Drink, Play, F@#k
Drink, Play, F@#k
One Man’s Search for Anything Across Ireland, Vegas, and Thailand
ANDREW GOTTLIEB
Copyright © 2009 by Goodness Incorporated
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-5558-4991-5 (e-book)
Black Cat
a paperback imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
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For the real Alicia
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.*
—Mark Twain
0
or
Introduction
or
How This Book Works
or
The Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Numbers
The seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal is one of those guys who kind of almost invented everything way before everyone else did, only he didn’t. Computers, the flush toilet, the wristwatch . . . Pascal just missed nailing all of these marvelous contributions to modern society. He was on the right track but never quite made it to the station. Aside from a bunch of theorems and triangles and stuff, his greatest real invention was the result of another failure. While unsuccessfully trying to come up with a perpetual motion machine, Pascal accidentally created the roulette wheel—a brilliant contraption featuring thirty-six numbers and thirty-six ways to make a fortune or to lose all of your money.
At hundreds of casinos from Reno, Nevada, to Atmore, Alabama, to Coconut Creek, Florida, you can hit the tables, put down a bet on any one of those numbers, and get paid off to the tune of thirty-five to one. If you found a spot where the limits were high enough, you could turn $6,250 into $218,750 in a few seconds just because your Little League number was seventeen and you woke up with a lucky feeling.
I’ve spent a lot of time in casinos recently and I can tell you firsthand that there is almost no better feeling—and I’m factoring in sex, drugs, sports, rage, alcohol, love, dessert, linen sheets, fresh fruit, and religion—than hitting your number at roulette. I can also tell you that getting wiped out at the table feels like getting nut punched by an angry biker with enormous fists.
I didn’t used to have this kind of sophisticated perspective about the gambling arts. My name is Bob Sullivan,1 and I used to be just another overpaid account executive logging hour after hour at a large Manhattan ad agency while trundling my way through a life of comfort, expectation, and—let’s face it—boredom. The boredom pretty much stopped, however, when my wife of eight years decided to leave me for another man while vociferously suffering the mother of all existential crises. Some might suggest that these events led to a crisis of my own.
Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but after everything I’ve been through—after all the heartache I’ve suffered and joy I’ve felt, after all the strange sights that I’ve seen, the bizarre situations I’ve encountered, and the weird and fascinating people whom I’ve met—I’ve come to one simple conclusion: life is not just like roulette, life is roulette. And, since this book is about life—or at least one year in my life—I’ve decided to organize it like a roulette wheel with thirty-six chapters describing the year I spent out there. “Out there” in this case being a euphemism for “anywhere where I could get away from the unrelenting heartache caused by my wife suddenly stabbing me in the back.”
I’m also going to include two extra chapters to represent the two numbers added over time to Pascal’s roulette wheel,0 and 00. 0 and 00 are sneaky bastards. When they hit, it always comes as a surprise—as if someone snuck those evil green digits onto the wheel while it was spinning too fast to notice. And when they hit it usually leads to that brutal nut punch I mentioned earlier.
The three sections of this book will each focus on one of the locations in which I spent the year in question, desperately trying to get my head and heart together after my wife had so enthusiastically poured battery acid over both of them. From the pubs of Ireland, to the casinos of Las Vegas, to the hedonistic pleasure palaces of Thailand, I learned a great deal during my twelve months of isolation, degradation, depredation, inebriation, confabulation, masturbation, consternation, and elation. One of the most important lessons that I learned was not to fear the zeroes. Yes, they’re unfair. And, yes, they reduce the odds of winning and add to the house’s already hefty advantage. But they also make things fun. The great victories in life are never sure things. Anyone can beat up a toddler—especially if he’s napping. But when Buster Douglas dropped Mike Tyson that cold February night in Tokyo, he made history. He also paid out at forty-two to one.
I am a simple man. I believe in only a few things, but I learned these things the hard way so I believe in them absolutely. I don’t consider myself a spiritual person. Either I’ve been too busy to think about that stuff or it just felt stupid to do so. But I’ll tell you one thing that I really do believe: If you listen to the roulette wheel, it will talk to you. And sometimes it will even whisper what number’s about to hit.
00
or
The Second of Those Two Extra Chapters
or
Maybe This Roulette Analogy Isn’t Working
I used to have a plan. It wasn’t a brilliant blueprint designed by crafty German Bauhaus architects. It was a simple outline for how I wanted to live my life. And, without wanting to sound boastful, I think that it was a solid plan: have some fun while I’m young, work hard after college, meet a couple of ladies, marry one of them, make lots of money, drive an expensive car, have some kids, worry about my receding hair-line, watch lots of sports on TV, die. A nice, basic plan, right? And everything was unfolding beautifully. I was in the middle of step six, blissfully unaware of the shitstorm that was heading my way, when the bottom fell out—of my marriage, that is. The expensive car held up nicely.
