Hey! Welcome back! I see you’re here to hear more about my exciting life. Or at least, to read whatever I happen to say. That’s cool too. As long as I’m not just shouting out in the void, hoping to make the void chuckle. I do that enough when I’m trying to write a new book, and I’d rather not have to do it while just living my life.

But speaking of changing the subject…

I spent the other two hundred dollars the next day. For a little while, I was up. If I was in it for the money, I would have stopped. But I was in it for the good time. I wanted to see how long it would take me to lose the money. More importantly, I wanted to know what it felt like to lose the money.

I always try new things, just to see what they feel like. It makes it easier to joke about them later; and much easier to write about them. I mean, how well could I possibly write someone losing money gambling, if I’ve never done it myself? I can talk about the gripping fear, the paranoia of losing it all that prevents people from ever gambling. Sure. That’s no problem. But what about the rush that comes when you put your entire stake on a long shot? That feeling of elation when you win, and the crushing of your hope when you lose; that alone is worth the price of admission.

Some people avoid betting for the strangest reasons. Some people refuse to gamble because they think they’re the type of person who might get addicted, and they don’t want to run the risk. That makes sense to me. There are a lot of things that I don’t do because I’m afraid I’ll like it too much. Things that will distract me from writing, and will be a huge waste of time. And of talent. Mine, I mean. So I get that.

But the people who refuse because they think they’re the kind of person who should win, who should be able to do a great job, and they’re afraid to discover that they’re wrong. They don’t want to learn that they are less suave than they pretend to be. That just boggles my mind. Why pin your whole self esteem on something as silly as luck? Why not pin it on something more meaningful, like whether or not you get a prize from your breakfast cereal that day.

Most of the time, you see these people hovering around the poker table. They’re trying to read tells, trying to see how well they would do. Of course, they walk around, if possible, and see all the available hands, so they have privileged information. They know who’s bluffing, so they know that they wouldn’t have fallen for it. They talk a good game, but give them a chance for a real game, even one where the stakes are just nickels and dimes, and they won’t want to play. They’ll claim that they just don’t like playing with friends, or that the stakes aren’t high enough, or some crap like that. But the truth of the matter is that they don’t want to find out that they’re wrong about themselves. Don’t want proof, anyway. They want to keep their illusions. I guess I can see that.

Illusions are fun.

I can’t quite think that way, but I guess I could write about someone who did. I mean, I understand it intellectually. I took some psych courses in college. I’ve read a few books about the mind and how it works. I know that denial isn’t just a bad pronunciation of a river in Egypt. I also know it’s not just an atrocious spelling of Regis. But then, everyone knows that.

So I spent my money gambling, wanting to know what it was like to lose it. At one point, I was up to about six hundred dollars. That’s triple what I started with. That made the losing it so much more important.

Maybe I’m fooling myself. Maybe I’m just pretending that I didn’t care, that I wanted to lose it, instead of just admitting to myself that I got greedy and I was stupid, and I should have walked away when I had the chance. Maybe that’s it. I tell myself that I wanted to lose, for the experience of it. Then I could at least write about it, and it wouldn’t be a total loss. It’s probably how the guy who refuses to gamble because he’s not that type of person would rationalize losing the money. He would just say that he intended, all along, to lose. That would at least hold up the illusion.

Doesn’t matter. I didn’t come to Vegas to gamble. I came because of this whole convention thing. So I didn’t compromise with myself and get more money to gamble with. When I ran out of money, about two o’clock on Thursday afternoon, I spent the rest of the day reading. I’d brought enough novels that I wasn’t going to run out, hopefully, and even if I did, I’d just buy another one. It’s not important.

I spent the night reading and writing, though not at the same time. That’s a trick I’ve never quite mastered. I sat with my laptop on a desk, making me wonder why I still call it a laptop, and stared out the window at all the lights, glitz, and glamour of that town called Vegas. It wasn’t as inspiring as I’d hoped it would be. After about an hour, I closed the curtain and turned the desk to face the wall. So I suddenly had nothing to distract me, and I was staring at a wall. That helped me be funny. The view outside was just making me cynical and sarcastic.

In the morning, it will be Friday. This is nothing unusual. It happens every morning after I go to sleep on a Thursday night. Except one time, but that was a special occasion. Anyway, I set my alarm for seven thirty-four, meaning I will be awake and ready to interact with the world promptly at nine o’clock. Or maybe promptly at nine o’ seven.

Let’s just call it nine-ish sharp.