Occasionally, Happy Baby author Stephen Elliott hosts a poker game at his house. After the game, he writes a report of the evening, which is then e-mailed out to a list of subscribers. If you would like to subscribe, you can do so by sending an e-mail to pokerreport-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. - - - - Looking Forward to It - - - - June 23, 2008 Guest Writer—Isaac "the Debtor" Fitzgerald It's hard to lose when you show up to a poker game with no money. There's dignity, I guess, but whatever dignity I could scrape together probably wouldn't have covered the $20 buy-in. Still, I decided to go to Steve's house in hopes that he was feeling generous, as friends sometimes do. When I walked in the door, he immediately offered to pay for my dinner if I'd go pick both of ours up at the grocer's around the corner. Things were looking up. By the time I returned with two pints of piping-hot white-bean-and-pork soup, Steve had his poker table, all red felt and busted legs, set up. The other players had arrived and were jammed in around the rickety table in Steve's small living room. Steve clamored over the couch behind his friend Otis, who was visiting from Knoxville and looked a bit like a shark hunter, to put on some music. We were going to have to keep our cards close to our chests. Jason Roberts, Tom Barbash, and Adam Krefman all brought beer. Chanan brought potato chips, and Josh confused everybody by bringing a bottle of wine. Eli Horowitz, whom the L.A. Weekly had just inexplicably dubbed "McSweeney's boyish publisher," was also in attendance. Eli has a face cut from granite that could only be described as aged and haggard. I wondered about the L.A. Weekly's fact checkers. The moment I walked in the door, Steve asked for his change from the soup, which I was hoping to pocket, and for my buy-in. I gave Steve a look that said "Could you cover me?" It was a look I know he'd given many times in his life. In this regard, Steve and I speak the same language. We're both city kids who have had our share of empty-pocket adventures, and I was relying on a sense of brotherhood. Steve knew I had had an interesting year, and that interesting years didn't usually lead to big bank accounts. Sometimes, but not usually. This one certainly hadn't; it had been the kind of year where you end up working at a biker bar, then find yourself smuggling medical supplies on the Thai/Burma border, only to wake up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with a giant tattoo of a tall ship on your rib cage for absolutely no reason. I've never even been on a sailboat. Unfortunately, Steve also knew I had just gotten a new job. A 9-to-5. I got paid with checks now, taxes taken out and everything. No more fistfuls of dirty bills with drugs still on them, just a clean check every two weeks like clockwork. I was getting my shit together, and Steve gave me a look that said "People with their shit together don't come to poker night empty-handed." "Don't get my first check till next week," I shrugged. "OK, but if you lose it all I'm not covering you to buy back in." I smiled, confident that I'd be paying him back out of my winnings in just a few hours. - - - - We started out with Texas Hold 'Em, which would rule the table for most of the night. Chanan took an early lead, winning the first three hands, taking me to the mat every time. Steve tried to instigate an ethnic war between us (despite my Hebrew name, I'm Irish Catholic), but there isn't much hatred between the Irish and the Jews, and Steve's instigations fell flat. Barbash muttered something about not knowing the rules and we took a break while Josh drew up a list of which hands beat which for him. "Oldest trick in the book," Otis muttered. I agreed Adam dealt the next hand. The flop was the seven of spades with the jack of hearts along with his king. Tom, after scrutinizing his sheet, immediately started betting big, humbling even Steve, who doesn't usually let other people's bets push him around. I wasn't buying it, though. I agreed with Otis and figured Tom was a seasoned player who was looking at the cheat sheet for dramatic effect while winning some easy chips. The five of hearts came on the turn, and then the five of diamonds on the river. I only had ace high. Tom laid down one last large bet, I matched it, and then we showed. Tom took me with a flush. It had now been four straight hands and I'd stayed in till the end on every one only to lose. Stephen smiled. "Slow it down." Eli was sitting next to my right, his old voice like gravel. I didn't pay attention. The chips on the table weren't really mine, so I felt like I was playing without consequences. When you're playing with nothing to lose, I figured, the only thing you can do is win. A few more hands went by, with Otis taking one, Jason taking one, Josh scoring a couple of full houses in a row, and me losing every time. Roberts, who was sitting to my left, and I started drinking from the same bottle of beer, because