Sammy and I ate dinner with the Lancasters yesterday. We talked about heading out to the local Indian reservation to make more money off my monkey wrestling winnings. I used to not like to gamble with Boyce and Sammy because they distracted me. Once I was sitting at the roulette table in Vegas with Sammy. He started talking to this other guy at the table which I generally don’t mind. But the story the other guy told was so disturbing that I simply couldn’t continue. Sammy somehow got him talking about his hometown. This is a favorite subject of Sammy’s and it produces some wonderful stories, and in this case, some horrifying ones.
In this instance I overheard the man tell the story of a guy from his high school (most hometown stories begin this way) who was the quarterback of the football team. He was a “straight-shooter,” the man said. The kind of guy, “who wouldn’t stab you with a screwdriver.” There is just no way to concentrate on anything when someone describes an admirable person by explaining how they would be unwilling to jam a sharp tool into you. This un-stabbish quarterback went to a party where he got very drunk, unusual for him. Out of his mind on whiskey, one of his linemen took him up to where the teenagers neck and canoodle. Approaching a car the lineman said he’d take the driver, and the quarterback can take the girl. They each opened the door and the lineman pummeled the driver, while the quarterback pulled out the girl and had his way with her. Only to realize that the girl was the quarterback’s sister. The quarterback ran away and was later found drowned in a local pond.
At this point in time the roulette ball was spinning. I’d made my bets which were all foolish, no doubt compromised by some lunatic telling me an outrageous story that was as ghastly as it was undoubtedly untrue. As Sammy says, I blew a gasket. I reached into the roulette wheel and grabbed the ball, screaming how I was distracted when I made my bets. The dealer was a small Asian woman who reached for my arm as I grabbed the ball. Too late Tokyo Rose, because I already swallowed it.
In retrospect that was the wrong thing to do. I was quickly grabbed by some large men and told that while every one else’s bets were safe, my money was gone, and if I didn’t get off the grounds immediately I would offer a small but important part of myself to be the new roulette ball. Since I was actually using my fake id of Boyce while I was there, he was the one who received a letter explaining his permanent banishment from Excalibur Casino.
Sammy later told me that I shouldn't have been so disturbed by the man, that in fact I should have liked him based on my hatred for most things people say. Here's the thing: I do not like it when most people speak their opinions because those opinions are generally based on: 1) a lie, 2) a rumor, 3) someone else's opinion. Since #3 generally comes from other #'s 1 and 2, you can understand how endless this is.
For instance, I understand Barack Obama is our "president." I do not care what anyone has to say about this man. I simply don't care because why on earth should I? I certainly never said I was interested in what you thought because I am not a liar. Sammy is the only person I know who says, "What do you think?" instead of, "You know what I think..." To be fair though, Sammy doesn't care what the person actually says--he's just interested in how people say it. Rachel was like that: she didn't care what you thought, just what your thoughts meant about you. As for Boyce, he just doesn't care about most things, and I am generally looking up at the sky because anything falling from a bird's butt is more genuine and enlightening than what rises out of a person's mouth.
This is why Sammy thought I should have liked this man. After all, he told a wildly inappropriate story (even for a roulette table) instead of saying some simplified opinion he got from someone else about politics, religion, or someone he doesn't like. This man, Sammy said, was shockingly original, which next to no one is (certainly not people who want to be shocking or original). Next to talking about who he thinks would win in a fight between a red-tailed hawk and a german shepherd, his story should have been one of the best things he could have told us, even if we didn't like what we heard.
Therefore I changed my mind. I also changed my mind about Sammy and Boyce being around me when I gamble. I pride myself on being somewhere between degenerate and professional on the gambling spectrum, and I was never sure where eating the roulette ball falls in that. With Sammy and Boyce as my wingmen, however, I can not only learn to appreciate the fresh jabber of alcoholics, prostitutes, and lunatics who often sit by me, I can also learn to love myself a little more.
By the way, when word somehow got around at the Sleep Center about how I ate the roulette ball, I had one religious lady tell me that it was the demon of gambling working in me. When Rachel heard that she said maybe it wasn’t the demon of gambling but the angel of investment capital, since those two little devils are never in two places at the same time so you'd almost think they were the same thing. I didn't get what she was talking about, but she touched my arm when she said it so I just kind of mumbled, "Seriously...Jesus is awesome...no way devil..." and then pretended she was a blackjack dealer with a pet falcon who asked me to marry her.
P.S. The red-tailed hawk would destroy the german shepherd. The dog just couldn't overcome the advantage of position.
