Pocket Kings (10 page)

I stopped going to the gym.
Th
ose six hours a week were now allotted to cards. Time was money, and running home with my fattening lunch was all the exercise I was getting.

Now I could walk through the front door and be playing poker (and jamming fries down my maw) within ten seconds.

Th
e words
addiction, gambling problem, obsessed, denial,
and
help
hadn't yet occurred to me.

Th
e company that I was (barely) working for had no idea I was winning more money on their dime than they were paying me. It was as if they were paying me to use their office space as my own office space. I felt guilty cashing their checks but still forced myself to do so.

Bubbly Brit Bird and Pest Control kept up their affair, playing and joking around with others but heating it up at private tables.
Th
ere were dozens of other trysts and flirtations going on (in some ways being on the site is like walking down a high school corridor between classes) and you could witness every sexual activity, from adult toys to group sex to armpits and toe-sucking, known to man. If an anti-American terrorist organization could read some of the sex chat on the site, they wouldn't deem this country worth destroying.

One time I stumbled upon Cali Wonder Gal entertaining a Seattle furniture salesman.

Cali Wonder Gal:
So how big, Eduardo?

Fast Eddie G:
How's 11 1/2 inches sound to you, baby? Rock hard.

Cali Wonder Gal:
No way.

Fast Eddie G:
I no lie to you, sugar pie.

Cali Wonder Gal:
Oh yes you do.

Fast Eddie G:
Just sent you a foto.

Cali clicked out while she downloaded Fast's photo, and I didn't believe Fast any more than she did. (Only a week before I'd overheard a player named 23rd Century Foxx telling a guy named Buff Stuff Bobby that she was hot. “How hot,” Buff had asked her. “Soooooo hot,” 23rd told him. “I'm a hi class escort, $3K an hour.” Whereupon two minutes later Buff was not only losing $500 to her three 9s but was ejaculating all over her 36D breasts. “I just jizzed,” he confessed to her, “all over your gorgeus [sic] boobs, baby.” But I clicked on 23rd Century Fox's profile page [where players can, if they so choose, display personal information and a picture] and the truth in all its gory detail was revealed:
Th
e woman may indeed have had a 36D chest but the rest of her looked like a cross between Yoda and Teddy Kennedy.)

Cali clicked back in.

Cali Wonder Gal:
Holy smokes, Fast, you no lie to me!

Fast Eddie G:
Did I not tell you, baby?

Cali Wonder Gal:
I'm surprised you could even take a picture of the whole thing!

Fast Eddie G:
Can you handle all that?

Cali Wonder Gal:
Honey, I can. But I just don't know if you can handle me. I'm very hot.

I happen to know that Cali Wonder Gal is not very hot. But this is one of the crucial things about this site: all the women are Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Megan Fox, and Salma Hayek, and all the men are Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Robert Pattinson, and Johnny Depp. A pair of breasts smaller than a C cup doesn't exist, nor does a female waistline larger than a size six or a men's larger than a thirty-two. Hair is silky and wavy, legs are long, smooth, and slender. Baldness is eliminated, as are eyeglasses, limps, birthmarks, lisps, freckles, acne, and cellulite. All the guys are hung like giraffes and have butts that turn women's heads. In this online utopia, Lane Bryant, Rochester Big & Tall, Rogaine, Pfizer, and plastic surgeons the world over would have gone out of business in a day.

You cannot eavesdrop for two hours without seeing an exchange like this:

Nash Gambler:
So who do you look like?

Dallas Alice:
What do you mean?

Nash Gambler:
Like what celebrity?

Dallas Alice:
Well, my friends tell me I look like Giselle Bundchen.

One of the saddest sights is to witness a player all alone waiting for his or her date.
Th
eir forsaken animated avatars cannot even tap their fingers against the felt or order a drink from an off-screen bartender.
Th
ey just have to sit and wait, sometimes for hours. It's sad enough to see a person getting stood up outside a theater, at a bar, or in a restaurant in real life, but to see it happen to a person's cartoon alter ego on a computer screen is even more heartbreaking.

Friendships are forged too: it isn't only about Ace-high flushes, bodily fluids, appendages, and
mmmmm'
s and
ooooooh'
s. Second Gunman and I, as the weeks and months progressed, spent hours griping to each other about our lives during and between games. Toll House Cookie, who'd confessed to me he stole money at his job (he works in a New Jersey tollbooth near the Lincoln Tunnel), sent me pictures of his twin daughters when they were born.

I never asked Second his real name but he told me it was Johnny. For weeks I wouldn't tell him
my
real name. “Just tell me your name for chrissake,” he'd plead. “My real name is Johnny Tyronne and I was born in Dublin but my family moved to England when I was four and I live in Blackpool and I work at the Four Swans Hotel and . . .” What I truly feared was my fellow card players finding out my Amazon rankings, for isn't that the
true
measure of a man? I also feared them saying, once they knew I was (once) a writer:
Hey,
I'm writing a book!
or
I've thought about writing a book
or, the absolute worst,
I could write a book about my life/my family/this place.

Second Gunman/Johnny (it must have been four a.m., his time) was telling me one night about his girlfriend woes and we must have IMed for two hours straight, occasionally playing a hand.
Th
en he asked me my real name, for about the hundredth time. Finally I caved and told him. He told me to hold on. I held. “You still there?” he asked me a minute later. I told him I was.
Th
ere was no reply. A minute later I asked him, “Are you still there?” No reply. He came back a minute after that and said: “331,871 on Amazon UK. Not too good, mate.”