To be totally honest, there were problems with my plan even before my wife shoved a nuclear bomb down the pants of our life together. I might have spent too much time at the office. I probably could have met a few more ladies before marrying one of them. I definitely should have put my foot down about all the pasta-making courses, ballet recitals, and poetry readings she made me go to. And regular viewings of Shakespeare in the Park turned out not to solve the problems that already existed in my life. I really did love that car, though.
I’m pretty much through with planning now. See, I used to think of myself as just another guy watching that white ball bounce around, hoping it would land on my number. I felt that I wasn’t in control of what was happening in my life and that made me nervous and anxious. But I’ve come to realize that I’m not some wide-eyed hopeful bellied up to the baize watching helplessly as a random white ball decides my fate. I now know that I’m not fully in control of what will happen to me,
nor will I ever be. But that’s okay. Because I also know that I’m not just watching the white ball, I am the white ball. And it doesn’t matter where I land, because each number has something wonderful and magical to offer. Especially twenty-nine.
During my travels and travails through Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand, I met some amazing people. Some of them were amazing douche bags. Some became my guides. Some became my closest friends. And one of them became my own personal guru. Not in the way you’re thinking. There was no yoga or incense or creepy bald dude in a unitard helping me realign my chakras. Rick was more like a teacher, or mentor, or guardian angel, or golf buddy, or whatever the hell you want to call him. Maybe guru was just a bad choice of word. After all, how many gurus sleep on the bathroom floor of the Twenty-third Street YMCA and have actually beaten the Big Game at the Bellagio for a hundred grand?
I’m using Rick’s real name, and the real names of several other important people whom I met while I was on the road. Some other names and locations have been fictionalized out of respect for people’s privacy and my aforementioned desire not to be sued. Aside from that I’ve tried to relate everything exactly the way it happened—or at least the way I remembered it. And how much more can you realistically expect from a bouncing ceramic spheroid?
Book One
Ireland
or
“Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring.”
—Alexander Pope
or
12 Tales About Getting Wrecked
1
I wish Giovanna would kiss me.
There are many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. Giovanna is an exchange student from Milan studying marketing in Dublin. I am an American businessman in my late thirties hiding out in Ireland trying to get so drunk that my wife’s recent betrayal will stop burning my insides like hot lava. Giovanna’s a beautiful young Italian goddess with a lion’s mane of jet-black hair, and I’m a thoroughly average-looking New Englander with the beginnings of love handles and some gray creeping into my temples. So Giovanna is almost twenty years younger than I am. She is engaged to a guy named Teodoro back in Italy. She is sweet, and innocent, and deeply religious. But the real reason why Giovanna kissing me would be a terrible idea is that she is so incredibly drunk right now that if she were to kiss me, she’d probably throw up all over my face.
Ireland is an amazing country. In no other spot that I have come across on my travels has drinking to excess been accepted to such a degree as normal, everyday behavior. I used to think that Texans didn’t actually wear cowboy hats—that it was just a stereotype propagated by movies and TV. But one day I had a stopover in the Houston airport and I saw a bunch of people wearing cowboy hats for real in a totally nonironic fashion. Well, Ireland is just like that—only instead of cowboy hats, it’s people getting shitfaced. And instead of just a handful of good ol’ boys rocking their ten-gallon lids, it’s every single person in the country slamming shot after shot and beer after beer from morning till night and then starting all over again.
As further proof that Ireland is committed to promoting a drinks-based culture, I’d like to point out that one of the most popular sections of Dublin, where all the tourists go and the fun happens, is called Temple Bar. They have the word “bar” in the name of their most famous neighborhood! That would be like Parisians calling the Latin Quarter the Escargot Quarter, or Los Angelenos changing the name from Beverly Hills to Cocaineville.
In defense of the Dubliners, the “bar” in Temple Bar doesn’t actually refer to a bar where you order drinks. But it’s not like they don’t know about their international reputation for throwing it down. If the Irish didn’t want to encourage the stereotype that they’re all booze hounds, they easily could have called the place Old Dublin, or South Bank, or Liffeytown or something. But these sauceheads love everything that even tangentially has anything to do with alcohol. So they have been calling the cultural center of their capital city Temple Bar for four hundred years.
There’s a reason that the Emerald Isle has never produced any world-class painters, sculptors, or architects—none of them could hold a brush, chisel, or pencil steady enough to get the job done. The poets could dash down their rhymes and romances in shaky letters on cocktail napkins in between pints. And the singers could wail and moan while teetering on the verge of alcoholic unconsciousness—but that’s where Ireland’s artistic contributions peter out. These people really drink, is my point. If you were to cut an Irish hemophiliac, you’d have beer on tap until the poor bastard bled out.