there wasn't enough space for two between us. People were knocking elbows, and when I got up to go to the bathroom three others had to get up just to let me by. "There's a flashlight behind the toilet if you need a light," Steve told me. This man teaches at Stanford. - - - - It was Eli's turn to deal and, despite Chris Cooney and Ben Peterson being AWOL, he started to explain the rules of Peach Grove. I felt bad for the new players; even Tom, who by now I thought might actually be telling the truth. I remembered my first game of Peach Grove with Steve, Eli, Ben, Cooney, and Windy. It was over a year ago. In fact, that night was when my interesting year really got started. They gave me a bottle of tequila without a glass, half-assedly explained the rules, and then ruthlessly took me for all I had. Nights like that make you leave the country. I looked at my small pile of chips and realized that tonight was going the same way, but I didn't have any tequila to blame it on. "You have to understand there's Iowa Peach Grove, San Francisco Peach Grove, Calcutta Peach Grove—the list goes on," Stephen was explaining to those who had never played before, which didn't help at all, which was of course just what he wanted. After everyone had a grasp on at least a couple of the rules, Eli dealt out the eight hands. We got five across the middle. Everyone was hungry, but for what most of them weren't really sure. Three winners can walk away from Peach Grove, with pieces of the pot going to the high hand, the low hand, and, of course, the grove. You need trips or higher to win the high, nothing above a seven in your low, and you can take the grove with the highest three cards in a row of the same suit. There's a lot of betting and a lot of luck. And a lot of confusion at the end. I bet big, figuring that just knowing the rules put me a cut above the rest. The pot gets so big in Peach Grove that it's hard not to imagine that you're somehow going to get a slice. I drank more of my and Jason's beer, trying to pay attention to the cards, but I was more focused on tossing the chips into the ever-growing pile. Everyone stayed in, except for Chanan, who had been smart enough not to ante up at all. When we all showed, everyone spoke at once. "Why the shit did I stay in?" "What the fuck?" "I think I've got the grove ... maybe?" "I've got everything." After the smoke cleared, Otis walked with the low, Steve had taken the high, and Krefman took the grove with queen, king, ace, all spades. Two hands later, Steve found an ace of spades under Krefman's seat; he denied any wrongdoing. The grove had all but wiped me out. Without even asking, though, Steve set me up with $20 more worth of chips. "He's not doing you any favors." Eli's last bit of advice. He cashed in his chips, saying something about having to conduct business in Brazil. Soon Tom and Jason had to head out as well, though they failed to mention whether or not they were off to exotic lands. Adam soon followed. The room opened up, but, with everyone leaving, my pile of chips, even with Steve's loan only a few hands back, looked smaller. Chanan kept us on track. Texas Hold 'Em games bled into one another, with Steve, Otis, and Josh taking turns at taking my money, which wasn't really mine. Playing without consequences had led me to bet big and not win a single hand. But the room had more space, and soon we were all laughing. Steve got out some photo albums and he and Otis reminisced about their past together, although what they used to do was never really made clear. Josh opened the bottle of wine he brought and poured a couple of glasses. The beer was gone, and bringing a bottle of wine, which hadn't been touched, to a poker game didn't seem strange anymore. It seemed genius. By the time we called it quits, I only had $3 left of my second buy-in. I told Steve that I'd have his money by the end of the week. "Don't worry about it," he said. "It's fine." It was good to hear. He knew I'd get it to him and there was no need to worry. Otis, Josh, and I got up to leave as Steve described to Otis the Wiggle, a series of streets that bicyclists use to avoid the hills of San Francisco. We all parted ways as friends. - - - - Adam called me a few days later. I was at my new job, sitting at my new work computer, which stood atop my new desk. It has been a long time since I have had a desk. I was looking forward to the check with which I was going to pay back Steve. California was allowing people to get married to one another no matter their gender, and everyone in downtown San Francisco seemed to be in a great mood. I was in a great mood. "Have you seen Steve's website?" Adam asked. "No, why?" "Just go take a look." I hung up and went to Elliott's page. I was greeted by my own face on the computer screen, wearing a menacing grin. Beneath the unflattering photo, it read: "Have you seen this man? If so, keep him in custody. He's wanted on outstanding poker debts." I had owed Stephen Elliott $37 for