Playing Cards, Playing Girls, Playing Make-Believe
Saturday night. I’m up $140 on $0.50/$1 so I decide to take a shot on $2/$3.
I made a kissy sound at the supe – it’s a signal that all the staff do at Crown to get attention. “Hey, my friends are sitting down here at table 23 and there are open seats -”
“Jump right in.”
“Thanks.”
“Well well Mr. Devilfish,” said Vasily. “It seems you’ve finally graduated from computer games to real poker with real cards and real chips.”
I played tight for a while. I’m looking down at ace jack offsuit, first to act. I make it $15, which is a small raise on $2/$3. Weezer in the glasses next to me makes it $60. Gwen folds. Shaolin in the corner makes it $150 to go. Gwen folds, Vasily folds… fold around to me. I look down at my cards and look at Vasily. He shakes his head. No good. I muck. Weezer calls and turns over AK. Shaolin turns over aces.
“It’s just like the movie,” says Vasily. “One big hand an hour.”
I picked up ace queen suited in early position… I made it five big blinds. Vasily shoved all in from the big blind. I thought about it. Vasily had just given me the read on Shaolin when I looked over at him. Surely he wouldn’t do the same for me to get a read on him though. I look down at my cards again.
“Fuck you, I call.”
“Damnit, why did you call? I tried to tell you how strong I was!” He turned over AKs and stacked me.
“I thought you were just being a bastard.”
“Are you buying back in?”
“I can’t – I’m just playing with my profit.”
“I didn’t picture you going out like this Mr. Brixton. I thought you would go out all guns blazing, firing on all cylinders, shooting for the moon.”
“Not tonight Vasily. Good game.”
“GG.”
I ended up $5 down for the night.
I went upstairs to the food court and ran into some of the other guys from Inselligence. Ended up at the Carlton Club. On the way there, they handed me a bottle of vegan wine. I drank half of it. It was smooth, but tasted weak. I wonder if “Organic natural” was some sort of euphemism for “non-alcoholic”.
I’m drinking Corona with lime and turning to people as if I’m in an ad “¡La cerveza mas fina!” and they say “…What?”
Manolo is telling me how his company is hauling half a million in its first year or something ridiculous.
“It’s great – now all the major companies have laid off a lot of their staff, they need work done, and I pick up the contracts! I wake up at 7 and think, nah fuck it. I jack off, go back to sleep, wake up and then maybe I’ll do some work. Working for yourself is the best thing ever.”
“Sounds awesome. But there is one question I must ask you, and one question alone.”
“What’s that?”
“Where the ladies at?”
“Good question.”
I grabbed a tall Jewish-looking girl with a tight body and started dribbling shit. She bobbed around as I talked to her.
“You’re very variable in your altitude.”
“Such words!” she laughed.
“I apologise… My verbosity increases in directly proportion to my inebriation.”
While we were standing there, and she was listening to me talk about how great Dr. Seuss is: “Yeah, I’d probably say that Oh! The Places You’ll Go is the greatest book of all time. It’s a guide for everything that’s going to happen in your life.”
Talk talk, get the digits. As I’m talking to her, I grab her by the waist a couple of times and kiss her on her cheek.
The third time, I grab her and go to kiss her on the lips.
“Wait. I have a boyfriend.”
I stare at her in disbelief.
“What. Why is that so bad?”
I laughed. “Do I really have to explain?”
She’s been standing here letting me touch her for about fifteen minutes, involved in a sexual, physical interaction with me. Now when I go to kiss her, she’s playing make-believe that I haven’t been wearing my cock on my sleeve all along. As soon as the implicit meaning becomes explicit, she can’t quite pretend any more. Or can she?
“What? Why can’t a guy and a girl just talk and be friends in a nightclub?”
“Fuck that shit,” I laughed. “I want to fuuuck!”
She laughed. “Why can’t we just have fun talking together?”
“We can, but it’s a natural progression. We have fun talking together, then we have sex.”
“You’re getting weird about this. You’re so cut up.”
I wasn’t angry or disturbed, just shocked – but I adjust, and return to my regularly scheduled nimbus.
“Nah, I’m cool with it.”
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“Not really. I don’t give a shit. Anyway, probably my most favouritest book of all time is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It’s all about doing things for the right reasons, and how do you measure a man.”
I paused.
“…What, you’re asking me?”
“Yeah, because if you do it by inches, I got to tell you, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. No wait – I just mean you’ll be sore, not disappointed.”
I talked a little longer about Rand, and then she said she’d better get back to her friends. She leant in to kiss me on the lips.
“Whoa,” I said, and grabbed her by the shoulders to stop her.
She kisses me on the cheek instead. “You read too much into things,” she says, as if she intended to kiss me on the cheek all along. I don’t like playing make-believe.
I must be starting to get over my anger issues. If this were three, four months ago I probably would have told her off for being so stupid and leading me on – making it out as if I’d misunderstood the situation from the beginning. I’d really break it down for her so she understood my exact grievance with her behaviour – saying something poetic in its simplicity, for example: “Bitch??? Are you retarded???”
Then I’d let it ruin my whole night. Instead I just forgave her. After all, why should I be mad. She thought if she mentioned her boyfriend immediately I would probably wish her farewell, so she disguised the fact for fifteen minutes just so she could hang out with my cool ass.
I had a few more drinks and went home.
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Comments (2)
I can relate to this story. Usually girls would like to be wooed a bit before starting with the sex talk
[Reply]
they sure would. but they ain’t gettin it from me! NEGLECT FEMALES ACQUIRE CURRENCY
[Reply]