And here's another teaser we've been sending around. This story probably rings a bell with most people who have read this thread. And yes, this is exactly as it happened, if Vesko or anyone has any claims about the thuthfulness of the story feel free to point out any part that you don't believe in and I'll do my best to get you in touch with people.
There are a couple of errors in this, it's an older version of the same teaser and I can't find the proper one on my laptop. Whatever. I guess this is a pretty good one to post so that people can (hopefully) see a difference in the quality of my writing in the book vs this thread's original stories. The chapter breaks are screwed for this one also.
Once a gambler / Chapter 10
"Serena"
Only a week after breaking up with Emma, Unibet, one of Europe's largest sports betting and poker operators, has a Christmas party in Helsinki I'm supposed to attend. The Finnish poker scene is at its peak, and out of the five million people living in the country it's estimated that at least 100 000 have given online poker a try. I'm already pretty close to the top, at least when it comes to publicity, and I want to climb higher on that ladder. Because true ballers don't show up for a fancy party without a date, I'd naturally planned on taking Emma as my date, and us breaking up has presented me with a curious dilemma. Who should I take?
I know better than well who I want to take. Her name is Serena. A couple of years younger than me, I've known her for a few years, even before I went to Australia. She's in the same social circles as many of my friends, and I've had a bit of a crush on her for as long as I can remember. Calling it a mere crush might be a bit of an understatement, really. She's the rare girl who can effortlessly and perhaps inadvertently stop everything around her in whatever room she decides to step into. She's young, barely nineteen, skinny, and there's a subtle sense of vulnerability about her, as if she needs someone to protect her from everything evil in the world. Yet at the same time she has that elegance and awareness of her good looks that allows her to steal the show wherever she goes. She's the hot girl next door everyone has a crush on, even inside our circle of friends, and I have certainly never been immune to her spell. But the time has never been right; first I was in Australia, when I came back she had a boyfriend (who I hated), and when they broke up I was already with Emma. To top it off, I've had a brief fling with her best friend upon returning from Australia, something I sensed at the time she didn't appreciate. But now that we are both single, one of us more recently than the other, it feels mandatory to at least try my luck. The Christmas party seems like a great way to ask her out without making it too obvious that it's a date I have in mind, and I beam for a long time when she says yes.
The Unibet party is great, and it's clear they've spent quite a lot of money on it. There's an open bar, and they've invited just the perfect amount of people; enough to make it feel like a good party, but not too many so it's not overcrowded. It's the kind of occasion where everyone in the attendance is made feel special, not only because of the stream of celebrities flowing across the room at a steady pace, but also because most attendees are indeed high stakes players carefully hand-picked by Unibet. I know I've been hand-picked for something else than my skills, but I'm incredibly happy to be a part of it all the same, and nothing makes me happier than being here with Serena.
I've been nervous from the start. It's my first date with Serena, and even though any first date would be enough to make me nervous, this feels like more than that. I'm overwhelmed by her beauty from the first moment, and early into the night when she grabs my hand to pull me towards the bar, I already feel ready to be pulled towards anything as long as she's coming along. She could take me in front of a passing train and I doubt I could resist. Never before have I felt so spell-bound, and my urgency to please her is reaching new heights by the minute. As my nervousness grows, I resort to alcohol, making sure she gets her dose of the drinks too. We are both quite tipsy early on.
When I reach a comfortable level of alcohol in my bloodstream I forget my nervousness and start enjoying every moment. Me and Serena have a fantastic time, and I take great pleasure in introducing her to old and new friends. Among the new ones is a young online player named Ilari Tahkokallio, who's destined to win over $800,000 only fifteen months later in a European Poker Tour event that'll go down in history for reasons other than just poker. The story I'll write about him will be the last I'll ever write for our magazine. In 2008 Ilari is dating a girl who's studying to become a veterinarian, and her class is having a party in an empty factory hall in southern Helsinki. After the Unibet party starts to die down, we decide to invade the party at the factory, and we need three taxis to accomodate our group. It's mostly poker players, who for the most part have only just met each other, and of course Serena, who's done a great job socializing with everyone. I don't know how she's done it, given that the sole subject of the night has been poker and she doesn't even know the rules, but somehow she's stolen the show once again. No one is immune to her spell, and even if they knew she's off limits as she'd come as my date, I've observed many naturally shy males in the room enjoy conversating with her immensely. And no one has enjoyed her company more than I have.
I get my first kiss from Serena, and the second and the third. As Blue Monday by New Order is playing in a half-empty factory hall, creating a menacing echo in the high ceiling, we are all over each other in a quiet corner. I can hear someone telling us to get a room in the background, but couldn't care less. When Serena's nose touches mine for the umpteenth time reaching for another kiss, I tell her to hold still and keep exactly that distance, refusing her impatient attempts to lean forward. It's not that I don't want to kiss her – I'm ready to do that until the end of time for all I know - I just don't want to close my eyes for the kiss once again. Instead I want to look at her beautiful features right there, only an inch apart. It's a vicinity to her I've always dreamt of having, but one that I'm not accustomed to, and I want to capture the moment in my mind forever. The first time she's mine, even if it's not going to last. Just us in a dark corner under a New Order song, feeling like we are the only people in the room, me holding her face with one hand and gently stroking the back of her hair with the other, smelling her perfume, carefully observing the shade of her eye color and the location of every mole. I'd say I did a pretty good job at capturing the moment, because years later I still remember it like yesterday. A partial reason to why I remember everything so vividly might be that it was perhaps this exact moment that initially launched my downward spiral that I never fully recovered from, until I reached the rock bottom almost exactly a year later. But it's a good memory all the same.