three days and he was already calling me out. For all I knew, he had put a bounty on my head. My phone vibrated. It was a text from Steve: "How's my money treating you?" Isaac Fitzgerald - - - - June 3, 2008 It was 8:30 in the evening and I met Windy at the Phone Booth, a dimly lit smoker's bar on South Van Ness. We were on the edge of the Mission, near her boyfriend Eric's house. He was having a tournament. It was the day before the election and voters across the state would soon decide if San Francisco should continue to have rent control. Windy drank a Maker's Manhattan in a chilled glass. She wore a dress that stopped dramatically at her knees, and white heels. She looked good, like someone healthy, with a job. It could be the day before the end of San Francisco, but we doubted it. Proposition 98 wouldn't pass. The forces of darkness would be banished to their vaults full of money for a brief time. Rent control would be saved and later we would burn down their houses. I told Windy I had been picked as the best political-lit S&M guy in the city and I was wondering if that would affect my life in any way. She said, "You're so famous." I knew she was just buttering me up, two fingers gripping the stem of her drink. She intended to take everything I had. - - - - Here's how you play Texas Hold'em No Limit Tournament Style. Twenty-five dollars buys you a $100 worth of chips, winner-take-all with three rounds of rebuys. Each round is 25 minutes, so if you lose everything in the first 75 minutes you can buy back in for another $25. There's a small blind and a big blind and nobody else has to bet if they don't want to. If you do bet, you can bet as much as you want as long as you have enough chips to cover. You get two cards down. Three shared cards come in the flop, then a fourth, then a fifth. The down cards and the cards on the board give you seven cards to make your hand. The best five-card hand wins, if the cards are ever shown. Normally, the cards aren't shown. The cards are dealt, there's a bet, and then another bet, then a fold, then more folds. Twice I was big blind to Eric's little blind and I took his half stack without even gesturing. - - - - It was an 11-person tournament. There was more than $400 sitting in a cigar box next to a monitor. Eric had set up a playlist full of songs I'd never heard of. It had been six months since I'd played poker, more than a year since I'd played a tournament, driving down to the South Bay with Andy Miller at the wheel strung out on crystal meth. Not me, of course. I'm essentially clean and sober. But Andy treated his body like a laboratory, a mixture of blood, tendon, and synthetic adrenaline. Andy doesn't come around since he got arrested and Ben had a baby and Chris Donahue changed his name to Christine so when you call you don't know if you're talking to him or his wife. It had been so long since I'd played I couldn't remember the meaning of "big slick," or how to play a low pair in the hole, or what it meant when someone pressed two black chips onto the felt and said, "Chelsea Clinton." It didn't matter. I had a streak of focus dripping down my spine that made me grin. The best poker players don't play the cards, they play the person. I was ready to go one step further than that. There were two tables. One in Eric's bedroom, which is also his living room. That's how we live in San Francisco, roommates finding creative ways to split one-bedroom apartments. It's what I do, sharing my space with a 26-year-old hipster who sits on the couch all day reading Foucault and Roth, eating nothing or dining on Acme bread smeared with Nutella, wearing a cheap brown suit and a pencil-thin tie. There are only two other options: find work or move out of town. I played at the green-felt table in Eric's room, the windows staring west toward Portrero and south where Bernal Heights rises to the sky. His room is filled with album covers and guitars hanging from the wall and the glass backings of dismantled pinball machines. It's a visual celebration. There are bottles everywhere, many covered in dust and half-full of something strong enough to clean a puncture wound. I won fast and early when the blinds were small: $1/$2, $2/$4, $3/$6. I lost to James, who went all in after the flop on an ace-high flush, and me with a pair of jacks in the hole and nothing higher than a 10 on the board. But I won with bullets and I won with a flush draw, and I came back over the top several times, scooping 10 with 30, 15 with 50. But in a tournament the early games aren't worth much. They might save you a $25 rebuy, but when blinds get up to $20, and then $40, those early pots get filed into a data bank of pleasant memories, about as important in the grand scheme of things as the roller-coaster ride you took when you were 11. The other table was in the kitchen, near the beer and the porch where players went to smoke when their luck was bad. Windy sat there, leaning suggestively over the Formica table, a pile of chips