My god, it was so slow at work last night. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that last night will be in the 'top' five of worst toke nights ever. We'll be damn lucky to crack a hundred bucks. It was awful. I spent my first two hours at completely dead tables, staring off in the distance, trying to keep from falling asleep. It was so bad that I left three hours early, pretty sure that I only missed out on like forty bucks.
I had one table that was busy, and longtime reader (Mike in KC, I think?) joined me for awhile. It was fun, except for the jerkoff on first base who was easily the most annoying player I'd had to deal with in over a week. Just a pain in the ass. Otherwise it would've been a great time all-around. Even the floor boss was getting fed up with him. But I smacked him down for a couple hundred bucks, so there was a little bit of satisfaction involved.
However, I'd put my name on the early-out list, and they were sending people home as early as 11. I made it to almost 1 am before pulling the rip cord.
It was an interesting weekend though.
Some of you readers might know that I was sort of dating a gal last summer--I met her at dealing school when I first got to town, we hit it off, and started hanging out all the time. When things went south there at the Stripper house with all of the utilities getting turned off and such, she was the one that led to getting a room right away with her ex-husband at his house.
At the time, for obvious reasons, I never mentioned her very much in my bloggings. But we hung out together all summer long, and I will admit that it was a little strange sometimes there at the house when I'd wake up in the morning with my roommate knocking on my bedroom door so he could talk to his ex-wife to work out some issue like who was dropping the kid off at school that day. I mean, she used to be married to the guy and live in that same house.
Yes, it was an odd situation, but nobody had any problems at the time.
However, later in the summer I began to suspect that not all was right. I had a feeling that she was doing drugs again. She was a former stripper and when we started seeing each other, she was upfront about all the silliness in her past--lots of drama and such, but every week she was down at the courthouse taking care of some other issue on her record, and seemed to be making progress in getting her shiat together.
Anyhow, after a couple of months I could that she was back on the downward spiral. She refused to get a job and things just didn't seem right. It pretty much ended between us when she totally left me hanging one day while the ghetto sled was in the repair shop, and she had no excuse as to her whereabouts, although she was obviously all messed up when I caught up to her later in the afternoon.
And the roomie/ex husband was always in a painkiller induced fog, stumbling around like Ozzie Osbourne, oblivious to the fact that his house was crumbling into dust around him. Eventually I figured out that they were sharing some of the same medications, and decided that it would be better to just cut the ties and move along.
At the time, she was living in a trailer park out on Boulder Highway, but was hardly ever there. It seemed to me that she was on the verge of getting evicted and needed a place to live, so she started putting the pressure on her ex's (my roommate's) dad, telling him that she needed to move back in to the house on a permanent basis--he actually owned the house. Well, I was looking to get out and move on, anyways, so it didn't bother me at all--but we were on the outs and she wanted back in the house where I was living. So I had to go.
So we didn't end on the best of terms, and by that time, I was pretty much convinced that she was a crack whore anyways. I moved out, deleted her number from my cellphone, got a blood test, and pretty much forgot all about her.
However, a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in traffic a few blocks from the house and stopped short of the car in front of me to let someone pull in who was trying to turn onto the road from a gas station. I waved them in, and there she was, waving a thank you. Of course, she couldn't see me, the sun was shining directly on my windshield making it impossible to see who was driving, and she wouldn't have known it was me anyways--she doesn't know that my fortunes have improved and am now driving a brand-new truck instead of the old Ghetto Sled.
But she looked pretty bad, and I had one of those brief moments of smug satisfaction that you get when you run into an ex who looks much worse than the last time you saw them.
Then I saw her again this past Friday night. She was stumbling through the casino, obviously cracked out, wearing a skanky dress with her big fake boobs hanging out and looking like a lap dancer who'd been breaking the rules for far too many years. She walked right by my table and was oblivious to my presence. She was with a dude who was clearly her supplier, and seeing her wander by was like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion.
One of my buddies was working the floor that night, standing behind me, and whispered Hey, check out the crack whore--Nice! as she passed by.
I was too embarrassed to tell him that she used to be my crack whore...
I still shudder when I think about it. A part of me says I told you so, but part of me also feels bad for her. I tried to help her out back in the day, but that line from Rounders always came to mind, especially near the end--You have to know when to fold a losing hand.
And she was a losing hand. Apparently, still is, too.
Anyhow.
Speaking of mixed emotions, I also got a couple of interesting emails this weekend. One was from a headhunter I signed up with four years ago when I first moved back to Nashville. It seems that my old job at Schwab is available and they are looking for experienced brokers and bullshiat artists, and apparently, I fit the bill.
The second email was from a Schwab recruiter directly, telling me of the same position.
Sorry guys. Should've hit me up two years ago. Or better yet, not laid me off in the first place, dickheads. As much as I'd enjoy living in Phoenix again and working with my buddies, I think my opportunities here in Las Vegas heavily outweigh the benefits of going back to that life I used to know. And it would be a pay cut anyways (these past few weeks notwithstanding).
If I went back, it would be like the last nine years never happened. Why wake up in 1997 when 2006 seems to be much better? Of course, if I had Biff Tannen's sports almanac, maybe it'd be worth going back in time.
This time, though, I'd go short on Enron and avoid hooking up with cracked-out former strippers.
And I probably wouldn't bet on Notre Dame, either.
Mikey
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