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| Naked City
Posted: 10/20/2009 11:59:19 AM | I don't recall that particular motel. There were a lot of little motels around there. Right where Vegas Blvd splits into Main and it starts to get really seedy. Motels that rent by the hour and little wedding chapels.
Foxy's became a cow themed slot joint. Everything was cows. Pictures of cows, but I forgot the name of the place. There was a number of them around Vegas. There was a similar chain: Big Dogs. Slots, pub food and the like.
I went to a dealers school that was at first located around there. Right across from the New Thunderbird Motel.
Do you remember Dino's (the last neighbourhood bar)? Low ceilings, cheap booze, bagged out floozies?
I also had a penchant for the really grubby gin mills.
I am getting mixed up on my dice payouts. It's been too long. Place 9 pays three to two. Line bet 9 or come bet 9 pays time and a half. The bet plus half the bet. Pays like a blackjack.
Not that it really matters. When I talk about dice I usually don't try to explain the nuances of the payouts or rules. What's the point? But if you want to know about dice you could read Scarney: On Dice.
The pull I felt in Vegas was the timeless anonymity of the place. Thousands had walked my road. Many thousands and more to follow. Vegas didn't seem like a physical location, although of course it is. It seems like a spiritual destination. Some limbo between heaven and hell. Purgatory.
I was really drawn to the flame there. My life was a kind of burden. My body felt like weight. I wanted to quietly throw it away. | |
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| Reno was a bust.
Posted: 10/21/2009 5:01:43 PM | I woke up in late September of 1992 and I thought "that's it! I'm out of here!" I'd burned up about $280.00 bucks on a rock crawl the night before and I was getting scared. I was losing control.
I phoned the spa and talked to the assistant manager and I informed him "I quit." He begged me to give some notice. I gave him two weeks. This was the spa at Caesars.
It was crazy. Walking away. I had some money in the bank. I'd saved eleven grand. I thought I had money. I never had money before. To me that was money.
I cleaned up my business. Got rid of sh1t, I sold my Toyota to Helen, a friend I knew from the Buddhist temple. She was a junkie on methadone maintenance. Her mom was a functioning hard core alcoholic.
On my last day at Caesars I went to the gift shop and bought a black satin jacket with Caesars stitched on in gold letters. Eighty bucks. I got an employee discount. That's why I bought it.
I was headed for the elevators. Back by the pool. I'm staring at the ground and chewing on my lower lip. I'm troubled. I'm walking away from money and status and I have no idea where I'm going and the geographical cure never worked for anybody.
But I felt eyes on me and I looked up directly into the eyes of Iron Mike Tyson. Moving fast through the casino with about four human appendages trailing. His eyes registered inquiry. The man is highly intelligent. He looked away shyly when I met his gaze.
I had seen him at Tocco's. Johnny Tocco's gym. I was there with Les Fabri to spar. Les talked to him because they knew each other from the Olympic trials. Anyway, Mike was friendly to Les and maybe he remembered my face, or I don't know. It's sticks in my mind. That little snapshot.
So, I left. I flew to Vancouver and stayed with my parents in North Burnaby for a week. I spent a week in Seattle. I'm looking to start a new life. But it wasn't going to be Seattle.
Or Vancouver. I told my mom "I'm going back to Vegas." She says "Oh, don't go back to that terrible town." I said okay, I'll go to Reno. A low rent, two bit Vegas.
I hit Reno in early October. Now I had been warned about Reno. That it is a seasonal town. But being arrogant I figured that it would be different for me.
Reno is a nice city. It spreads out more than you might think. It's seedy downtown. This is an old city. It dates back to the civil war. When I lived there you could walk across the river and not get your knees wet.
I did everything wrong in Reno. I didn't buy a car but I furnished an apartment. Then I moved into a furnished place and practically gave away my furniture.
I auditioned at the Circus Circus. My evaluation: Good dice, no blackjack. One game won't cut it in Reno. Dice is nothing in Reno. I saw a lot of inside stick there.
I went to a dealers school and started to learn a pitch game on 21.
It's hard to start a new life. It is harder the older you get. I was drinking heavily. I wanted pot but I had no connections. I finally got some off a lady at dealers school.
Come late January I was running through my savings. At the school they told me if I could hang on till March I would definitely catch on somewhere.
I packed it in and caught a flight to Vegas. I got there close to March. Movement was slow. The country was in recession. It was made more difficult by the fact that I was trying to get my old life back. I wanted the strip. I had left. I had run. I had an enormous hole in my soul an emptiness and I ended up wishing that I had just settled for the solace of worldly distractions.
I mean I was ruined. I couldn't get my illusions back for love or money. I was a raw wound.
I moved into a complex on Stewart at 14th. The building was cracked out and I was using a lot. With my neighbours. Street walkers. And so on.
I caught on for three days at the El Rancho. Presidents Day, Valentines Day weekend.
I thought I had a job. I phoned for my schedule at the end of the three days and was informed that they couldn't use me. My game was too weak. I had been out of my game for two years.
I hung up the phone and I said this " If there is any purpose to my life, If there is any reason for me to live, if there is anybody out there, then send somebody quick because I am at the end of my rope."
The next day I phoned Helen. She came over in the Toyota, my old car. We went out to Red Rock Canyon. We had beer. Tall cans. It was cold out. Early spring. I was wearing my Caesars satin jacket and shivering.
We get back in the car. But in the meantime a pickup truck had pulled up and parked.
A man walks over and hands me his card. Tom Rankin, contractor. I'm thinking: he's going to offer me a job?
This guy is rather ordinary. Six feet, chubby. He has black hair, a beard. He has a Texas accent.
He says "I was sitting there and God told me to come over here and talk to you."
I put my hand beside my mouth, hid my mouth, and I say "Helen, start the car." And I'm rolling up my window. But I'm teasing. It's hard to do what he was doing and I had already made up my mind to listen to him.
But there was something else. His eyes were deep. I saw compassion in those eyes.
