Drink, Play, F@#k

by Andrew Gottlieb

  As for the darkness, it is a greatly appreciated mystery whose secrets are known only by good hotels. Why is it that you can achieve total obscurity only in a hotel room? Every bedroom that I have ever had in every dorm, apartment, or house has had myriad openings through which the sun would creep. And it wasn’t like I didn’t fight the good fight. I installed blinds, curtains, and blackout shades. I even tried taping them to the glass like the nutjob in Insomnia. But the sunlight would always beat me. Somehow, though, the good folks at the Bellagio had been able to hermetically seal out the light. At four in the afternoon, with the Vegas sun blazing outside like a thousand exploding stars, I could make my suite blacker that the darkest corner of the Luray Caverns just by closing the drapes.

  I woke up and took a shower in an enclosure large enough to raise cattle. There were more nozzles in that thing than in a fire truck. I had jets of water shooting up, out, over, around, and through my body. By the time I was finished, my spleen was clean. I threw on some clothes, grabbed a nice, ripe nectarine out of the complimentary fruit basket that the hotel had provided, shoved last night’s purples in my pocket, and headed down to the casino.

  My first stop was last night’s blackjack table. Onald was not there. A middle-aged Asian woman named Say was working the felt. The table was empty except for an obscenely large sweaty man wearing a Green Bay Packers cap sitting in the anchor seat. I asked him if he minded if I played in the middle of the shoe. His response was, “Fuckin’ A, I mind.” Nonplussed, I sat down and waited for the shoe to turn over. I probably should have left right there. It can’t be good hoodoo to play cards with some creepy giant who smells like wet cheese and has already been rude to me. But I figured that last night’s good luck would overwhelm today’s bad luck.

  I was wrong.

  Right from the first hand, Say started whacking me. And she wouldn’t do it nicely. It’s one thing when you’ve got a fifteen and the dealer’s showing a ten. You hit, bust, and lose the hand. I can deal with that. But it’s very painful when you’ve got a nineteen and the dealer’s showing a four. She turns over the hole card to reveal a ten. Then she pulls an ace, another ace, and then a five to crush your spirit with an unanticipated five-card Charlie. When she does this over and over again, you start to take it personally.

  The other thing you start to do is chase the dragon. This is the opposite of the modified Kogen. Instead of implementing and sticking with a controlled betting strategy, chasing the dragon means risking more and more money in a desperate attempt to retrieve what you’ve already lost. Frequently chasing the dragon is accompanied by clammy palms, a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, and extreme light-headedness.

  After I lost my first purple, I also lost my self-control. I started using Vegas math for evil instead of for good. I figured that if I had just lost four hands in a row, then the next hand was bound to be a winner, so I should bet five times the amount I’d normally bet, and then I’d be even. After this didn’t work twice, I decided that I was being punished for thinking small. Why was I worried about breaking even? I was at the tables to give this casino a beating. Forget five times the amount I’d normally bet, it was time to play some purple.

  I placed my $500 chip in the betting circle and received two eights. The dealer was showing a six. For a moment I wondered whether or not I should really split those eights. The book demanded it, but I’d be risking a grand on one hand. Then I chastised myself for ever doubting the sanctity of the book. I placed another purple chip next to the first one and told Say to split ’em. She filled up each hand with a glorious face card. Now, I had two eighteens against her six. She flipped her down card up to reveal a ten of clubs. Then she pulled a four off the deck and swept away my thousand dollars.

  For some reason the sweaty giant in the anchor seat chose this moment to call me a “fucking douche bag.” I don’t know if he was angry because I had queered his luck or because he thought I was playing poorly. I prefer to think that he was merely an extremely perceptive man with a foul mouth. Because right then I really felt like a fucking douche bag. I had blown through around six thousand dollars in less than an hour. And I wasn’t even enjoying myself. Actually, I kind of felt like I was having a stroke. Mercifully, the yellow cut card popped up and Say had to roll over a new shoe. I mustered what little physical strength I had left and was able to push myself away from the table. I wished Say and the rude behemoth a lovely afternoon and stumbled away in a daze.