At two o'clock in the morning we enter our third party of the night, this time at a famous celebrity after-hour spot named Lost&Found. It's my first time here, as the age limit is a strict 24 even on weekdays, but we are all let in since Jasper and Ziigmund (who is also a mainstream celebrity in Finland by now) are among us. I'm starting to become fond of being friends with celebrities. The name of the place seems more than appropriate, as certain things are both lost and found during the night. The two things I lose within 90 minutes of entering the place are the last shades of sobriety I have in me, and more importantly, Serena.
We drown tequila shots from the get-go for no specific reason, and order five shots each just before closing time at 3:30 in the morning. Somewhere between all the shots and the many conversations with my colleagues I've lost track of Serena's whereabouts for what only feels like a few minutes, and it only hits me when we are all escorted out by the bouncers after closing time as the last customers. She really isn't anywhere in sight. I try calling her, but her phone is off. It's -20c outside and there's a mild snowstorm with an endless flow of huge, thick snowflakes raining from the sky, dropping the visibility close to zero. I consider shrugging it off, assuming she'd just left for whatever reason, when I hear from one of the people who are having a smoke outside that she'd left the club maybe fifteen minutes earlier, unable to walk straight and falling on her face on the way out. Panic hits me. It's not at all uncommon in Finland for drunk people to freeze to death in the winter after passing out in the snow. It only occurs to me now that Serena has downed shots as fast as I have, despite me being almost twice her size, and it's all my fault that she's ended up in a state where she's barely able to walk. It's me whose responsibility it is to take care of her and make sure she's safe, and instead of looking after her I got carried away talking to my friends, and now she's on her own in the middle of the night in a mild snowstorm, possibly without a good idea where she is and being unable to even walk straight.
I search in every direction around the club, looking for footprints in the fresh snow, but find nothing. My search operation has been hardened not only by the weather that's poor even by Finnish standards, but also because the last-minute tequila shots are doing their best to make their way into my bloodstream, making my thoughts blurry and limbs number. Or maybe it's the cold. There's ice under the heavy layer of fresh snow, making me fall down several times like a bambi on ice. Every time it's harder and harder to get up, and the piles of snow look like comfortable pillows. I can barely see my nose.
For nearly two hours I walk around the city aimlessly, looking for a needle in a haystack. I've forgotten my gloves at the club and as a result my fingers are badly frozen. Eventually at five o'clock in the morning I'm so cold, tired, and drunk that I have to give up. When I reach the Central Station to board a train and see all the people heading to work, my mind sobers up slightly. I come to realize that Helsinki is a big city, the club isn't that far from the centre, and the chances of her not being noticed by someone had she passed out outside are slim (a little over a year later I'll get to experience the effectiveness of the Finnish police force when it comes to rescuing passed-out people from a freezing death first-handed).
It's been nearly 12 hours since I've had anything to eat, and since I've concluded there's nothing I can do about the situation anymore, I decide to grab a bite. Apparently I'm more drunk than I've realized, because for the first time in my life I'm being refused service at a fast food restaurant. That, in turn, makes me uncharacteristically angry – I've always been a happy drunk and have always wondered how some people seem to get angered by booze and start bar fights – and I nearly manage to get myself locked up by the police upon refusing to leave. Eventually I'm let out with a warning, and I exit to the still heavily pouring snowstorm once again, walking in a random direction to cool off instead of taking the train home. After a while I need to take a leak, and in my ****-the-world state of mind decide it would be a great idea to pee on a car. I open my crotch and urinate on the bonnet of a large, black car. In the middle of the procedure I hear an angry honk, and it takes me a second or two to realize that the sound is that of the horn of the very same car I'm urinating on. Sobering up in a millisecond I realize the car isn't parked, but I'm standing in traffic lights. I've never ran as fast.
When I finally get home at seven o'clock in the morning I hastily log on to Facebook to find out if she's left me a message. I let out a huge sigh of relief when I find her online, indicating that she's got home safely. She tells me that she was thrown out from the club just before closing time, her phone ran out of battery, and she had to run to the train station to avoid freezing, slipping a couple of times on the way in her heels. She says she's stayed up just so she could say good night, and I apologize for not noticing her being thrown out. We make plans to meet later in the week, and I go to sleep with a wide, drunken smile on my face.
Over the next couple of days we have long conversations over the phone and the internet, and have a rather intimate second date at my place. It hits me only a few nights after our second date that I really care about her. Not only because of my blossoming crush on her, but also as a person. I'd always thought there's a certain vulnerability about her, and talking both to her and about her with out mutual friends reveals it's more than just that. Someone we both know pretty well suggests that she's a bit of a crash course, ”definitely not girlfriend material”, because of her out-of-control drinking. She tells me herself that doctors have advised her to stop drinking altogether because of something ulcer related, an advice she doesn't want to follow, which in turn leads to endless stomach pains. Then again, from what I can tell she doesn't seem to drink more often than any other 19-year old, definitely no more than I did at her age (or even now). I know that it's too early for me to suggest following the doctor's advice and focus on other things than partying, because that'd just chase her away. Instead I decide to try to protect her the best I can, to be the one looking after her as often as possible by accompanying her to parties. And of course I want her to be my girlfriend, which I'm hoping could also have a calming effect on her.
