There's been an awful lotta meta floatin' 'round these parts of late. Who's spying on who, who might be a sock-puppet or not. I got my opinions on all that (hint: personally not all that fond of being spied upon) but I'm not here tonight to discuss that. I'm here to discuss some personal bullshit. So pull up a chair and, unless you're in the program, pour yourself a glass of something or other and keep me company tonight.
I was supposed to leave that one bottle alone; the bottle of the good stuff. Save it for tomorrow, was the idea. The idea was, pretty good wine and some fairly good coffee liqueur and a couple of pretty bad industrial strength beers should have been enough.
I've always struggled with the should have been enough part of things.
Back in college some folks called me, among other things, and by the way if "asshole" was one of those things, I don't wanna know, but anyway, sometimes they called me U.B., which was short for unnecessary beers.
As in, we're all so wasted we can barely stand up, but I'd go to the bar and order another round of beers. A round of unnecessary beers.
They seemed necessary to me.
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So anyway, where was I?
I think we can all agree that things sorta suck. I mean, you got your all-time, disaster to end all disasters global warming thing hanging over our heads, and fuck yeah, I absolutely and completely refuse to call it anything other than that; you got your spying, you got your one percent still running everything for their own benefit, you got your health-insurance-still-be-fucked-beyond-belief thing.
And that's not even the half, the third, the quarter, or even the tenth of it.
But a guy's gotta have some fun in the middle of that shit, no?
You start thinking you can solve that shit by yourself, or even with a few people on your side, and pretty soon you wind up ready to jump off a fucking bridge.
Me, my fun is, in no particular order, loud music, betting horses at Saratoga, and drinking too much when nothing else seems to offer enough consolation.
I also enjoy running off at the mouth, but I'm not sure if that counts.
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So, the work-week sucked. Training on an intimidating reporting tool in the mornings, and trying to get other shit done in the afternoons.
No intention to complain, of course. I mean, I got a job which buys me health insurance for not a lot of dough, and the wife's pay, as a social worker, tops off the gravy boat. I got it good, and don't you think I don't know it. I got lucky. For now. Because one of the things that suck is that we no longer have the lucky jobs forever anymore. In these modern times, they take those jobs away from us, out of nowhere, and without rhyme or reason.
For now, I still got mine, and I snuck in a few trips to the Great Orange Satan at the office; damn but all that orange-ness makes it too obvious, don't it? They need to offer an all-black-and-white option for people looking in from their offices, no? All that orange just screams out, yo, this dude over here is fucking off, ya know, in case you happen to be walking by his cube while he's looking at it.
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Anyways, as they like to say in my hometown, and yes they always stick the "s" on the end of words where it don't belong, the end of the week drew near and there was this bottle of wine in the fridge, and it was, as they say, the good stuff.
I wasn't supposed to touch it.
But I did.
I did a little more than touch it: I put the corkscrew to it, opened it up, let it breathe, and then I poured myself a big old glass of it.
I mouth the words along, trying to avoid waking anyone up...
"There was that whole weird thing with the horses
I think they know exactly what happened
I don't think it needs any explaining
I'm pretty sure I wasn't your first choice
I think I was the last one remaining..."
My mother-in-law is sleeping in a bedroom nearby. I'm blessed with two mothers-in-law, one the mother of the wife that died, one the mother of the wife that told me to save the good stuff for tomorrow night.
The first mother-in-law is here for the summer from England, where she's from, where the first wife was from. She's been coming over for years, my first wife's been gone six years now. She's been sleeping out in the living room on a pull out. It seemed OK, or, she never complained about it, but tonight, when I suggested she sleep in the bedroom of my eldest, who is out at my sister's tonight, she readily accepted, and I'll make of that what I will. I'll make of it that she's not all that thrilled with sleeping on the pull-out, but that given the choice of the pull-out and not seeing the three children her only, now gone daughter, bore, she'll take the pull-out.
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Had to work the office phones last Saturday, something I'm not used to but only have to do a couple of times a year. We all gotta take a turn. Usually I sit in a back corner of the office and make a little magic happen. I get asked difficult questions that need answering, and I answer them, with authority; I generally don't get asked to deal with the public.
Last time I had to work the phones I got a crazy person on the phone and, being inexperienced in this sort of thing, I couldn't get rid of her, so I was a little nervous on Saturday. I brought the day's Racing Form in and hoped for the best.
And I got the best.
I got one call looking to schedule an interview the next week, I got one call from someone lost on campus. I directed them on in with not much trouble.
That was it.
The rest of the time I scoured the Form, looking for some magically delicious, easy money.
My wife hates me for betting the horses; OK, she doesn't hate me, but she hates that I do what I do on Saturdays. She's into animal rights. She makes her case, and often. I'm down with what she says, but what I can't get past is, there's no other way for an on-the-ball lowlife lower-middle-class dude such as myself to make some quick money.
No way in hell I throw my dough in with the sharks running the Wall Street rodeo; they'll eat me for lunch. I figure, that's how they make their commissions: they vacuum up the antes of the suckers who let themselves believe the game's on the up-and-up.
Of course, none of this would even be an issue if a regular Joe could get a job making OK money with a promise of a pension. But steady work and pensions are a thing of the past.
So the phones stayed quiet and I studied the Form in peace, and came to some conclusions.
I had things figured out.
I knew how things would go down, and I planned on betting accordingly.
Maybe I'd win us a stake on an easier life.
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I bet a small Pick Six, where you have to pick the winners of six consecutive races.
Not as easy as it sounds, not that it probably sounds that easy.
Hit the first, missed the second in a photo finish.
Bet a Pick Four. Won't bore you with the details, but that requires picking the winner of four consecutive races.
Long and short of it, I nailed it. On the side, had a $30 win bet on a horse that won and paid $35 for $2.
Wound up with the Pick Four, three winning tickets times $1276 each, plus, a $700 consolation for having five out of six in the Pick Six. Some consolation; had I won the photo finish instead of losing it, I would have won $145,000. That's not a typo, that's one hundred forty-five thousand dollars.
To small potatoes such as myself, one hundred forty-five thousand dollars, minus taxes, is an enormous, life-changing sum of money.
All debts instantly squared.
A massive (percentage-wise) down-payment on a house.
My wife, who despises gambling, and especially gambling on horses, asked me what was the matter after I had realized I'd won $4500 but had realized I'd just missed on something five times as much.
I explained it to her.
"You probably wouldn't want the ill-gotten money, but I came within a photo-finish of winning a hundred forty five thousand dollars."
"Oh," she said, trying to play it cool.
"I told you gambling's the only way a nobody can grub up a stake, didn't I?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"You thought I was full of shit, didncha?"
"Yeah."
"You realize the jig is up, right?"
"Whaddya mean?"
"You realize the game's almost over. The shit's hittin' the fan. We need some dough."
"Yeah. I suppose."
She didn't sound convinced; she sounded like she was trying to amuse me. Trying to agree just to get me to shut the fuck up and come to bed.
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So the mother-in-law sleeps nearby. All the lights are off. I'm blasting some music, and dreaming of last Saturday, and next Saturday. Of course, I know the booze and the music and the gambling Saturdays are bullshit, no matter what else I might say.
They're all bullshit. There's no easy answer for what ails us; what ails one, ails all, and no score at the track's gonna change that.