He's talking and blah, blah, blah. I mean...he don't know, he's being guided by the Holy Spirit. He says: "I'm not trying to threaten you with hell or anything."
I told him: "YOU CAN'T!" I mean very fast and flat. He laughed. He understood what I meant.
He says "okay, okay. Let's just say the sinners prayer." But I didn't know it. I was just following him and I figured to blow him off and maybe I would figure it out later.
I was asking for forgiveness and wondering why. I felt like a victim. Something happened. Something out of time. I broke. Broke hard. I was sobbing uncontrollably.
I felt a thrill of fear. I never, never thought I would fall that low.
I tell this guy my mom won't like it. Being as I'm a Jew and all. And she didn't like it.
Well he got excited. If you bring a Jew to Jesus you're getting the wall clock, the blender AND the fvcking toaster.
It would be nice to say that I became a new creature in Christ Jesus, but it was a little more complicated than that. I got clean for a while. I went back. I been clean almost six years now. I don't drink or use street drugs.
I asked for God. I ASKED. That's how he came. I can't argue. You could. You could argue about it was just some chemical imbalance. You could prove God don't exist. You can't prove it to me however. | |
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| Reno was a bust.
Posted: 10/22/2009 1:31:42 AM | ^^^If you wrote a book, I'd buy it, bodypro.
Your writing is just flying. You've got a great rhythm and style.  | |
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| Vegas John
Posted: 10/22/2009 1:26:10 PM | In 1990 I was a 16 month dice dealer working at the Barbary Coast, a notorious sweat house located on the original four corners. Adjacent to the Flamingo Hilton, across from Ballys, kitty corner to the Dunes and across from Caesars Palace.
At the juncture of Flamingo Road and Vegas Blvd.
The Barbary had a very small room base. They got hit and run dice play, dice action coming mainly from the Dunes.
The dice games were run at a relentless, double speed pace and the object was to kill the game as quickly as possible and drive the shooter off. They would sweat nickels. 5 bucks.
And they made it personal. If you dumped money.
Needless to say, it was real and it was fun, but it wasn't real fun. Working there, that is.
One day I got a call at home. A masseur at Caesars. A guy I knew through another guy I worked with when I was doing rubs at Ballys. Ballys was my first Vegas job.
Okay. This guy, Les: "you want a job at Caesars?" Me: "can you get me in?" Him: " yeah."
Me...after brief consideration: "Yeah! Get me in there!"
It would derail my gaming career, but I wasn't ever gonna likely get a high status job, a juice job, good money, like that. Ever. Not on my own. Not without juice. Lester was my juice.
Well, it took about 6 weeks to get through the corporate and I had to go downtown to FBI special investigations and talk to some d1ckhead about my gruelling application covering twenty years of job and residence history and WTF.
Because what was I going to do? Hand finish?
Anyway they gave me a provisional licence because I didn't have an Italian last name. So it was cool.
I ask the guy, the agent "can I work on this?" "Yeah, but I don't think they should let you."
Whatever! This guy's got something against me making a living.
Okay! I'm in. I'm making more money. Less stress. I mean there are no cameras, no surveillance. I'm eating better. In the staff dining room. These joints always feed you.
I got a high status job and here is the big thing: I don't have to wait till after work to get high, I can do drugs right in the spa. We all did.
I'm learning how to hustle and my best days were when I was doing meth. I could talk the money right out of their wallet. Plus, I think they got some kind of contact high from me.
The sweat from my hands would go into the pores on their face and they would be tweaking.
I drove an enormous 1976 Mercury Marquis. Who cared? Gas was cheap. A 460 cubic inch engine. A very comfortable and powerful car. Bombs like that are ubiquitous in Vegas.
I had to take it into my mechanic down where Fremont turns into Boulder at Maryland Parkway.
I knew that area. I had lived around there before. It was about ten in the morning. I went to a bar I knew around there. Bars half full. It doesn't matter when you drink in Vegas.
I'm at the bar ordering my drink. A tired looking bleached blond..." buy me a drink?"
Me: " okay." I'm easy.
She pauses, " want to have sex?" Me: "okay." I'm a dirt bag, slut. She introduces herself as Dixie. A street name.
We finish our drinks and go to her crib nearby, upstairs. There is a guy sitting at the kitchen table of a small studio apartment. "Give him a couple of bucks to buy cigarettes."
I fork over, yeah, get rid of him.
We get down to business. I'm nervous but she is experienced. She's helping me. " Crawl in, crawl in..." Like a mantra. And it's working and I'm getting some good strokes in.
I got a hold of her ass and my finger is inching toward her a-s-s- h-o-l-e. She says " Don't even think about it!" Which...she was experienced, and I behaved myself.
She's doing this stuff. "Come on daddy, come on daddy, come on daddy..."
Well, that was a little weird. Some kind of incest thing?
The boyfriend/ come/ pimp returns as I'm about to get off.
I should have given him ten bucks "buy a whole f**king carton man! Smoke them all!"
We go back to the bar. Talking about finishing up. I'm being worked of course, not that I really cared. I regularly did these gutter crawls and I wasn't too much worried about the money. I was making money.
She's sitting on my lap. We're back in the same bar. She tells some guy "I just had sex and it was good. He's big too." The guy looked envious. Little did he know.
She wants 50 bucks to go buy crack and then she was gonna come back and finish our business. Which was fine because I had paid her nothing up front.
Of course she never came back.
I go check on my car. I knew the mechanic for a while through various sets of wheels I had driven, since about 1988 I suppose.
I tell him " I just f$$ked Dixie." He laughs. "Dixie's got aids. Everyone around here knows that."
Well, goddamn! Now I'm sweating. I head down to the County Health Centre. Tell them my story. I am informed that I am stupid for having unprotected sex with prostitutes.
Even after, I kept doing it. I think I had a death wish.
So! I surrender some blood and start to twist in the wind.
A week or so later I phone. I'm at work. They won't release the results over the phone.