For our third date I decide to come up with something special. There's a large outdoor ice skating rink near where we both live that's always crowded. It's the heart of the winter, and the place closes early, at 8 P.M. I tell Serena to pack her skating gear and meet me near the fence two hours after closing time. When we get there, I help her climb over the fence and follow suit. We land on a soft pile of snow and make it to the benches outside the closed dressing room. It's a beautiful sight – ice so crystal clear it works as a mirror, a starry night with nearly a full moon sending rays of light to the otherwise dark rink. No one could see us from outside the rink, but as there are street lights in every direction, we can still see passers-by and possible guards. It's so cold our breathing forms large, steamy clouds. We talk in whispers just in case anyone's still inside the building.
She puts on her beautiful white skates. They have long blades, the kind that female figure skaters use. I observe her making her first circles around the ice while tying the laces of my big, black ice hockey skates. It's so quiet everywhere that the sound of her blades gently scratching the ice makes me think of an angry lion roaring. Perfectly timed snowflakes start raining from the sky, and I watch her skate in awe. She has an oversized beanie covering her hair and ears, her cheeks are getting rosey from the blistering cold, and her slender figure makes her look like she's ice skated all her life, making sharp turns and pirouettes.
I join her on the ice, skate directly towards her. She leans in for a kiss.
”Not yet”, I say. ”Turn around and close your eyes.”
She does what she's asked, and her neck is facing me when I reach for my pocket, where I have my mp3 player and headphones. The player only has one song in it, ”Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol, the biggest hit song of the year and what I know to be Serena's favourite song. I gently place the headphones on her ears, and manage to hit play despite my fingers freezing.
”You can open your eyes now, but don't move”, I whisper, holding her from behind. I start making soft, silent kicks with my skates, slowly pushing us both around the rink so that she doesn't have to do anything but enjoy the ride. I keep doing the footwork for the next four minutes and eight seconds, the song's duration. When the song is over I let her turn around, and the way she looks at me makes me think I've at least done something right. We skate around hand in hand until we are freezing, and Chasing Cars is being played several more times.
Becoming an item with Serena has immediate negative effects on my life. She wants to go out drinking a lot, and since it's now my duty to save her, I accompany her to most parties. I don't mind it that much, as I like hanging out with her friends, and introduce her to some of my closest poker buddies. More than anything I'd hate to have her think that I'm boring. Now that I've managed to charm her, I'm desperate to keep things that way, and I'll party seven days a week with her if I must.
Partying on weekdays along with weekends begins to take its toll on both of my jobs. Waking up at seven in the morning for work after a night out until the wee hours is hard. I start missing deadlines. And I'm barely playing poker at all, because on the juicy weekend nights I'm used to spending grinding I'm now around the Helsinki nightlife with Serena. On our first two full weeks I drop $3000 partying, and I don't even care. I have the most beautiful and amazing girlfriend who everyone looks at in awe wherever we go. The poker games are still easy, too easy. I know – or at least think - that I can win tens of thousands whenever I want to, but the thing with Serena might not last forever, so I want to enjoy every minute of it now. We both share a careless, ”you only live once” kind of attitude towards life, and we make sure to practice how we preach. I miss more deadlines.
There's another Unibet Open in Warsaw, a 1650 euro buy-in in early December. My editor asks me if I want to go as a guest of Unibet. I won't actually have to do anything as he's writing the story about the tournament himself, but I'd get free flights and a posh five-star hotel room just for showing up. It's subtly suggested that it would be appreciated if I blogged a little bit about the trip, but officially I won't have to do a thing. It's a three-day trip, from Friday to Sunday. I'd get there so late I won't be able to play the actual tournament, which is fine because I want to take Serena with me. I'm dying to show her the parties, the whole lifestyle, what the tour and the more glamorous part of my profession is like. I buy her a ticket for the same flight, and before I know it we are on our way to Warsaw.
We don't even make it past the lobby before we run into a bunch of Finnish poker players, most of whom I've met before. Among them is a guy who I've never seen, but who's acting strange. He's short, skinny, maybe thirty years old, and in a way doesn't seem to belong in the group, despite trying to make himself the centre of attention. It's only late afternoon, and he's incredibly wasted. But there's also something about his behaviour that makes me sense something dodgy. He's not only wasted, he's wasted in a different way than most drunk people who I've observed. Drugs? I don't know. Of course, it's also slightly alarming that he has a fat envelope of 500 euro bills in his hand that he keeps dropping. While I catch up with a couple of friends, I observe him order a drink at the lobby bar and forget the envelope on the counter. I observe him drop it on the floor. He has people following him literally picking up the money every time he drops it to make sure he doesn't lose it. The guy comes to me, says he knows me and my blog. Almost the first thing he says is that he wants to put me in some 5000 euro buy-in tournaments, where he'll pay the buy-in and we'll split the profits. I haven't even shook hands with him yet. He gives me a speech about all kinds of crazy deals he wants to offer, which would all basically be him throwing piles of money at me. Before I get to even open my mouth, he excuses himself and goes to buy more drinks, and I give my friends the thousand yard stare. By now I thought I knew or at least knew of virtually everyone who's significant in the Finnish poker circles, yet this apparent highroller is someone I've never seen or heard of.
”Who the hell was that guy?”
”That's Jay”, someone enlightens me.
The name doesn't ring a bell.
