Every once in awhile a loud, guttural exclamation emerges from the poker table. Everybody looks back at the older men playing cards, trying to see if anything dramatic has happened. A short, stocky man in a satin Twin Dragons Kick Boxing jacket just won a big hand on a bluff.
It’s probably his lucky jacket, the one he wears out for cards, the one that reminds him of his days ascending, a jacket that he imagines still commands respect from all the gathered on this winter night. He’s standing up in victory, like he just knocked somebody down, like he just knocked the entire goddamn table down.
The waitress wears a clinging, striped dress and has short, blonde hair but for a long thin strand at the back that she’s braided. She talks quickly, does everything quickly, in fact, and likes to express herself through the flamboyant use of her body. Her body is the central component of any conversation she’s having, and it is her that the young man has come to see.
They sit together and do a shot, firing the empty glasses across the bar like the cowboys they know themselves to be. Boxing is on the TV, and the fighter the two of them have agreed, “Looks too nice to fight,” gets punched in the head. This repeats in slow motion, his sweat exploding into the air around him like fireworks, beautiful stars now lifting free from gravity.
The young man has his hand on her back, moving it softly, slowly around, and he is so happy, so proud to be the guy going out with her, alive in these days he will one day look back on with a disbelieving, hazy longing, while the man to the other side of them, still in his FedEx uniform, dozes on his stool, his dreams unknown.
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Middle-aged men, guys getting off work and who are still in their FedEx or Hydro uniforms go there. Each night, as part of a promotion, the bar host’s a card came which takes place at the back on one of those poker tables you can buy at Canadian Tire. The other night it was Texas Hold ‘Em they were playing, and although it’s a cashless game, since it’s poker, people felt heavily invested.
As I was sitting at the bar drifting through the sports section, a fight erupted at the back of the bar. It was extraordinary how quickly rage, explosive rage, swept in and over the table. Men, something now ignited within, had pushed back their chairs and were standing. Screaming and swearing, they waved their arms about and stiffened into fighting posture, fists clenched. A woman, who seemed to be at the centre of it all, had a voice that was a black, untranslatable hiss, more the unearthly vocalizations of possession than language. She threw a glass against the wall, her long hair waving in fury, as the men shouted. It seemed the very manifestation of mental illness, that from the collective interiors of these people, a dark, stormy cloud of violence had been summoned.
But the thing that struck me the most was how quickly it all passed, and how everybody seemed to enjoy it. It had been fun for them. What, I wonder, does that say about us? On a frigid, lonely night in February a group of strangers go out looking for something. They find one another at a card table in a bar, and what they needed was this, to wake up and experience that jolt of electricity spiking through their bodies, so that for a moment each one of them was alive in the streaming arteries, heroes on a battlefield, the lion’s roar that answered back to the night.
Over at the bar sat an older man, his hand inside the dress of a young, very drunk woman. Her body was bending and curving into his, grinding and pressing, the bare flesh of her back exposed like a wound. Careful and still as a predator, he was looking past her incoherent eyes to another point in the evening, waiting.
Another man, probably near 60, had a mop of charismatic grey hair and carried with him the manner that suggested a confident expectation that things were going to work out in his favour. He’d talk to anybody, fully expecting that they’d be happy, even flattered, to chat and then move tables to accommodate him. Familiar in an indistinct way and able to immediately establish a hierarchy within the place, he had the aura of celebrity.
He turned out to be John McDermott, a Scottish-Canadian tenor and sort of middle of the road performer that your parents might really like.
Incongruously, accompanying him were a group of 20-something Bros, all dressed like they were ready for a night of poker and drinking in a buddy’s kitchen. There was a raw, unkind edge to them and they were treating McDermott like he needed them more than the other way around. They were egging him on, and in short order the room was called to silence and John McDermott sang Danny Boy for us while his crew, holding cell phones in front of their faces like masks, took disinterested videos while continuing their snickering conversations with one another.