rising to her chest. Eventually, the tables joined together in Eric's room. Windy, Eamonn, and Timmy Tunks came in from the kitchen. It was almost midnight. It was Monday. People were very drunk. Felix had been wiped out an hour ago. He said he had a date later. He was wondering if there was anywhere open he could buy some chocolate and flowers. "That sounds like a booty call," Windy said. "No, no," Felix protested. "I don't even know her." Ace was still in, wearing her visor, a silent killer quietly hovering at the level she started at. The Ref (aka the Colonel) was standing in the doorway. He had lost everything early in the evening, or years ago, depending on what you were talking about. To the Ref it wasn't about the money, it was about staying out of the wind. I was as far as I'd ever been in a tournament, but my stack was dwindling. It was always James, beating my eights with his nines, my pair with his trips, my queen-king with his king-ace. I wasn't even tired. Timmy told us all about a famous porn movie he'd seen while working on his master's thesis. The woman had sex with more than 300 men. The janitor, who just worked in the building and wasn't part of the shoot, also had sex with the woman. When someone interviewed the janitor he was asked if he was afraid of losing his job. The janitor told the interviewer it was a lousy job anyway. They didn't pay him hardly anything and he could get another job just like it anytime. "You see," Timmy said. "It's about labor. That guy didn't even have health insurance." I wondered if someone could have sex with 300 men in one day and then run for president. I wondered when we were going to get over this sex thing, take the shame out of everything, and stop hiding ourselves. I had been in a porn once. It was a very strange experience. But at some point it's just naked people and a camera. Or not. It was almost 1 in the morning when I noticed the disco ball above Eric's bed and the red light aimed at the silver globe. The music had shifted from funk, to Yes, to folk rock, to techno. Somebody asked, "What would Morrissey do?" But I've never liked Morrissey. Maybe I wasn't as awake as I felt. I wished Andy Miller were still around, but even when he finishes his sentence he'll still have to deal with all those restraining orders. I realized how comfortable Eric's room is, and how happy I was to be at a card table again. I realized we were more than still young, we were children. In a desperate bid, I went all in with a pair of sixes. Timmy Tunks, a man who had built a career out of years of carefully analyzing adult films, called me with a king-seven. The odds were in my favor, but just barely, and I wasn't even sure that was true. Anyway, whatever was or wasn't true was quickly wiped out by the flop, with its seven swimming like a guppy upstream in a sea of clovers. It didn't matter. I was back in the action. I had never left. I've been in San Francisco 10 years now. My bicycle was still locked on the corner with both its wheels intact and I pedaled through the night of my chosen city to my home and bed, more than ready for whatever would happen next. - - - - November 16, 2007 1. It's been a long time since I've written a poker report, or been in Vegas, or looked into the cold eyes of a murderer, wondering what he told himself as he tried to sleep in his windowless cell at night, but that's the kind of week it's been. It's the middle of November and I'm on Virgin America, flying back from Las Vegas to San Francisco, where, on the other side of the bay, Hans Reiser stands trial for the murder of his wife, Nina Reiser, whose body was never found. I read recently that people are only really interested in sex and murder. And people aren't as interested in sex as we think they are. I think it was Dominick Dunne who said that. Dominick's become a murder junkie, mainlining the Menendez brothers and Claus von Bülow's fatal charm, assessing the cut of O.J.'s suit. He can't get enough. Nonetheless, I left the Reiser trial, where the famous computer programmer's son was being mercilessly cross-examined by the talented defense attorney William Du Bois. The child was 6 years old when his father did or didn't kill his mother. He's 8 now, and is as handsome as his mother was beautiful. Pursuant to international treaties, he was flown in from Russia, where he'd been staying with his maternal grandmother. In Las Vegas, I met a longtime girlfriend who was there on business with a free room at the Bellagio on the 21st floor, and a view of the city consuming the desert like termites on a block of wood. We have the type of relationship open to people who don't get married, or have children, and are willing to live as long as possible slightly unmoored. There was room service, then dancing, and then, while she slept, I crept down to the poker room. It was 6 in the morning. I said, "Deal me in." 2. One-Dollar/Two-Dollar No Limit was the only game available. There was a drunken Jew at the table, and a