Played poker at Joe’s last night. I didn’t know how to get there, which was a problem, because riding over my buddy Doctor Mike was on the phone with me, and Waze wouldn’t override him, you know what I mean. The Waze lady has no issues speaking over your music, even at the best parts of the songs, but when you are on the phone she will not interrupt. Is this– what? Gallant of her? I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t really know how to get to Arlington. Well, I don’t know how to get to where I am going in Arlington without help, and I needed help.
So, old Doc Mike was telling me this story about some patient he was working with. The guy had some issues with his leg. I forget the Latin terminology, suffice to say, for a poker blog that nobody reads we can go with “dude’s leg was fucked.” Guy comes into the practice every so often, however often sick people come and go to a doctor, and then there is a period of time where Doctor Mike doesn’t see his patient, the guy is missing his appointments, and this is worrisome because of the condition of his fucked up leg. As fate would have it, Doctor Mike runs into the guy’s wife. What happened to him? He’s in prison. Raped a thirteen year old.
So now Doctor Mike is torn. That bastard, you know. At the same time, after going over it in his head for a while, he realizes he has some kind of ethical responsibility to his patient, despite how vile the guy is. So he calls up the prison, mentions the guy’s medical condition, and they put him in a little prisoner van and bring him to the hospital. His leg is now so fucked up that they have to cut it off, and…
Hey, Doctor Mike, I say, this is all great stuff, a real humdinger of a tale, but I need to talk to the Waze lady so she can direct me to this .50/1 poker game in Arlington, talk to you later, bye.
Uggh, technology.
Since I was running late, I arrived at the game beerless. I got laid off/let go/fired from my job last week. At first it didn’t really affect me too much, but lately it’s like this slowly creeping depression cloud is trying to make its way over me. I feel like I am doing a decent job of keeping it at bay, but in order to better do so, I felt like I needed a beer. I hate mooching beers, but since I was so desperate for one, I was willing to make a deal. I surveyed the table, tried to figure out how many beers people had behind, what it would take for them to hand over a few without looking at me like I was a goddamned freeloader. It’s a dicey game of chance, mooching beers.
After making my initial hesitant queriess regarding the beer situation I was informed that in the post-futuristic world of Arlington, Massachusetts, you can tap a few buttons on your phone and within minutes some Russian guy will show up at your door with a twelve pack of Sierra Nevadas. And let me tell you, the Sierra was of a vintage that I had only once had before, at a place I couldn’t exactly pinpoint, but in the vaguest way, reminded me of sipping a Sierra Nevada at a wedding, a catered hall, a napkin around the beer, a dollar bill tip deftly handed to the caterer behind the table, the tepid mingling of family and friends soon to be a raucous Bacchanalian celebration of tribal unification, people dancing to that Brick House song.
Or, maybe not, I dunno.
I can’t say I played poker too well. I was having fun with different kind of levels. Pulling stunts like telling Andy R when we were heads up after I’d made a significan bet and he was tanking “I will bet you $20 that whatever decision you make here will be wrong.”
I’d like to be able to tell you what happened with that hand, but the result was too confusing for even me to understand. Something about, here, I’m not taking your bet but you can have $20 since you are unemployed now. The game lasted a long time. I got out of there down $70 (beer included in that!) at about 2:45am. I checked the Waze to see how long it would take to get home. I wanted it to say 15 minutes on account of there being no cars on the road, but no, it predicted 28 minutes, which turned out to be only one minute off.