The singing was lovely, and many people looked like they felt blessed to have been present for such a spontaneous gift. But still, there was something mechanical and imposed about it, like we were tourists who had just been taken advantage of by sneering locals who now expected us to pay.
I wanted to clear my head a bit from this and stepped out on the balcony. The city was soft, fuzzy and fog-lit, the skyline glowing.
Near me on the railing arrived one of McDermott’s young crew. He was wearing a black hoodie and had a smudge of a moustache on his upper lip, and rocking his body back and forth he pulled deeply from the back of his throat and horked over the side and down to the street 18 floors below. He then went into the bar and proceeded to talk the really drunk woman away from the older, predatory man, bringing her back to his group, a trophy now, for all of them to enjoy.
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As Rachelle’s birthday is coming up, I thought I’d pick it up, refurbish it in my unique way (I like to paint primitive cowboys on things), and give it to her as a present.
At any rate, I figured the lamp would be safe until we were making our way back from the walk, but as we returned I noticed that some shady guy had picked it up and was looking at it.
Me: Hey, that’s my lamp!
Scavenger: I don’t think so.
Me: Heidi, attack! (Dog does nothing)
Scavenger: Your dog does not obey you.
Me: What exactly is it you’re trying to say by that?
Scavenger: Perhaps you are not the sort of man who commands respect?
Me: Perhaps I don’t want respect, okay?
Scavenger: Perhaps. Heidi, sit. (Dog sits) Good dog. (Now petting her on the head)
Me: Don’t touch my dog.
Scavenger: As you wish.
Me: I also wish for you to give me my lamp back.
Scavenger: It is not your lamp. It was left out with the garbage for anybody to take.
Me: Look, that lamp is a birthday gift for my wife. She’s going blind, you know, and this lamp, the symbolism of this lamp, is going to mean the world to her. It will keep her going.
Scavenger: It would be funny to play poker with you.
Me: Oh, why is that?
Scavenger: You are not a convincing liar. Your lip twitches when you are uncertain of yourself. I think that you dog sense’s that weakness, and that is why she doesn’t listen to you.
Me: I tell you, I do so much for her and she just doesn’t care. Drives me crazy.
Scavenger: Is it because you crave the love from her that you do not feel for yourself? First, you must love yourself before others can truly love you, and with animals, first you must respect yourself before they will respect you.
Me: You are an incredible buzz kill.
Scavenger: I am sorry, but it is God’s will that we are having this talk, and there is no lamp in this life that will ever be able to address your sadness.
He then put the lamp in his two-wheeled shopping cart, said something to the dog in a language I didn’t understand, and walked away.
As I’m not much of a gambler, I was just standing around watching some low stakes cards at a poker table. It was more like an Ex for people with addictions than it was a James Bond film–mindlessly repetitive, ugly in an everyday way and tinged with a bit of desperation. I just stood there hoping not to look too conspicuously like an Out-Of-Towner-Who-Is-A-Little-Scared-Of-Your-City.
After a moment or two a black man in a flashy sweater approached me.
Man: I got to say, that hat really looks good on you.
Me: Thanks, I love it.
The man then shook his head and put his hands on his hips.
Man: No, I don’t much compliment men, so this doesn’t come easy to me, but you really own that hat, man!
Me: Well, I like your sweater!
As I was saying this I sent a text to Rachelle:
Text to Rachelle: The Detroit Brothers really dig my style.
Man: You got some confidence to dress like that, boss!
Me: Well, my wife picked it out for me. She’s a designer– good at hockey, too.
Man: Your lady plays hockey?
Me: She has a wicked shot, great power forward.
Man: You Canadians and you’re hockey, man!
Text from Rachelle: Who are the Detroit Brothers?
Text to Rachelle: Black people!!!
As fate would have it the wife of the guy who liked my hat was sitting at the table right in front of us. She was pulling crumpled ones and fives out of her purse and handing them to the dealer. She turned and faced her husband with a look of surprise on her face.
