Nurse the Hate: It's Over

I am beaten.  I am humbled and am backing away.  I don't know a goddamn thing and I am getting out of there.  I would have been better off betting on Harness Racing than the NCAA Tournament.  I should have known better than to wander into this forest alone, like a tiny shivering lamb.  Then again, I was briefly known as “Lamby”, so perhaps I should have taken heed.  I did not though, and now am left to sit and lick my wounds.  It was a bloodbath.

I can’t recall having a cold streak like this in the last decade.  I’ve had some grim NFL weekends, sure, but nothing like this comes to mind.  The last time I had a total asskicking like this I was in Las Vegas with a group from work.  We were all in our upper twenties/lower thirties and making a shit ton of money.  We had hit some type of monster sales goal so the station rewarded us by flying us to Mandalay Bay for a long weekend.  I spent the first afternoon playing blackjack and methodically building up house money.  I was up about $1500 and feeling pretty good about myself right before dinner. 

One of the other guys and I were waiting for this woman to meet us in the lobby for some group expense account steak dinner.  She had never been on time for anything and this was no exception.  “Let’s play a few hands of blackjack until she comes down.”  To this day I remember the dealer’s name.  Melena.  She was a gorgeous strawberry blonde with that chilly Eastern European demeanor like a Bond villain that seemed like a put on.  I lost a few hands right out of the gate, astoundingly quickly.  Bam, bam, bam.  I should have realized the mojo was all wrong and left.  I didn’t.

Instead I decide to put some real money down on a hand, you know, to win back my loss.  I get dealt a pair of eights, which I split.  After the split I get another eight, which I spilt as well as a three, which I double down on.  I was slightly uncomfortable by the initial ante I had put into the pot to begin with, but now I was in four times that.  She was showing a five, so this was a text book situation to be all in.  I was sweating it, but in the back of my mind a voice was saying “This is the right thing.  It’s what The Book says to do.”.  The four hands ended up with an array of totals between 17 and 20.  I felt pretty good about how this was developing.

A small crowd had gathered behind me.  There was a lot of money out there for 7pm.  Melena with complete indifference flipped her card.  Five became eight became twelve became twenty-one.  The crowd even let out a collective groan.  The sickening sound of the stacks of chips being taken away was the exclamation point.  Melena might have had a small smirk, but I couldn’t tell for sure.  It was like I had been punched in the gut.  Right then the very cheerful woman we worked with came out of the elevator with a “Hi guys!  Am I late?”.  I got up from the table.  It was a gut punch.

I limped over to that dinner totally deflated.  What the hell had happened?  All that painstaking work to build up my wallet had gone south in an instant.  I even floated out a test balloon to blame the woman we worked with, suggesting that her tardiness was the cause of this shattering episode.  As we walked over to the restaurant, the other guy kept saying “Mel-AAAAAAA-nah” and will bring it up to me now 15 years later with the exact same tone and volume.  It was a long walk of shame and failure.  But it wasn’t either of those women’s fault.  It was mine.  I did not appease the Gambling Gods just like I had not appeased them for this tournament.  I should have walked away after those first few hands with Melena and I should have walked away when Virginia lost to a Community College on Friday night.  I didn’t though. 

Somewhere Melena has that little smirk on her face.  I can feel it.