  My intention was to return to my suite, close the blinds to convert the space into a massive sensory deprivation chamber, and cry myself back to sleep. But the flesh is weak, and my brain is even weaker. As I walked toward the elevator bank I came across a $500 chip wedged deep in my pocket that I hadn’t noticed earlier. This was a gift from the gods—I wasn’t busted after all. I weathered the storm of defeat and humiliation and was still walking away with a little something to show for my efforts. Unfortunately I was walking away right next to a roulette wheel.

  My heart leapt. Here was my chance to win it all back in one shot! But my brain was having none of it. I knew how bad it would feel to lose it all moments after I’d already thought I’d lost it all. But I did have to admit that it would feel amazing to get back in the black after the beating I just took. I made a small gentleman’s wager with myself. If the current spin landed on black, then I’d play. Red, I’d walk away. Double-zero hit. Neither red nor black, this result placed me in a quandary. I solved the quandary by saying, “Ah, what the hell. I got more money upstairs.” I asked the dealer if I could play my purple chip. He checked with the pit boss who okayed the bet. Five hundred dollars turned out to be the maximum bet allowable on any individual number at the current gaming stakes at this table.

  I had never bet the limit before and my heart insisted that the time was right. I was no longer listening to my brain. I think my brain may have even been caught up in the excitement by now. If we hit the winning number with this bet, we’d win $17,500. Plus the half dozen people sitting around the table would think I was a superstar. Granted, I’d never see any of them again. But just knowing that some complete strangers out there would be pressing license plates or serving frozen yogurt while fondly recalling the time when that guy hit his number on a max bet made me feel like a winner.

  But where to place my chip? Obviously I could have broken it down into smaller denominations. This was a $10 table, which meant that everyone had to be risking a total of at least $10 on every spin of the wheel. I could have changed my purple into five hundred one-dollar chips. Properly spread out, that could have lasted me for an hour—even if I never won a single spin. But I was already committed to letting it ride. I surveyed the numbers and did a quick analysis of each. Surprisingly my emotions had a lot to do with the choice.

  My birthday was on the twenty-fifth, but that seemed a little trite. My basketball number in high school was thirty-one, but that was also my wife’s birthday—so that wasn’t happening. Every number I looked at triggered both positive and negative thoughts. Twelve? Sure, I was spending twelve months on the road during my journey. But twelve was also Tom Brady’s number and I can’t stand him. What a loser move—leaving Bridget Moynihan for Gisele Bundchen. Four? Four used to be my favorite number, but it’s left a bad taste in my mouth ever since the Red Sox won four in a row from the Yankees back in 2004. (Even though I was born and raised in Connecticut, I’ve always been a New York sports fan. For better or worse, this fact has colored many of my decisions.)

  Then I noticed twenty-nine. Black twenty-nine. I couldn’t think of any twenty-nines in my life. Nothing good popped up, nothing bad came to mind. Twenty-nine seemed totally neutral. So, twenty-nine it was. I shoved the purple chip on top of that number just before the dealer waved his arm over the table and announced, “No more bets.”

  At this point my brainpan became a theater in the round for every lunatic idea, superstition, and wish I’d ever had. A billion thoughts exploded at once. Part of me was actively and de
sperately wishing for twenty-nine to hit. Part of me was honestly wondering if my wanting the number to hit could possibly impact that number hitting. Part of me was telling other parts of me to calm down and be quiet. And another part of me was aware that everyone else at the table was probably having this exact same cavalcade of craziness swirling around in their heads.

  The wheel and the ball slowed down in their opposite arcs. The ball started skipping and bouncing from number to number. The ball settled in twenty-nine. An intense roar of exhilaration started forming in my shoes and working its way up my legs. The ball teetered out of twenty-nine and landed permanently on the adjacent number. Twenty-five.

  “Twenty-five! Red! No winners!”