I beg my boss "please let me go early, I GOT TO KNOW!!!"
I get there. Some black guy. "It's negative. No wait! Let me look." "Yeah, negative."
I get the printout. Non react. Man, I was so happy.
Plus, I figure maybe I could use the report. I kept it in my wallet. I could show it to girls. Look! I'm clean! Lets have sex. | |
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| Cassie rhymes with Assie
Posted: 10/22/2009 7:03:00 PM | In 1994 I got off swing shift at the Vegas Club on Fremont and Main. I walked over to the Union Plaza at about 2 am with one of my crew, a Korean kid nicknamed Ping Pong. I had worked dice at the Union Plaza before, it was my first middle level job.
We settled in at the Sports Book bar. The bar was dead but a Hawaiian girl , ethnic Chinese, was friendly and introduced herself as Cassie rhymes with assie. She proceeded to lift her blouse and show me her t*ts. Having aroused my interest, we were soon engaged in public foreplay. The bartender looked uncomfortable.
Ping Pong didn't care and scarcely noticed as he was a complete slut and cheated on his pretty Korean wife with impunity. She was a BJ dealer at the Lady Luck.
Anyway, the bartender was looking uncomfortable. By then I had my right hand stuffed down the crotch of her pants.
Shortly, a security guard arrived and bashfully advised us to take our action elsewhere or get a room or whatever and I apologized and we left. But I didn't follow through and Cassie and I didn't have sex. Not then and not ever.
She was staying at the Vegas Club. She described her dad and I recalled his action on my game. She said "he takes a good punch, doesn't he?" And I had to agree that he was stoic as he watched his money evaporate into the layout.
She told me " You are handsome and you don't even know it. You could have a different woman every night." But it scared me to hear that.
The next day we went up to her room at the Vegas Club. I think it was my day off or something, or prior to my shift. I told her about my fake testicle (the cancer), the left one. Silicone. She felt it but nothing sexual happened .
I talked about my dead friend. Only two years before and the pain was fresh. I cried. She gave me these strange, tiny, round pills and told me they would help me. She wrote her address in perfect script. Small letters. Told me to stay in touch. I didn't. | |
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| I wasn't ready
Posted: 10/22/2009 8:04:26 PM | I was on my game at Vegas Club when Rudy, a dice dealer I had worked with came in and informed me and anyone else in the vicinity that they were hiring at the Fremont.
They were hard up for dealers. Dice dealers. They had guys working a lot of OT and they were starting to b1tch about it.
I was reluctant. The Fremont was a very strict house and they used speed checks which were hard to deal. I had been back in my game for about 6 months and my hands were still not too good. A speed check is an acrylic chip with a metal insert about the size of a dime. They are heavy and extremely slippery. If you look hard at them, they spill.
Once you get good you can deal faster. And they don't wear out. Saves the casino money.
Anyway, this was 1993. I did go and audition at the Fremont. I was nervous and spilling checks all over the layout. I was giggling in embarrassment. But. They hired me. I mean they would have hired anybody.
The Fremont wasn't a fun place to work. Their action was mostly Hawaiians and when you deal to them you are going to work your ass off. Plus, you had to pay colour for colour. You couldn't colour them up. The idea being that if you paid green for red or black for green, they would wake up and cash out. Here: red=5 bucks, green= 25 bucks, black=100 bucks. And you couldn't total. Couldn't pay the flat and the odds together.
I started hanging out with this dealer from my crew. A college ball player from Utah. He was a school teacher but he was making more money as a dealer.
I don't usually hang out with big guys, but he was a sweetheart and he liked me. Sometimes guys take a shine to me. We started going to a slot joint behind the Fremont near the Lady Luck. It was dark in there and cool and no table games. Dealers hung out in there.
We would go in there and order a pitcher of beer and drink shots of Jagermeister . Which we got pretty fvcked up on. We would talk shop. Talk Vegas. I told him "this town is a little paradise if you can avoid the traps." He wholeheartedly agreed.
My particular affliction was that I was not only not avoiding the traps, I was rooting around in the gutter to find them.
He told me "those Mormon girls sure like to fvck!" In a tone of wonderment.
The night before my last shift at the Fremont, I was drinking at the Horseshoe and two ladies cames in and one asked "is this chair taken." I didn't say anything, I just shoved the chair over with my foot. She seemed charmed by my lack of manners and we started hanging out and talking. It was her and her sister from Barstow. We went over to the Four Queens and I was drinking and dancing with them. Drinking Black Velvet. Drinking a lot. We ended up back at the Shoe and she wouldn't let me fvck her so I decided to leave and she made me promise to take a cab.
Instead I decided to go down to a bar at 21st and Fremont. I walk up to a black guy in there and tell him "20 rock. Right now."
He gets in my car and we go somewhere to pick up, and I piece him off and drop him at the bar. I got a head of steam on me. I'm driving around downtown all over... where are all the whores? Quiet night. I drive by a voluptuous looking black female who genuflects in my direction when she spots me.
We go back to my room at the Peter Pan motel. We smoke my crack. We smoke her crack. I actually had good sex with this one. Which is rare. I did stuff with her just like I would with any woman. Oral stuff, which she liked.
In the morning I was half asleep and she cleaned out my wallet. But fair is fair. Because I hadn't paid her up front.
I go to work and I am messed up. I can't think clearly. I became aware of two female floormen watching me from behind my game. They pulled me off third base. I asked them "you firing me?"
"No, we are dismissing you for failure to complete probation." Yeah. Oh yeah. Thank God I wasn't fired. Motherfvckers.
A boxman had dropped a dime on me. He knew me from the Union Plaza. He sat on my game there. When I applied at the Fremont I had lied about my dismissal from the Plaza.
He got canned from the Plaza also, but I didn't retaliate by ratting him out.
Well. I was worried. Five days before Xmas is not a good time to be out of work. But I had a chance to catch on somewhere for New Years.