A lot of players have prearranged trysting times. For example, Kiss My Ace, a rugged contractor from Cleveland, would meet with Boca Barbie from one to two in the afternoon every weekday. Sometimes they'd allow others in, sometimes not.

Kiss My Ace:
You got my poem?

Boca Barbie:
Yes! It was so great. I read it over & over again.

Kiss My Ace:
:)

Boca Barbie:
I'll send you back one when I get the chance, Tim. Xoxoxo.

Boca Barbie was a nurse and worked long shifts at a large assisted-“living” facility in Florida. Old men and women died on her regularly, and new ones would quickly fill their places, only to perish a few weeks or months later. A never-ending supply of the dying. Kiss was married, his oldest son suffered from severe autism, and his wife was on Zoloft; the Zoloft wasn't working although it didn't bother him that it killed any last trace of a sex drive she may still have had. Kiss My Ace/Tim and Boca Barbie/Barbara sent hundreds of love poems to each other, some cutesy and corny, others serious, lovely, and meaningful. “Do you know,” I once asked Kiss, “what Boca looks like?”
Th
e image of the 36D Yoda/Teddy Kennedy hi class escort was still fresh in my memory. “Honestly, Chip,” he said, “I don't care what she looks like.”

Boca mailed care packages to a Mailboxes Etc. account that Kiss had set up, though Mrs. Kiss My Ace sounded so zonked out on her meds that it wouldn't have troubled her one bit had she ever opened a package containing Boca Barbie's stained chartreuse panties. Boca would also send Kiss homemade brownies, stockings she'd worn, sexy underwear she wanted him to wear, her homemade macaroni and cheese (his favorite dish), and souvenirs from Disney World for his kids. He sent her cranberry scones, flowers, books, sexy underwear he wanted her to wear. It was intoxicatingly pleasant to be around them and be in love vicariously (a bit like when dieters force-feed their friends doughnuts, chocolate, and pizza while they watch). Even though, of course, I wasn't really around them and they weren't really around each other.

Toll House Cookie:
So are you two ever going to meet?

Boca Barbie:
Maybe some day. You never know.

Chip Zero:
Tell ya what. How about everyone at this table chips in from their winnings and we donate some $$ for Boca's flight to Cleveland?

Cali Wondergal:
Put me down for $50 right now.

Kiss My Ace:
We'll need to put Barb up at a hotel too, you know.

Chip Zero:
Cali, you've won 400 goddam k. All you're putting in is $50? Have you no heart? Are you all dollars and sense? Have your winnings poisoned your soul?

Boca Barbie:
Yeah, Cali . . . I wanna stay at some swank 4-star hotel in Cleveland.

Chip Zero:
Have you no sense of decency, Cali, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Toll House Cookie:
I don't think there are any swank hotels in Cleveland.

History Babe:
Ha, Chip!
Th
at was from the McCarthy hearings. You can't fool me.

Boca Barbie:
I can't wait to melt in your strong loving arms, my dear.

Kiss My Ace:
I have to make sure I don't break you. . . . I want to hug you so much. All I want to do is hold you in my arms and kiss every pore from your forehead to your toes.

Boca Barbie:
You can start with the toes, darling.

Chip Zero:
I hope she wears Odor Eaters.

Artsy Painter Gal:
Th
is is getting a bit too gooey for me!!!

Chip Zero wins $800 with two 9s and two 3s.

I could pass hours in the presence of the two lovebirds, who probably weren't the only Paolos and Francescas hooking up in this poker inferno. Yes, it was sweet; yes, it was sickeningly gooey, but even those of us born without hearts need to wade in a tide of treacle every now and then, just to remind ourselves of how truly cold and pitiless we are.

Th
ere was no doubt that Kiss and Boca loved each other.
Th
e fact that they hadn't met and didn't care what the other looked like only, in my eyes, meant that they genuinely, honestly, deeply loved each other.
Th
ey must have because even as they were exchanging x's and oooh's they were also winning and losing money to each other regularly.

Kiss My Ace raises $200.

Boca Barbie calls and raises $200.

Chip Zero folds

Strained Quads folds.

Kiss My Ace shows a Jack-high straight. Boca Barbie shows a club flush. Boca Barbie wins $1,200 with a club flush.

Having a straight and losing to a flush is a wretched experience, like biting into what you think is a porterhouse steak and it turning out to be Spam. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you're going to win with a straight. Were I a multi-millionaire I would keep a 38-ounce baseball bat nearby at all times while playing poker, just to smash my computer to bits when a straight of mine lost to somebody else's flush or when a flush lost to somebody else's full house.
Th
en I'd calmly hook up the next computer and start playing again.

But the two lovebirds were so deeply in love that money and pride didn't matter to them.

Kiss My Ace:
OMG, did you just beat me?

Boca Barbie:
I think I did, Tim.

Kiss My Ace:
I had a straight.

Boca Barbie:
Yes, I know. I had a flush. Clubs.

Kiss My Ace:
It's okay, darling. Still love you, you know that.

Losing $1,200 in one hand with a straight to someone's flush and then just forgetting about it . . . I don't know if I could ever love anyone that much.