  The dealer raked away all the chips. I sat there staring at the winning number, still spinning softly, in disbelief. Twenty-five. Of course it was twenty-five! There’s a reason that betting your birthday is trite and a cliché. Because, like all trite clichés, it’s based on the truth! You always bet your birthday! What the hell had I been thinking? Isn’t gambling just like the SATs? Aren’t you always supposed to go with your first instincts?

  I could no longer live with this shame in public. I was convinced that all those people who moments ago were going to be wistfully recalling my winning play while tromping through their dead-end lives would now be laughing at my failure while jet-setting around the French Riviera. The woman sitting to my immediate left was around fifty years old. She appeared to be from Southeast Asia and was eating some noodles out of a Tupperware container that she had clearly brought with her to the casino. She had twenty-seven dollars in front of her, some slightly soiled Kleenex, and had been nursing the same complimentary gin and tonic for the past half hour. The likelihood that this person would soon be chortling at my expense while speedboating with Prince Albert of Monaco was, realistically, extremely slim. But at that moment, I could actually hear her telling Albert the story of my defeat and shame. She called him Al—and the son of a bitch laughed uproariously while the choppy waves sprayed sea foam on top of his big bald head.

  Disgusted with myself, I stormed back up to my suite, closed the blinds, and hurled myself into bed.

  18

  Not surprisingly, I couldn’t sleep. First of all, I’d just woken up a few hours earlier. Secondly, I was so jacked up on adrenaline that I kept replaying the various hands that Say murdered me with over and over again. Every time I shut my eyes I saw that damn ball skipping out of twenty-nine and landing on twenty-five. The perverse bad luck that had plagued me at blackjack destroyed me at roulette. Like I said, it’s one thing to just lose. But when you lose in such a cruel way—with winning so tantalizingly close—it eats away at you.

  I had to do something or I’d go nuts. But what do you do in Vegas if you’re too nut-punched to gamble? It was too early to catch the Amazing Jonathan—besides, I hate magic acts. So I decided to go to the gym.

  There are only two kinds of people who go to the gym in Las Vegas: people who hate gambling and people who have just taken a beating at the tables. Since people who hate gambling rarely go to Las Vegas, the gyms there are pretty much filled with losers. And I’m not making a moral judgment about these people. As I approached an open treadmill, I was most emphatically one of them.

  It was a pretty depressing exercise session. Since I was sure that the story of my ruinous run had spread across the town by now, I avoided direct eye contact with everyone. I just jogged along with my headphones on, staring at the plasma screen playing SportsCenter but not really watching or listening.

  My mind was reeling. I was supposed to be in Vegas for four months. I was supposed to have all kinds of fun in Vegas for four months. But so far I had been in Vegas for twenty-four hours and I had already experienced a soul-crushing reversal of fortune at the tables. If I blew all of the money I’d brought with me in the first week, what the hell was I supposed to do for the rest of the time?

  I forgot to mention something earlier when I was describing Vegas math. The mathematical coefficient that is the key to having fun in Las Vegas, regardless of how much you lose, is always having money when you’re in Las Vegas. You don’t have to have a lot. But you have to have some. When you have no money in Las Vegas, and you can’t get any more out of your ATM, and your credit cards are all maxed out, and your buddies no longer think of you as a reliable credit risk, then there’s only one thing to do: leave Las Vegas.

  But I was committed to staying here for the long haul. So what was I going to do if I kept getting wiped out? I was really stressing over this as I was pounding the treadmill. Maybe I should have stayed in Ireland. Maybe I should never have even started this stupid trip. Maybe I should go back to New York and beg for my old job back. If the purpose of this whole expedition was to have fun, then things had really started going off the rails. Because I wasn’t just not having fun. Now I was not having fun and I was jogging. I hate jogging. A lot. On an average day, I would honestly rather get hit in the shins (lightly) by a hammer than jog more than a block or two. But here I was humping along this stupid treadmill worrying about my future. The situation was getting dangerous—I was really starting to doubt myself.