But the word got out around there and some kid I worked with at Vegas Club got word to me not to be too proud to come back.
I saw the casino manager in front of Vegas Club and asked him about it. About coming back. He told me to talk to the swing shift boss, who liked me, and I got rehired to start New Years Eve.
I never got rehired at a Vegas joint before. Not in the 20 I worked in and they usually won't do it. For any reason. I was grateful and I said to myself "I'll give him 6 months."
I ended up back there for a year and a half. Until I tried to move up again. I wasn't ready that first time. | |
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| I wasn't ready
Posted: 10/23/2009 1:22:20 PM | | Wow. Bravo, Body. You really have a knack for bringing others right into the story. I can picture all of this happening. | |
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| He's cold. I'm gonna knock him out.
Posted: 10/24/2009 7:04:54 PM | It's the middle of the week. Sometime in 1984. I'm at the Shamrock Boxing Gym on Hastings near Main. The gym is not too busy. I was there, my friend Jamie was there and Manny, my regular sparring partner, was there. Manny was 14 years old and he's had about forty amateur fights by then. He was close to my fighting weight of 132 lbs.
Decker was there. Bob Decker the coach and gym owner. Also Tony Dowling, Jamie's manager.
This blond haired middle weight walks in with two older guys. There was nothing too distinguished about this guy. 5'9" mediocre muscle tone. It turns out the guy had won 10 tough man contests and the older guys, businessman, with him, figured that this guy was a prospect. Maybe they figured their "tiger" would be a world champ and they could print money.
Right away Dowling, a shrewd, tough Irishman saw an opportunity. Dowling had made a living as a professional opponent. He knew Micky Duff and he was part of the subculture of boxing. He had been around boxing forever.
They glove the tough man up and put him in with Manny. Right away the guys nose is bleeding. So Decker pulls Manny aside and tells him to take it easy.
If you glared at this guy his nose sprang a leak. See Dowling is going to use the business men's money to promote a card and get my friend Jamie a fight and a payday.
This blond haired guy is now training at the gym. I wanted to spar with him but nobody invited me. I wanted to hit him because I am a bully and I was jealous of the attention he was getting. This guy clearly couldn't box a lick.
I worked with Jamie at a cemetery. We trained together every night. Jamie took the middleweight to the aerobics class we went to. Now Jamie, a junior welter, is sparring with the guy. Everybody is trying to get this guy ready.
This guy is getting more and more insecure. I mean he is figuring it out. He's getting beat up by a kid. This kind of thing.
Dowling puts this card together in Abbotsford, east of Vancouver. It was about three weeks from when the tough man guy walked into the gym.
Jamie is top of the card. Fight night we're out there. Maybe 300 people at this card. Jamie's got an 8 rounder with a guy from Seattle. The blond guy, the mark, has a four rounder with a mean looking local middleweight.
This guy, the tough man, is now aware that he is totally fvcked. He's got that sick feeling and it is so hopeless that he doesn't even bother to warm up. He probably felt exhausted before the bell rang.
The other guy notices that the "tiger" didn't warm up. He says: "He's cold. I'm gonna knock him out!"
They get in there. The mean guy starts walking him down. Buddy boy is running sideways to his left, in a circle. His gloves are pasted to the side of his face. It's futile. You can't hide behind your gloves like that. Two something minutes into the first round the meany catches the toughy with a left hook and knocks him down and out and that basically ended his nascent boxing career.
My friend fought a black guy from Seattle. We both knew this kid, a good fighter from Seattle. He had come up here to Canada for sparring at the Kingsway gym.
This guy was deceptively fast. He was tough and he had a good work rate.
My friend beat him but he took a lot of punches doing it. He won on attrition. Which, sometimes you have too. It's not good though. Obviously.
The next day we're back at the cemetery. I'm looking at Jamie and he has abrasions and contusions. He's got lumps on top of his lumps. He looks like the elephant man.
But no cuts. He puts on some sunglasses and his face is so misshapen that they sit lopsided on his head. We're laughing.
At lunchtime we go over to the Brentwood Mall and to the bank so he can deposit his purse. Dowling meets us there and we go in the bank. Dowling is standing by Jamie and waiting for his cut. He looked hungry. Maybe his power was about to be cut off.
The bank teller looks at Jamie (Ollenberger) and over at Tony. "I see! He takes the punches and you get the money!" Dowling: " I took my share!"
Whatever. Women loved Jamie. In 1992 I was living in Vegas. I was out partying with my coworkers from Caesars. Drinking, smoke a joint, some lines. Talking shop.
I get home and my answering machine is blinking. I hit play. It's Dowling: "We buried Jamie three days ago."
My world fell in. He was drinking. He borrowed a Mustang and went over to the North Shore. He lived over there. North Van. He got caught up in some new road construction.
He flipped the car and broke his neck. He survived for three weeks in a respirator. Paralysed from the neck down.
It ripped my heart out. | |
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| Breaking in on dice
Posted: 10/24/2009 10:34:20 PM | It's good, Jesse.
Sad, but good.
We want more. Keep 'em comin' honey. | |
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| Knockout
Posted: 10/25/2009 7:55:06 PM | In 1983 my coach and a handful of fighters from the gym drove down to Kirkland, Washington, for a novice tournament. It was five fights or less to compete.
I had one going in. A one point split decision loss in my first fight, which was in the gym in the downtown east side.
One point=three punches. So, yeah. It was close.
Anyway, all the way down to Washington I'm eating and breathing fear.
We get there. It's an auditorium in a school if I can remember.
I strip down in the mens bathroom which is crowded with fighters hitting the scale. I'm aware of guys sneaking glances at me, especially if they were at or near my weight.
I was ripped to shreds. I trained like a pro because I trained with my friend, a pro, every day (we worked together at a cemetery).
I did everything he did but sparred less rounds.
Anyway I made weight at 131.5. The amateur lightweight limit is 132lbs.
There's two rings set up. I'm out in the auditorium warming up, hitting the focus mitts with my coach.