Wife: Where you been at? I haven’t seen you in 10 hours, don’t you think its right that you come and check on me, maybe be bring me a drink or something?”
Man: (Looking incredulous and spinning around to include me in the conversation.) Where have I been? Where have you been at?! If you’re asking me where I’ve been for the last ten hours, then shouldn’t I be asking you the same question? (Directly to me) Can you believe it?
Me: Don’t get me involved.
Text from Rachelle: What are you doing? Stop it!
Wife: You shouldn’t just be leaving me alone all night. You never know what’s going happen. I’m special.
Man: I can be damn sure you ain’t gonna win nothing.
Text to Rachelle: I’m mediating a domestic dispute at a poker table.
His wife gave her husband the finger and then she sucked it.
Text from Rachelle: Did you just say to them the truth isn’t two-sided, it’s round?
Text from Me: Yes, but I added nigga.’
Me: Well, as they say, the truth isn’t two-sided, it’s round.
Wife: (Looking directly at me in that way) Have you been hitting the pipe? You got crack teeth, I can see that, so you best be minding your own business. I’m trying to play here, understand?
Man: You see what she’s like?
Me: (To woman) My teeth are like this because of chemotherapy, not crack, okay?
Text from Rachelle: Pickle, I’d really like it if you left the casino now and came to the hotel room.
Wife: I don’t care what they from, they be NASTY.
Man: (Facing his wife) You know what’s nasty, you’re nasty!
She looked at him, put her cards down on the table and stood up.
Wife: Oh no you didn’t.
The man waved her off and walked away, and I decided, as Rachelle had suggested, to just return to the hotel room, where for reasons I still don’t quite understand, I told her that I had won $85.
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We were at the Madison Pub’s regular Tuesday night game. Perhaps 50 people were there to play Texas Hold ‘Em, with the winner receiving a $25 gift certificate for the place. I’m a bad poker player who is almost completely ignorant of the protocols at the table. I play cards with the same amount of intelligence and design as I play a scratch-and-win ticket. I also talk constantly, always telling people I don’t know what I’m doing, and so for most serious players—even in a no money game– I’m a really irritating presence. To make matters worse on this night, I kept winning.
(This is a rough approximation of me at the table)
Drunk guy: This is bullshit, man!
Me: I play by my gut. I play the person, not the cards.
Drunk guy: Are you saying you played me?
Me: What I’m saying is that I just got lucky. Honestly, I’m a beginner and I really don’t know what I’m doing.
Drunk guy: I see through you, you fucker. Don’t keep feeding me that bullshit line, okay?
And then he glowered at me, rolling up his sleeves to reveal his white supremacist tattoos. I pretended to suddenly become transfixed by something that was happening on the TV.
This tension continued for another half hour, eventually culminating with the drunk guy accusing my friend and I of being cheats, before our table was broken up by the powers that be, and we were sent to different games like a bunch of delinquent children in need of a time-out.
After I was eventually bounced from the tournament, I started to play pool, where I met a woman named Mary. This woman had met actress and model Milla Jovovich on the set of one of the Resident Evil movies that was shot in Toronto and proudly announced that she had her cell phone number. Although she would not divulge the number to me, she agreed to act as an emissary and send some question to her on my behalf.
These are the ten questions:
- How many actors have you had sex with?
- How many actresses have you had sex with?
- Would you be interested in funding and starring in a movie about a couple of Poker Grifters who go from moneyless game to moneyless game in pursuit of the validation and love that eluded them as children? It will be an Oscar caliber screenplay.
- If a ghost lived in one of your many zillion dollar mansions, what name would you give it?
- Have you ever caused a ruckus on a plane? If so, please explain.
- What music do you put on when you’re feeling like doing it?
- Where do super-models hang out in Toronto?
- What is the best way to approach a supermodel? I’ve heard that they’re easily startled.
- Do you eat Kale? My wife says it’s a SUPERFOOD, but I’m suspicious.
10. The troops, are you for them or against them?
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