”We only just met him as well. He said he plays high stakes Pot Limit Omaha games online, likes to keep a low profile but randomly decided to come to this tournament just for the parties.”
The Pot Limit Omaha part is enough to make me buy his story for now. Finland is full of PLO crushers, and the identities of some of the biggest Finnish online PLO winners are still unknown to the public. Something tells me that my paths are meant to cross with the guy, but I'm undecided whether it's a good or a bad thing.
The hotel room is amazing, one of the best I've seen. It's definitely the best I've ever been given by poker tournament organizers, and I smirk on the inside at being able to show Serena this of all hotel rooms. There's a safe in the room, and I put the most of the contents of my wallet there. I've taken everything I have to my name with me, except for some scattered online funds. Fifteen thousand euros in neat 500 euro bills. I don't even know why I have the money with me, since I doubt I'll even find time to play poker. I guess it's mainly to show off.
Serena tells me she needs time to get ready for the night, so I go downstairs to the casino to catch up with some friends. I take a portion of the money with me just in case. Almost immediately I run into a friend who's just busted the main event, and he says he wants to blow off some steam at a roulette table. I join him for the fun of it.
We wager two hundred euros on the first round, then four hundred, then a thousand, missing on all of them. We keep betting on black and hit a strike of red numbers until we both run out of money.
Great, now I'm down four thousand euros.
”You know, I have more cash in my hotel room safe”, my friend says, clearly frustrated. ”I don't want to lose it all, so let's make a pact and promise to each other not to play more roulette on the trip.”
All I want is to play more roulette, but the sensible part in me accepts the offer. We shake hands.
I go back upstairs to our room, and hear Serena in the shower. I sit on the bed for a while, but she's taking her time. The faint sound of the antique clock on the wall makes me nervous.
I can't stay, I have to go back.
I can hear the roulette wheel singing its seirenous songs from several storeys below, and the hotel room feels like a jail cell.
I have to go back.
I reach for the safe, hastily input the correct code and grab seven thousand more. I hear Serena turn off the shower, but I don't want to be stopped, so I sprint out of the room and go straight back to the casino. It doesn't even take me thirty minutes to get stripped out of everything again. Down eleven thousand euros in my first couple of hours in Warsaw. I can't breathe.
I walk back to the room slowly, almost dragging myself, my mind black like a sky full of heavily storming clouds. I know I have another three thousand left in the safe, an emergency fund, some of which I will actually need on the trip for things such as food and drinks. Yet I know I'm destined to lose it as well. It's as if I've already wagered it, it doesn't feel like it's in my possession anymore. It doesn't matter whether it's the mother octopus slot machine or the evil spinning red and black wheel. Once you start, you don't stop until you're broke. I know it better than anyone, and I already consider myself broke. It's almost like an out-of-body experience, observing myself walk the hallway in a zombiesque motion without a free will.
I put the keycard in its slot and the door opens, making a clicking sound. I push it open, and the first thing I see is Serena all dressed up.
Snap.
Just like that, I remember why I'm here on this trip, that there are things more important than the losses I want to chase. She looks so beautiful that I'd be happy to light the rest of the money on fire to be able to accompany her to the party. And luckily I don't even have to do that, so I just refill my wallet with 500 euros – in case we end up going to a more luxurious place in the wee hours – and start getting ready myself.
There's a group of maybe fifteen of us, most of whom I've met before. Some other players have brought girlfriends too, and we resort to a nice bar with a pile of drinking vouchers from Unibet in hand. The friend I played roulette with is there too, and he looks grim. More grim than a man who's just lose four thousand, I think.
”So you broke the pact too, huh?”
”Yep.”
”How much?”
”Another six or so.”
Degenerates.
We have a good time, and eventually head to a night club. I can see Serena enjoy herself, and she's conversing with my friends effortlessly. I catch her talking about poker – a subject she still knows virtually nothing about – and to my amusement she manages to convince one of my friends that she's a poker professional herself by using the correct terminology. I'm enjoying myself so much that I entirely put the roulette loss behind me, despite it being one of my all-time biggest gambling losses and more than fifty percent of my net worth vanished in the air.
The online games are so easy, I'll grind it back in no time, I think to myself.
After a few drinks it seems more like a fact than an optimistic fantasy.
We head to a night club, order a vodka Red bull after another. I even dance a bit with Serena, which is something I normally never do. At some point Jay joins us, comes to talk to me like an old friend, says he's lost his phone. I ask if he still has the envelope, and he flashes a pile of cash. He seems more sober than a few hours earlier, or maybe it's just me being closer to his level after all the drinks I've had.
All of a sudden it's four in the morning, and the club has closed. We are standing outside at a taxi stand with a couple of male friends who want to go to a strip club. I'm not all that eager, and I'm waiting for Serena to object so that I can comfortably bail on my friends and take her to the hotel.
”A strip club! I've never been to a strip club! Let's go!”, she shouts enthusiastically.
Should have known.
We take a taxi, and ask the driver to take us to a strip club, any one of them. Shouldn't be that hard to find in Warsaw. But he doesn't speak a word of English, doesn't understand the words ”strip” and ”club”. No matter how many times we say the words and even impersonate the dancers he doesn't understand. Then one of my friends says the magic word.
”Sex?”
”Sekkkksssss? Sekkkksssssss”, he repeats, grinning and laughing a creepy laugh that makes me think of old paedophiles. He turns on the engine.
