Storiesonline.net
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                           Crying Over My Loss
                               by Openbook

Copyright© 2006 by Openbook


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Description: Some people just can't accept criticism.

Codes: no-sex
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Chapter 1



I had just sat down at the Pai Gow table, ready to kill an hour or two until my wife and two young granddaughters got out of the Lee Ann Rimes concert they were all attending. I was playing my $10 to $320.00 negative betting progression at the table, trying to get in enough playing time to justify the free room and the free concert tickets they had given me. The comps, or complimentary gifts, were given out to casino players to encourage them to stay and play at the casino. The more you played, and the higher you wagered, the better the comps. I'm a low level better when I play cards over at any of the state line casinos, but even there, I can play for a long time with my progressive betting systems. If I get stuck too bad though, their maximum betting limits are so low that I have to drive the forty miles into Las Vegas to play my system past the first level.

The thing I like best about my system is that you win right up until the minute you lose six hands in a row. Losing six in a row would cost me $630.00. Sometimes though, you never lose six in a row, and you get to quit winners. Some people like to shoot themselves in the head and get it over quickly. Others, people like me, we like to jump off of high places, and enjoy the ride down. It's a lot of fun until you reach the bottom. My systems aren't supposed to be winning systems, they are meant to prolong the time that I get to play. Often, I spend a few days and nights as the guest of the casinos, usually leaving with more money than I came with. Occasionally, I have an extended run of bad luck and will drop a bundle.When that happens, I come back with even more money and win back whatever I've lost.

So, anyway, I'm sitting there, playing Pai Gow and, as it usually happens, the other players at the table are all talking with each other, being sociable while they gamble. I'm the same way. I like being sociable. I even have my tried and tested brand of witty patter, mostly what I'd call self deprecating humor, things I say that makes some gentle fun of my old brain, and of my relationship I have with my wife.

I've been told I'm funny. Not by my wife, but by strangers like these that I meet in these casinos. I like to play and pass the time pleasantly. I can be a real sour puss at times, but, mostly, I'm someone who tries to be pleasant and get along with people. Mostly, I do, get along with people, I mean.

Sitting next to me, on my immediate left, was a fairly attractive woman in her mid to late thirties, with a shorter style of dark blonde hair, and a body that was ten, or even possibly, fifteen pounds on the heavier side of perfect. She had the kind of body that was just the teensiest bit on the ripe side, the kind that causes those men who live in trailer parks and think beer is a food group, to sometimes yell out when they see this kind of girl: "You'd be really purty sweetheart, if'n you was to lose them extra twenty pounds yo'all be carryin'."

I'm not like those kind of men, so, instead of yelling that at her, I sat there quietly, thinking it, but letting my thoughts go unspoken. She was an attractive woman, no doubt about it, but there was something about her that somehow seemed not quite right to me.

We had been sitting there together for about ten minutes when Cindy, that was the girl's name, asked me what it was I did for a living. That had been the table's current topic of conversation, all of the people at the table wanting to celebrate the diversity of having all of us brought together like this in a casino such as this one, far from all our real homes. I had developed a whole wide array of pithy comments that I could make in situations just like this one.

"I used to be a land developer, a long time ago, but now I'm pretty much retired. I still play a lot of poker though, and I sometimes write porn stories and put them up on the internet."

I thought that was a pretty good reply to her question. It was interesting, and just a little bit provocative too. The combination of things I admitted to doing would be unexpected, coming from a relic of my advanced years. I was sure I'd get a comment or two, and at least a few follow up questions about the stories I claimed to write. No one ever admits to actually reading dirty stories on line.

"What sites do you write for, and what name do you write under?"

I could tell, just from the expression on her face, that Cindy was really interested, and wanted to hear my answer. I hadn't expected either of those two questions. Hell, it was just a throw away line I sometimes used in situations like this anyway. She was supposed to have just laughed, and maybe asked me if it paid very well. Since the answer to that question would lead right into a whole battery of funny one liners I'd carefully rehearsed, I had expected to be able to hold forth, and with my quick delivery, to soon have the table rolling in laughter. I looked over at her, knowing that she was serious.

"I use the name "Openbook", I write and publish my stories only at Storiesonline for now."

"I've read some of your stories. Your descriptions of the oral sex guys perform on women were hilarious. My lover and I really got a lot of good laughs at that story you wrote about the old geezer who was sent back in time. The one who always thought he was such a great lover. Reading it made me wonder if you have ever actually gone down on a woman before?"

This wasn't turning out at all like I'd planned on. I could feel my face coloring. I can take criticism of my writing. Well, I can take it if it's something about a misplaced comma, or maybe a semi colon that doesn't belong where I put it. But, I'll be fucked in the ass if I'm going to just sit out in some public venue and put up with some total stranger questioning my credentials to be writing smut on some relatively obscure online site that mostly features erotic stories written by amateurs. Just who the fuck did she think she was?

I'd eaten pussy, and lots of it. I can't say I'd never had any complaints about my technique, because I did have. The thing was though, I hadn't been writing about my own technique, so why was she talking to me like this, embarrassing me this way? With this type of criticism, I found myself bristling, wanting to strike back at her for what she was doing to me.

"Yes I certainly have, and, for your information, I'd be willing to bet that it was at least as many as you've done that to." I expected my little dig, announcing my own suspicions about which side of the plate she batted from, would be enough to stop her right there in her tracks.

"I seriously doubt that, Mr. Book. As a matter of fact, I've engaged in oral sex with more than one hundred different women. Can you honestly say that your own personal experience is the same or greater?"

A hundred woman? What the hell had I let myself in for here? Even the dealer had stopped doing what she was doing in order to listen to what my answer was going to be. The floor supervisor was standing right there next to her, and she didn't tell the dealer to resume dealing either.

I'm an old man, so I'm already used to lying to women. I was certainly no stranger to exaggeration either. If she had challenged me by claiming to have done that with five, or even six, women, I'd have lied, almost without thinking, and claimed ten or twelve for myself. Why not? She couldn't prove that I hadn't done that many.

To be perfectly candid though, after she threw that big a number at me, I couldn't even think of any lie I could possibly tell. Not one that would be, in any way, even remotely believable. On top of that, I was starting to worry that she might actually be able to remember some parts of that story. Even worse, suppose she was able to quote from my story, verbatim, right there at the table, now, in front of everyone? It would only take one or two sentences quoted from her lips to expose me as the know nothing fraud that I am.

Even worse than that, like any other married man would be, I was afraid my wife might come sneaking up on me, for some crazy reason right then. It was possible that she hadn't liked the free concert seats we had been given, or maybe, the concert had been canceled.

Who could tell what perverse series of events might suddenly produce her, there, right behind me. If she was there, she'd be able to listen in on whatever untruth I might have decided to try to get away with. If she did come over right then, she would be certain to wade right in, naturally, on Cindy's side. If that happened, I'd never be able to live it down with her. I had to say something though, and I had to do it damned quickly too. I just needed to make whatever I said in reply suitably vague. This was so that whatever I said couldn't expose me to any further possibilities of ridicule.

"I've been in a committed relationship for over forty five years, and I'm not the sort of person who takes his solemn vows lightly."

Weak, I knew, but maybe she'd take pity on me and leave things just as they were. It was the best I could reasonbly hope for. I just wanted this to be done with, over, so that I could go back to enjoying the game.

"So, are you saying, for the last forty five years, your total experience at giving face is limited to just one poor woman?"

All of the women at the table, including the dealer, the floor person, and another pit critter who'd wandered over to the table, they all joined in with her, all of them laughing right at me.

I was sitting there, surrounded by a bunch of know it alls, all of whom were enjoying themselves, at my expense. I hadn't come all the way there to Nevada, on my vacation, to allow myself to be treated like this. I could get all of that, in great abundance, right back at my own house.

"I never said I've only done that with one woman. Don't you try to put words into my mouth. Besides, this isn't about me, so don't try to make it seem like it is. The story that you're discussing revolves around a totally fictional character, one that I just made up. His abilities, or lack of same, shouldn't reflect, in any way, shape or manner, on any of mine. I'm a real person, not some character in a made up story. I'm not about to sit here and have all of you discussing my sex habits. I wouldn't talk about private things like that, not in front of you, Cindy, and certainly not with a whole group of total strangers."

I glared right at the dealer when I was saying that, then yelled at her to deal out the damn cards. It got awfully quiet at that card table right about then, and remained so, over the next forty five minutes. One or two of the other people playing had stood up and left the table. This was a really silly thing for them to do, because that dealer, as well as the one that followed her were both running cold as can be. All of us that had stayed at the table were taking good money from the casino, and we all kept on doing it, for the remaining time that we were there playing together.

I was doing well enough that I was starting to feel a lot better about everything, when Cindy's lover showed up.

She was a slightly older lady than Cindy looked. I'd put her age as somewhere in her late thirties, around there is where I'd guess. She had a slightly more masculine look about her than Cindy had, but she was attractive also.

She placed a hand on each of Cindy's shoulders and proceeded to give her a shoulder and neck rub that looked like it was not only sensual as all get out, but also really a professional quality neck and shoulder massage.

"Hey, Debbie, guess who this old guy sitting next to me is? He writes on that dirty story site we sometimes read. He goes by the name of Openbook. Do you remember that story of his where this old guy had cancer, and the voice in his head told him he got to live his whole life all over again? He's the guy who wrote that story. Can you believe it? What are the odds that we'd ever get a chance to meet him?" Debbie looked at me, and she too started laughing.

"Hey, I liked that story a lot. Are you really the guy that wrote it?"

"Yes. I'm sorry that you thought my descriptions about the oral sex were laughable. It was only a story, and I tried to stay true to my characters."

"I never thought they were laughable. I thought they were hot. I wondered how a guy could know so much about what a woman wanted done down there. I even told Cindy that she might be able to learn something by reading the techniques you talked about in your story, didn't I Cin?"

I shot a triumphant smile over at Cindy, and, suddenly, she started looking a little green around the gills. She looked damn nervous to me in fact. A thought came to me that she was afraid that I might tell Debbie about something else that she had said to me. The only comment she had made, that I could remember, that might bother Debbie, was when she had bragged to the table about her munching on over a hundred different carpets.

