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Opening and closing phrases for each paragraph in the article Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia (Part 1) By Colson Whitehead

POSTED JULY 27, 2011

Graphs:

• I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. My particular combo of slack features, negligible affect, and soulless gaze had helped my game ever since I started playing 20 years ago, when I was ignorant of pot odds and M-theory and three-betting, and it gave me a boost as I collected my trove of lore, game by game, hand by hand.

…Nature giveth, taketh, etc. You make the best of the hand you’re dealt.

• This thing draped over my skull and fastened by muscle is also a not-too-bad public transportation face, a kind of wretched camouflage, which would come in handy on my trip to Atlantic City.

… I had to get in shape.

• There was no question about taking a bus.

…My wife had the car now. We got divorced four days before.

• I’d been looking forward to a descent into some primo degradation to start my trip, a little atmosphere to match my mood, but of course the Port Authority was cleaned up now, like the rest of the city.

…I could be anywhere, starting a journey to any place, a new life or a funeral.

• I rushed to make the 3:30 bus and thought I’d have to gulp down a hot dog from a street vendor — fearing a grim return of said frank hours later at the table — but had time to pick up an Albacore tuna sandwich with dill, capers, and lemon mayo on marbled rye, and an artisanal root cola, all for 10 bucks across the street at Dean and Deluca.

…Greyhounds are raised in deplorable puppy mills and drugged up for the racetrack, I think I read somewhere, and Peter Pan used to enter kids’ bedrooms and entice them, so perhaps there is a core aspect to the bus industry that defies rebranding.

• The bus was state of the art, like it had Wi-Fi, and I sat two rows up from the lav and did not smell it.

…This being life, and not literature, we’ll have to make do with this: A middle aged man, already bowing and half-broken under his psychic burdens, decides to take on the stress of being one of the most unqualified players in the history of the Big Game. A hapless loser goes on a journey, a strange man comes to gamble.

• According to the two crew-cuts in the row in front of me, the weekly pool party at their casino was killer, but I wasn’t going to make it over there

… We passed the one- and two-story buildings of downtown — clapboard homes, broken chapels, purveyors of quick cash — that seemed washed up against the casinos like driftwood and plastic, and then we pulled into the Plex .

• Growing up in the city, I never went to a lot of malls, so I didn’t have those psychological scars my Midwestern friends have, who cringed at the thought of all the adolescent afternoons spent mindlessly drifting across the buffed tile.

…Consumer theorists, commercial architects, scientists of demography were working hard to make the Plex better, more efficient, more perfect, analyzing the traffic patterns and microscopic eye movements of shoppers, the implications of rest room and water fountain placement, and disseminating their innovations throughout the world for the universal good. Even if we fail ourselves in a thousand ways every day, we can depend on this one grace in our lives. We are in good hands.

• Anyone who’s gambled in the past 20 years knows that casinos are the highest exponent of Plex technology, high rollers in the Leisure Industrial Complex.

… If there is a gap in perimeter, through which an unfulfilled wish might escape, it will be plugged by your next trip. They even have bus depots.

• Some casinos are equipped with snap-on bus depots, an optional component for the base model.

…I checked in, had some buffalo wings for fuel, and soon I was in the Tropicana Poker Room.

• I found my degradation

…I was among gamblers.

• I sat down at a 1-2 table with some types I would encounter with some frequency during my training. Like Big Mitch.

…He will be less vocal about his failures, as we all are.

• Next to two Big Mitches was a Methy Mike, a harrowed man who had been tested in untold skirmishes, of which the poker table was only one.

…Will, seeing pocket jacks demolish some weekend punter, tell the table, “Let me tell you a sad story about a pair a jacks.” A sad story for every hand, every one of the 1326 possible starting combinations.

• And then there was Robotron, squeezed in there, lean and wiry and hunkered down, a young man with sunglasses and ear buds, his hoodie cinched tight around his face like a school shooter or a bathroom loiterer.

…Their ear buds help keep em out, playing music, self-help manuals, “The Art of War” as read by Edward James Olmos, or the latest invasion plans transmitted from their home planet.

• There was one woman at the table, a quiet 60-something lady with bright red hair, the follicles of which it was perhaps possible to count.

…I liked her.

• I will now take a moment to explain Hold ‘em to the lay reader, I don’t mind. In my home games, I often assumed the mantle of the Explainer, laying out the rules for the newbies — the indulging girlfriend, the language poet in town for the weekend, and, maddeningly, people I had played with dozens of times before.

…Nowadays my poker neophytes are on their own.

• You start with two cards.

…Two dollars is two dollars, we live in a capitalist society.

• Everything begins and ends with these two cards.

…”If it worked once, I can make it happen again.” (This analogy makes the most sense to misanthropes, I reckon.)

• Then comes the Flop: three communal cards in the middle of the table. Sharing with strangers — we’ve moved from capitalism to communism.

… Checking is ducking from artillery, like if I lie low maybe I won’t get hit and my lot will improve. Taking a second to see what’s going on.

• Then comes the next communal card, the Turn, as in: Turn the corner to see the next obstacle fate has thrown in your path, three goddamned tourists walking shoulder to shoulder so you can’t progress, or Godzilla.

…Finally we get to the last card, the River, and fortune’s drifts and eddies have borne you to a safe harbor, or you suddenly discover that pirates crept aboard a few rounds ago and you’re about to be robbed: Hold ‘em.

• About Limit and No Limit: I have good card sense, I’m a pretty good player in my five-dollar buy-in game, in the way that a lot of people are good in low-stakes games.

…Over five hours, you got your money’s worth.

• In No Limit, that’s where you get the ladies and gentlemen dropping their genitals on the table declaring “All in!” You can bet your whole stash, it’s crazy.

… The stakes are intensified, but if you bust out, you can still go into your pocket.

• In a tournament, if you go all in and lose, you’re out.

• Tonight was a warm-up. Tomorrow I was playing in my first casino tournament.

… The lady with the crimson hair fondled her chips, and I played tight and I won 81 dollars. Chickenfeed, but enough to cover the entrance fee for tomorrow’s tournament.

• I returned to my room.

…I flashed to how happy my daughter was when I told her I won 100 bucks in a game last summer. “One hundred dollars!” She believed in me. (Here’s a tip for new parents: Start lowering those expectations early, it’s going to pay off later.)

• I was lucky.

• I was gonna play in the Big Game and give it my best shot. It was not the National Series of Poker, it was the World Series of Poker, and I would represent my country, the Republic of Anhedonia.

…I contain multitudes, most of them flawed.

• Plus, I’ve always wanted to wear sunglasses indoors.

(Source: grantland.com)