Bond18 - Around the World in 90 Days: Days 60-62

Posted by Bond18 | Filed under Bond18

As a result of the two hour time zone jump from Vegas to Milwaukee coupled with the late arrival of our flight, I wake up around 3:30PM with the party at 4PM. I scramble to get myself and Celina together before my parents arrive. Previous to this summer I hadn’t seen my immediate family in about a year, and depending on who we’re talking about in the extended family, it’s somewhere in the area of one to two years.

Since moving to Australia, I haven’t really been the most available family member or friend for that matter. Outside my parents I don’t really email anyone regularly, I don’t call, and I’ve stopped using social networking sites like Facebook. Even though I have most people on my AIM list, there’s pretty little to talk about when we have entirely different lives and most of the time I’m online I’ve got eight tables in front of me and can’t talk anyway. The last time I lived in the United States for a sustained amount of time that wasn’t in Las Vegas was 18 months ago, and even that was only for a few months after having already been away for more than a year. The last time I was really around, available, and involved with peoples’ lives was after I finished my sophomore year of college at age 20, and I’m 23 now.

Whenever I come into town, only my parents have any advance warning. I don’t bother informing anyone else. First of all, I don’t know how much time I’ll have and I don’t want to tell people I can hang out then have to bail due to complications or conflicts. Second, I get a sort of amusement from calling people up randomly after a year of non contact and talking like we spoke yesterday. A good example would be when I call my friend Jensen to make arrangements for after the party:

“Hello”

“Yo, Jensen what’s happening?”

“Uh….Tony?”

“Yea dude, what’s going on. Wanna hang?”

“Um, are you in Milwaukee?”

“Yea? Wanna get drunk later tonight?”

“….Yea OK, sure.”

As for the family party, well I always feel a bit out of place at those. That’s not at all the fault of my relatives, it’s that I mostly feel out of place around “normal” (that is, people not involved in the gambling community and who live that lifestyle) people in general. Answering a question of “So what have you been doing for the last year?” honestly yields a result of “Well, last year I went to the WSOP like I’m doing now and lost a ton of a 17-year olds money. Then I went back to Australia after being unbanned, then went to China to gamble over there for a while. Hung out in Australia some more and played online poker every day, then left on this current trip. I started by going to Italy where we got on a boat for a tournament in the Mediterranean, then over to Paris for another, and then Barcelona after that. I got crushed all over Europe and, at that point, had dropped ball park $150,000 of my backer’s money, which is a sort of investor if you’ll bare with me here. Understand that the money is not something owed, but something that needs to be worked off, is that making sense? Anyway, after Barcelona, I went over to Vegas where I’ve been playing in the WSOP again, but am actually up this time. It’s about four weeks into that, and now I’m here. I think that’s about all.”

Yes I know I could give people a more simple answer like “Oh, just playing poker here and there,” but after not talking to anyone for a year or longer, giving them the one sentence answer seems like a bit of snub. That and it makes me sound like some massive slacker, which is only the half truth. Either way, nobody in my family is really into poker, so most of my conversation and explanation is met with curiosity mixed with befuddlement. Lucky for me everyone in my extended family is very nice and supportive, even if they don’t quite understand what the hell I’m talking about.

After the party we go back to Rob’s apartment and I call up some old friends and invite them over to the apartment with plans to go out to a bar. I call up everyone that I’d guess is interested in seeing me again and invite them out, and thanks to it being summer, pretty much everyone is available. My old roommates Jenson and James come over to the apartment with James’ girlfriend in tow (well done Jameson) and we start the pre-drinking while playing Nintendo Wii. The two of them were pretty much the guys I spent the most time with in my college years, and outside having just graduated, not a ton has changed for them in the 18 months since I’ve last seen them. They catch me up on all the various stories, gossip and loose social ends I’m curious about, then we head out to the bar.

The majority of my college social circle is waiting at the bar and I start playing catch up as fast as possible. My friend Cassie is holding some vodka company’s promotion at the bar and downing numerous shots of her company’s product yields me a T-shirt and some kind of blue laser pointer thing. As always, getting together with old friends results in reminiscing about the best of our college antics. Such stories include:

1. The time our friend Ben Cagle, or as he was affectionately referred to when very drunk, Dirty Ben got massively wasted our second night out in college and approached a bunch of girls and yelled at them “Hey girls! Who wants to play sex?! You know, you know, you get that girl, and you tell her… get on your knees bitch!” then started thrusting his pelvis at them before he fell straight backwards and smashed his skull on the wood floor.

2. The time we got real drunk at some house party and, while walking home, found a sort of half broken wheel chair lying in the street. Jenson wheeled me into the dorms in it while I screamed “THEY BLEW MY KNEE OFF IN VIETNAM!” at the people behind the check in counter who reluctantly let us in with the wheelchair. We took it up to the room of some girls we knew and found one of them was hooking up with this guy who was considered one of the biggest douche bags on campus. He asked me what happened and I told him I tore up my ligaments. He started rambling off all this bullshit jargon because “I’m a kinesiology major” then I leapt out of the chair, yelled “I’m magically healed!” and shoved the thing into the room at them and ran off laughing as he threatened to kick my ass.