Momentarily, I thought about having a little fun with her, as a payback for her earlier put down of my character's prowess with oral sex techniques. I thought about it, but then, I resisted the urge. What can I say? I'm not usually a malicious person. I was winning money and having a good time again. I was mostly over the criticism she'd given to my writing. She was entitled to have her own opinion. It was a free country.

It was a good thing I resisted that too, because just about then, my wife walked up, right behind me. I had no doubt that she would have been very happy to discuss, and at great length, right there at the Pai Gow table, my abject ineptness when it came to performing cunnilingus. She would have made some cutting comments about it all being only some vague and distant memory for her too, saying this was just what she could still remember from a time that was long ago. But, after that, she would have been all too willing to give her own damning testimony.

Then, when she finished telling everyone about my lingual shortcomings, she would have complained about how long it had been since I'd even made my last half hearted and feeble attempt. That would have set me off then, and I would have launched into my own charges, each designed to counter her complaints, by telling her that it must have been back sometime around the same time as the last blow job that I had received from her.

As soon as I said that though, the fight would have been on for real. It would have made quite a spectacle too. It wasn't that I don't enjoy us having those kinds of fights, because I do. I was there on our vacation though. That kind of banter would be just as much fun if the two of us were sitting around the living room some night in our own home.

My wife was signaling to me that they were anxious to leave. She had to do this from about ten feet away. My two granddaughters were with her, and they are too young to be any closer to the gambling tables. I got up and colored up my chips to make it easier to carry them over to the cashier's window. I had won a little bit over two hundred dollars, even after tipping the dealer ten bucks.

I said my goodbyes to both Debbie and Cindy, wishing them both continued good luck at the casino. Debbie promised to keep on looking for new stories from me, while Cindy kept silent.

A few days later, the wife, the grandkids, and I were sitting in my big Lincoln Town car, driving back home after a slightly profitable five day vacation. Both of our granddaughters were asleep in the back. It was during this quiet lull that my wife asked me whether or not I'd been flirting with Cindy a few days before. She is like that, letting things go for a few days so that my guard is relaxed, and then springing stuff on me. She claimed she had noticed the two of us looking at each other in a way she thought was suspicious.

That was when I started to tell her about the conversation we had gotten into at the table that night. Of course, my wife took Cindy's side of things, just like I knew she would. The more she talked and harangued at me, the faster I drove the car, hoping to get home soon enough to grab my golf clubs, and get in a quick nine holes at the club.

In fact, I was pushing my Lincoln up to ninety five miles an hour when my damn engine blew up on me. Luckily for us, we were near enough to Barstow that the cell phone had a strong enough signal for me to call AAA for a quick tow. The repairs on the car cost me nine thousand dollars. I needed a whole new engine to replace the one I'd ruined.

I can be a vindictive bastard, as well as a writer who really doesn't really take certain kinds of criticism very well.

So, Debbie I hope you're online here reading this. That little bitch of yours, Miss Cindy, the one who considers herself such a great critic of all my writing? She has been out bragging, in public, that she's eaten over a hundred different pussies. Yes, a hundred pussies, that's what she claims. I'm letting you know about what she said for two simple reasons.

The first is because I consider Cindy partly responsible for causing me to blow up my motor, and for making me have to end up spending the nine thousand dollars that the new engine finally ended up costing me. The other reason I'm telling on her is that I'm not fond of literary critics, especially the ones that enjoy picking apart someone else's story because of a few tiny flaws.

Debbie, thanks for reading, and for enjoying all my stories. I really hope knowing this will help you see what kind of person that Cindy really is.



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Chapter 2



I was sitting at another Pai Gow table, just recently. This time I was over at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino. This is my favorite casino on the Las Vegas strip. I was in the third day of a four day visit. Up to this point in my trip, the gambling had been about break even. I'd started out by losing nine hundred dollars on the first day, then had gotten nearly four hundred of it back during the following day's morning session. During the afternoon and evening sessions, I'd made an additional six hundred dollars. Each session had been short, more than an hour, but less than two hours.

With my miscellaneous expenses though, I was about even for the trip. My play had earned me enough in comp points to pay for the two times the family and I had gone over to the buffet at Harrah's, and then for whatever else my wife had purchased out by the pool for herself, my daughter, and our three grand kids who were with us this trip.

I had just started play for my morning session. It was eight o'clock, and the rest of my family were still up in their rooms, trying to fit in another hour or two of sleep before they'd all be coming down together wanting breakfast.

I liked to play shorter sessions, now that I was getting up there in age. Two or three hours at a time was plenty for me. I could take a break for an hour or two though, and be right back at the tables, ready for another short session.

I'd only been sitting at the table for about ten minutes when I heard a loud noise behind me. I turned my head to see what was causing all the ruckus, and couldn't believe what I was seeing there. Not ten feet away from me, those two lesbian ladies I'd met over at the Primm Valley Resort were having a big argument about something. I recognized Cindy right away, but it took me another few seconds to remember that the other one's name was Debbie.

Just about the time I was remembering Debbie's name, I realized that they were arguing about me. As soon as I realized this, I also remembered why they might be doing that. I remembered that short story I'd written and published, right after the first time I'd seen them. I'd been a bit angry when I wrote that little story about them. I guess I was still pretty upset over having spent so much money when I was getting the engine on my big Lincoln replaced.

I didn't want to be a part of any big scene in a casino where I was pretty well known, and, hopefully, well thought of. I had been a diamond card player in Harrah's casinos Total Rewards program for a number of years, and considered the Harrah's chain of casinos all to be my homes away from home.

I usually came to Las Vegas at least fifteen times a year. I mostly stayed from two to four nights on each of my visits. Mostly, these visits took place sandwiched over weekends. This way, we usually only had the grand kids missing one day of school. We nearly always got some free show tickets on these visits, in addition to the free rooms we got. The way my play was being rated, I always seemed to earn more than enough comp dollars to pay for whatever food all my family members and I might be consuming during the period of our stay.

The year before, I'd earned about fifty five thousand tier level points from my casino play. This put me right in the middle, between a diamond player and a seven star player. That was right where I wanted to stay too. It was enough to earn me the upgraded rooms my wife liked for us to stay in, and was usually sufficient to earn me whatever help I might need from my casino host. It was a comfortable situation for me to be in.

The girls stood there, having by now lowered their voices enough to where they weren't creating such a disturbance. It was easy to see that Cindy was the one who was really upset, and Debbie was doing her best to calm her down.

After another minute, Cindy came over to the table where I was sitting and sat herself down. I was sitting in the third seat from the right, the place on the table I generally liked to sit, for the extra leg room it offered me. Cindy took the seat all the way over on the left, the one that would keep her the maximum distance away from me at the small Pai Gow table it looked like we'd both be sharing.

She kept glaring over at me as she waited for the hand the dealer and I had been playing to be finished, so that she could get chips for her money and start playing too. I ended up winning the hand, beating both the dealer's front and back hands in order to do so.

Pai Gow Poker is a card game. Each player and the dealer are dealt a hand consisting of seven cards. You set your cards to try to make the two best poker hands you can manage. The back hand, consisting of five cards, is required to be a stronger poker hand than the front one, which only contains two cards. I had been betting fifty dollars that hand, so I was paid forty seven dollars and fifty cents. The house keeps five percent of all winning bets. That's how they make the money they need to pay for their overhead, and to turn a nice operating profit.

I was betting a six step negative progression, with a maximum exposure that was four levels deep. What this means in plain English, was that I would double all losing wagers until I either won one, or until I ended up losing six times in a row. If I lost six in a row on my first level, it would cost me fifteen hundred and seventy five dollars. This figure was minus whatever I'd managed to win from my play before losing the six times in a row.

Once I lost the first level, I'd go immediately to playing on the second level. This was another six step progression, but for double the stakes of the first level. In the first, I was betting 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, and 800. which totaled out to be $1,575.00 when you added all of the six bets up.

The Second level started with fifty dollars being bet, and ended with a final bet of sixteen hundred dollars. If I lost the second level too, I'd move up to the third level, which began at one hundred dollars and ended with a final bet of thirty two hundred dollars. To play at the third and fourth level, I'd have to change tables, doing all my playing over in the high limit section of the casino.

Right then, I was playing on the second level, although I was slightly ahead of even at the time. I would remain at the second level until I either doubled my money, to $6,300.00, or else lost six bets in a row again. If that happened, then I had to go up to the third level.

My betting progression could end up costing me $23,625.00, if I wound up losing all four levels, but I didn't think that doing it like that was possible. Not without me winning quite a few other bets before losing six in a row four separate times.

It hadn't happened to me yet, and I'd been playing this way for an awfully long time. I had ended a trip before being down as much as six thousand dollars for the duration of it, but had simply returned to Las Vegas a few weeks later, still playing on the fourth level I'd been on when I went home that time.

On that second visit, after losing all that money the time before, I'd won on the fourth level where I'd started playing, and had gotten all the money I lost on the first trip back, plus quite a bit of new profits besides.

On this second visit, I'd brought enough money with me to take things through the fourth, fifth, six and seventh levels if I'd needed to. I'd been prepared to suffer through some catastrophic losses on that second visit, in the event my results were unfavorable this time as well. I'd have gone all the way to losing six bets on the seventh level if I'd lost to the point where I needed to do it. With my preferred method of betting though, four levels was all I'd ever put at risk during a single visit to the casinos.

Over the years, I've accumulated a substantial sum of money to employ as a gambling bankroll. This money had come from my having won several good sized No Limit Hold 'Em and Lowball poker tournaments, going back to the mid and late 1990's. I'd somehow managed to hold on to all that money, and had been adding steadily to it from the winnings I'd managed to accrue with my ongoing Pai Gow poker play.

In spite of my winning ways over the past decade and more, I was still a lifetime net loser when it came to all my years of gambling. I'd gotten off to a very poor start for the first thirty years or so of my gambling. By the time I'd wizened up, and started showing much better game selection skills, I was already stuck a lot of money. Many tens of thousands of dollars. I'd managed, over the past decade, to slowly climb up to the point where I might hope to someday get to where I'd be able to claim to be even again.