The city of Warsaw is behind our tail lights, and I can see the silhouette of the tall buildings by looking out the back window. I'm the only relatively sober person in our group, and the only one who seems even slightly alarmed at the fact that we are thirty minutes outside of the city on a motorway driving twice the speed limit. I'd ask the driver how much longer the trip is going to take or where he's taking us, but I know the effort would be moot.
Finally the driver slows down, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There aren't even street lights. He drives us to an empty side road. It's hard to see anything in the darkness, but I can see a brick house at the end of the road. The house has two storeys, and it looks completely normal, like a house someone could be living in. Except for one thing. There are bars in every window, and behind the bars there are women. The taxi stops at a distance just far enough so that I can't see their faces, but there's something about the way the women act and pose that makes me think they aren't there voluntarily. It's pretty obvious this isn't a strip club but a brothel.
My two guy friends want to go anyway. I ask them if they are sure, given that we are in the middle of nowhere, and if something happens God knows how they'll ever get back to Warsaw, or even out of the house.
”We'll be fine.”
They slam the car doors behind them, and we watch them ring the doorbell. A huge, bodyguard-esque guy comes and opens the door. They talk for a few seconds, and my friends are let in. Just as I'm about to tell the driver to drive back to Warsaw, Serena starts yelling that she wants to go inside too.
”I've never been to a brothel! I want to see what it's like inside!”
I do my best to try to assure her that it's going to be terrible inside, that the place looks really dodgy and I don't know what they'd do to a girl like her. But she's not having any of it. She opens the car door and starts running towards the brothel like a thirsty Bedouin who's seen an oasis in the middle of the desert. I takes every bit of my power to catch her and pull her back inside the car. Now the driver is looking at me like I'm the one forcing women do things, but agrees to drive us back to Warsaw and our hotel anyway. I feel relief once we cross the city border again. We dash through the empty streets of Warsaw, and with Serena sleeping on my lap I notice the sun is about to rise.
When we wake up it's already late in the afternoon. I'm slightly hungover, and Serena's considerably more so. At first she doesn't remember the whole brothel episode, but when I tell her she not only remembers, but thanks me for not letting her go there.
This afternoon is our only chance to explore Warsaw, as the official Unibet dinner is in three hours. We get dressed hastily and set to see some sights.
Before we manage to even leave the hotel we run into several people. First is Jay, who tells me the story of having lost his phone again, seemingly oblivious that we've spoken in length the previous night. He asks me to go buy him a new one and gives me some money for it. I don't like being treated like an errands boy, especially in front of my girlfriend, but then again we're going to the city anyway, so it's not a big deal. We also see the guys we left at the brothel, and I'm glad to see them in one piece. I'd love to hear the entire story, but I'm too much of a gentleman to go into the (assumedly dirty) details with Serena in my arm. The guys resort to telling us that the place was fine and they got what they were looking for, and for a cheap price.
We walk around the breezy Warsaw. I buy Jay a new Nokia, and some Polish vodka to bring home. We pass an ice skating rink next to a shopping mall, and I briefly consider suggesting that to Serena. But then I realize that I don't want to make it a regular thing, but rather let her have that one experience that she'll hopefully remember forever.
The Unibet Open has around thirty people attending that I'm friendly with. It's starting to feel like a family reunion; guys from the PokerPages party, several friends from the Christmas party a couple of weeks earlier, foreign friends I met at the previous Unibet Open, media workers, managers and so on. There are also lots of celebrities – Unibet has a ”celebrity team” in each country where they have a significant market share, and they fly them over to these tournaments for publicity. There's a local celebrity who's apparently represented Poland in the Eurovision song contest. He's got spikey, fluorescent red hair and he's wearing sunglasses inside the dark restaurant – and that's the normal part. What's slightly more curious is that he likes to take his manly parts from his pants in front of everyone to show his penis piercing.
”I just got this, what do you think?”
The dinner takes ages, as our group is filling the entire high-class restaurant and preparing enough food to feed 70 people takes time. The upside is that booze is, again, on the house, so we get drunk again and I enjoy my time both talking to all my friends and Serena.
Once the dinner is over, we head to another high-class night club with an open bar. But there are now 300 poker players inside along with other customers, and with everyone trying to order free drinks at the same time the bar counters are a chaotic cluster****. I resort to a table with friends and we decide to make our own orders, and pay for table service to get trays of Vodka Red Bulls. Serena is sitting next to me, but after the first tray is downed she wants to go dancing to the blasting techno beats. Luckily there are other girls in our group, so I don't have to accompany her to the floor. I stay at the table with Jay, a few friends, and a guy that I don't recognize but who seems to be friendly with everyone else, so I introduce myself and we shake hands.
”Hey, I'm Miikka, by the way.” I consider adding something about the blog, but decide against it.
”What's up, I'm Ellis”, he says, smiling. ”You wanna do PLO flips 200 euros or so?
In his first ever sentence to me, the guy who's destined to become one of my best friends and a regular traveling partner for years to come, tries to get me to do drunken PLO flips. Seems fitting.
With my last 3000 euros burning in my pocket I'm happy to accept, as are a couple of other guys along with Jay, and we start flipping five ways. First for a hundred euros each, then two hundred. Once I'm down a bit, I start doing 500 euro flips heads up against Jay, who's the only person willing to give me action at those stakes. Of course, no one knows this is virtually all the money I have to my name besides what little I have left on my online accounts. It only takes a few flips to lose all of it except for a couple of hundred I've smartly set aside for the rest of the trip. Jay's trying to get me to continue, but I tell him I'm done.
