Abby. I show up ready to call their bluff.

The Game Itself

Six and a half people make it this week, Joanne, myself, Ben, Abby, Jon, Jeremy, and the midget. We meet at Jon’s new apartment, a fairytale pad with a purple porch and a garden full of flowers, a stones throw from Whiz Burger.

Not a mad, furious game. The midget lost everything he had, all ten dollars, plus I ate half his burrito. He pulled cards from the middle of the deck during games he was folded out on. He told everybody Ben couldn’t have the last four, the last four was still in the deck. He hollered out could and could not be trues. If he was playing in Texas somebody would have shot him with a small gun.

Everybody else won four or five bucks. Ben won seven. Jon lost everything. Jon lost everything plus a very suspicious dollar he pulled from Abby cashing out early. Basically, it went like this, Abby cashed out for fourteen, Jon gave her fourteen dollars and added two blue chips to his pile. Jon lost his two blue chips, his white chips, his red chips. Jon lost everything. Jon went down like the Hindenburg. Jon was like a hippy running for election in '68. The rest of us were Nixon, we all stomped his sad hippy ass.

Otherwise, I won four bucks, Abby won four bucks. Abby played tight. Abby is nobody's sucker anymore. Abby used to lose all the time, now she knows when to quit. Abby’s a strong player. Abby beats Ben in cribbage every Tuesday and Thursday when Ben’s face gets sad and long. Ben won seven bucks, Joanne won five bucks without knowing how to play, Jeremy won five or ten bucks and went to work the graveyard shift at Orphan Andy’s. There was one big hand, Jeremy pulled five of a kind. Jeremy never loses in the long run.

Monica and Katie showed up late, hung out in the back. Didn't play cards. Ate tacos and drank beers and left to wreck havoc at CHA CHA CHAS.

Postscript

Ben and I headed to CHA CHA CHAS after the game. It was some guys birthday. There was a gay polo player there. He was in a gay polo league. I thought all polo leagues were gay. We had another beer. Monica and Katie split. Monica and Katie came back. Katie slipped her arm into Ben's shirt. Katie lost an arm to the elbow. I was talking with Monica. Monica keeps my life interesting. I turn to Ben and Katie has dissapeared inside his buttons. All that is left of her is a piece of shoulder. She is burrowing under Ben's skin. I ask Monica what her friend is doing. Monica says her friend is assimilating. That's cool, I say.

Every Mission night should be this hot. Every sky should be this clear. Ben and I shared a beer together and Monica and Katie stumbled drunk to a pickup truck called hummer. I decided it was OK if Ben spied on me, his good points outweighed his obvious flaws. That's how charitable I was feeling. That’s how many beers I had. I even decided Abby was OK, though to hear her say it she had never done anything wrong. Still, Abby's a nice girl, and tonight she played like a champ.

Steve Elliott

Editor

The Poker Report