3. The time our roommate Jarod got in some kind of argument in a party and our whole group of friends ended up lining up against the other guys in some kind of 1950s-esque tough guy stare down. One of the other guys whipped out a knife and pointed it at Jenson’s face, and the whole party stood on edge wondering if a massive brawl was going to break out. Meanwhile, I was downstairs hitting on some girl and heard about everything after the situation cooled down.

Not that different from most peoples’ college stories, I imagine. Kind of makes me feel nostalgic.

One of the unfortunate aspects of Milwaukee is the 2AM bar close time. As the hour draws near, we decide to call it a night and have the whole group meet up again tomorrow. Jensen tells us he wants to swing by his girlfriend’s place, and I insist upon meeting her. I tell him we really need to stop by the all-night pantry place so I can grab some milk and pop tarts, and we walk over. When I enter the store, I walk down the middle aisle and past a couple of very unattractive cougars. One of them says, “Hey Vodka shirt” at me and I keep walking, hoping she just drops it.

“Hey Vodka shirt! I’m talking to you!” she repeats.

“Oh um, sorry, yea I just got this shirt tonight, didn’t even realize I had it on.”

I grab my box of cherry pop tarts and book it to the milk aisle. As I walk toward the counter with my pop tarts and half gallon in hand, the cougars approach as well. There is a rack of dirty magazines directly below the counter and the one who bothered me before decides to keep going.

“Is that all you’re getting? Sure you wouldn’t want one of those magazines as well?”

“Nah, I’m cool.”

“Maybe you need to get one of those and jerk yourself off.”

I freeze up, utterly terrified. This fucking cougar is more aggressive than a Turkish rug salesman.

“Or maybe you already have a girlfriend to do the jerking off for you?”

I eye the magazine rack and see a copy of High Times front and center. I point to it and say

“Nope, no dirty magazines for me. I think that one is the only one for me.”

“OK then” she says, and she and her nasty friend leave the store. I let out a long breath and set the pop tarts and milk on the counter. The Indian guy behind the counter looks at me and says in his accent “Will this be all? Are you sure you are not wanting a copy of barely legal perhaps?”

“No dude! Look, I’m just a guy trying to get some pop tarts and some milk. I don’t want any pornography, I’m after deliciousness here. OK?”

He and the other attendant crack up laughing at me then give me my change and I exit the store.

On the walk over to Jenson’s girlfriend’s apartment, he tells me about his girlfriend and about the vapid and shallow whores that are her roommates.

“It’s ridiculous dude. Every time I’m over there, they’re bringing some new random guy home from the bars. Her best friend slash roommate cheated on her boyfriend with his two best friends within 24 hours.”

“Man, that dude needs to keep better company. Some real gutter sluts huh?”

“Heh, yea.”

“Hey, I don’t ever have to see these people again. Can I make a ridiculous scene and burst in there yelling shit about gutter sluts and what not?”

“Oh dude, please do that, that’d be so hilarious.”

“Sweet, I’ll ask ‘Do you gutter sluts want any pop tarts?’ it’ll be hilarious.”

Suddenly Jenson realizes that I’m serious and asks me not to call anyone a gutter slut since he has to see them every day.

“Alright Jenson, just for you. But I’m making a scene either way. I’m too drunk not too.”

He takes us over to his girlfriend’s apartment and she comes to the door. He introduces me and as we walk into the living room I yell “KONICHIWA BITCHES! Who wants a fucking pop tart?!” while holding up my half gallon of milk and box. The girls look up in collective confusion at the sight of some random guy bursting into their apartment at 3AM drunk with munchies and swearing at them.

“That was kind of random,” one of them answers.

“Random yes, but that has no affect on deliciousness. Now who’s in?”

They stare at me in silence and shake their heads.

“Fine, more for me and Jenson. I’m using your toaster.”

I spend the remainder of the evening munching down on the synthetic cherry flavor of my toaster pastry and try to avoid getting dumber by being in the vicinity of Jenson’s girlfriend’s roommates. It is not an easy task.

I wake up the next “morning” at around 3PM. My parents pick me up and take Celina and me out to breakfast-lunch-dinner, or whatever it is when your first meal of the day is at roughly 5PM. Either way, we get enough pasta at the family style Italian restaurant that I won’t have to think about what to eat at 2AM.

Afterwards, I invite James and Jenson over again and we kill some time before going out for Indian food and then another night of drinking and shooting pool. It’s a Sunday night, so things are considerably more relaxed than the previous night, and we mostly just hang around talking about what we’re going to do with our lives now that we’re all that a sort of crossroads.

Ironically, as the person who has veered the furthest off the beaten path, I’ve ended up having the most clear direction in life. Most of my friends who have just graduated are still not quite sure exactly how they want to pursue a career, and in some cases, what in. Some are considering going back for more school, others want to go out and get work experience, but aren’t sure how to get involved in their industry of choice. Meanwhile, my mission is clear; keep gambling, keep writing. I’ve had the luxury of finding something I really love doing at a very young age and, in the poker industry, how far you go is entirely up to how much work you put in. There’s no politics or bosses or useless coworkers to deal with, and for the most part (that is, variance will certainly throw up some hurdles), you get back what you put in.

The next morning, I go to lunch with Rob, Joe and Jenson before Rob gives Celina and me a ride over to the airport. There’s no delay this time and I watch episodes of The Wire for all the flight. We get back to Vegas in the incredibly hot and surprisingly humid evening, and I do my best to get a decent night’s sleep since I have to play again tomorrow.

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