Because of the level of play I was able to bring on my casino visits, I pretty much got all these trips to any of the Harrah's properties to be fully comped. This was only true though for as long as I was being reasonable in what I asked for. It certainly didn't mean I could make any outlandish demands, like insisting on having one of the high roller's suites, instead of getting the free upgraded hotel room that my level of play made a reasonable proposition for them. If I was bringing in another four or five guests those times when I chose to dine in any of the more expensive restaurants the casinos featured, I had to pay for this with the comp dollars my casino play had earned me. I tried very hard to stay well within the perks that my level of play had made reasonable for me to be given.

When Cindy had purchased her chips, the dealer started dealing us both a new hand. I could see Debbie lurking in the background, ready to calm Cindy further, in case something else happened, or if she got herself all excited about something again.

"That was a very mean trick you pulled on us, writing that story and putting us in it like that. When it came up and we both read it, you caused both of us to get in a big fight about some of the things you wrote."

When Cindy spoke to me, I thought about trying to ignore her words. I didn't want to get involved in anything while playing at my favorite casino. It took me only a few seconds to realize I couldn't just sit there and not respond to her.

"Hello, Cindy. I didn't expect to see you and Debbie over here in Las Vegas. I thought you told me that you both preferred to stay over at stateline, because the minimum limits were lower, and the deals for rooms and food were better."

"They have new owners over there now. It isn't like it used to be. Not as friendly, and they don't treat us as good as they once did. We like it better over here now. The rooms are nicer, and there's a lot more to do at night here. Don't try to change the subject, Mr. Book. Tell me why you wrote what you did. We could sue you for writing about us that way. I'm sure I don't weigh any twenty pounds more than my ideal weight like you wrote in your story. It wasn't nice the way you described Debbie either. She and I are almost exactly the same age."

"Well, if you would have read the story better, you'd see that I said ten to fifteen pounds, not twenty. I also placed Debbie's age at somewhere in her late thirties. I seem to remember my saying that you both were attractive too. What part of any of that did I get wrong?"

"You said she looked older than me."

"I should have said you looked younger than her. I was giving descriptions based on what I was seeing, and how I was interpreting what I saw. If Debbie's any younger than about thirty seven or thirty eight though, I could understand then how she might be upset by what I wrote about her. Is she?"

Our conversation went on for another twenty minutes. For this whole time, both of us were winning nearly every hand. The cards run like that, in cycles. I was beginning to get nervous, because I'm superstitious about things like that. I figure if you win six or seven hands in a row, there is probably a string of losses waiting for you soon. One that will be every bit as long, if not longer, than the winning streak has been.

"Well, this has been fun, but I think I'm going over to Bally's for awhile. I don't want to still be here when that big losing streak shows up."

"What big losing streak? We've both been beating the dealer's socks off of her. You should stay right here with me. You shouldn't change casinos when the cards are running lucky for both of us."

I explained my superstition as the dealer was coloring my chips up for me. I'd managed to make a little more than five hundred dollars while I'd played, all in less than an hour. My leaving was mostly due to my superstitions, but it was also in part because Cindy continued talking, at the table, about other stories I had written and published online.

Like I said earlier, the Flamingo is my favorite Las Vegas casino. I was well known there, all my children stayed and played at this casino, so I didn't want anyone telling things about me that could cause me or my family members any embarrassment. I was sorry that I'd even mentioned my internet writing, and also sorry for writing that damn story about Cindy in the first place. Not many people even read the story. It had fewer than a thousand downloads from the time I first posted it, over a year and a half before.

After I went to the cashier's cage and had gotten my chips turned back into money, I called up to our room and told my wife I was going over to Bally's to play some more Pai Gow. I told her to bring herself and the rest of the family over there when they were ready to eat, and we'd have the buffet breakfast over at Bally's when they came there to get me.

I was seated at Bally's an hour later when both Debbie and Cindy came walking over to the table where I was playing.

"We both should have listened to you about the losing streak you said might be coming. Debbie and I both lost a lot of money right after you left. Debbie says we should ask you about the way you bet. You said something about it in your story, but neither of us paid too much attention to what you wrote about how you play. You seem to win when you play though, and we usually don't win. If we ever do win, then we just lose it right back the very next time we go somewhere to play."

"We all end up losing, Cindy. That's why they build all these nice hotels and casinos out here in the middle of nowhere. They want you to gamble, because that's how they make their money. I lose just like you do. I'm no luckier than anyone else. The only difference is, I usually don't run out of money to gamble with. When I do, I just go home, then come back later, with a lot more money, and try to win whatever money I lost on the last trip back from them. They like me for doing that, because they know, sooner or later, they are going to be able to win long enough to win all of my gambling money. They just haven't been able to manage that feat lately, not for a real long time. They have patience though, lots of it, and they know their turn is coming."

"Can you show us both how your system works?

"I can tell you in five minutes or less. It isn't complicated. I start out betting the minimum amount I picked out to play for this trip to Las Vegas. That level started out being twenty five dollars. I'm playing right now at the second level I'm supposed to be playing at so right now, my first bet in the sequence is $50.00. If I lose that, then I'll bet twice as much for the next time I place a bet. I keep playing like this, until I either win one of the bets, or lose six bets in a row. When I do win, I drop back down to my minimum bet again. If I lose six times in a row, I go to the next level, where all six bets are twice as much as they were on the level before. I'm prepared to bet and lose up to four levels on any one visit. If I win enough at any level I'm playing to double the money I've started with, I'll drop back down to my first level, which for this trip is going to be $25.00."

I looked at both of them, smiling. Waiting for them to ask me their questions. I'd spoken to other gambler's about my playing strategy. All of them I'd spoken with had lost interest as soon as they discovered how much money they might lose if the system ever got to the fourth level and then they lost that one too.

"You're risking almost $25,000.00 to try to win $25.00?" Debbie asked the question. As she did so, I could tell she thought I had to be crazy to be willing to do that. I laughed, nodding my head that this was, in truth, exactly what I was doing. "You're crazy, you know that, don't you?"

"It gets even better, or worse, depending on your point of view. If I did manage to lose the first, second, third, and fourth levels, I would come back again with the fifth, sixth, and seventh level bankrolls to continue playing. Added together, levels one through seven comes to $200,025.00. If you wanted to, you could say I was risking that much to try to win $25.00. With the five percent commission, I'm really risking all that money to try to make $23.75."

"You do know it's insane to be doing this, right?" Cindy seemed horrified as soon as she heard me confirming the sums of money that are involved with employing my gambling strategy. For the first time since I'd met her, she seemed genuinely concerned about my welfare. We might have had our differences in the past, but, now that she knew and understood how truly troubled I was, she was becoming sympathetic to my plight. I could see she was sincere about wanting to help me, or with aiding me in finding someone who might be able to help me.

"I don't think you have the right idea about what it is I'm really doing, Cindy. These properties that Harrah's owns or operates around the country are all part of this time share I now own. I can come to any of their Casinos and enjoy free use of their rooms, restaurants and recreational facilities. If my wife wants to get a massage or a pedicure, she gets it, and charges the cost of it to our room. Whatever is charged to the room is more than covered by all the comp dollars I'm earning with my play. At the end of the year, they invite us here to their big Holiday gift giveaway, where they give us all kinds of things that make wonderful Christmas presents for us to give away. Last year, both my sons and I got a nice pair of diamond earrings for my wife, designer purses for my daughters and daughter in law, big brand name golf equipment for my sons and me, a nice plasma television, and some other small electrical appliances. This year we're saving our points to get three different laptops to give to our three oldest grand children. All of this is on top of the free rooms, the free shows, and all the free dining we do here. I call this my timeshare, because I get to use all of this whenever I want to. I've brought as many as fifteen people here to Las Vegas at one time, and we ended up having everything we did comped, plus making a net profit on the gambling for the trip. My two sons have diamond cards also, so they get their own free rooms and show tickets too. Both of them spend about four hours a day gambling with me while they're here, using my money to wager with. I keep their winnings, and I absorb all their losses. All they need to contribute is four hours a day of their time, doing something they both seem to enjoy doing."

"But all that money. Most people work their whole lives and don't save up that much money. To waste it all on gambling, it seems almost criminal." Debbie still looked at me like I was crazy when she said this to me.

"I've been doing this for a long time. Not always here, but either here or somewhere else similar to this casino. I've tried a lot of different player reward programs at various times. Right now, what they're doing here is a much bigger deal than it ever used to be. This is because they've been adding in some desirable additional freebies. Now, their player reward program gives us a lot better benefits than it ever did before. For these reasons and others, the amount of my money that I'm willing to put at risk has increased. This increase matches the increase in the number of people I bring here, and because of the increased number of perks I want them to give me. If it makes you feel any better, the money I've set aside to do this with is money that I've won from my other gambling activities over the last ten or twelve years."

"That doesn't matter, that's still a lot of money to just gamble away. You even admitted that they were going to win it all from you someday."

"If I play long enough, they're bound to win it all eventually. If they do, so what? Our home is paid for, and my wife and I don't have any debts. We have enough other income to live on comfortably for the rest of our lives. Even if I lost all that money in my gambling bankroll, we'd still be leaving something after we're gone, enough for the kids and the grand kids. Our kids have already finished up with all the schooling they either wanted or were willing to sit through. My wife likes our doing this too, because it gives us nice places to take all the grand kids. She wants them to have a lot of pleasant memories of their childhood, and we both want them all to have built up pleasant memories of the times they've spent playing with all their cousins here, and the times they spent with us, their grand parents. We've already had many occasions when we brought all the kids and all the grand kids here to spend time with each other, and to enjoy being together as one big extended family. If I did lose it all, who would really be hurt?"

"You could be doing so much more with all that money."

"It's my money. I get to decide what I want to do with it, and this is what I've decided. I like to come to Las Vegas. I probably spend fifty days a year in one casino or another. For the past few years, none of these visits has ended up costing me one red penny. When it does end up costing me, then I'll quit. With my current age and the state of my health, it looks less likely that they are going to have enough opportunities left to win all that money from me. When I die, or when I get so sick that I can't come here and play any more, if they haven't won my money by then, I will have done the near impossible, beaten the casinos at their own game. I admit my strategy isn't for everyone. There have been many times in my life when I wished I'd never started gambling. Lots of times when I hurt myself and other people because of the money I sometimes lost gambling. I stopped hurting myself in that way a number of years ago. This gambling bankroll represents my last wager, and I'm determined to see it all the way through, to the end. My end, or the end of my gambling bankroll, whichever comes first."