He spots the watch in my hand, the one I bought from Vegas.
”How about your watch against some of the money?”
I really don't want to lose the watch. It's the last baller thing I have left, and if I lose it, I've officially achieved nothing in the last six months.
”Sure”, I hear myself saying.
It's a big flip. Jay deals me four high cards, double-suited, and a measly 6-6-3-2 rainbow for himself. I only need to hit one of my cards, and he's more or less drawing to a six. I manage to do that on the flop, and hit a flush draw to help my case on the turn. He has exactly one out, the six of diamonds left in the deck to beat me. When the river lands I'm genuinely surprised, because despite getting used to losing every significant flip ever, the odds of it hitting are so small. Yet there it is, the six of diamonds, staring at me. I take the watch off my wrist, admire once more how beautifully heavy it feels in my palms, and hand it over to Jay. But this time, I'm not finished.
”Let's do a few more of those 500 euro flips”, I hear myself suggesting. I'm in that gear again where I've lost control over my own actions. ”I'll pay you tomorrow if I lose.”
Jay accepts the offer grinningly, and I lose three thousand more in rapid succession. He's dealing every hand, and I don't even care if he's bottom dealing me or not. I just want to lose, to feel one step closer to the rock bottom. Serena's only spent 15 minutes on the dance floor, but during that time I've lost six thousand euros and my watch. I wonder if she's supposed to be the one saving me, after all, and not the other way. Right now I could use a guardian angel. I don't tell her about the flips, and my friends are smart enough to not mention them either. I'll be hiding my right wrist in my sleeve for the rest of the night to make sure she doesn't notice the watch missing.
I tell Jay I'll meet him at the lobby tomorrow, without a clue how I'm going to pay him. I figure I'm probably going to have to tell him that I'll need some time to pay him back, probably with a fat interest, but I don't want to say it just yet. It's going to be a long night, and miracles do happen. Waiting for one, I'm going to get ****faced.
I take the deck and throw it on the floor.
”No more flips, let's concentrate on the more important things in life”, I say, and grab the gigantic bottle of Grey Goose resting on the table.
”Hell yeah”, someone says and offers his glass for filling. I pour him so much vodka he can barely fit any Red Bull in.
Serena returns from the dance floor just in time, and offers me her glass next. I make drinks for the both of us, and we toast for a fun night ahead.
The last call comes relatively early, at three o'clock in the morning. I hear highrollers at the table next to ours discuss bribing the owners to keep it open for another two hours. The music is too loud to hear the details, but how I wish I hadn't lost my money on roulette and PLO flips so that I could offer a couple of thousand to join the pool. The ultimate baller move. Sadly I can't do anything but watch and see what happens.
We aren't escorted out until five in the morning, and head to the taxi stands with a group of eight or so people. Just like the previous night, a strip club is suggested.
”I've still never been to a strip club! Now we really have to go!”, Serena shouts with genuine enthusiasm in her voice.
We board two taxis, and this time there's a guy with us who knows the address of a place that's supposed to be the best in Warsaw. The driver knows it and it only takes five minutes to get there.
The club truly is great. I've never been one to enjoy strip clubs as much as the rest of the male population seems to, but if there's a place I'd want to frequent, it'd definitely be this. It's small, very upscale, the kind of place where you imagine the politicians and celebrities go to. The strippers are more like escorts, but they are very, very discreet, geisha-like. If you didn't know, you'd think they are just waitresses wearing sexy clothes.
We sit down at a nice, quiet area of leather coaches downstairs a few meters from a pole where an impossibly limber Russian-looking girl shows us her moves completely naked. There are stairs near where we are sitting that seem to lead to a some kind of private area.
Our personal waitress, who's wearing what looks like two napkins tied with a shoelace to cover her breasts, asks us what we'd like to drink.
”Five Vodka Red Bulls”, someone shouts.
”Each!”
A hazy hour or so later I'm starting to be drunk, too drunk. My speech is slurring and it's hard to keep up with my surroundings. I feel tired and energetic at the same time, and as a result am incapable of either resting or staying atop of things. I conversate with my friends but it's hard to follow what we are even talking about. Serena is like an Energizer bunny, running around, talking to the strippers. It's amusing to watch, but I don't have the energy to join them and ask what they are talking about.
At some point Serena leaves to go to the bathroom, and fifteen minutes later she hasn't come back. I get worried and eventually go knock on the door of the ladies bathroom. After all she's a nineteen-year old girl in a strip club in Poland, and no matter how upscale, I doubt it's the safest environment for a girl like her.
There's no response. No one is watching, so I open the door. To my amusement I find Serena having an intense conversation with one of the strippers.
”This is my new best friend!”
The stripper tells me that Serena would make for a great stripper, and tries to get her to audition.
”I'd love to!”, Serena says before I get to say a word.
I manage to convince her that it's not a good idea (and secretly fantasize that she'll audition to me in private later on), and we return to the table, but not before the stripper has given her phone number in case she wants to audition later. Once again, no one is immune to her spell. I wonder how many customers have asked the stripper for her number without ever receiving it, and yet here she's practically forcing Serena to add her as a contact.
