The Poker Report

7-10-01

"A Cheap Steak In The Oven Since 2001"

Well, there was a game on Friday, a long, drawn out, six in the morning affair. I was watching Dorothy’s house. There was a dog, a cat, me, Jon, Jeremiah, Andy, Ben, and my publisher. Cooney wasn’t there. I thought to ask, "Where’s Cooney, long and willow-like, a green stalk blowing in a midwestern wind?"

We didn’t know who won on Friday. Jeremiah definitely lost. He lost until his head was rolling to the side and his eyes were slanted towards his cheek, a sort of demented, Full Metal Jacket look on his face. My publisher bought a pizza. My publisher pushed thirty dollars in chips my way when he decided it was time to go. I stacked his chips in front of me just as the first thick strand of spit fell from Jeremiah’s mouth.

"That’s cheating," Ben said pointing to my chips.

"Is it cheating to take money from my employer?" I responded rhetorically.

In a perfect world Ben could be stopped by logic. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world eaten and destroyed by racism, class warfare, disease, and man’s hungry grasp for power. And it is in this world, the not perfect one, where Ben continued on, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair....

Tuesday night poker back at the palace, my apartment, a shimmering neon crucifix over the Folsom Street Prostitute Mart. Pat couldn’t make it, hung over from life. In attendance: Ben, Abby, DJ Jeremy, myself, and Jon.

There was a lack of beer and it started with three man baseball over tall glasses of orange juice. I was winning dangerous. Somebody floated a rumor that I was the greatest three man poker player in the history of the world. Finally, when Abby and Jeremy showed up, I ran out to the streets for a twelve pack.

Abby lost smooth and steady, but the game that took the last of her reason was fuck your neighbor. Abby learned a hard lesson about fucking your neighbor, she learned to be careful who you sleep with, she learned that friends turn quickly to enemies, she learned that everything sucks when you’re losing. Towards the end of the end Abby decided she would split while she still had enough for coffee in the morning. Ben told her to stick around for a couple more hands. Five minutes later her coffee money was gone.

Jeremy leaves first, the city is calling him, underground clubs with no names, secret handshakes, drugs that haven’t been discovered yet. Then Abby, angry, her veins dry and competitive, a silent war raging noticeably just under the skin on her forehead. Then it’s just Ben, Jon, and myself, three man baseball again, this time with a deadly joker swimming in the deck. And then that ends. I won big, but I bought the beer, call it: Five dollars to the good.

11:30, Jon and Ben are gone. Their five dollars is burning a hole in my pocket. I’m too bored to clean. I call KLM and book a flight to Israel. Truth is stranger than fiction. The travel agent asks me if I would like anything else, a rental car, a hotel. I say how about a bullet proof vest, I hear there’s a war going on over there. She laughs at my joke as she punches my credit card numbers, non-refundable. August promises to be hot and dry.

Steve Elliott

Editor

The Poker Report