Just then, I spotted my wife, my daughter, and three of our grand kids coming off the escalator. They were searching around the casino floor, looking for me. I stood up, waving my hand in the air to get their attention. My wife saw me, and approached where I was playing. I had already lost the last three bets in a row. I was going to play until I either lost the next three, or else won one. I told my wife we had to wait until I either won one, or else lost another three in a row.

I pushed with the dealer for the next three hands in a row, and then, on the fourth dealt hand since my family had gotten there, I picked up queens full of aces, a very powerful hand. The dealer turned over a king and a jack for the top hand, and a pair of sevens for her best bottom hand. She paid me four hundred dollars, minus the twenty dollar commission she took from my winning layout.

I colored up and cashed out again. I had made another five hundred and twenty two dollars for that hour and a half session. For the trip, I was now up over eleven hundred dollars, plus the two free rooms, and all the meals we'd already eaten.

I said goodbye to Cindy and Debbie, getting up from the table and going over to the cashier's cage to cash out my chips again. The family and I went upstairs to the buffet they had there. The food was good, and of course, there was too much of it. The youngest grandchild got in for free because of his age, and for the other two, we paid a greatly reduced rate. For all six of us, the bill came to less than sixty dollars, and I had them swipe my diamond card in their machine to take all the charges for the meal off of my accumulated comp dollars.

After breakfast, the rest of the family was heading back to the Flamingo, to spend more time playing in the hotel's pool area and going down the slides. My wife liked to soak in the jacuzzi, as did my daughter, while the children stayed together, enjoying the two big main pools, and all the slide areas leading from one wading pool area to the next. My wife and daughter had decided to go to the little Italian place and buy some pizzas for lunch, using the charge cards they'd been given so they could charge their purchases to our rooms.

We agreed to all meet up again at six for dinner. After that, the five of them were going over to watch one of the Circe du Soleil shows playing over at the Bellagio. I'd been given two free show tickets, and so had my youngest son. He was flying in later that day, to spend the night, and he would be flying back home again the next afternoon. Our casino host had arranged things so that my daughter, his sister, got his room, and he'd go into the diamond check in desk when he got here to sign the necessary check in paperwork, and to arrange to get his show tickets as well. Our casino host had gotten us the fifth ticket we needed for that night's show. The cost of it, around a hundred dollars, would be taken off of my comp balance, but I wasn't worried. I still had plenty of comp dollars left.

I went over to Paris Hotel and casino, after breakfast, to play some Pai Gow there. I knew my son and I would be playing for about six hours each that night or the next morning. This was in addition to the time I'd already spent playing earlier in the stay. We'd arranged with our host to put in that much time together, so that my son's room and the tickets were covered too. Somehow, my wagering was going to count towards the time he was supposed to be spending at the tables. I wanted to get at least sixteen hundred dollars ahead before he got here, so that I could close out my own play for this trip and concentrate on helping him meet his own playing requirements. It took less than two more hours to win the rest of the money I needed. After I cashed out at Paris, I walked back over to the Flamingo, going up to my room to take a little nap. I wanted to be alert for the time when my son and I would be playing together.

I managed to get in a nice three hour nap. I usually don't sleep very well in Las Vegas for some reason, so three uninterrupted hours of sleep was a nice bonus for me. I was in the bathroom, freshening up, when my son called to let me know he was in the casino, and had just finished with signing all the registration paperwork with our host.

All of us met up at six to walk over to Harrah's, for the buffet they had there. I had five dollar off coupons for all of us, so that ended up saving us another thirty dollars for dinner. My son and I had picked up the show tickets earlier and had given them to my wife and daughter. The kids were excited to be going to a nice show. The month before, he and I had gotten four free tickets to the Jerry Seinfeld show over at Caesar's Palace. He and his girlfriend and another couple, friends of his, had used the tickets that night. I'd only been there to gamble during those two days, and I'd given him my free room at the Flamingo for his friends to use, and had gotten myself a second room, one which I had paid for with some of my comp dollars. My son's friends owned a timeshare down in Mexico, and he and his girlfriend had flown down there earlier in the year, to spend a week as guests of theirs at their timeshare condo.

Luckily, my son's work required him to do a lot of air traveling, and he and his girlfriend, who was employed in a similar capacity for a different company, had plenty of frequent flyer program miles they could use. My other son didn't have the frequent flyer miles, but he was married with two children, and he liked to come to Las Vegas with us too. He liked to have us look after the kids while he and my daughter in law enjoyed a night or two out on their own, enjoying the Las Vegas entertainment possibilities, and each other, while they were here.

After we had gotten the rest of the family on their way to the evening's entertainment, my son and I went into the casino at the Flamingo and started playing. It was after seven thirty when we bought in to play, and we stayed at the same table until after twelve. By then, I'd doubled my second level starting money and switched back down to my first level bets. At around nine, my son lost his first level six bets in a row, and began playing at the second level. We quit at twelve fifteen. He was down a little more than eight hundred dollars over all, but I'd made more than that from my more than four and a half hours of play. He and I were both tired, so we agreed to call it a night and went up to the room he'd be sharing with my wife and I. I had gotten two queen sized beds, knowing he'd be coming up to spend one night with us on this trip.

The next morning, at seven thirty, he and I bought in at the one open Pai Gow game in the casino. Debbie and Cindy were already sitting at the table when we arrived. Cindy was playing, but Debbie was sitting there with her, watching her play. I greeted both of them, asking how the table had been treating them.

"We've been up all night. We've lost more than three thousand dollars. All because of you and that stupid system you told us about. We've lost six times in a row three times since we started playing at one in the morning. Three times! Luckily for us, we didn't increase our bets to the next level when we lost. It takes forever to win money at this game your way, but you can sure lose it quickly enough by playing your system. To make things even worse, when we asked the pit boss if he could comp our rooms, he told me we haven't given the casino enough play to justify a room comp. How come you get one, and we don't?"

"Do you give the dealer your player's club card every time you sit down to play? Does Debbie put her card in the slot machine, whenever she plays slots here?"

"We don't even have cards. No one told us we needed to do that. You never told us we had to get cards."

I got the pit boss to take their ID's and have player cards made up. She could only back date Cindy's play to four A.M. when the new shift had started. She was very generous though when she rated Cindy's average bet for the time she was being rated for. When one of the shift managers came around, I told him what had happened, saying that both women were friends of mine, and asked him to see what he could do to possibly help them out with their room charges. I heard him on the telephone talking to someone, after taking Cindy's card from her before making the call.

"Thank you for your patience with us, young lady. The Flamingo Hotel is going to take care of all your room costs for the past three nights. Thank you for staying with us, and we hope you have a lucky visit."

I thought it was a nice gesture on the Hotel's part. All she had was a beginner's level gold card, and didn't really have the play necessary to earn a three night free stay. Even with her losses, I was sure it was a public relations gesture rather than a fully earned comp. Cindy was appreciative of it though, telling me it was worth almost five hundred dollars to her by not having the room charges appear on her credit card statement.

My son and I played Pai Gow with Cindy for another two hours. While we were there, he and I did very well. My son stayed at the second level for the entire time, making back another seven hundred plus dollars. I made a little less than four hundred, but I had an awful lot of pushes, many of them when I was betting either four hundred or eight hundred dollars. I won very few of my twenty five dollar or even fifty dollar wagers. I wasn't winning very often, but I never did lose my sixth wager on that first level, during the two hour session we played.

Cindy had won back about three or four hundred of the money she had previously lost. With the free rooms and getting some of her money back, she was beginning to get less depressed about all the money she had lost. Of course, gambling luck and fate being what they are, just before my son and I quit to take the rest of the family out to breakfast in the coffee shop, Cindy once again lost her sixth bet. Now, according to what she was screaming at me, she was out almost forty five hundred dollars, and all of this, she seemed to be saying, was because she was trying to play the same way I did.

My son was basically even for the more than six hours of his play. I was up for the trip over two thousand six hundred dollars now. Both of us were through playing for this trip too, so that was a good thing. We'd done what the hotel wanted from us, and I was once again taking away more than I'd come with.

Debbie was doing her best to console and comfort Cindy. I decided to help her if I could.

"Cindy, you should never bet more than you can afford to lose. It isn't healthy. Next time you come here, have a set limit you're willing to lose gambling, and then stick with it."

"You made money. You should pay for part of what I lost. I wouldn't have lost so much if you hadn't gone and filled our heads with all your talk about getting so much free stuff, and calling this all part of some kind of time shares. How much did you win?"

"I think we're up about twenty six hundred dollars or so, but we've made over a thousand of that right here in the past two hours. We could have lost that much and more. I would be so easy to have done that. That's why they call it gambling, Sometimes you lose. This time, you lost, and we won. Next time, it might be the other way. You can't ever tell."

I had stood up after my son and I had both gotten our chips colored up. I had given him mine to cash in with his. He was already waiting in line at the cashier's window when Cindy started kicking at my legs, as well as slapping at me with both her arms. She accompanied herself by saying some of the most vile things to me that you could ever imagine.

All of this was done in front of fifty other casino customers, fifteen or twenty on duty employees, and, luckily for me, two very big and competent casino security officers. They had her restrained and subdued in a matter of seconds, although she was still swearing and yelling things, even as they were taking her down.

Debbie just stood there, a look of pure horror on her face as she watched her girlfriend being wrestled to the ground and then restrained. She couldn't do anything about what was happening except to just stand there, a witness to what was taking place, just like the rest of us. In a matter of seconds, three other security personnel, one of whom was a woman, came over and led Cindy away with them. I was getting ready to leave myself, after talking to our dealer and the pit boss about what we had all witnessed.

A man in a nice dark business suit came over and identified himself as a hotel employee, asking me to accompany him to a quiet place where he and I could have a conversation about what had just taken place between Cindy and myself. I told him it was really nothing, that I only knew her from both of us having played at the same table over the past three days. I said I knew she'd lost a lot of money, and had then gotten upset about it. I said I hadn't been hurt, and that I hoped they'd get her calmed back down again and release her. I assured him that the incident was closed, at least as far as I was concerned.