Serena is sitting next to me, and I'm having an interesting talk about future live poker trips with my friends. They are considering going to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure at the Bahamas or maybe the Aussie Millions in Australia, both next month, and ask if I'd like to come along. In the middle of the conversation I notice that Serena is half asleep and starts leaning against my shoulder. When she's entirely passed out, the waitress asks if she'd like some coffee. The place truly is high-class, instead of throwing my passed-out girlfriend out they simply ask if she'd like some espresso. She mumbles something, which I take as a yes, and pass the request to the waitress. I secretly wish that the espresso will wake her up a bit, because I don't want to leave just yet. It's our last night in Warsaw, and I don't know when I'll see all these people next, living scattered across Finland, some even abroad in places like Thailand. And I don't want to go back to the hotel, because Jay will be there, and that'll mean I'll have to deal with the debt.
While we wait for the espresso, I gently help Serena to rest her head on my lap, using my thigh as a pillow. I get lost in the conversation with my friends again for what feels like ten minutes. When the waitress comes back, for the first time she doesn't give us a smile, but instead a horrified face. She nearly drops the espresso. I look at her face, puzzled, and then realize she's staring at Serena, who's facing her back against me.
I notice how pale she is. I shake her a bit to get her to wake up, but she's unconscious. I try to lift her up, but she's motionless like a dead fish. Her mouth is wide open, and there's vomit leaking from it, lots of it. Images from the overdose scene in Pulp Fiction fill my head. Images of Jimi Hendrix, my childhood idol, choking on his own vomit. These are the most horrifying seconds of my life, and also the most sobering. In a whim all the alcohol in my bloodstream disappears, and all I can feel is my racing pulse.
I roll her on her stomach and try to get her to puke on the floor.
Please, God, let her be alright.
There's a silence. It's the longest five seconds of my life. I'm nearly wetting my pants.
Just when I'm about to scream for an ambulance she starts coughing and vomiting furiously. She does that for maybe twenty seconds, and for a passing moment I think we're safe. Then, in the middle of vomiting, she somehow passes out again. There's lots of the stuff dripping from her mouth, and she's lying motionless again. She's breathing, but she's pale like a heroin addict. There's something else about her that just looks sick, too, I can't quite fathom what it is but she looks like she needs urgent medical care.
”Would you like us to clean that, sir?”, one of the escorts asks. Still they don't throw us out.
I try to examine Serena further, but it's hard because at the same time I have to worry about not accidentally breaking her neck or otherwise hurting her. She's only sleeping, but she seems lifeless, and no matter what direction I try to turn her to her limbs and head keep falling uncontrollably. And what symptoms would I be looking for anyway? Is she just too drunk, or is there something else? Should I take her to a hospital or just to the hotel?
The more sober guys in our group are also worried. They volunteer to leave with us, and we take a taxi to the hotel. She keeps vomiting on herself, her eyes aren't reacting. She's totally out of her mind, sleeping and vomiting at the same time. I'm closer and closer to calling ambulance, but at the same time, if there's any chance I definitely want to save her from a Polish gastric lavage operation.
As the taxi wanders through the dark streets dodging drunk party-goers I feel guilty, more guilty than I've ever felt about anything. I'm the one who dragged her to Poland and to all these parties. I'm the one who let her drink all the Vodka Red Bulls when I should've been controlling her. After the watch episode I'd wanted to get drunk and have a big night to forget about it, and I'd selfishly poured drinks for both me and her, when I should have been watching her, guarding her.
If she gets through this without further damage, I swear to never let this happen again.
The five stars in the logo of our hotel welcome our taxi, and we are offloaded. There's no valet outside at this hour, just us, three guys dragging an unconscious fragile-looking girl who's covered in vomit. I grab her from the arms, and my friends take her legs. To get to the hotel we must walk past the reception, and the girl working the night shift almost screams when she sees us. She comes to question us, and from my shock I can barely hear what she's saying. All I can hear is the word ”police” being repeated lots of times. I don't blame her, as we must look like we've picked a passed-out hooker from the street and are about to take her to our room to rape her. And then there's the vomit coming out from Serena's mouth on the red carpet.
When I open my mouth I really wish I've sobered enough to be able to explain the situation without slurring, and I have. Eventually she lets us go, and the guys help me to carry her all the way to our room. I haven't even closed the door behind me when the phone rings already. It's security, wanting to know if everything's fine. I tell them I certainly hope so, holding Serena in my arms.
I put down the phone, and I'm finally alone with Serena. She's sleeping on the floor, temporarily stopped vomiting. I try to wake her up, but she's still not responsive. She seems to be doing a little bit better; her skin has regained colour, she's breathing more deeply. I'm now somewhat convinced that she's not going to die on me if I just put her to bed, but before I can do that I'm represented with yet another problem. She's covered in vomit, head to toe. She has vomit not only on her dress, but also in her hair, her legs, her heels. No matter how hard I try, she doesn't wake up and is entirely incapable of cleaning herself up. She's staining everything she touches, and I don't really see it as a possibility to just lift her to bed. I don't want to leave her on the floor either, because what would be a worse way of waking up than from the floor, like a dog, covered in your own vomit? It appears that my only choice is to undress her and help her clean up, but even just the idea of it makes me feel like the lowest scum on earth. I've never seen her naked before. And I really, really don't want it to happen like this.
She's only wearing a beautiful, silvery dress and leggings, both now entirely covered in vomit. What if I only removed those, then she could at least still keep her underwear on?
