Truesday: Breaking Cycles

For me, in today's social climate, cards and Blues seem to go together like crooked politics (potentially redundant, sure) and boycotts. Call it "artistic" license or whatever.

For the card player, that plateau always seems to arrive in the form of a stacked deck, on a staged table, in a rounded game. It happens to all who play long enough, and bet under the delusion that they’re on equal odds. That the house dealer isn’t palming aces. That there’s no real cycle there, that it's honest chaos or random chance, and that they have an honest shot at taking it all.

Sometimes, it might be best to walk away from the table. Before it's too late to enjoy Blues.

Back in middle school, I desperately wanted to belong to this small gang of miscreants whose favored activities included untargeted home invasion and petty theft: shoplifting, snagging purses from public places, and rummaging through unlocked cars in mall parking lots. Small time stuff, and nothing important enough to warrant a rather pathetic desperation to join in on.

Not that I longed for it with all my being, because I wasn’t intelligent or emotional enough to conjure up such desire, but I will admit that I had more interest in being in with that crew than I was in joining the basketball team.

And I loved to play basketball with every beat of my thirteen-year-old cola-fueled heart.

But these guys were the “cool kids”. The guys who appeared, to my small and chemically adjusting mind, to have it all figured out. They seemed to know what was up. Always busy with a hustle somewhere. What the plan was. Money for whatever they didn’t take from someone else who, like a sucker, bothered to earn it. Like they had an answer that the rest of us didn’t. Some secret code that gave them carte blanche to indulge. They flinched at nothing, with unfaltering confidence, even in the face of obstacles that kids in my regular world would quickly shy away from.

They commanded a level of respect, even from adults. The adults knew better than to mess with these kids. Grown folk, with a much better understanding of how a productive, multi-dimensional society which may provide mutual benefit to all involved: should work, understood immediately that this rag-tag group of deviants operated outside of civil reason. Beyond the bounds of social conscience and responsibility. Knowing this, they steered well clear of kids like these. Amoral if not immoral, these boys did for themselves and only themselves. In their minds, as long as the ends ended in their pockets, the means were meant to be and anyone who wasn’t a victim better thank them for it. As if everyone else was responsible for doing real work to earn something real in life, and the fact that they got to keep it, instead of losing it to these kids, was a blessing worthy of note.

And the only possible law above them would simply have to have more means. Meaner, much meaner means. That was the assumption, anyhow.

I was not alone in wanting in. There were many who wanted to be involved, probably with similar reasons as myself. I wanted the same material shit. Shiny things. Restaurant dinners. That fear-made respect, and their apparent freedom to sail by the winds of their will alone. Probably chicks, too.

Sure, the description is the fluffed-up perspective of a thirteen year-old who simply knew no better.

Really, they were just punk kids, just as clueless and vulnerable as the rest of us. Just as faulted, confused, and mistaken as the people they commanded over and around. Even if they were, for that relatively brief window in hindsight-highlighted time: seemingly unstoppable.

On top, they were, for a chaotic moment in my life: the total shit.

As I struggled my way around their crew, trying to impress my way in, I got to do the bullshit work. I got to be the “face” whenever the real authorities got involved in some botched job, unaware that I was shouldering all the risk whenever it happened. I got to explain to security guards that “we were just looking for our puppy who wandered into this back yard and we think might have gone in that house through that busted window, sir.” I got to keep the store clerk busy with smart, seemingly genuine questions about something while everyone else lifted. I rarely got to handle, keep, or share in the profits from the sale of any merchandise. I had no idea what happened to the stuff after it was acquired. I was an equal, if not overburdened partner in the labor, sure. But never the spoils.

Even worse: I fetched, albeit begrudgingly, glasses of water for these assholes when we all played cards, even though my bets were just as high as theirs. And inevitably, when I would leave the room for such errands, card-collusion would occur and I would not-so-mysteriously lose my hand. I got rolled-on whenever one of the members’ drunken dads would take something out on them. I played patsy, and was often forced to take the brunt for mistakes made by others. The indignant, but ever-patient scapegoat.

I willingly suffered multiple indignities, many of them flagrantly admitted to my face, because I was intent on earning my spot at the table. The assumption being: that one day, at some unspecified point, I would be the one arranging decks while some other chump would be watering MY parents’ goddamn rose bushes.

After some time of slaving away, trying to earn my in, I began to grow disillusioned with the whole thing. I started to wonder whether or not I’d ever get anywhere. As if, perhaps, I’d be stuck as a peon underling for an eternity. That mindset quickly led me to protest my treatment. I figured maybe, if I stood up and demanded some equal respect, that they’d see my worth and I’d be out from under the thumb. After all, I’d put my time in. Perhaps they had simply overlooked just how valuable I was, and all I needed to do was highlight the injustice. All would be right and square after that.

But my protests were met with increased beratement. The more I complained, the shittier they got with me. More pointed taunting, increased frequency of attitude and general displeasure with me being around at all. Soon, my fear that they never had any real intention of granting me equality, regardless of how they claimed it would occur after I’d earned it, began to sink into my subconscious. I kept at it though, because I never felt I had much in the way of options. I’d put so much effort in already, I was invested. I didn’t really know much else. I kept up my protest, demanding equal treatment and my spot at the table. That dreadful table, where for reasons I wish I couldn’t comprehend, I wanted to be able to one day treat new entrants as poorly as I was being treated. I wanted my upward rounds on someone else’s down-cycle.

But then one day, by some grace of lady luck, my whole fortress of mob-mentality reason blew over like so many cards. I have no idea what it was that set me off, but something certainly did. It was the summer before high school when I broke out from that crew, tired of being dicked-with, and I got my first job. A real, normal kid job. I actually earned some money. My own money. Legally.

Suddenly, those assholes were my enemy. Soon, they’d be after whatever it was I bought with the money I earned by selling my life to an ice cream parlor. They’d soon be making efforts to take my life from me, those hours for earned wages. Those hours, my most precious commodity, gone, possibly at gunpoint. And I would never willingly let that happen ever again.

They kept their table for quite some time, and their operations flourished in my absence. Many, many others put in their work, and their crew got pretty impressive in size. But then, as it always goes, things got too bloated. Too many dealers for too few decks, and the inevitable struggles went down. Infighting. Jail. Spin-off crews.

Everyone learned, in their own way, that it would never work. That one should always be careful what it is they’re protesting to be an equal part of. That sometimes it is best to simply walk away and start your own game elsewhere. Where the aces aren’t notched and the deal has at least a chance to be square.

Had to happen. Always does. Beautiful, somewhat sad, and painfully predictable. Like a good Blues song.