I swung wild with a left hook and knocked his glasses off. I saw fear. I apologized.
He says "there's your opponent." Points. I look. A skinny black kid surrounded by two white kids on either side.
This kid is looking straight ahead. His eyes looked like white saucers.
The other kids were pointing and snickering. Which I don't know why the one kid was laughing. He was my # 2.
The lighter weights always fight first. Lucky me. The place was filled up now. My coach holds the ropes open and I step into the ring. He tells me this "he didn't warm up. He's cold. Knock him out."
The ref asks me how I feel. I tell him I'm dying. He laughs and says "you'll be all right."
Now all this time, the fear is indescribable. It had nothing to do with this kid or anything. There is something about getting into a ring surrounded by people watching you and fighting.
It's about your manhood.
All this time I'm thinking: it's me or him. Over and over, like a drumbeat in my head. I felt like a cornered rat. Scared mean and viscous. I got to send this. It will come in instalments. Jesse | |
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| Knockout
Posted: 10/25/2009 7:58:49 PM | The bell rings. Like most fights I just remember fragments. It was the same combination. The whole fight. Three quick, hard jabs and a right hand. The first knock down I thought he slipped. I didn't feel any contact. It felt like I was punching a sheet hanging on a line. I was punching right through him.
The second knockdown was...I started to get excited. I realized that I could get out of there RIGHT NOW! I never wanted any thing so bad in my life.
And then it really hit me. I could win!
This kid was backed up on the ropes getting an 8 count.
The ref had waved me to a neutral corner. I looked to the corner where the judges were. There was a lady judge. Blond. Good looking.
Her lips were parted and her eyes were shiny. She looked hungry. They all did. I felt this huge rush of adrenalin. I started to jump up and down in place. The murder came up in my eyes and I turned my eyes on my opponent. I had picked up the count at five.
The ref waved me in and as I closed the distance I felt my head lower and my chin tuck and it was like I was outside of myself and within at the same time. But the point is that I was being careful.
I saw the brass ring. I had him on the hook and I wasn't going to let him off. Me or him.
Three hard jabs and he brings his glove in front of his face. He's trying to hide behind his gloves.
Now here is the peroration of my whole story. I saw an opening, a space between his head gear and his gloves. It was like the clouds parting for the sun. Time warped. Slipped away. Disappeared. A moment frozen in time. I was in hyper focus.
I decided that my glove would fit through that little opening. I pulled the trigger and knocked him out. At the moment of impact I twisted my hip into the punch. I put my ass into it. A perfect right hand and the hardest punch I ever threw and I could really punch. That punch would have knocked out any amateur at my weight anywhere.
He went down and his neck was on the bottom strand and his eyes were wide open but sightless. Eerie. The doctor came running.
I looked into the audience. Two teenage girls, about 18, were looking at me, their eyes shiny with lust. I thought: so that's the way it is! Power.
There was such a confluence of feelings going through me. Deep, deep pathos. I thought: this is one fvcked up world.
I didn't prance around with my gloves held high. He was just a kid. But it was me or him. And I decided: it had to be me. | |
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| Knockout
Posted: 10/25/2009 8:03:31 PM | So I hug this kid. He looked resentful. My coach is spreading the ropes for me. I tell him "I still don't like it." Then I start snickering "I could learn to like it." He tells me "they won't all be this easy."
I got to wrap this up. I could write a short novel about this one day. I beat the next guy. He ran and held.
There was a three hour break until the finals. I was tired. Well, emotionally spent. I didn't want the last fight. And I had seen the guy fight and I really didn't know how I was going to beat him.
I later learnt that he had lied to get into the tournament. He had 7 fights going in, instead of five. I had one, as I said. One of the guys he beat told me that.
He stopped me with a right hand that hurt me and I got an eight count and I rushed in and got caught again. I never went down. RSC.
Referee stops contest.
Yeah, I felt ashamed. A lot of people wanted me to win. There is a lot of racial sh1t in the states.
I'm not really a fighter. I made myself do it. I wanted to be like my friend. I admired fighters. I got a very late start. The success I did have was because I had very heavy hands.
Once I asked a very good retired fighter and trainer, Hedgman Lewis, a welterweight active in the late sixties, if I could even call myself a fighter. He said "you got in there. You fought."
Yeah, I didn't have much of a career. I was basically 50/50. | |
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| Stage A, pure Seminoma
Posted: 10/26/2009 9:06:29 AM | I was living on south Granville with a pretty red head. I stepped out of the shower, dried myself off and walked naked over to the couch and sat down. My girl friend was watching TV and reached over without looking at me and started fondling my testicles.
Shortly she asks "What's that?" "What's what?" "That lump." "What lump?" There's a lump." My left testicle. I ask "Isn't there one like that on the other side?" I figure if they are both like that, it's okay.
But I told her I didn't know. I go to the bedroom and lay down in the dark and I'm feeling and remembering that I read about this and uh-oh.
The next day I see a doctor and to cut to the chase. in three days flat I'm under the knife.
I had surgery in the morning and the next morning I walked out of there bowlegged with a silicone implant.
Stage A means that the tumour was almost completely surrounded by healthy tissue. Pure Seminoma means undifferentiated cancer cells and seminomas are easily eradicated with radiation. All together it meant that I get to live. I hit the lottery.
The surgery was very painful and I got sick from the radiation but at least I didn't have to have chemotherapy, which is brutal and half kills you. The radiation permanently sterilized me and maybe as a result I was a little more caviller about my life.
As soon as I had a preliminary diagnosis I decided to use the cancer to make changes. Changes that I was too timid to make without the impetus of the spectre of my imminent mortality to spur me on.
In other words I had a well paying secure job but you can't spend the money when your dead. Also my girl friend would have to go. That's a tough one though. That one took much longer.
I worked in a cemetery at the time and that's what I mean. Business was...steady. We had plenty of room left. It was union.
But I was bored. Almost four years. I never held a job that long before or since.
