June | 2005 | H.G.T.

Deadwood long writeup-y thingy:

After narrowly securing a pair of days off, I hopped in a car with a pair of firearms enthusists, a child, and a small musician and headed for Deadwood, South Dakota. We made good time and freely partook of juiceboxes and airconditioning. The firearms enthusists are actual parents, as opposed to simple progentiors de baby, and brought ample distractions, which they employed with skill to quiet the child and the musician. Both were well behaved on the drive.

We arrived, met the rest of our group, and occupied our suites, then we commenced ta gamblin. The first night, we tried to simply stick our heads into every sin-parlour in town, and give each a slice of our money.

We also had some Chinese food, in a place called, of all things, Miss Kitty’s. Miss Kitty’s humble establishment would go on to play a substantial part in my gamblin’ experience, but more on that later.

The first thing I noticed about gamblin’ with this bunch of loons was that El Musico (they all need pseudonyms, do they not?) is a lucky bitch. Seriously. The guy probably won $300 in nickels over a weekend playing slots.

As we made our way up and down mainstreet (for those familiar with Deadwood only through HBO, it does sit in a very narrow, very steep gulch, which the series shows in wide shots but fails to convey in totality – the upshot is that the whole town is only about 6 blocks wide and has to get longer to expand), I explored each establishment checking the poker boards.

By an odd coincidence, the cheapest game in town was at the establishment in the basement of the Chinese place. Since I had become almost superstitously convinced that I would win nothing while El Musico was sitting next to me, I decided to ditch the rest of the crew and play some poker – an avocation with which they were all unfamiliar with and intimidated by.

Now, here’s the kicker. They bring you free drinks while you play. I think, in the case of poker geniuses like myself, this is so that we can handicap ourselves and still have fun with normal mortals.

Since it was already about ten, and several members of our poker playing temporary table family were already the rough equivelents of sponges soaked in gin, I felt obligated to catch up. Time does funny things at a poker table, doubly so when you’re drinking, and soon, I’d caught up.

There was a couple there celebrating their honeymoon – which they did by demonstrating an ability to hit two four of a kinds in half an hour. . . both times when I had a flush.

There was the drunken chiropracter who kept threatening to adjust our L3s. There was the older guy who introduced himself as “Bob,” and a local guy that just sat waiting for aces and not making too much trouble otherwise, and our rotating dealers, Ole (that’s Olly, not oh-lay) and Justin, who we quickly dubbed Sven for reasons of ethnic-joke compatability. There were a few others in and out, but that was the cast when we started.

When we finished however, the cast had changed. It was now The Drunken Chiropracter, the Drunken Local, the Drunken Couple, the Drunken Bob, the Drunken Cook From Upstairs Who Sat Down at About Midnight, and the Drunken Me . . . and Sven and Olly, the Sober and Very Tired Dealers Who Were Getting Sick of Our Goddamned Mouths.

We were bad. We were profane. We were lippy with floorstaff and we made fun of the blackjack players next door for wearing khaki pants. We were breaking fundamental rules of poker, like “Don’t pass out over your goddamned hand” and “try not to drop your cards on the floor” and (this one goes out to the Drunken Chiropractor) “Don’t offer the cocktail waitress your penis as a tip”

But . . . we were having a damn good time.

The only lowpoint of that table was the wife of the new couple displaying this weird streak of Peggy-Hill style Friendly Racism. When the cook from upstairs sat down, she asked his name, which she couldn’t pronounce, and, hearing his accent, said, “oh, you must make good rice” (he was a hispanic feller). We all just kind of looked at her and just played cards. She took to calling him Jose Cuervo because she couldn’t say his name, and finally, when I told her that was some bullshit, she asked him his name again, and he looked her in the eyes and said, “You can call me Papi.”

She goes “What’s that mean in English?”

And he goes, “It means I get to put it wherever I want.”

They threw us out around two, and I was down a bit too much. I discovered waiting voicemails, stating the hour and that my party had returned to the hotel. When I got back, I slept. End part one.