He seemed very happy that I wasn't upset. He also seemed to know who I was, having called me by my name, several times, without me having to identify myself to him. While we were standing there by the now empty Pai Gow table, a woman came over with a small black binder and handed it to the guy in the suit. He opened it up, took out a pen, asking me if I was willing to sign his form, which attested to the fact that I released the hotel and Casino from any culpability concerning the incident that had just occurred. I smiled at him, took the pen and signed my name with a flourish. He took back the signed paper and the binder, shaking my hand, and wishing me a lucky stay at the hotel. He then departed, having gotten what he'd come for.

My son had been watching all of this taking place while standing quietly off to the side.

"What did you sign, Dad?"

"Some paper saying that I didn't blame the casino for what Cindy did to me."

"I really thought you were going to pop her one when she started throwing her fit and hitting you like she did. How come you didn't do anything? You didn't even try to defend yourself."

"I knew how she was feeling. I remembered the first time I ever gambled too much and ended up getting myself in a pretty big jam. I figured she already had enough problems. If I'd hit her, the casino would have had no other choice but to hold both of us for the Las Vegas police. Now, with me signing that form, they can treat it like a smaller incident, and just let her off with a stern warning. They'll probably tell her she's barred from here, and from all the rest of the Harrah's properties too. That's more than enough punishment for her little outburst."



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Chapter 3

I was playing Pai Gow Poker at Harrah's in Rincon. It was a Saturday, in the early afternoon, and I was buried by quite a bit. Rincon is an Indian Casino that Harrah's operates for the tribe down near San Diego. In most respects it is similar to Las Vegas as far as the gambling goes. They don't give away free drinks with alcohol though. You can buy them, but they aren't allowed to give them away.

I had moved to the high limit room, after losing my first and second tiers of bets. I was betting the $100-200-400-800-1,600- 3,200 negative progression, and had won back about half the money I needed to get back to my starting tier. Twice already I'd gotten to the sixth and final bet of the third tier. Both times I'd ended up winning.

Progress towards accumulating the winnings to get back to the first tier was slow, because I was going deep into the progression before finally winning. When you bet $800 and win, the house takes their five percent commission, $40, and you end up with a net of only $60 for that cycle. I needed to win $6,300.00 in order to progress back to my first tier again.

With the seasoned gambler, the more money he has at stake, the more narrow his focus. All of my focus and attention was centered on myself, the dealer, and the cards. The last thing I needed or wanted was a distraction at that time.

"Hello again Mr. Book."

I turned my head as soon as I heard those words. When I did that, I spotted Debbie immediately, waving to me from the wide opening to the high limit room. I didn't see Cindy with her, and that had me somewhat curious, so I waved for Debbie to come closer.

"Hello, Debbie, where's Cindy?" As soon as I asked her the question, I wished that I hadn't done so. She looked back at me with such a look of anguish that I just knew something terrible must have happened. It also looked like she was getting ready to fall apart emotionally any second now. I'd just won my last bet, so I quickly pulled back my next bet from the circle and turned back to Debbie. "C'mon, Deb, let's go over to the Diamond lounge and you can tell me all about it."

The Diamond lounge is a place where Diamond and Seven Star players can go to relax, have a drink, or a snack during those times when they want to take a little break from playing. You need to have the right player's card to get admitted, and each member is allowed to bring in one guest. After I had gotten my chips colored up, Debbie and I walked the short ways over to the lounge area behind us. It was literally only thirty steps away from where I'd been sitting. Once inside, I got myself a diet Pepsi, and a cup full of mixed salted nuts. Debbie got herself a cold drink as well, and a plate of Frito's and some potato chips. We went into one of the smaller, more private, TV lounges so we would have a quiet place to have our talk.

We took our seats, sitting side by side on two padded chairs. All the sound for the TV's had been turned off already, so it was pretty quiet in there, and we were alone in the room.

"After we got home from the Flamingo that last time, Cindy and I kept getting into arguments about her temper, the money we both lost, and that terrible scene she made when they arrested her. It got pretty ugly there for about another week, and then we stopped talking about it. I thought it was over with after that, but, a week ago, she just packed her things and moved out of our apartment. Just like that. No note, no phone calls or any warning at all. I found out, through some friends of ours, that Cindy had moved back to Santa Maria. She's living with her brother, Tom, and his wife. She quit her job without giving any notice too. Eight years we were together. It seems so stupid that she'd just decide to end everything over something so insignificant."

"Maybe it wasn't that insignificant to her? She seemed pretty firm in her beliefs to me. I didn't know her very well, but even I could tell that she didn't like it when people tried to argue with her about anything. My own wife is like that, except she doesn't quite have Cindy's temper, or her lack of self control. If she did have that, she'd soon end up being my ex wife. I'm sorry that you feel so bad about this, and I hope you'll manage to get over her soon."

I was anxious to get back to playing. To me, Debbie was just a nice woman I knew casually. I actually knew Cindy better than I knew her. I knew I wasn't the warmest most comforting person, but I did hope she started feeling better. As far as Cindy was concerned though, I thought Debbie would be better off without her.

What little I did know about Cindy made me think that she'd be a tough woman to have to be around for a long time. She seemed kind of angry at the world, and jealous of any good fortune someone other than herself might have had. Her temper alone would have scared me away from her though. Debbie seemed much calmer, more relaxed, and easy going. It was hard for me to imagine what she had seen in Cindy. I mean, Cindy was pretty good looking and all, but with that mouth she had on her, she certainly wouldn't have been good looking enough for me to overlook all the rest of it.

I got up to leave, having finished my drink and the cup half full with nuts. I really didn't have anything more to add to what I'd already told her, and she didn't seem to want to tell me anything more either. I left her there in the Diamond lounge, and went back to my Pai Gow table. It took me four more hours of play before I finally managed to double my starting money from the third tier. It had been somewhat nerve wracking for me, being on the next to the last tier like that. I had only come to Rincon because they had been offering seven to one bonus credits on Friday, and five to one on Saturday and Sunday.

When you played any casino games at Harrah's properties, using your Total Rewards card, you earned tier points and bonus points. The tier points determine your player's level, and the tier points and bonus points, added together, determined how many comp points a player earned. I used up a lot of comp points when I had the whole family in Las Vegas in the summer months, so I liked to earn them, and store them up, in the winter, so I'd have a lot saved for the summer months. It was nice to go to a buffet with about fourteen people and have them take the $250.00 or so bill directly from your comp point balance. Harrah's seemed okay with this too, because they wanted as many chances to win my gambling bankroll as they could get.

So far on this trip I had about seven hours averaging $100 a hand average bet, and now another eight hours at around $400 per hand. This was a good average for me, and I knew I'd earn plenty of comp dollars. It helped that I was back on my first tier again, and that I was enough ahead that I'd still be winning, even if I again lost my six straight bets at the first level. Playing with the casino's money is much better than playing when you are down, and it is all your own money you're risking.

I had visited the cashier's cage and now had all my chips converted back into money. I was going to head back up to my room for an hour or so of rest before going back to the tables in the regular casino and trying to earn more money again. I was walking by the bar, on the way to my elevator, when I spotted Debbie sitting alone at the bar.

Gambler's, by their very nature, are single minded, self absorbed individuals. It can't be helped, that's just the nature of the beast. When we're winning though, we tend to act more caring and civilized than we do when we're losing. I'd felt bad for Debbie earlier, but back then, I'd been playing on my third tier and had already had two very close calls with losing that one too. If I'd lost, I'd have been playing on my final tier for this trip.

Had I lost that one, I'd have been down more than $23,000.00. Worse than that though, I'd have only been three tier losses away from losing my entire gambling bankroll. It is very difficult for any self absorbed individual to show much caring or sympathy for anyone else when their own ass is out waving in the wind and cold.

Having recouped all my earlier losses, I was now feeling somewhat more sympathetic to Debbie's plight. I decided to sit with her, to buy her a drink or two, and help her try to come to terms with her loss. When I first sat down next to her, my heart was pure, my intentions honorable, and the furthest thing from my mind was doing anything to make either of our lives more complicated.

The two of us sat there, drinking and talking for several hours. I mostly listened to her as she poured out her pain and sorrow to me. The drinks made listening to all her troubles a lot easier for me. She did almost all the talking. All I did was offer a sympathetic ear. One of the last things I actually remember was her telling me she was going to try to drive home. She was in a lot worse shape than I was, and I was totally wrecked from all that drinking.

I had just assumed that she was staying at the hotel, like I was. She lived almost two hours away by car, and the first eleven miles of the drive home was over a one lane in each direction, winding, narrow, strip of road. I had to practically beg her not to try driving in the shape she was in.

I vaguely remember her and I sharing an elevator on the way up to my room. After that, I don't remember anything else, until eleven o'clock the next morning. I was awakened by Debbie's loud scream. One of the first things I noticed was one of her bare breasts, poking out through the covers. The next thing I noticed was the terrible taste in my mouth, my pounding head from sitting up so quickly, and the way my eyes were burning up. After that, I noticed I had no clothes on at all.

I'm an old man. Me, without any clothes on, is not a pretty sight. I've got so many little things growing on me that I don't even like to think about how it looks. In the past ten years or so, my back has been in a contest to see whether all the brown spots on it was going to completely cover the available surface area before the sudden profusion of back hair did it first. Like I said, not a pretty sight at all. I'm telling you all this to make you understand just how unlikely it would be that I'd wake up in a strange bed, with a strange woman, and both of us would be naked together.

There's one more thing I need to tell you too, and that is that I'm no longer capable of doing anything with a woman. Haven't been for several years now. Too many years of smoking, and of eating high cholesterol fatty foods. My veins and arteries are so clogged that the last time any blood got to my dick it was because I'd cut myself shaving, and a drop of blood had fallen and landed on the tip of it. That was a few years ago too. Being in bed with Debbie like that had made me glad that I was impotent. At least that was one thing I didn't have to worry about. I knew nothing had happened.

"How could you take advantage of me like this? You knew I didn't like men, and you went ahead and raped me after I passed out."