Plus I was wanting to move back to the States. I wanted NY. I'm from Brooklyn. But I wound up in LA.
See, I had demons to slay, but first I had to conjure them up.
We were doomed. Me and my girlfriend. I loved her but there had been too much wounding on both sides. The cancer was the extra weight that destroyed us.
We hung in for a while. I ended up moving to Chinatown and she took an apartment in the Joyce-Collingwood area. We were still seeing each other.
Things were coming to a head. I was on unemployment benefits. I had quit the cemetery at exactly four years and took a job with a landscape company and then got laid off.
One day I got a letter from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. ICBC. Icky-bicky. The letter informed me that I had accumulated 23 points for various traffic violations including multiple accidents and please remit 1200 bucks or surrender your licence for five years.
Well, I didn't have 1200 dollars and besides that, they ain't getting my fvcking money.
I'm a US citizen. I had an American passport. I figured to get a California licence before the hammer came down on my birthday, which was a month away. They can't check across borders and I am inclined to run from troubles if I can.
At this time my friend Jamie was in Stockton California training for a fight. He was the main event and he had been sparring with a tall black guy and caught the guys elbow and got a slice on his left eyelid. It wasn't a bad cut, but it got infected. The promoter's doctor cleared my friend to fight but he was...they were fvcking him over.
If he dropped off the card they would lose money.
Anyway, he's in trouble I got troubles, so I loaded up my car and drove down there. There was a guy there that my friend knew that was interested in sponsoring me if I wanted to fight for money. Which, I was marketable. White, good looking, good puncher, and I'm a Jew and that is worth something in boxing.
I could have been moved. Anybody can be moved. One thing though is it's hard to find small men who CAN'T fight. I would have risen to a certain level and then the beatings would have begun.
I get out there. Jamie's there with Dowling, his manager. I'd been to Stockton before. A real hardcore blue collar town. An old boxing town. Yaqui Lopez lives there.
I'm hanging out with Jamie. We go up to the Fat City gym where he trains. We go on runs.
One evening at the motel where all the boxing people were staying, we were out at the pool and a hue and cry goes up, "Angie, Angie." I look and see this oily looking little guy with a big smirk on his face and it's Anglo Dundee. He had a kid, a prospect on the card.
Well, I can't quite remember but I think Jamie fell off the card. He had been seeing his own doctor who advised him not to fight. We watched the card. I scarcely remember it.
The sponsor guy wasn't ready to take me on. He had just taken another guy in. Had him living at his house. Jamie said to come back in a month.
I pushed on to LA. To Torrence and visited my uncle. My dad's brother and I ended up living with him for over a year.
From there forward it was circumstance meets opportunity. | |
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| Stage A, pure Seminoma
Posted: 10/27/2009 5:39:48 PM | You are a great writer!
Sad, dark, real.
Much better than most out there who already have published a book.
When is yours coming out?
 | |
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| Stage A, pure Seminoma
Posted: 10/28/2009 8:46:45 PM |
You are a great writer!
Sad, dark, real.
Much better than most out there who already have published a book.
When is yours coming out?
Oh, hey -- I want one! Can it be pre-ordered? Is there an Amazon link? | |
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| Stage A, pure Seminoma
Posted: 10/31/2009 1:35:25 PM | What a life. What a story.
These snippets are real eye openers.
You have a way with words, that's for sure.
Thanks for writing this down and sharing it.
Like the others.....I'm looking forward to the book. | |
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| Stage A, pure Seminoma
Posted: 10/31/2009 6:31:13 PM | | I'm not scholarly. Most books bore me. They get caught in adjectives and make believe. You say more in one sentence than most say in a chapter. You deliver with a straight right. Good stuff. | |
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| The 800 pound Gorilla
Posted: 11/1/2009 8:19:13 AM | Whenever somebody tries to force feed me scripture as a palliative to the human condition, I want to ask them the question, the question that is the 800 lbs Gorilla sitting in the theological tearoom of monolithic religion. The big ape that everyone is politely doing their best to ignore.
When they were marching my people, men, women, and children...WOMEN AND CHILDREN, off to the ravines to be murdered, WHERE WAS GOD THEN?
Keep in mind that any answer you or any body else supplies is a lie. Has to be a lie. And there is nothing left but to live the question.
If, as my witness said, you tell me it's because the Jews killed Jesus, I will move backwards very, very quickly, as I did with him. I was not mad at him, no. I was disappointed, because that is a cowardly answer. He diminished his God with that answer and he clearly did not think.
I am not interested in stopping thinking via a prescription such as the Bible.
I am not interested in that kind of Christianity nor in being that kind of Christian.
I am not looking for the answer. The one final answer. To life. The living is in the questions. I'm leery of those that say they have the answers. I don't believe them. | |
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| A soundless voice
Posted: 11/1/2009 7:17:52 PM | I was proselytized in Vegas in 1993. I was just trying to be polite and get rid of the guy. He asked me to say the sinners prayer. To ask Jesus for forgiveness and I started to follow him, I was repeating his words and something happened and I broke before God and I started sobbing and I am crying now because this is eternal and timeless.
I mean at this point in my life...a town like Vegas...I was a dice dealer and out of work. I was close to a full blown crack addiction. I was looking at suicide as a logical response to the existential dilemma of the fundamental meaninglessness of life.
Because without God life means nothing. To live? For me? It wasn't remotely worth it. And all the crack in Las Vegas couldn't kill my pain. All the drugs and booze.
Anyway, after I had that experience, which still is the most real thing that ever happened to me, I was scared and couldn't, still can't find an identity as a Christian. I did go to a Spanish language church for a while. The people liked me. Then I went to a Messianic church. But I was bored and the congregation seemed smug.
I was baptized also. In a swimming pool by Mccarren Airport. But all the water in all the pools in Clark County couldn't wash the Jew off of me.
A while later I decided to get clean. I quit drinking, narcotics and cigarettes all at once.