German. The Jew said, "I'm a Jew. But I don't hate you because you're German. That was a long time ago." The German said he appreciated that. A flop came with a pair of tens and the Jew wrapped his knuckles on the felt and the German pushed $40 over the line. In No Limit you can bet as much as you have, and the Jew had stacks to his eyeballs. I only call him the Jew because that's what he called himself. I'm half-Jewish, but I never refer to myself as "the half-Jew." I usually introduce myself as Steve. But that's not what happened. What happened was it was early in the morning and normal people were sleeping. The Jew was drunk, but playing very well and talking strange. People bet heavily against him because he made such a scene, but he won every time, or folded when it was the right thing to do. He wore a nice suit and had a big head of hair. He swung his giant stack of chips like Chris Cooney swings a hammer: hard, and with precision. The Jew came over the top toward the German, pushing $80, and then, on the turn, which is another way of saying the fourth card, because in Hold'em there are five cards with the first three coming on the flop, then the turn, then the river. And soon he was all in, though not really. He was all in for the German's money, but if he lost he would still have money to spare. He had been winning all night. The German lost that hand, even though he was drinking seltzer and the other man drank whiskey. The Jew said he would buy drinks for the table, which was totally unnecessary since the drinks were free. He tipped the dealer $10 for the 10/ace in the hole. He called the cocktail waitress. He said, "I always tip you, right? Don't I always tip?" I wanted to say, "Why do you call yourself 'the Jew'? Don't you know I'm going to write about this?" Of course, he didn't know. It's something I've been wrestling with recently, the difficulty of being decent to my subjects while still being honest with the reader, and where exactly is that moral line? On Sunday, when we're watching football, there's an orange line showing the first down, and all the players have to do is get across that line they can't see. Life's more complicated than that. The Internet has made people very sensitive with being written about. The Jew said, "I'm just having a good time." I liked him quite a bit. The table was open like a flower and as loose as a hubcap without lugs. It cost $2 to see a hand, provided nobody dropped a pre-raise. I played everything, four ten, five jack suited. I lost $5, $10. But when I won, I won big. I never bet. I took my free cards. When I made a hand, I doubled or tripled whatever came back to me. I didn't worry about pot odds. I played the players. It was early. An orange sun had risen. A beautiful woman was breathing softly into her pillow on the 21st floor. The Jew was telling jokes. The slot machines were almost musical. I was patient and I was winning hundreds of dollars. "I'm Asian," the guy next to me said. "I'm supposed to do better than this." By that time the German was long gone and I realized that poker says a lot about how we process ethnicity. At some point I felt compelled to tell someone I was born in England. My biggest loss came with an ace/king of spades in the hole. Two spades came on the flop. Another player raised and I raised back for $70. I was looking for a payday. The turn came: a heart. Now there were two spades and two hearts. If another spade came, I would have the nuts. My opponent went all in. He had a stack and I had a stack. It would cost $400 to see it. If it was a spade, I won. But the odds were less than 25 percent. If it was an ace or a king of diamonds or clubs, I was in good shape, but it wasn't guaranteed. My chances were less than 50 percent, but there was already $100 in the pot. I didn't like it. I tossed big king into the muck. When I told my girl I had won $300, she took $100 from me. She didn't even think about it. It was fair enough, in a way. She was an escort and lived in Washington, D.C., but that's not why. She'd come out to Vegas for the week with two scientists who were best friends and split their days with her. They paid for the room, and the room service. She was a friend of the girl I saw sometimes in San Francisco, who would also want $100. It's the price of winning. Relationships always take off the top. Just like the house. The house pulls a rake from every hand played. When you lose money, they never give it back. After lunch, she went back to work and I went back to the tables. In the afternoon, the players were well rested; the tables had tightened up. There was a debate happening that night at UNLV but nobody cared. We talked about Barry Bonds looking at perjury charges. "It's such a dumb crime," someone said, probably me. "You never need to lie to a grand jury." Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates were refocusing on Hillary Clinton, who, a few months ago, said that she would continue to accept money from lobbyists. "A lot of these lobbyists represent real Americans," she said. "They represent nurses, social workers, and, yes, they represent corporations and they employ a lot of people." With the front-runner talking like that, it's no wonder people are sitting out. The point is, I tightened up as well, and I was as interested in the debate as everybody else. I waited. I didn't check the flop. I played the cards. And then I noticed the kid three from the dealer. His black hair spiked and nervous, he looked about my age when I had my first major poker loss. That was a devastating moment and, at the time, I wasn't sure I would ever recover. I took him for $50, then I folded a winning hand against him and he threw his cards face up on the table with a sharp laugh. "It's about time that worked!" It was uncalled for. He was rubbing my face in it. But I didn't feel angry. I felt calm. This kid was going to lose it all today. He was going to lose it to me, or someone else. An hour later, we went back and forth on a hand until he pushed all his chips into the middle, a stack of 30 red. I asked for time and I looked at him. He was biting his lip, glaring at me, looking down. I had a paired ace on the board. I had more money than he had. He didn't have the confidence. All I had was high pair, but he had nothing. So I called and the river came and he faced his cards and stood to leave while I organized what he used to have. 3. That was yesterday. I'm on a plane back toward the Bay. Reiser's trial will take at least two more months, probably three. In the airport, I see Snoop Dogg, wearing silver track pants and an oversized sweatshirt with the hood pulled forward covering a pair of giant headphones. He was traveling with two of the biggest men I've ever seen. I watched him go to Mrs. Fields and buy cookies with a hundred-dollar bill. He smiled at the woman behind the counter as she counted out his change, and I stood to the side, pretending to consider the hot dogs. Last night, I wondered if that kid at the Bellagio could afford to lose. Someone said, after he left, that he couldn't afford not to lose. I doubted that. But, then, not everything always adds up. Who pays for cookies with a hundred-dollar bill? Stephen Elliott - - - - July 18, 2007 Guest Writer—Steve Almond It was Baudelaire who famously warned us: "Nobody wants to see a clown at midnight." To which we may now add the less famous corollary: "Nobody wants to see Stephen Elliott across the poker table at any time of the day or night." Elliott, a shameless raconteur of sexual shame (well, all right, who isn't?), appears docile and often slightly disoriented when not seated behind a stack of chips. His affect at the table de poke changes. Gone is the lovable masochist who insists on trauma play as his chief form of recreation, replaced by a wolf with a sheep-eating grin. But I am getting ahead of myself. To set the scene. We are in Pornland, Organ, the only city in America with a mandatory-tattoo policy. More specifically, we are in a large, bug-infested dormitory on the Reed College campus, where the still-coherent staff of the Tin House Writer's Workshop has gathered for a late-night round of Hold 'Em, organized by Monsignor Elliott himself. Around the table (from my left) are the following personages: Aimee Bender The buy-in is $20, nearly half the annual salary for most of these working writers. We settle on a one-dollar/two-dollar game, so as to prolong the agony for the lesser players. The Monsignor immediately takes out the long knives, putting together a three-hand run that culminates in a house full of kings and knaves. Blood appears on his incisors, and his studded choker miraculously dissolves. The game is briefly derailed by Aimee Bender's effort to buy in using candy wrappers. While the Monsignor impugns her reputation, the phalanx of railbirds seated on a nearby chifforobe leaps to her defense, led by the irascible Jim Shepard, who is dressed (nonsensically) in a pleather crop top. There is no bargaining with Shepard. He has published nine books and we must live with his fashion decisions. The action turns ugly for young Cheston Knapp, who tosses his chips into the pot with the exuberance of a child dispensing pellets at the petting zoo. Within an hour the baby goats are starving. The Monsignor generously offers to restock him, and extends the same financing to Whitehead, then displays the two twenties he has just taken from his comrades in plain view of the entire table. And they say humility is dead. Whitehead, representing the East Coast and playing loose enough to be accused of sluttery, comes roaring back in hour two. The youthful master of speculative fiction stuns the Monsignor with a hand that features no fewer than five sevens. He then takes Goldfaden to the cleaners on what has to be considered the hand of the night. It proceeds like so: Whitehead nabs a four of spades on the flop, giving him a pair. Then, on the river—staring a high pair in the kisser—he draws