"Hold up a minute, Debbie. I'm not sure of too much right now, but I know damn well that I never raped you. I couldn't, not even if I wanted to, and I didn't. My dick doesn't work. I don't remember much, but if we'd done anything, I think I'd remember that."

Debbie threw off the rest of her covers and stood up alongside the bed. There was definitely some caked deposits on both of her thighs. I'd even have to admit these deposits certainly looked like it might be someone's jism. I knew it wasn't mine. I tried standing up too, I'm not sure why. When I finally managed it though, you wouldn't believe how surprised I was to find pecker tracks running down my own skinny legs, and other visual evidence that I'd recently been fucked. It's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack, and drop dead right there in the hotel room.

I'm an old man, and I'm a married old man. Married for over forty years. Most of that time I'd have to say I was happily married. We've had some differences, but none so bad that we weren't able, eventually, to work them out. One thing I'd always been proud of was that I'd never cheated on my wife. I'd had lots of chances, back when I was younger, but I'd never given in to any of those temptations. You can imagine my dismay after seeing this evidence that I had cheated on my wife. This was compounded by the fact that I didn't remember any of it, and that I would have really loved to have done that with my wife, instead of this woman I hardly knew, and who I certainly had no desire at all for.

"I'm calling the police and reporting you for what you did."

"Go right ahead. I'll tell them what happened, and it will be your word against mine, and whoever else saw us leaving that bar this morning. This is my room we're in now, and you're too damn big for me to have hit you on the head and dragged you in here. If anyone was raped, it was me. I hope you don't have any diseases. Christ, what am I going to do now? She's going to kill me."

"Your wife?"

"Of course my wife. This will be the end of us too. Forty two years we've been married, forty two years. You know how many times I've stepped out on her, in all that time? Never, not once. Not until now. She's going to be so devastated. She always told me I wasn't much, but at least she could always trust me. A lot of our friends, over the years, they had trouble with that, but not us. Forty two years. I can't believe it. I never even thought it would be possible."

"Suppose I don't call the police? Let's say it was just an accident? You still have to pay some penalty for what you did to me, but your wife doesn't have to find out about it."

"You think you can blackmail me? You expect me to give you some money? I don't think so. How do I even know any of this goop is even mine? Maybe you kept a cup of cum in your purse and poured it out over both of us after I was already sleeping. I'll tell you something else, old men don't cum in buckets like that. Even when I could cum, it wouldn't have been anything like even a fifth of that much of it. Go ahead and call the police if you want to. I'm not paying you anything. I'm going to tell my wife exactly what I think happened here last night. I was trying to help you out then. I didn't want you driving drunk like you were planning on. I didn't want you killing yourself, or maybe someone else too. This is the thanks I get for trying to do someone a favor. Get out of my room."

Debbie got up and got dressed. She left right after. The first thing I did was check all my pockets, to make sure she hadn't stolen any of my money while I was still asleep. All my money was there. I went in and took a long shower, cleaning all that stuff off of me. After I was cleaned up and dressed, I went back to the casino floor and played for another four hours. My heart and my head just weren't in it. All I could think about is what had taken place up in my room earlier. I knew I was going to have to make a confession to my wife. All I could hope for was that she'd believe me. I thought she would, but I also knew she was going to make me pay for my stupidity, and for even getting myself into such a ridiculous situation.

The drive back home took about ninety minutes. I tried to rehearse exactly what I wanted to say to her. In the first place, I wanted her to know I had no memory of having done anything with Debbie. After that, I wanted to tell her I'd never once had any desire to cheat with Debbie, and that I hadn't even thought about it. Last though, I wanted her to know that I still loved her, and, if I was ever going to make love to anyone, it would have been her. I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing by dropping all this in my wife's lap, she didn't deserve this. Trouble was, I'd never kept any of those kinds of secrets from her. I wouldn't even know how to start doing it now.

The wife was just as understanding as I'd known she would be. Luckily, her aim had never been that good, and I managed to get out of the house before she made any solid contact with any of the objects she was throwing at my head.

I went over to our oldest son's house and stayed there for three weeks, and then I spent two more weeks over at my daughter's house, over Christmas, helping her with money for Christmas presents for her and her kids, plus some remodeling she needed done. That cost me twelve thousand dollars. After five weeks I was allowed back in my own home, but got the frostiest kind of silent treatment for another month after that.

I played online poker most days, locked up in my study. I fetched my own meals too, for this whole month. I did my own laundry, and slept in one of the kid's old bedrooms. I had to admit that I didn't think it was going to take so long for things to get back to normal. I had my study set up just the way I wanted it. I had my own phone line, a big screen TV, with full cable, a good computer, and all the necessary faxes, modems, routers, scanners and other peripherals. I was pretty well set that way.

I was getting kind of house burnt though. I got on the telephone and set myself up with a room at the Flamingo, in Las Vegas. While I was at it, I set up an additional three nights at a competing chain of casinos too. In all, I'd planned to be gone for seven nights on my trip. I left right after my wife headed out the door to go over to our youngest daughter's house. I called my oldest son and told him where I'd be, not telling him when I planned on coming back home.

Ten minutes after my wife left, I was sitting in my big Lincoln and heading down the highway. I'd brought along a set of my golf clubs too. It would probably be too cold to play, but I might decide to swing over to Arizona, or even head down to Texas to see my brother. If I did either of those two things, I'd probably run into some passable playing weather.

In the years my wife and I had been married, we'd both reached the point, several times, when one of us needed to take a long break from the other. Usually, these breaks had only lasted for a week or two, but that was back when we were both sexually active with each other. Attraction and need can usually reduce any disagreement to a solution after some short time period. We didn't have that option anymore. Two and a half months hadn't thawed her out yet. I didn't see where me waiting around the house for it to happen would benefit either of us.

The thing that had finally gotten me upset enough to leave was hearing my wife's cousin referring to what happened to me as the 'Miracle at Rincon'. I'd heard my wife laughing after her cousin had coined that phrase. The biggest truth of why I left was that I didn't appreciate my wife going around telling all my personal business to her family. None of this was funny to me. I took my laptop with me, so I wouldn't miss out on any of my email correspondence.

I was checked in at the Flamingo, and had already managed to win a couple hundred dollars in my first short gambling session. My youngest son and his girlfriend were in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl party. I'd called him, knowing he'd be in town too, and had arranged to meet them over at Harrah's at three for the seafood buffet. He and I hadn't talked about what was going on between his mother and me. I had assumed he'd heard about all of it either from my wife, or from his brother or sister.

"How come you and mom are no longer on speaking terms? Why didn't you spend Christmas at home with her this year?" We had just sat down to eat after filling our plates with food. I hadn't even taken one bite of the food yet.

"Something happened, and your mom needs more time to get over it."

"Freddie said it had to do with another woman?" This was turning out to be more painful for me than all the rest of it. No man wants his children to think badly of him, or of his actions. I didn't know what to say to him.

"It wasn't what you might be thinking. At least, I don't really believe it was. On my solemn oath, I don't remember ever cheating on your mother. I don't believe I ever have. Right now, your mother is blaming me for something I don't think I did."

"That's pretty lame dad. You sound like Clinton now. 'It all depends on what your definition of "is" is.'"

"You can think whatever you want to. I might have to talk about this with your mother, but I've already talked to you about this all I'm ever going to. Let's eat." When my son and his girlfriend got up from the table then, leaving without eating a single bite of their food, I'll admit it really bothered me.

I saw my son once more before they left to drive back home. They passed by me while I was sitting at the Pai Gow table. Neither of us acknowledged the other. I called it an early evening and went up to my room soon after that.

After my four nights at the Flamingo, I packed up and moved over to the other side of the street. I didn't like the MGM/ Mirage casinos as well as I did the Harrah's casinos, but this probably had more to do with some of my wife's preferences than any of my own. She cared about the health spa and the pools, and about having safe and fun places for the grand children to play and spend all their time. For me, one Pai Gow table is much the same as another. I got free rooms at either chain, so it really didn't matter too much to me.

After I got myself checked in at my new hotel, I was up in my room putting my things away. I decided to check my email, because I hadn't checked it in a few days. I was surprised to find multiple emails from my family. Two from each of my daughters, one from my oldest boy, two from the youngest, and four from my wife.

I was curious, so I opened the oldest one from my wife first. It was short and to the point. "You don't ever have to come back as far as I'm concerned." That was just lovely to read. The next oldest was even better. "Are you hoping to have a 'Miracle in Las Vegas' now?" The third one from her was a reminder for me to take my pills. The last one told me to call our youngest daughter.

I opened the oldest email from my youngest daughter. She wanted me to phone her. The second email from her was a plea for another loan. Her mother and I had agreed, long ago, to let me handle all new requests for money from this daughter. My wife had a very difficult time saying no to her. It wasn't that much that she was asking for, so I went online and did an electronic transfer out of our joint savings account and over to my daughter's personal checking account. As soon as it was done, I sent her an email letting her know that I'd made the requested deposit. We all kept our savings and checking accounts at the same bank, and the bank people were used to us transferring money back and forth between all of these various accounts.

My oldest daughter had apparently just found out about the Rincon incident. Her first email was very angry. Her second one was a request to hear my side of things. I sent her a reply, telling her that it was a private matter, between her mother and me. I hated to shut her out like that, but I was still upset about my youngest son's reaction at the buffet.

My oldest son wanted to know if I could get him and his wife show tickets to see Bette Midler when she took over for Celine Dion. I replied that I'd check with my host to see what he could arrange for me. My youngest son had his own Diamond card and his own host too, so he never asked me for things like that.

When I opened the emails from my youngest son, they both turned out to be apology's for how he'd acted in Las Vegas. I replied, telling him that I knew he'd just been upset at the time.

After a few minutes I decided to answer my wife. "I called Tina, and transferred money to her account. I have all my pills, and I've been taking them twice a day. I won't be coming back until you write to tell me that the big freeze is over. I don't like 'Miracle in Las Vegas'. How about calling it "The Second Coming"?"

Later that night I got another email from her. "If you're waiting until I ask you to come back, you'll be waiting until hell freezes over. Give my best to your floozies."

After spending those seven nights in Las Vegas, and making over five thousand dollars, I got back in my Lincoln, and started heading down towards Dallas, Texas. I'd been threatening to go to my brother's house for a visit for about the last ten years. This seemed like a good time to make good on my threat. Before I left, I checked on any new emails from my Storiesonline feedback account. Amazingly, there was an email from Debbie there.