I was living in the Peter Pan Motel at 14th off Fremont. 80 bucks a week. I was dealing dice (craps) at the Las Vegas Club up the street...downtown, Glitter Gulch.
Anyhow, I had bought a new shower curtain, the hitch hiker series, and it had pictures of licence plates from all the different States in the Union. I was staring at it with pleasure. It was colourful.
I was happy. I was clean and alive and I was living. Suddenly I heard a voice, a soundless, powerful voice. It came from outside my body and the dead centre of my brain at the same time. The voice said " you can barely conceive, you can barely see, you can only glimpse what I have for you."
I was startled. Did I hear it or think that? The voice levelled me and I wept.
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| No light at the end of this tunnel
Posted: 11/1/2009 9:23:39 PM | Any recent news? You will be busy now, with your dad. It's a terrible time. When your parents begin dying, you lose your past and you step up to the turnstile.
I console myself that by outliving them, I have spared them the devastation of outliving their children.
Why is life so painful? But it is. I don't really believe in the silver lining thing or that it's a learning experience. Learn what? How to suffer? But I do believe in stoicism.
I would stop in to see my mom every day on my way to work. She died of cancer and she had it before and survived about 27 years. A good run. In the end she was rotten with it. All through her, even on her skin.
She lay there but she weighed about 65 pounds. Then I would get on the train and head for work. At the end she was in a light coma.
I worked a graveyard shift. She was close and I prayed. Prayed for her to die. "Take her. Please." There was nothing left.
That body wouldn't support life. In the morning I stopped and looked on one last time and held her hand. I went home to bed and my father called me at about 2 pm and that was it.
I had cancer in 1985. It will come back and kill me in the end. I am certain. Anyway, something will. I pray I don't outlive my sister. She is my best friend. After my dad dies...just her. I don't want to be alone. My life has been lonely.
It seems selfish, me talking about my loss and pain, when you are confronting your own pain. That's how it is though. My empathy for you comes from the places I've been.
I had to mourn my best friend. He passed at 30 years old. It's just weight.
I keep a place for you in a corner of my heart. Jesse | |
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| Not worth a title
Posted: 11/2/2009 8:53:29 AM | Well if we are going off topic here, slightly off topic, you could chalk up the current economic crisis to the peroration of a long decline. There could be a lot of breast beating about the inequity of the capitalistic system, which no doubt about it, is not working well at present. Capitalism seems to be imploding the way communism did in the late eighties. Remember the euphoria? The end of history?
The annihilation of the middles class spells the destruction of democracy. It seems inexorable and inevitable. If the wealthy want to live behind a moat...but don't bet that they won't trade off freedom for comfort. The economic and sociological fissures appearing in the US and to a lesser extent in Canada, appear to have a life of their own. Until the pendulum swings back to a more even economic keel.
The wealthy and powerful always espouse their superiority and divine right to prosper and rule by self evident genetic superiority. But! No worries. Because if something goes wrong there is always Joe Public, the anonymous loser, to bail them out.
We need new managers? More love? Less greed? A kinder gentler...? I don't have the answers either.
The following is a response to commentary on the above piece. But he won't get a piece of my thread. He had nothing to say as far as I'm concerned. He didn't speak to me. He can run it up somebody else's flagpole and see who salutes it.
As follows:
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm! Yes, I see what you're saying! I hear you loud and clear! Been there, done that! I hear what you're saying and I feel your pain.
WHAT DID YOU THINK OF MY STYLE??? Hey! I'm trying to write here! That was just a post on some thread, some guy having a Hallmark moment, decrying the loss of common values, and I would personally like to stuff his head in a meat grinder. Because I loathe sentimental pap. | |
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| Did I even deserve it
Posted: 11/2/2009 1:30:26 PM | In 2000 I was living in the San Fernando Valley. I had taken bakery at school. I got a job interview at a small wholesale bakery in Northridge. They were a vendor for Trader Joes. So Sandra, the owner, was impressed and called her husband Benny to the bakery to meet me.
Benny Stern was from Israel. I have never been to Israel, but I have relatives there. I used to think I wanted to go live in Israel, but after getting around this guy...
So they wanted me and they hired me and then they started pressuring me to be the manager. On account of I was white and they trusted me and everybody else was Mexican ladies.
I didn't want to do it. I don't like being a boss. I like to work alone.
I kept saying "what about Norma?" She made the cinnamon rolls. She was smart, tough, and she really LIKED bossing people around.
But..."Well, we like Norma, but we don't really trust her."
Well, I wanted and needed the extra money, so yeah, I took the position. But there was some big Mexican kid there. He helped with the deliveries to City of Industry and other little duties.
This kid started insinuating himself as some kind of power broker between me and my subordinates. Because he spoke Spanish of course and all I had were palabras (words) .
He's coming to me: " The girls are saying this, the girls are saying that!"
After about three days of this bullsh1t I told him, "The next time you come to me like that, I will send you home on the spot." Well, the whining started: "That's not fair! They are coming to me!" I told him, "Well, If I were you I would tell them to fvck off then."
Then I went to Norma and told her "I'm the boss, I'm gonna be here a long time (a lie) get over it. Any problems, you come to ME."
I also told her "And quit calling me a chinga (a f--k)!"
Which actually, I was charmed by that. Yeah, it didn't bother me at all. I thought it was funny. Hey! I was the Gringo boss. Of course they hated me. I just wanted her to know that I wasn't completely stupid.
Actually I loved those ladies. They worked hard.
One day Sandra, the owner, called me into her office late. I knew what was up from her tone of voice. She told me she had uterine cancer. I was struggling to maintain my composure and keep a poker face, which believe me I'm not good at.
Because inside my heart was bursting with joy. I was thinking "Well that ought to keep this b1tch out of my hair for a while and maybe, God willing, she will die.
But I did carry the place for five months with very little help from her husband. I even visited her in the hospital. Every week.
I had no health insurance. No vacation pay. No holiday pay. Not even the four percent.