I should mention that as I’m staring at Giovanna’s gorgeous face, lustrous hair, and devastating green eyes, I’m probably even drunker than she is. Here is a quick recap of what I’ve had to drink in the three hours leading up to my current emotional quandary: six pints of Guinness, six shots of Inishowen, three large Bacardi Breezers, two glasses of red wine, half a glass of water. At this point it’s really a toss-up between Giovanna and me as to who is going to puke on whom first. But as I’m staring into those lovely, albeit significantly glazed-over green eyes, allow me to flash back to another occasion when I was staring into a woman’s eyes. This time they are my wife’s eyes—also green—but at the moment I’m remembering they are more red than green as she has been crying hysterically in the bathroom for about an hour.
2
There are approximately a dozen possible explanations as to why my wife might have been crying hysterically for about an hour. In ascending order of significance, these are some of the things that made her weep uncontrollably: world hunger, accidentally skipping breakfast, missing a sale at Barney’s, not enough women on the Supreme Court, noticing a new frown line, political persecution in far-off lands, thinking she’s not as pretty as her sister, the subway, anything having to do with me.
My guess is that this tear binge was primarily driven by the last option—but you never know. Once while we were staying at the Four Seasons Resort at Punta Mita, Mexico, she wouldn’t leave the room for two days because she didn’t want anyone to see the bags under her eyes that were a direct result of her sobbing about the possibility that she might have bags under her eyes. For those of you keeping score at home, the Four Seasons Resort at Punta Mita, Mexico, is a very expensive hotel. And having a profoundly neurotic, self-obsessed wife turns out not to be a valid excuse for a refund.
On the night in question, however, I just knew that this was all my fault—that I was the bags under her eyes. There was a familiarity to this wailing that I had dealt with many times in the past. I was getting the same vibe that I used to get when I’d forget about meaningless pseudo-anniversaries or when I didn’t introduce her “quickly enough” to people at the office Christmas party.
As I lay in bed desperately trying to pretend that not only was I still asleep, but I was so deeply asleep that even loud caterwauling couldn’t possibly wake me up, I wracked my brain to try and remember what I possibly could have done wrong. My checklist was pretty slim. I never cheated on her, I never hit her, I was nice to her family, I paid for all of her stuff. When you get right down to it—what else is a decent husband supposed to do?
The correct answer to that question is “not much.” Her answer to that question was “a lot.” I discovered this when she finally called my sleep bluff by storming out of the bathroom and making a caustic remark about my testicles. I believe that the exact phrase was, “You got some kind of balls!” At that point I felt that not even the greatest actor of our time could have pulled off the fake sleep gambit any longer, so I sat up in bed and asked what was the matter.
As it turned out, my initial instincts were correct. I was the matter. Somehow I was responsible for the myriad sadnesses in her life. I was indifferent to world hunger and political persecution. I wasn’t enthusiastic enough in my support of women’s rights. I made her ride the subway too often. I looked at her sister’s ass at Thanksgiving. The floodgates burst open and I was drowning in my own massive culpability.
In my d
efense, I should point out that if I did look at her sister’s ass at Thanksgiving, it was only to marvel at the staggering effectiveness of bulimia. I swear—that woman can’t weigh more than one hundred pounds. There was never any lust in that glance. I felt sorry for her and I was mystified by her feelings of inadequacy. She’s a smart, pretty lady—how come she never eats?
Anyway, as far as women’s rights go, I stuffed envelopes for Hillary Freaking Clinton! I actually liked the broad! It wasn’t my fault she got hosed.
And I wasn’t indifferent to the problems of the world. I just didn’t waste my time moaning about them. I actually tried to help whenever I could. I just never saw the point in talking about it all the time.
As for the subway thing—I have to plead guilty there. I know she hated taking the subway, but taxis are ridiculous. It’s not the cost that bothers me, it’s the traffic. I’d rather take my chances of catching tuberculosis on a fast-moving A train than spend an hour staring glumly through a dirty window at the same backed-up midtown street corner while sweaty cabdrivers curse in Russian.
I knew she hated the subway. And I knew she resented me every time I insisted we go down there. But if marriage is all about compromise, then why was I the only one compromising all the time? If the Guarneri String Quartet were playing at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday at the exact same time as the Super Bowl, guess where I spent my afternoon? Exactly—Beethoven 1, Football 0. And, sure, I DVR-ed it, but it’s not the same. Sports are like sweet shrimp—they’re meant to be enjoyed live.
I really felt like I gave way more than my fair share in the relationship. But my wife had absolutely no interest in breaking down my emotional mathematics. The only thing she wanted to break down was me. She had come to a powerful realization while she wept onto the porcelain—and it wasn’t that we were out of toilet paper. My wife wanted a divorce.
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