"Dear Mr. Openbook,

I am pregnant. What do you plan to do about that?

P.S. Cindy came back, and I don't know what to tell her about what happened that night."

"Dear Debbie,

This keeps getting stranger and stranger. While you now claim to be pregnant, I distinctly remember a visit I made to Planned Parenthood back in 1975. Not only did they perform a vasectomy on me, they filmed the whole procedure in order to make an informational video for any new vasectomy applicants. You are now in the unenviable position of accusing an impotent old man, one who has been sterile for the past thirty two years.

I find it troubling that you think I am the best candidate to have fathered this baby you claim to be carrying. All I can say is that I wish you well with trying to make your case for this in any court in the land. I am forwarding a copy of your email to my wife. While she didn't have too much trouble believing that I'd somehow seduced you, I think she might find it exceedingly difficult to give any credence to this newest allegation of yours.

Best regards,

John

I sent a copy of Debbie's email and my reply to my wife's email account. I closed up the lap top and headed out of the hotel.

The trip over to Dallas was long, but fairly uneventful. My brother and his wife seemed happy to see me. We had a good visit and even managed to play a couple rounds of golf together. I hit the ball farther than he did, but he beat me with a much better short game. I ended up staying for a week. Visiting relatives are like fish, after a few days, they both begin to stink. I could see in both their eyes as I was leaving that I might have overstayed my welcome. I'd gotten no further emails from my wife, so I headed further east, pointed towards New Orleans.



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Chapter 4


My original intent when I started heading over to New Orleans was to spend a few nights at the Harrah's Casino there. Somewhere along the way, I became disenchanted with the idea of doing anymore gambling for awhile. It didn't make much sense to me any more. I'd won over five thousand dollars during my week long Las Vegas visit, but it hadn't cheered me up a bit. I was feeling pretty glum after leaving my brother's house, so I drove straight through to Panama City, Florida. The next day, I drove south across the state, ending up on the beach, just north of Miami.

Hollywood, Florida was an experience. I met a lot of other old people, most of them, like me, didn't really know what they were doing there. I got myself one of those extended stay motor inn rooms and settled in to try to do some thinking about where my life, or what was still left of it, was heading.

I was usually an early riser. At home, I'd get up and go sit in front of my computer, writing, playing poker, reading stories, or taking care of my correspondence. It was force of habit mostly. There was something about the air in Florida, plus the fact that I was feeling very restless and uncertain about things.

All of my adult life I'd been busy, going to school, working, raising a family. Then one day, I just decided I was tired of always being busy, so I just pulled the plug on work. I retired, thinking I'd have more time to do those things I liked, but never seemed to have enough time to actually do. I played tennis and golf, went out to more movies and restaurants, and started going on quite a few more gambling junkets. My finances were solid, so I wasn't worried about not having enough for my wife and I to live on.

After a year of being retired, I kind of found myself settling into another rut. Different from the work rut, but requiring just as much of my time and energy. Being retired is hard work too. I stopped being so active, giving up tennis altogether. For awhile, I was spending a lot of time with various doctors, trying to find out why I didn't have more energy, or feel better most of the time. This too became yet another rut, until I decided to cut back on all those doctor visits too.

This change in my lifestyle started affecting other aspects of my life. I enjoyed small parts of my life, but, overall, I wasn't happy with the way I was beginning to feel about myself, my life, or my future prospects. I was depressed. They had me on Prozac for awhile, but my wife said it made me act like a zombie, that I'd sit in front of the television, feeling nothing. I had some good reasons for being depressed, financial, family, personal health, good solid reasons for not being happy.

Lose a million dollars or two, have your mother and oldest sister drop dead, see one of your daughter's throwing her future away by marrying a bum, find yourself becoming increasingly impotent. Add in finding out you have a brain tumor, a failing kidney, forty years after the other one suddenly failed. If that isn't enough, mix in some other things, like multiple lung nodules on both lungs, lymph glands swelling up to be the size of large eggs. All these things begin to add up after awhile.

The situation at Rincon was just one more problem wanting to be added to all the other disruptions taking place in my life. It seemed to me like things were spiralling out of control. One thing I knew for sure, and this was that I needed to try to do something to bring things back to a manageable level. The situation with my wife was the last straw for me. Something needed to change, and I knew there was no one else I could count on now, other than myself.

What do you do when you're three thousand miles away from your home and family, when you find yourself beginning to believe your life has run its course, as far as having anything really pleasant remaining? I don't know what normal people would do, but I started walking.

I had this condition in both legs, I believe its called intermittent claudication, but I'm not sure about that. When I tried to walk any distance at all, especially if I was carrying something, my calves would ache and hurt just like someone with strong hands was down there squeezing them with all their might. I'd had it before, back in '89, but I'd had two of my illeal arteries given a balloon angioplasty, and then had taken fifty intravenous infusions of chelation therapy right after that. I also did some walking, until the pain in my calves went away.

I started leaving my room at around six each morning and walking on the beach until my calves hurt so bad I couldn't stand it. When that happened, I'd sit down in the sand and wait until the pain disappeared. I'd get up again when they felt better, and walk back to my motel room. I'd repeat the same thing before lunch, and then again before dinner, every day. I started eating better too. After the first week of doing this, I noticed I was walking a lot further before I needed to sit down and rest. By the end of two weeks, most of the claudication pain was gone. When I did get some pain, I was able to continue walking through the pain. All my clothes started getting loose on me too.

I had chest pains often while I walked. I kept walking then too, determined that I would allow whatever would happen to go ahead and occur. Surprisingly, nothing much came of that. I started feeling better, more energetic, and more positive and optimistic. I checked my emails about twice a week. When members of my family wrote to me, I replied. I didn't tell anyone what I was doing, just that I was still on the road, and still waiting for hell to freeze over. February gave way to March, and March to April.

I'd brought two or three months worth of my medications with me when I had left the house. I was out of some of my medicine, and running very low on all the rest. I didn't try to get refills or to see another doctor to get new prescriptions. Instead, I kept on walking.

I woke up on the morning of April 12th. I remember it was the fifteenth anniversary of my mother's death. It was also the first morning I remembered waking up with a morning hard on in at least eight or nine years. I got up and looked at it in the mirror. I was very tempted to find out if it would last long enough for me to rub one out, but it seemed too important for me to treat it like something I just wanted to be rid of. Instead of doing that, I put on some running shorts, with no underwear on underneath, and went out for my daily before breakfast walk.

The thing I remembered most about that first hard on, was all the stares I got as I did my first power walk of the day on the beach. It seemed to me that quite a few of my fellow oldsters took notice of that satisfying lump I was carrying around in my shorts. I liked the way it moved all around as I walked on the beach. For the first time in too long, I felt like a man again, rather than an old man. I didn't feel quite so used up any more. It was a good feeling too.

That afternoon, after I had returned from my second long walk on the beach, and had then stopped off for lunch, I went into a camera shop by the cafe I usually frequented, and bought myself a digital camera. When I had taken my shower, but before I had towelled myself off, I took my own picture in the bathroom mirror above the sink. You couldn't see my face in the picture, but my hard dick was featured quite prominently. When I had uploaded the picture onto my laptop, I wrote my wife an email, enclosing the picture as an attachment. On the email I wrote, all in Bold capitals: BEHOLD, THE SECOND COMING! REJOICE, ALL YE NONBELIEVERS.

I sent this email and attachment to my wife. She hadn't been sending me any emails in awhile. I kept getting reports of her though, courtesy of our children. Our forty third anniversary was coming up in a couple of months. I was determined to be back in my own house when that day came.

I kept up my walking regimen for the whole next week, checking my emails at least two or three times every day, but heard nothing from her.

I took another picture of yet another hard on, but this time I held the camera away from me, and made sure the picture also included my face too. Again, with the attachment, I sent her a brief message:

IF YOU CAN'T BE WITH THE ONE YOU LOVE, LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH.

I checked my email, about two hours later. There was an email from my wife: "If I'd known you were going to be giving me your permission, I wouldn't have jumped the gun like I did. Would you like me to take a picture of his dick and send it to you so you can compare it to yours?"

I continued my walking, but whenever I thought of my wife's last email, I tried a little jogging too. I kept getting those chest pains still, but nothing else happened. By mid May, I was feeling like I had when I was about fifty years old. I weighed the same thing I'd weighed when I came out of the service, back in the early 1960's.

I checked out of my motel and started heading back west again. When I got back to California again, I found a divorce lawyer and signed the papers to start the procedure for filing for a divorce. I owned a four plex up in the high desert that had a vacancy in one of the furnished apartments. I moved in there and started playing golf early every morning. For the first time in years, I chose to carry my own bag, and to walk the course. The days were getting hotter, but I wasn't having trouble playing eighteen holes before eleven o'clock.

As soon as my wife was served with her divorce papers, she started sending me plenty of email messages. At least five or six every day. They weren't conciliatory, not by a long ways, but at least she was trying to communicate with me again. I'd joined one of those fitness centers and hired my own personal trainer. I went to a dermatologist's office and started having all those things growing on me either burned off or frozen off. I had some kind of treatment on my back that made most of those brown spots begin disappearing too. When that part of the treatment was finished, I had electrolysis treatments to take off all the hair that had been growing on my back. I also went in and had dental implants put in so that I could have myself a full set of good looking teeth again. In July, I had some liposuction work done around my waist and hips.

I'd gone to all the trouble of getting myself back in shape again. I figured it wouldn't hurt anything to polish my appearance up as much as I could too. After everything else was done, I went to a beauty salon and had my almost completely white hair dyed back to the dark brown color it had been when I was younger.

After everything was finished, I looked in the mirror and saw a seventy three year old man who was doing his utmost to try to look younger than he was. I wasn't happy with the result. I felt like a fifty year old, and I was almost willing to believe I could possibly pass for someone in his early sixties. It was the little things, like the wild eyebrows growing in every direction that gave me away.

My wife had decided to try to fight the divorce. In California, according to my attorney, there was little hope of one party succeeding in contesting a divorce where the other party wanted one. One thing I already knew though, this divorce was going to cost me in many ways, not just the money either.

