It always happens like this… I win a bunch of money playing poker, then I lose that same bunch of money playing poker at a level I’m not comfortable with, then I re-commit to my writing and my projects because, as it turns out, in the end I’m just barely a profitable poker player.
After two wasted WSOP entries and a nice comeback with a tournament win at the Venetian, I’m back down 2k again today after a suck-out gave some Italian guy a flush to my AK. I read him right, and knew I was ahead with just AK after the flop, but he called $900 on a draw and beat me on the river. Oh well… it’s a call I want that will usually win money.So here I am having a bottle of wine and a cheese plate for one at a very cool café on The Grand Canal in The Venetian in Vegas. Still in a very good mood despite the day’s lost dollars, and ready to go home (wherever that is), soon, to my boys.I really ought to have gone to Europe instead of pseudo-Euro Vegas. It occurs to me that it would have been cheaper. Still, I’m barely out any real money as this is still poker winnings from another poker tournament win from a few weeks ago.I could do an “I Saw You” eposide/essay/vignette here. There are so many people out and about, like myself, having dinner or just drinks at 10:45 on a Monday night in the false vanilla sky of a manufactured indoor Venice. There’s a pharmaceutical supplies conference in town (or maybe just limited to the Venetian – I’m not sure) and last night I ran into a crazy group of women leaving the restroom and making noise, blocking the walkway. Once I’d passed them I realized I must have had a scowl on my face, because one of them, the cute one, apologized for her group and said “Give us a sign to let us know it’s okay?” I turned around and failed at flirting by just giving a thumbs-up. “I’m sorry,” she said again, as I slowed to let them catch up to me while on my way to the poker room. “We’re just a bunch of boring professionals who don’t get out very much.”“No problem at all,” I said. “What are you in town for? Bachelorette party?”“No,” she laughed. “It’s a pharmaceutical sales convention.”At that point I got lost, realizing she was indeed very pretty, and of course every pharmaceutical sales woman in the world is beautiful. After all, they need those doctors to be totally psyched to see them when they walk in with their samples.And though she was clearly flirting or interested to some degree, I forgot to flirt back as flashes of a previous infatuation that may have been love (but was probably just lust) burst through my brain and over-rode the smile and wittily flirtatious space I reserve nowadays mostly for waitresses and women at the poker table.I drifted back in time to 2000, where I met another pharmaceutical sales rep at a downtown Seattle bar. I was wearing my leather jacket even though it was about a hundred degrees in the bar. Lights flashing, music blaring and people so crowded together that the sweat and beer and liquor blended together on the sticky floor and actually smelled pretty good.I saw M_ standing there, just next to the dance floor, and I’d had just enough to drink to be able to walk up to her, pull out my wallet and say “Hey. Look at my awesome nephew!” I flashed my picture folio like a badge. A badge that said: “Look at what my sister made. I have within me the ability to make things just as beautiful, and don’t you ever forget it.”She admired my one-year-old nephew and we talked for a few minutes, and she showed me photos of her gorgeous family, too. She wanted to dance so we danced and sweated together on the dance floor. It was so crowded that dancing wasn’t really feasible so pretty soon we were just there, pushed together by the crowd, hopping to the beat and feeling everything and the moment required that we kiss. We made out on the dance floor amongst the masses in the thumping beats.We closed the bar and because at the time I thought myself a very good drunk driver and her friend was in bad shape, I drove them to my car, which was parked at my friend’s office a few miles away. She asked me to come home with her. “Just more kissing,” she said. “I want lots more kissing because that’s really fun with you but you have to be good.” She said this while holding up a finger as if to warn me in a pre-scolding way. She was recently divorced – still waiting for the final papers, actually – and just needed to kiss, be touched and appreciated. She needed to feel, again, how awesome it was to hold or be held all night.I considered the coolness of being so close to something so beautiful for a while longer, and agreed to her terms. After driving us all to my Jeep I then led them to her house because she was new to town and said, basically, "If you get me to XXXth street, then I can find it from there." I nearly missed her turn-off, but responded to her urgent bright-light-flashing and turn signal from behind me that said, “Hey – don’t forget to exit here.” It felt good knowing she was anxious, too, to spend more time with me. Where so often you expect to be ditched in that scenario, as she re-considers and thinks better of the whole thing, turning off suddenly and running away, she instead was concerned about me going the wrong way. We kissed all night and I held her while she slept (I’m not sure I ever really slept), and when the light came through her window and ignited her smile, creating a shadow in her deep left dimple, she turned a bit and said to me, a little embarrassed and shy, “Hey there.” And me, the big spoon, one arm under her neck stretched out underneath the pillow and the other laying on her slim waist, cupping a breast outside her t-shirt: “Hey.”I fell for her almost immediately, and was there to be the soft landing she needed to recover from her divorce and just to be a friend – someone to cuddle and eventually to make love with. “Timing is everything,” we always said, often in frustration as things slipped backward and she needed more space or I happened to call at just the right time to offer a Neil Diamond show after she’d had a difficult phone call with her soon-to-be ex. We went to Teatro ZinZanni, once – a Seattle cabaret / entertainment that includes the audience in the show, and they put us right up front where the little French bus-girl fell in love with me and gave M_ dirty looks. The performer stuck out her tongue at M_ as she and jumped into my arms to claim me, and we laughed along with everyone and that night we were a couple. After the show she said rather urgently that I’d better find somewhere to park or there was going to be trouble, and we found the darkest spot we could as close the theater as we could, and we made love (or something like making love, considering I had a rather cramped Jeep) there in the shadow of the Space Needle at what used to be a Tower Records store, because something had to be done with that sort of awesomeness – with the night and happiness, emotions and an excitement that that could not wait for a long drive home.So interesting and amazing the little things we do – whether based on timing or pure choice or chance – that determine a lifetime or multiple lifetimes. The children we made and the worlds we changed by the things we did. Here in Vegas I basically forgot how to flirt as I escaped into my memories and told the pharmaceutical sales girl to have a great night as I walked away to the poker room. Maybe she was destined to be something more in my life than the spark of a memory, but I’ll never know. The girl from Zazu, M_, circa 2000, not quite ready or divorce-recovered until she was finally ready and divorce-recovered and I’d already moved on, telling her not to come over during her last, tearful two-A.M. call when she’d finally changed her mind and wanted me for more than just her recovery, her bounce – her friend already driving her to my house. “No,” I said, painfully, already essentially committed to the woman who would eventually become my wife and the mother of my two beautiful boys. “I’m sorry,” I said to her that night. “It’s too late.”“Timing,” she said, finally. “It's always has been about timing.”