I try to get her to wake up once more, shouting in her ear, throwing cold water on her face. She only responses by mumbling faintly, not even opening her eyes, and instantly passes out again. I don't think I have a choice.
I slowly, carefully start undressing her. I take her heels off and remove her leggings. I unzip her dress and manage to slide it off her, revealing her flat, toned stomach. The air condition has been blowing all night, and it's really cold in the room. She's shivering so hard that I worry she's going to catch hypothermia. And what's worse, she has vomit all over her bra as well. I don't how she's managed to do it, but somehow she's even vomited inside her bra. She's starting to turn pale, almost blue from the cold, and I see no other option but to take her to the shower.
There's a small plastic chair in the shower, the kind that elderly people might use. I have no idea why it's been placed in our bathroom – I'm pretty sure I haven't noticed it before – but it feels like a blessing. I help Serena to sit on it, and start running warm water over her, washing her hair. It's hard, because whenever I lose my grip on her for half a second she starts falling towards the floor incontrollably. If I lose my grip for two seconds she's going to get a concussion. I've never seen anyone so drunk before that they can't even lean against a wall on their own while sitting.
I wash her hair and her upper body with soap. I try to wash her bra from the outside, but it doesn't help, there's too much of the stuff inside. And I also realize that her bra is now all wet, and it's so cold in the room she's going to freeze if she's going to sleep with a wet bra on. It's not exactly how I imagined it would go down, but I don't have any other choice. I remove her bra with one hand while holding her with the other. It's the first time I see her breasts. A hollowing thought enters my mind.
What if she wakes up now without any memories of the situation, and thinks I'm trying to rape her?
I wash her as fast as possible, trying my best to not even look at her breasts. I make sure that she's warm everywhere, temporarily turn the water from warm to hot, until her cheeks are starting to turn rosey. Clean and no longer shivering, I wrap her in all the towels I can find like a mummy, and dry her with a blowdryer. After I've carried her to bed, I support her back with pillows to make sure she stays sideways so that she won't choke in her own vomit.
When I finally have her clean, warm, still and in a good posture for sleeping, I watch her doze while shivering myself. I've used every single towel to dry her, and now I'm freezing and covered in her vomit myself from the cleaning operation. I didn't get a chance to wash myself in the shower since I had to hold Serena the whole time. I'd love to take a warm shower now, but I can't. I'm still too worried about Serena. I hastily wash away the most of the vomit, not leaving her alone for more than thirty seconds, and tuggle under the heavy blanket wet and shivering. With the bedlight on, I spend the next three hours unable to sleep, monitoring her breathing.
Not on my watch.
At nine o'clock in the morning Serena opens her eyes. She looks at me confused, trying to say something, but she's still too drunk to talk. I give her a glass of water, stroke her hair and tell her she's alright.
”Just sleep a little more, I'll explain everything later. You're safe now, it's all that matters.”
She smiles faintly, corrects her position so that the pillows aren't under her back anymore, and appears somewhat normal. I take this as a safe sign to catch some sleep myself. I keep waking up every twenty minutes to nightmares of her choking.
I wake up late in the afternoon. Serena is still fast asleep, and for a few innocent seconds I adore her sleeping until I remember that I'll soon have to tell her the entire story, which involves stripping her of her bra with her being unconscious. I check my phone, and I see two missed calls from Jay.
****.
I wake Serena up, and she looks at me, smiling.
”Hey... what happened last night?”
”You don't remember anything?
”Not a thing. Why am I covered in all these towels?”
I tell her the whole story, only leaving off the part where I lost my money and my watch. I tell her that it was probably my fault as I was making her those drinks early on, and wasn't watching her later on. I tell her about how she was unconscious, the panic, the guilt. When I get to the part about undressing her I nearly sob, because I'm so afraid of her reaction. I tell her everything, and do my best to stress how I really didn't have a choice. I think she sees the panic in my eyes, and is able to conclude I'm not some pervert who did all this on purpose. She gives me a hug and thanks me for saving her.
When Serena's in the shower I call Ville Wahlbeck, who's also in Warsaw. Ville is a good guy, a little bit older, and one of the people who I've always idolized. Of all the people in Warsaw he seems to be my best shot to come up with the money this quick, because I'll have to pay Jay within hours or the whole thing is going to turn into a mess. And I don't want it to turn into a mess, because I don't know Jay, and with his strange behaviour and high stakes background he doesn't seem like the kind of guy you want to piss off. I think Ville will understand, he's been around degenerates long enough, and he has ties to both our magazine and PokerPages, which will hopefully give him enough incentive to think that I will, in fact, pay him back. Ville obliges, and tells me to pick up the money from his room. When I get there, he doesn't even ask any questions, just hands me six purple 500 euro bills. Just looking at me right now is probably more than enough to tell it's been a long night. I promise to pay him back within a couple of weeks.
I meet Jay at the lobby, and hand him over the bills. It's the first time I see him somewhat sober, and he's much less talkative now. He thanks for the money and disappears into the elevator, sporting a shiny watch. My watch. I'll only see Jay once more after this, and all his big talk about staking and putting me in tournaments never gets mentioned again. I'll later hear from multiple sources that he's never played a hand of high stakes PLO in his life, in fact he was just another degenerate who had got lucky to win a bit of money from something, and took all of it with him to Warsaw. Some degenerates are more lucky than others.
________________
So yeah, TOUCHE MOFOS. Now if you'll excuse me I'll head to the casino and buy myself a mojito.
