Click A trap opened under my feet and I began a free fall. I felt prickling in my chest like when you realize something big just happened. Probably like when you fall from a roof, too. There was nothing to catch hold of. Anyway I did not want to.
The game lasted at least four hours for me, at the same table. I attended quite a various fashion show of players around me that night. It is funny how people can be anonymous in such casino games. You don't speak with most of them. A lot looked like not remembered Hollywood actors burning their little remains in sauna, white towels, and sunglasses. And probably beauty stuff for the face. One jackal stayed at this table all night long like me. One honest grandpa played only three hands and lost five hundred dollars.
I was just a French in Las Vegas, in a summer trip with a couple of friends. Quite a common practice I guess. I even had a smoking on. Poker has always been fashion in the United States. It came to Europe quite recently, like some kind of flu that travelled together with movies. Steve Mac Queen said poker was badass a while ago. Then Guy Ritchie, Matt Damon and Edward Norton repeated. Finally James Bond imposed. For my share, I arrived the day before, I was leaving the day after, I had a couple of drinks, and I just made something like two thousand dollars.
Before that, as I was struggling on how to play that hand, the amount of money on the table kept rising. I was wondering whether or not to put all my chips in. My heart was beating wildly, as usually in this case. No big deal though, I would not walk away ruined or rich. But somehow this situation had twisted something in my mind. It was a trigger: “please somebody push me”. And I made that life choice bet. “If I win this one, I'm done with everything”. I had been thinking about that for a long time but never had the guts to do it. For no good reason, though. And there is no good reason anyway.
Two thousand dollars is not even a lot of money. Where can you go with that ? Just a thin mattress that tells you you are not totally sleeping on the ground ? Eventually I said “all-in”, and as for my future, all bets were off.
The guys around me did not believe I had a straight. I have no idea what they thought actually, I just know I was floating in cotton and their hands got beaten one by one by my timid Seven of Clubs and Ten of Spades. The latter had the good taste to perfectly match some friends of them on the table and build a straight from Six to Ten. A fair lady showed me an aesthetic three of a kind together with a smile, but the others just grumbled throwing away their cards. Maybe just a few hundred bucks lost for them. But I knew I was not going to stay one more second at that table. I was done.
And don't bother me with months of notice or anything. I was done working out the way to sell more yogurts. My company's last move was to go organic, close to people, farm products. For the last couple of months, my job and the one of dudes like me had been to have two drawn smiling cows stuck on plastic yogurts. Bo and Joe. My future was to get Bo and Joe to explain to the distributors in some food events that their concept would get bought a lot. Why? Because their milk is coming from a farm. And we would probably get guys costumed in cows to help Bo and Joe penetrate the market. Arm in arm.
A free fall, really. There was a strange collection of images under there: a Buddha statue, don't ask me what that cliché was doing there, I was not even sure to get to India or Thailand. There was also the Golden Gate Bridge, and further away a piece of ocean, which I was convinced was in the south-Pacific. Like when those yacht race sailors go around the globe with their high tech ships, and end up surfing huge waves in the middle of nowhere between Australia and south America. I was not going to do that, well I supposed.
I could leave from Paris and explore further and further away. Or take a flight to nowhere ? But there is so much to see in Europe. Summer in the North, Winter in the South ? Hitch hike, ride freight trains ? Restaurant here, construction work there ? It was both an exciting and frightening free fall to the Unknown.
The croupier was collecting the chips with its metal hand. “I won't even count that”, I thought. It was not the point. “Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash”. My decision had been taken five minutes earlier: I was going away. From this table, from my job, from my house, from my life.
The game lasted at least four hours for me, at the same table. I attended quite a various fashion show of players around me that night. It is funny how people can be anonymous in such casino games. You don't speak with most of them. A lot looked like not remembered Hollywood actors burning their little remains in sauna, white towels, and sunglasses. And probably beauty stuff for the face. One jackal stayed at this table all night long like me. One honest grandpa played only three hands and lost five hundred dollars.
I was just a French in Las Vegas, in a summer trip with a couple of friends. Quite a common practice I guess. I even had a smoking on. Poker has always been fashion in the United States. It came to Europe quite recently, like some kind of flu that travelled together with movies. Steve Mac Queen said poker was badass a while ago. Then Guy Ritchie, Matt Damon and Edward Norton repeated. Finally James Bond imposed. For my share, I arrived the day before, I was leaving the day after, I had a couple of drinks, and I just made something like two thousand dollars.
Before that, as I was struggling on how to play that hand, the amount of money on the table kept rising. I was wondering whether or not to put all my chips in. My heart was beating wildly, as usually in this case. No big deal though, I would not walk away ruined or rich. But somehow this situation had twisted something in my mind. It was a trigger: “please somebody push me”. And I made that life choice bet. “If I win this one, I'm done with everything”. I had been thinking about that for a long time but never had the guts to do it. For no good reason, though. And there is no good reason anyway.
Two thousand dollars is not even a lot of money. Where can you go with that ? Just a thin mattress that tells you you are not totally sleeping on the ground ? Eventually I said “all-in”, and as for my future, all bets were off.
The guys around me did not believe I had a straight. I have no idea what they thought actually, I just know I was floating in cotton and their hands got beaten one by one by my timid Seven of Clubs and Ten of Spades. The latter had the good taste to perfectly match some friends of them on the table and build a straight from Six to Ten. A fair lady showed me an aesthetic three of a kind together with a smile, but the others just grumbled throwing away their cards. Maybe just a few hundred bucks lost for them. But I knew I was not going to stay one more second at that table. I was done.
And don't bother me with months of notice or anything. I was done working out the way to sell more yogurts. My company's last move was to go organic, close to people, farm products. For the last couple of months, my job and the one of dudes like me had been to have two drawn smiling cows stuck on plastic yogurts. Bo and Joe. My future was to get Bo and Joe to explain to the distributors in some food events that their concept would get bought a lot. Why? Because their milk is coming from a farm. And we would probably get guys costumed in cows to help Bo and Joe penetrate the market. Arm in arm.
A free fall, really. There was a strange collection of images under there: a Buddha statue, don't ask me what that cliché was doing there, I was not even sure to get to India or Thailand. There was also the Golden Gate Bridge, and further away a piece of ocean, which I was convinced was in the south-Pacific. Like when those yacht race sailors go around the globe with their high tech ships, and end up surfing huge waves in the middle of nowhere between Australia and south America. I was not going to do that, well I supposed.
I could leave from Paris and explore further and further away. Or take a flight to nowhere ? But there is so much to see in Europe. Summer in the North, Winter in the South ? Hitch hike, ride freight trains ? Restaurant here, construction work there ? It was both an exciting and frightening free fall to the Unknown.
The croupier was collecting the chips with its metal hand. “I won't even count that”, I thought. It was not the point. “Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash”. My decision had been taken five minutes earlier: I was going away. From this table, from my job, from my house, from my life.