  That’s when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there was Rick jogging along on the treadmill next to me. He said something, but I still had the headphones on and couldn’t hear. I removed the headphones. He repeated what he’d said before.

  “Take a beating, huh?”

  Shit. Everyone was talking about it.

  “Who told you?” I asked him.

  “No one had to tell me. The only people jogging at two in the afternoon at the Bellagio gym are people who just took a beating.”

  “I guess that means you took a beating too.”

  “No, man,” he said. “I work here sometimes as a personal trainer. I just finished up an hour with Deepak Chopra and now I’m cooling down. By the way, you’ll get better cardio if you breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.”

  I don’t know what surprised me more—that Deepak Chopra has a personal trainer, that I now knew Deepak Chopra’s personal trainer, or that Deepak Chopra was currently in Las Vegas. I would have figured that he’d be somewhere classy and spiritual, like Italy, India, or—I don’t know—Bali, maybe.

  Rick wanted to know what had happened, so I told him about my brutal day so far.

  “And that’s what’s got you in the gym? That’s what you’re all stressed out about?”

  I explained how it was kind of eating away at me and making me doubt my whole extended Vegas plan. Rick just shook his head.

  “You need a significant attitude adjustment. You want to grab some lunch?”

  I told him that it sounded like a good idea.

  He hopped off the treadmill, completely unfazed by the run. I, on the other hand, was about to puke. Trying to keep pace with Rick while maintaining a conversation at the same time almost killed me. But I didn’t want Rick to see me in my weakened condition so I pretended to tie my shoes for about two minutes while I caught my breath.

  Rick chuckled at my sorry state and playfully snapped a towel at me. He told me to raise my arms above my head, and to walk it out. Then he told me to meet him downstairs at Prime in ten minutes.

  I crouched there for a moment feeling like a total dork as I wheezed desperately with both arms stretched toward the heavens. I heard someone pass by and say, “That Rick is a real killer, huh?”

  I looked up just in time to watch Deepak leave the gym.

  When I got down to the restaurant, Rick was already at the table. In fact, he was the only person at any table. He had showered and changed, ordered a pitcher of Arnold Palmers, and was busy chatting up an extremely pretty waitress.

  “Bobby! Have a seat. Stella, this is my friend Bobby. He got whacked this morning, and I think that nothing short of a porterhouse is going to make him feel better.”

  Stella hurried off to place our order.

  I turned to Rick. “I thought this plac
e is only open for dinner.”

  “It is,” he replied. “But I train Jean-Georges so they take care of me here. They also never charge me, so relax and enjoy.”

  And that’s exactly what I did. The steak was excellent. The company was agreeable. Stella was adorable. She was the first person I ever met in my entire life who was actually from Las Vegas. Like—originally. She didn’t come to visit and end up staying there. She was born there. Until that moment I had never entertained the possibility that normal American lives were unfolding in that part of the desert. It seemed impossible that within a few blocks of these mammoth casinos, husbands and wives were serving their kids macaroni and cheese. How could Mike “The Mouth” Matusow suck out on the river to scoop a $300,000 pot from Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu in the same zip code where seventh graders were learning about the Protestant Reformation and wondering where babies come from?

  Obviously, I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I was surprised to hear about Stella’s background. Vegas is a huge city with all the same boring stuff that all huge cities have. Movie theaters, hospitals, schools, churches, and an enormous casino. hotel tower that features a giant teeter-totter that whips you in circles while you’re suspended nine hundred feet above the ground. You know—just like where you live.

  While we ate, Rick heard my whole sorry tale. The big breakup, my mini breakdown, my time in Ireland, and my plans for the year.

  Rick was a big fan of the whole idea. He had kind of dedicated his entire life to the spirit of what I was doing for these twelve months. He’s extremely smart and well educated and has held a variety of impressive jobs in challenging careers. But he never allowed them to hem him in. He’s been a practicing lawyer, a respected teacher, and a successful investor, but he insists that his job as a personal trainer has given him more freedom, fun, and entertainment than all of those other jobs put together.