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The San Francisco Panorama.
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Stephen Elliott's Poker Report.BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT- - - - August 2, 2005 $25 Buy-In, No Way Out When I arrived at Andy's house he was wearing spring-loaded shades and frayed gray denim, his dark curls buzzed high and tight, mid-length sideburns. He reminded me of Travis Bickle, God's angry man. "Do I look like a bad player?" he asked. "The worst," I told him. "Good. I'm going to take some sucker's money." "They read the Poker Report," I told him. "They know who you are." "Tell them I'm Chris Cooney," Andy said. "Then they won't think I'm any good." The game was just down the street at 8:30. Twenty-five-dollar buy-in for $100 in chips, tournament style, two tables, 16 players, progressive blinds. Andy was the first one out, check-raising his full stack into the felt. He was in third position and there had been two raises before. Both players called. "Who's got aces?" he asked, turning over a pair of kings, lips like flat tires. The lady next to me turned a pair of tens. Erik, the host, rolled American Airlines. "That sucks," Andy said. But Eric didn't win. I was dealing. A ten came on the flop, then another ten on fourth street. "Four tens," I said. "That's a tough hand to beat." Andrew was out of the tournament but he had brought a bottle of Jack Daniels with him. He drank near the door frame looking angular. Then he left for a cigarette. When he came back, the bottle was almost empty, it was 10 at night, and he was still wearing his sunglasses. "What are you still doing in?" he asked, weaving near the fruit bowl. "You're projecting," I told him. The second player out was Tim. Windy flew sorties over his bluff. Tim had won $15,000 in an online tournament earlier in the week. There were some ringers at the table. Windy used to own a record store and now kept her face serious and focused, occasionally slurping from a styrofoam container full of noodles. Windy had invited me to the game after I thanked her for calling me her favorite local author in an interview. "I'm really not that good," Windy said, cupping her hand and peeling her top card. But she was that good. She took down Mike with a paired ace in her hand and all of his money across the center. She played like General Sherman, burning everything behind her. I had thought Windy had invited me over because she liked the Poker Report and wanted to be friends. Now I knew I was just another sucker in her eyes, something to destroy on her long march to the sea. Her chips became a fortress guarded by a full house and a nut-flush moat. I almost made it to the second table but I didn't. I was the eighth player out, just before the two tables combined. I had $65 and a paired ace. Lynnore had a pair of queens in the hole and a queen on the flop. She owns a furniture store. She took the last of what I had. I sat outside with Andy Miller and Tim, who had won $15,000 a week ago but lost $25 tonight beneath the Windy blitzkrieg. Tim and Andy wanted to play a losers tournament and I agreed. But I was the first to lose at the loser's table. Without Reason, All the Way Home It was getting late anyway, and it had been such a strange week. My heart was stretched and close to my ribs. I had visited a prison in the Antelope Valley, spoken with men in a gymnasium converted to a dorm, piled three-tier on 40 bunks, 120 of them kept in that room 20 hours a day. I had come back to San Francisco, where I explored the meaning of commitment, walked straight to the emotional edge and looked over the face and saw the swirling waters filled with the debris of when things fall apart. I wrote a love poem, started a novel, organized a fundraiser for children tried as adults. It was a week filled with jealousy, innovation, and reinvention. I was asked what my needs were and replied that I wouldn't know until it was too late. If it seems like I'm being vague it's because I am. There are secrets that must be kept. But I'll tell you this: love is a bruise, the child commits the crime but the father is guilty, sometimes there's nothing to do but climb the Twin Peaks and watch the tankers poking through the small rocky opening into the bay. I fled the poker game $25 poorer, sped home through the Mission, streets empty and flat. The fog was rolling in and the doors to the bars were closed. Andy Miller was still at the Loser's Table, his whiskey gone. And Windy, who had seemed so innocent, was at the final table beneath the façade of an antique pinball machine, a wealthy smile like a small demon at the corner of her mouth. For no reason I thought about a story I heard this week, about an old man who left his wife for a much younger woman, and the incredible price he paid. Hours later, I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing the stains from the bathroom floor, chipping the grout from between the tiles, sick with the smell of bleach and industrial cleaners. How had the bathroom become so dirty? Had I let things go too far? It was 2 in the morning. It would take me three hours to clean the tiny bathroom. The bathroom would never be this clean again. I remembered that I didn't always play poker. I grew up playing spades in houses with other troubled boys. The boy next to the dealer would peer at the second-to-last card. The games weren't for money but they were filled with the heavy air of potential violence. Between hands we tattooed each other with blue India ink, one dot at a time. I had a large dagger on my left shoulder, which I later covered up with something resembling a wizard escaping the sun. I left those savage homes in Chicago for quiet games in San Francisco. But the past always follows. Everything is cool, nothing makes sense. Stephen Elliott - - - - Read additional Poker Reports here. - - - - OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES: - - - - Stephen Elliott's Poker Report By Stephen ElliottAnticlimactic Twilight Zone Episodes By Jim Stallard Richard Salvatore: Future Extreme Accountant Endorsed by Gatorade By Julia Haslauer Obscenities Uttered by Jesus Christ By Cara Jennison and Andrew Sutherland HBO to Launch Edgeless Series By Jack Pendarvis |
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