Losing

Originally Posted Sunday, May 5, 2013

I put twenty down on Mylute.  It was my first bet ever on a Kentucky Derby race.  I don't like betting.  It is a stupid way to lose money.  I'd rather have it fall from my pockets when I'm pulling out my keys.  It made my interest in the race no more real.  I like the drama of the race just fine without having money riding on the outcome.  The friend with whom I watched it put a hundred on another horse, the two horse, who was in the lead for a bit.  He was screaming and yelling like one of Thompson's characters. I never saw Mylute in the race at all.  Perhaps Rosie was being demure.  Whatever.  It was fun watching Orb come from behind.  I don't think I'll bet a horse again. 

After the race, we left one bar and went to another.  It was a pleasant evening and a pleasant walk and all the women were dressed up and out for the evening.  All of them.  I haven't seen this many beautiful women in one place in. . . well. . . I don't go out that much.  In spite of that, though, in spite of the plethora of beautiful women, my friend and I got into an ideological argument about the rich and the poor.  He is rich.  Top five percenter, he said.  I said it was the one percent that controlled everything, but he is happy enough just having more money than ninety-five percent of the people.  It makes life easier in most ways.  You can pretend to economize, ape Warren Buffet and say the reason other people aren't rich is because they lack ambition, that they spend their money trying to live like a millionaire.  And those arguments are difficult to argue with, surely, for they are true.  But trying to argue against one truth with another, I told him, doesn't make you right. 

The argument is as boring and meaningless here as it was there, but the upshot was that we missed all the beautiful women.  Why?  For what reason?  So we could argue?  At least I didn't get into a shoving match. 

Our last stop of the evening was back at the bar where we began as we had to walk back to get our cars.  Everything had changed in the two hours since we left.  The bar was packed with. . . how should I describe them. . . what should be age appropriate people for me.  There was a band just starting up, a tick-tock band that could play any song and make it sound just like the last one.  They were fronted by two forty-something bleached blonds who had once been desirable in places like Key West, the apple of every drug dealer's eye, but now, stuffed into what must have once been an idea of rock hipness, all black dress and too tanned skin wrinkled and freckled where it showed. . . men with pot bellies and tucked in shirts with belts DANCING in that goofy prom way. . . it was a horror show. 

"There's my crowd," I said to my friend who is half a generation younger.  "Look at them go."

"Jesus," he said.  "I'm going home."

It was still early, perhaps ten.  There was home with its big screen t.v. and comfortable couch and on demand premium channels and plenty of scotch.  It was far preferable to the scene inside the bar.  I'd go home, I thought, one of those people too stupid or timid to strike out and become rich, one of the poor slobs trying to live like a millionaire.