Back in the Saddle

Originally Posted Monday, May 12, 2014

Getting back into the saddle sometimes is not as much fun as it was before.  I talked to a fellow yesterday who used to ride in Grand Prix-style motorcycle races.  I don't know what they are really called, but they ride around winding tracks on 750cc motorcycles at speeds up to 200 mph.  He had a crash that broke his wrists and turned his foot around backwards, among other things.  He was in the hospital for a good amount of time.  We were having brunch at the bar yesterday.  He was a trust fund kid who spent all the money and pissed off his family so that they won't give him any more.  His father won't even let him use his card at the country club to eat now.  It was all fun for a long time, though--drugs and hookers and gambling.  Married a nude dancer.  His daughter is twenty-one now and goes to Country Club College.  The family likes her, I'd guess, and she is a real sweet kid.  Oh, the marriage didn't last long, by the way.  Now, for the first time in his entire life, he has to make a living.  He works as a handyman for one of the very rich families in town.  He carries it alright.  Rides a bicycle.  Has a pretty girlfriend who I wanted for my own when I first met her.  One of those types.  He told me recently that she has a Ph.D. and teaches courses at a major state university.  Flies up each week for the classes.  Otherwise she is making lots of money.  The world never makes any sense to me.  So, as I say, we were sitting at the bar, he drinking dollar Buds as always.  That's the way he rolls now, but he'd drink about twenty of them. 

"That was the last time you rode a bike?" I asked him. 

"Well, I borrowed a friend's bike once after that.  Went to the track.  The bike was a piece of shit, you know. I just took it on a trial run, nobody else on the track, and I had the fear.  You can't ride like that.  You'll get somebody hurt.  You have to be balls to the wall all the time, fearless, and I knew I couldn't do it.  That was the last time I rode." 

And that is the way it is often enough.  Going back and trying something you used to do doesn't seem the same. 

My friend likes to gamble.  He used to fly to Vegas and get a luxury suite comped.  I've said this to some friends who act like that is nothing, like they do that for everybody.  They say it with a sort of viciousness that is supposed to undermine my friend's credibility, but they are wrong.  It was one of the ways that he lost his money, and it was a lot of money, not hundreds of thousands.  He lost it all, and the casinos liked him.  He told me he likes playing baccarat.  Right after he told me that, I read Osborne's "The Ballad of a Small Player."  It is about a British lawyer who steals a clients money and moves to Macau where he spends all of his time in the casinos playing baccarat.  The book is splendid and a lesson in the psyche of a gambler.  The novel makes the point that a real gambler likes losing as much as winning.  Yesterday at the bar, I told my friend about the book (in which he seemed to have no interest) and told him I'd become interested in the game.  And so we talked about that.  I was sitting between him and another friend with whom I go to brunch most Sundays and who loves to gamble and who can stand to win or lose a lot of money, but he only plays on holidays and is not a real gambler at all.  The two of them began swapping wisdoms about playing and players and being generous with the staff with tips and about dealers who are shitheads and against whom you can never seem to win a hand. 

"There's this Asian girl," my broke friend said.  "When she comes to the table, she has this 'fuck you' look on her face that is like 'go ahead, try to beat me.'  I can never win a hand when she is dealing." 

Which is funny to me because baccarat has no real strategy.  It is a game that is rooted purely and absolutely in luck. 

We talked on for a while, and then came the denouement.  They were talking about winning the big hands and letting the money ride and winning and letting it ride again and again.  I think he called it "pushing the bet." 

"That's the thrill of it.  That is how you win big money."

"But every hand is a 50/50 proposition," I said. 

"That's right.  That's the thrill.  For a gambler the thrill isn't winning, its losing.  That's why a gambler bets." His eyes were lit up and shining bright. 

My friend on the other side said, "Not me, I feel sick when I lose." 

The one with the bright eyes just looked at him, smiling. 

"That was the point of the book," I said enthusiastically, but nobody paid any attention or cared about that. 

I'm sure that I don't want to be a gambler.