another four of spades. Trips to win. The railbirds go silent with awe. The Monsignor begins suckling his nipple ring. This, my friends, is how you nab a MacArthur grant. Goldfaden, to his credit, refuses to back down. Three times he goes all in against the heavy action. Each time, he pulls the necessary cards out of his anus, thus earning his handle. Meanwhile, Bender is cycling through her cash like a playgirl in heat. The cheat sheet she clings is hardly inspiring confidence. Sure enough, she runs through her last ten-spot challenging Chesty Morgan and the Monsignor on the biggest pot of the night. The Monsignor shows two pair. Chesty turns over a seven, to match the pair on the board. The railbirds groan. Bender shrugs and shows the boys a pair of ladies in the hole, making three in all. Ballgame. Thanks for playing, Chesty. We are playing with three decks, one of which features George W. Bush in a variety of costumes. Bush as a fairy princess. Bush as a bonobo. It is sad to see the sitting president reduced to a novelty gag, nearly as sad as the Monsignor's wardrobe, which has been provided—as he informs us bashfully—by Nike, whose co-founder and former CEO, Phil Knight, is a fan. I believe my favorite item of clothing is the sleeveless mesh T-shirt, which allows for a clear viewing of the Monsignor's guns. That or his backpack with leather cell-phone holder. Very street. Things turn sloppy in the third hour of the game. Spillman, a dominant force in the early going, finds himself battling Whitehead in a series of pots only a mother could love. Jacks over nines. Eights over sixes. Ace high beats a queen bluff. Faced with this onslaught of mediocrity, the railbirds fall asleep, one by one. Bender hits the rack, mumbling something about a gentleman with playing cards where his hands used to be. The Brink bids adieu on a minor flush. El Tigre watches his life savings dissolve to the nut straight, held by yours truly. The game is down to seven, then six, then five. Soon, the only seats left are the Monsignor, Whitehead, Spillman, and myself. The games take on a certain grim momentum. Everyone has shit cards. The action is something like cutting for high card, only not that compelling. We are passing chips back and forth, very slowly. Testosterone and a reasonable fear of poverty are the only things keeping us awake. Finally, the Monsignor himself cashes in, claiming he needs his beauty sleep. Nobody disagrees. In a move that exemplifies the class of his particular operation, the Monsignor notes loudly that he's up $42, and signals for me to include this in my notes. (I am not taking notes.) It is hard to overstate the plain human misery incurred by this single poker game. The play itself has been listless. The company dull beyond words. I have come to see just how poor the quality of patter becomes when writers try to do more than one thing at once. And yet I am also strangely moved by the sight of the Monsignor, stumbling off to bed in his mesh T-shirt, with his winnings stuffed deep in his pockets. If this man can honestly fleece a small portion of the earth's population for an entire misspent evening, there is hope for us yet. Steve Almond - - - - June 9, 2007 Class Warfare in Tinseltown It was the day Paris Hilton went back to jail and it was just in time. My ex-girlfriend had called me earlier to make sure I knew she would never sleep with me again under any circumstances. It seemed gratuitous to me; why did we have to have this conversation? It was so sunny outside. "Maybe a hug, if we happen to run into each other on the street. But that's it." It was one of the most depressing phone calls I've ever had. It seemed to me we should sleep together one last time, just to be sure. Anyway, a catastrophe had been temporarily averted. Since Paris Hilton's release, people had been stashing bricks, preparing to storm Pacific Heights. The windows of the rich, peering across the Golden Gate Bridge, were ripe for breaking. But then Judge Sauer applied a warm compress to the mounting rage. There would be other opportunities for the poor to mass in the street. There was a war going on, after all. Still, I was angry. No one should be sentenced to a lifetime of sleeping alone. Sheriff Lee Baca had a lot of explaining to do. What was Paris Hilton's strange illness? Anyway, it wasn't so much that they'd let Paris out; it was that they'd kept everybody else in. For one shining moment I imagined every drunk behind bars in Southern California exiled to mansions pocking the Hollywood skyline, staring down at all the sober losers clogging the 101 on the way to work. Forty days of in-home spas and catered meals. Parties and pills and anorexia and rock-and-roll in the backyard. Then back to the grind. Or not. You can actually live a long time on very little if you're careful not to have a family. There's more than one American Dream. What You Find in the Grove All the talk about Hollywood heiresses and $3,000 handbags is just to set the