I'd heard from all four children after I filed for divorce. All of them told me they were siding with their mother. There were several phone calls that became so heated that words were spoken that could never be forgotten or forgiven. My family was being ripped from me. I knew it was too simplistic to blame all of this on what might have happened in Rincon.

If my wife and I had still had a strong relationship when that happened, we would have found some way to get through it and still have stayed together. When the sex we had shared for so many years died, both of us had started drifting apart. I couldn't take any of those erectile dysfunction pills, because I'd been taking nitroglycerine tablets for ten years before Viagra had ever come out.

Our marriage had been in trouble for a long time. Both of us had taken too much for granted, thinking we had too much time invested in each other to ever let our marriage disintegrate. We were both wrong.

Right before we went into court, about two weeks before our court date, our forty third anniversary came and went. I didn't celebrate the day, and I have no idea whether or not she did. By the time we went to court, the whole thing was anticlimactic. It took less than fifteen minutes for the judge to grant the divorce, and issue the decree.

I could tell how surprised my wife and kids were when I walked into the courtroom. They hadn't seen me since early February. In that time, I'd lost over fifty pounds, and had regained a lot of my lost health and conditioning. I didn't speak to any of them. As soon as it was over, I shook hands with my lawyer and left the courtroom.

After splitting all our assets and paying our legal expenses, I was left with that four plex in Hesperia, my social security, a small annuity and around three hundred thousand dollars. All the rest of it was gone.

On the day my divorce was final, I went to Las Vegas and promptly lost the first four tiers of my gambling bankroll. I don't think I won more than twenty hands total, from start to finish. I went back home, and returned two weeks later with the rest of my gambling bankroll. It took me two more days, but I managed to lose the fifth, sixth and seventh tiers too. When I left Las Vegas the second time, I had seventy nine hundred dollars left out of an original $200,025.00 bankroll. I knew I was finished with gambling now. I'd had enough, had played it out all the way to the very end, just like I'd promised myself I would.

Strangely enough, I didn't feel that bad about my gambling losses. I still had enough, if I was careful, to live out the rest of my life in moderate comfort. Of all the things that were bothering me, the one thing that troubled me the most was that my impotence had returned. Everything was working fine, and then, one day, for no good reason I could see, it just stopped working again. I was still walking every day, still playing golf and walking the course. I'd been eating right too, but it had just left me. I didn't know how to account for it.

In early November I got a phone call from my oldest boy, inviting me down to his house for Thanksgiving dinner. I told him that I had made other plans. A few days later, my youngest son came up the hill to visit me. We had ourselves a good talk. I told him about losing my bankroll, describing to him how it had happened. He said he felt bad, and asked me what I was going to do.

"I'm done with it. I always said this was my last gambling bankroll, and it was. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, but its over now. Time to let that part of my life go and just move on with it."

"Is that what you did with mom too? She still can't believe you divorced her. She told us she thinks all the blood from your brain got sucked down to your dick. She said, once you started getting hard on's again, you thought you were too good for her."

"Those hard on's never did me a bit of good, not one of them. I felt bad, at first, when they stopped coming again, but now I'm kind of glad they stopped when they did. They aren't very practical for a man to have, not unless he has some place where he wants to put them. When they came back for awhile, it just so happened I was out of places to put them. Never did me a bit of good."

"That lady from Rincon, Freddie traced her from that email address, the one she used when she sent you that message claiming that she was pregnant. He went to see her, to tell her what happened to our whole family after that night in Rincon. She wasn't pregnant at all. That whole thing she did was part of some scam that she and her girlfriend were running. They both have police records, from pulling those same kinds of cons on people. Freddie showed mom a copy of her rap sheet, one that he got from this detective who works over in Rancho Cucamonga."

"I already knew she was lying. I told your mother that. She knew it too. She just saw a chance to bust my balls for no good reason. She couldn't resist doing it, but, this time, she went too far with it."

"That isn't how she sees it. It isn't how any of us kids see it either. She let you come home after you spent time with Freddie, and then went over to Tina's for Christmas. She said you were the one who decided to stay in your study all day, and then spend all your nights in my old bedroom. It hurt her when you just left and took off for Vegas like that."

"Doesn't matter now. We were both at fault. She got what she wanted and I guess I got what I wanted too. It was time we did something, rather than just sitting across from each other, waiting for one of us to die."

"She wanted me to ask you to come back home. Why don't you give me a message to take back for her? Something that meets her part way."

"I don't have anything to say to her. We both already know it's too late now. Hell isn't ever going to freeze over."

My son left, looking pretty disappointed that his coming up to see me hadn't resulted in my giving him what he'd come for. My seventy fourth birthday came a week before Thanksgiving. All four of my children called me. They each found a way to let me know they'd be over at their Mom's for thanksgiving, and that they hoped I'd decide to come there for the day too. They tried making me feel guilty about missing all the important milestones in my grandchildren's lives. I could have told each of them about the emails and the phone calls they'd sent or made to me. About how each of them had told me that they sided with their mother over what was happening to us.

The day before Thanksgiving I was walking a Pete Dye course over in Palm Springs, with a couple of my old business partners. I'd been hitting the ball pretty good all day, and we were at the fifteenth tee. I wanted to really air it out on the drive I was hitting, hoping to reach the par five hole in two. I guess I tried to swing too hard, because the next thing I knew, I woke up in the back of an ambulance. The siren was blowing and we were racing through traffic, trying to make it to the hospital in time. I felt weak, but I didn't feel that bad, other than having these waves of nausea washing over me every fifteen or twenty seconds. I tried lifting up my head, but it made me too dizzy when I did that. I was having trouble remembering things too. I'd think about something, but then I'd forget what it was I'd been thinking about. We were just pulling into the emergency entrance to the hospital when my heart just gave out and stopped.

They told me later that they got it going again right away, but then it stopped again, and they had to get it going again. While I was slipping in and out like that, someone got in touch with my oldest son, on his cell phone number which I still had on my cell's speed dial. They took me in that night and performed a quadruple bypass surgery to relieve some major blockages around my heart. I didn't wake up until the next morning. I couldn't believe how sore I was. I had this huge zipper scar, from the top of my chest, down to near my naval.

A nurse came in about an hour after I first woke up. She explained where I was and what they had done to me. Then, she did the strangest thing, she leaned over me and combed my hair. I must have looked at her funny, because she started explaining herself.

"Your wife is here. You don't want her to see you with your hair all mussed up." It hurt me when I had to laugh.

A minute later, the nurse left, and my wife and Tina walked into my hospital room. I was hooked up to all those monitoring things, and I was still hurting quite a bit. My wife spoke first.

"I'm sorry, for all of it. All the way, while we were driving out here to see you, that was the only thing I was praying about, just that we'd get here in time so I could tell you that. Now that I've said it, I don't know what else I'm supposed to talk to you about." My daughter, Tina spoke next.

"Did you really lose all your money gambling, Daddy? That's what Sonny told Freddie. He said you lost over two hundred thousand dollars. That's how much my mortgage on the house is now. You lost a whole house, Daddy."

I just looked at her. I didn't know what I could tell her that would make her less upset about me losing all that money. If I told her that it had been my money to lose, she wouldn't have understood.

"Sonny talks too much. Don't worry, I didn't lose all my money, just all my gambling money. I was almost ready to quit gambling anyway, so it doesn't really matter."

"John, you're going to need someone to look after you while you're recuperating. I wish you'd come back home so I could do it. I knew this was going to happen when you stopped taking those blood thinners, and those other pills you took that made your blood cells softer so they could pass through those veins of yours. Only a crazy man stops taking his prescriptions."

I didn't say anything. It wouldn't have done any good anyway. When she decided about something, she'd never admit to being wrong later. I was on my hospital bed looking at her when all the alarms on my monitoring equipment started going off again. Damned if my heart didn't stop beating another time. I didn't know that, because I lost consciousness almost as soon as the alarms started going off.

I'm a little unsure about what happened after that. I remember waking up and talking to some doctor about how my heart was acting erratic and was unstable. I also remember sleeping quite a bit. I think they were giving me something to keep me calm. I'd been in the hospital more than two weeks before they felt my heart was again stable enough for me to have visitors. All of my family took turns filing in and out. None of them would say anything, not wanting to be the one who said something to make me heart stop again.

After the family finished their visit, a physical therapist came in and tried talking to me about how they were going to get me up and walking again. He said I needed to exercise my heart muscle. That didn't sound right to me, but what did I know? He said I'd heal faster if I exercised. The next day I found out what he meant as exercise was me walking all the way to the nurse's station, probably no more than fifty or sixty feet from my hospital bed. I wanted to laugh, but I knew it would still hurt a lot if I did.

After another week in the hospital, I was transferred to another hospital, one closer to my old house. A week later, I was released, back to my house. My wife had both my sons install me in our old bed. For a few weeks after that, she watched over me like a hawk. I could get up and walk to the bathroom, or out to the dining room, but that was about it. I got so bored that I started doing isometric exercises in bed, but only when she wasn't around to see what I was up to.

This morning, I woke up, and I feel particularly good. I just told my wife I was going outside for a walk. I'm putting on my old running shorts, but I'm not putting anything on underneath. I have on a sweat shirt too, and my pair of bedroom slippers. I plan to go outside and walk a ways up the street, maybe about three or four houses. After I do that, then I'll walk back down to my house. That should be enough.

I just got back, I can already tell that the walking hasn't helped my dick at all. I really don't think I'd ever be able to walk much further than what I just did. I'm already feeling the effects from walking uphill like that. I'm going back to my bedroom. I need to crawl back into my bed.

I really wanted to show her one last time that I could get my dick hard for her. Forty three years, and she's always been the only one. I feel the pressure building up inside my chest again...

(My mother found my father dead in his bed, a few hours later. This laptop was laying open beside him. The doctors had already told us his heart was too weak for him to last much longer. She wanted him home with her when he went though. He always did everything his own way, but this last thing, that crazy walk of his. They both had to know that it would be the end for him. How could she let him do it? She told me I didn't understand what love was. Maybe she's right.)


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The End
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Posted:  2006-05-24
Last Modified: 2008-01-08 / 08:54:42 am
Version: 1.10
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