This is the US. I made 9.50 per hour and earned $17,000.00 in overtime in one year.
These people were unscrupulous. They screwed their creditors, relatives and anything that moved.
One time Norma showed me a snapshot of her as a young lady. She had three kids when I encountered her. The snapshot took my breath away. She was stunning. High sculpted cheekbones. She showed me a picture of her husband. He was also genetically superior.
I whispered "Bonita (pretty)." I understood what she was telling me.
These two people, more beautiful than movie stars and just anonymous poor Mexicans.
Sometimes the husband would come to the bakery. We were located in an industrial park. I would open the door. He shows me a bag " Lunchy for Norma."
Then I would call her and she would come to the door. Her husband would stand there and stare into her eyes with rapt devotion. Three kids and she had put on some weight. But he still worshipped her.
I mean, I was watching surreptitiously. Yeah, I felt envy. You know...would I ever find that kind of love and did I even deserve it. | |
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| Bitter ugly rant
Posted: 11/2/2009 1:34:29 PM | Nothing fvcking balances. I phoned my tutor in desperation and I am waiting for her call back. You know what? Nobody on this planet has hurt me the way women have. They enjoy it. They got a lot of power and they got no power.
When my girlfriend told me she was leaving me, I cried like a fool. I could feel the contempt coming off her in waves.
I should have been laughing. Years later I'm making money, I got a status job. Who turns up?!!! She got my address off my mother, another b1tch who beat me in the crib. I told my mom, "I don't like that." I knew what my ex was doing. But my mom: "No, she's my friend!"
You know what? I don't miss my mom, I forgive her. I forgive women. They can't help what they are. I forgive em but conversely I do NOT apologize for being a man. For who I am.
Yeah, Brenda, men are sh1ts but I got my own problems.
See what I'm saying? I do better this way. That's what matters. You see that last thread? The last post? That guy is not P.C. but she is turned on by him.
Do women lie? Only when their lips are moving. Yeah, men lie too, but I ain't worried about men. I don't make myself vulnerable to men. And I can't figure this sh1t out. There is no solution. Not yet. I haven't found it. Maybe I'll get lucky. A hot woman with a real heart. But why would she go for me? Your bitter friend, Jesse
10/11/2008 4:07:23 pm Somebody p1ssed in my cornflakes. | |
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| Bitter ugly rant
Posted: 11/3/2009 7:57:07 PM | Dear Jesse:
You want to know how women think? It's like this:
"I hate you.
Let's get married."
 | |
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| Flunking out.
Posted: 11/5/2009 1:47:45 PM | In late May of 1996 I got fired from State Line. I was asking for it, pretty much. Lipping off and finally a customer complained and they were cleaning house anyway and the customer made a stink at shift change and all the bosses were around and goodbye Buffalo Bills.
Fortunately for me I could feel it coming and I quit using narcotics and pot (especially pot) about 10 weeks previous. Because State Line had no drugs screen. Meth in particular was rife out there.
Most and in fact all good jobs in town drug test. I was clean but I was still drinking.
I got a survival job at the King 8 on Trop off Vegas Blvd. They had slots, one dice table and a small blackjack pit. Like four tables. They ran silver on the dice table and the other table games, looking for crossover play from the slots. It was a forty dollar job plus the occasional score.
When the shift boss talked to me about the job she asked me no less than four times "You're sure you can pass a drug test?"
I got the look, I suppose.
I quit King8 pretty quickly. I wanted more action because I was under the illusion that I could get a decent job again. I wanted to keep my hands and my game sharp.
I got a job at the Casino Royalle. This bottom feeder was tucked between O'Sheas and The Sands. It was owned by Gilardi. This guy and his family owned the Frontier, which at the time hosted the longest running strike in North America. The Culinary Workers strike. In fact Gilardi sold rather than settle the strike. But that might give you an idea about what kind of pr1ck this guy was.
Yeah the money sucked, but what was worse was working with the brutal lumpy dealers they had working there. I mean this was basically a break in joint. On par with Slots of Fun, or Silver City or Bourbon Street.
I was still clean at this time. But I was definitely not right in the head. I was having trouble controlling my temper. Especially since I wasn't really even trying to control it.
I was head and shoulders above these dealers and being a compulsive perfectionist I would have to correct their bad pay outs and what not. I don't care to give away money. Even though it's not my goddamn money.
So, anyway, these dealers are going crying to the casino manager..."boo-hoo, he's making us look bad!"
So they told me to lay off. This one lady, I had a serious hate on for her, a hard ten rolled, 5/5. She points to the bet. Tells me to pay the player. Me: "Why should I?" I couldn't help myself. I saw it go down on a 6/4 and I knew, KNEW, it would come the hard way.
Her (impatient) "Because it hit!" Me: "That went down two rolls ago."
Her shocked countenance. Whatever. They could have rolled back the video.
I should have just kept my mouth shut. I worked so hard to be a good dealer, that...
My last shift there I was on second base and the dice went off the table. A player, not the shooter yells "Same dice! Same dice!"
I'm half asleep wishing I was on another fvcking planet. This was a jammed up game but flea bets. I mutter "Same dice? They're all the same."
The shift boss who just came on says " How long you been dealing? " He's standing beside me on the inside of the pit. Me: "I don't know. Why?"
"I asked you how long you been dealing?!" Me: " I don't know. Six years."
"Don't you know by now that only the shooter can call for the same dice?" I told him that I didn't even say that. He was just trying to pick a fight. He backs up and starts hemming and hawing and tells me that he's not in a good mood that day and "don't start with me." Like I fvcking care. But suddenly my head exploded. He had told somebody to tap me off the game. I couldn't take being bullied by this guy and I clapped my hands, stepped back and advised him to "Go fvck yourself up your mothers ass!"
He called for security and as I walked out into the basement to my car I passed a security guard making his was slowly to the dice pit.
I got in my car and drove home and that was it. Nine+ years and twenty joints and it was over. Vegas was over. | |
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