mood for our first-ever Friday-night poker game. Ben came early with chorizo burritos from Farralito on 24th. Wendy's out of town for the weekend, so Ben is on a mission to digest as much red meat and cholesterol as he can before she returns. He was with his brother Andrew, who wore a brace. They were followed by Windy, Eric, Isaac, Michelle Richmond, Cooney, and Eli. Windy and Michelle looked like movie stars and the obvious question was what they were doing in a shabby apartment with a dull-gray carpet off Prospect Street on a weekend night. But nobody wanted to ask. We played variants of Hold'em but quickly moved into Peach Grove. Cooney bet big on double barrel, four in the hole, two rows of cards across the middle, then two more to share. There were often four cards down. Often two and only two. There was California Peach Grove and San Francisco Peach Grove. There was even talk of Peach Grove 11th And Folsom, the only card game with a wraparound, the highest combination a suited king, ace, two. But it didn't happen. What did happen was that Isaac called Windy a bitch. Then he apologized. He was trying to live up to the ghost of Andy Miller. But Miller was a meth addict and Isaac was just drunk. Isaac lost everything, including bus fare, finally paying $7.25 on a $10 wager and hanging his head in shame. Windy offered to take care of him for a while in exchange for housecleaning duties and Isaac cried like a child in her lap. This is all true. Otherwise Michelle played carefully but still lost $20. Cooney played scared like a man with a broken-down tractor signing away the family farm. I lost $16. I don't remember much else. Except there was a new version of Peach Grove: French Grove. In French Grove you play two and only two in your five-card hand, then three on five cards on the table. The French also invented a game called euchre, which goes a long way toward explaining why they haven't won a war since Napoleon. Patti Smith When it was over I threw away the Indian pizza box and mopped the spilled tequila in the kitchen. It was 11:30 and Bernal Heights was quiet, so I went to a drag bar on Polk Street for Patti Smith Night. The bar had colorful flags on the walls and sloping hardwood floors. It was the kind of place where people are easy with their hands and if you let them they'll take things they haven't paid for yet. I didn't care. It was a free-market economy. I was down nearly $16 on the night. Michelle had lost $20 and she had a husband and a child. Her gambling was irresponsible. I was writing on the back of a study on Internet addiction commissioned by Stanford University. Bonnie was there, dressed like a cheerleader, and I rested my head in her lap for a while on the bench out back where you can smoke. When she went down to change for her show, a boy in a cute mohawk asked me what I was writing. I told him I didn't know. I could have said in California Grove it's trips or better for a high and in Iowa you roll four cards one at a time. I could have explained the importance of our poker games and how it kept us young and our community vibrant. How we had been playing regularly for six years now. How we had started with dime-ante Hold'em and now we played quarter-ante Grove. But I didn't. He told me he was a poet and that he did "boy burlesque." He was pretty, but if I were gay he wouldn't be my type. I'd want someone strong, with a good job, a nice clean apartment, and a big bed. Someone I could be faithful to. The daddy type. But, then, who knows? Patti Smith was telling us Jesus didn't die for her sins. Bonnie was on the stage with pompoms. Patti was singing and a drag queen was peeing on her abusive boyfriend and pretending to slit his throat. It was all very San Francisco. The rest of the country was staring at their ceilings, mouths agape, wondering what would happen to Tony Soprano on Sunday. I was, too, but I didn't let any of the queers know it. Bonnie was luminous in her pleated white skirt, kicking her legs high. She was just turning 24. I watched the queens in their makeup, wigs, and leather pants. I wondered why I had never been a drag queen. But then I'm twitchy. There would be lipstick everywhere. It would be hours and hours before the night was over. I'm not sure if I made it back to even. But that's not really the point. In poker, as in life, there are winners and losers. And just because you stay at the table, that's no guarantee you'll come out ahead. But only the rich and the dead don't bother to try. Stephen Elliott - - - - March 19, 2007 It was Thursday and I was just back from touring the country with the Sex Workers' Art Show. We had been to 31 cities in 35 days. We had caused a scandal at William and Mary, where they had just removed a cross from the chapel before inviting a group of hookers and strippers in to perform for 500 screaming children. I was sick at William and Mary and lay backstage with a jacket over my head until it was time for me to perform. But that's beside the poin |