The clickity-click of poker chips spills out to the six of us waiting for a table. We're old college buddies, drunk since one this afternoon, sporting the ball caps our wives never let us wear. We brag. About our poker wins, how easy it is to read each other, how we can figure the odds. Even as we worry—deep below the alcohol and overloud laugher, we worry—the other men are better players. And luckier too.
We sit together and joke we could've stayed home, played in one of our garages. Except we never play cards at home, too busy with wives and kids and lacking that chauvinistic will our fathers had on the front porches of our youth, drinking Lone Star as our mothers cooked and cleaned and tucked us into bed. We've pledged to be different sort of men—we kiss boo-boos, we read Dr. Seuss. We say things like clickity-click.
The cards fall well for some and not so well for others. We order drinks. We rib one another about our heavy bellies and fattening wives. We show off our chip tricks: spin one down the knuckles, slide two stacks of eight into one of sixteen. Hours pass. Some lose a lot; others double up, triple up. The winners laugh, knowing success is owed to them—with their wives so unwilling and their children so difficult to raise. The losers stiffen, knowing that failure is part of the pattern—why their wives are so unwilling and their children are so difficult to raise.
The winners want to go out for steak. The losers want the hotel buffet. We settle on a chain restaurant we can find back home. The winners have their steak overdone. The losers have sandwiches, still too pricey. No one can stop talking about poker. We lecture each other about our bad plays. We brush off attempts to talk about college and women. A few stop talking all together. We wipe our mouths and wonder why we even came, why we believed we all still shared something real.
We return to the tables. The cards fall. Our chips tricks fail. We think about our wives, our children, think about our fathers: they would have known how to make a loser laugh, how to get a winner to pay. We can change diapers and snuggle on couches, but we never learned how to stand on the porch, drinking beer, unfazed by each other's struggles, knowing what we share can't be taken away by fortune, good or bad. Our fathers understood things we've never known. Or so we think. Or so we hope, as the chips go clickity-click and no one now is speaking.
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Originally appeared in Bull.
wow.
i LOVE this story.
I'm 'inspired' by it and am off to write my own
(no, i wont plagiarize :)
"We settle on a chain restaurant we can find back home." GOOD
"We wipe our mouths and wonder why we even came, why we believed we all still shared something real." GREAT
"We can change diapers and snuggle on couches, but we never learned how to stand on the porch, drinking beer, unfazed by each other's struggles, knowing what we share can't be taken away by fortune, good or bad. Our fathers understood things we've never known. Or so we think. Or so we hope, as the chips go clickity-click and no one now is speaking." FUCKING PERFECT
This is so good--every detail.
Lovelovelove the use of "clickity-click"
"The winners laugh, knowing success is owed to them—with their wives so unwilling and their children so difficult to raise. The losers stiffen, knowing that failure is part of the pattern—why their wives are so unwilling and their children are so difficult to raise."
Love that mirrored take on life, neither group realising they are just like the other.
Great take on the grass is greener idea.
Thanks for the kind words. The guys at Bull did some killer editing on this.
Alan, I love when editors help like that. Check out my "What I'd Say" piece if you get a chance. Started off as a flash then bumped to 1001 so could sub to Storyg (at time not taking flash). Steve G made some great suggestions so I bumped up to 4000. He liked more but wanted more so I also sent to Ellen Parker/FRiGG who wanted it subject to my agreeing to some edits before publishing. WOrking with her on the edits dramatically improved the story. Editors can be amazing like that. I'm editing for JMWW and I try to always remember folks like Steven and Ellen. D
I actually read "What I'd Say" last night and thought it was incredible. Wasn't surprised to read at the end that you struggled with stuttering -- you can feel the truth of that story in every section.
And, yeah, good editors rock.
Hey, Alan, thank you so much. Man, I'm fired up to hear that. I debated on what to put in the comments but when I was workshopping the story I got a lot of folks asking me all kinds of crazy stuff about my poor dad. :)
And I meant Steven McDermott at Storyglossia (what the fuck am I saying Steve G for - I was tired this morning) was/is amazing, as is Ellen.
Thanks again, man, and great to have you on here.
Totally with Jay on this: the winners and losers thinking the inverse of their very same wives and children is excellent. Good piece. You almost lost me at the end, the idea that our fathers knew anything more than us, that they weren't just as completely lost. But the last two sentences nail that worry shut.
Really great.
Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it.
Excellent from start to finish. Loved it. The "we" narrator and the simple, straight-forward dissection of all those male, fatherhood insecurities and ideas.
Thanks, Brendan. Glad you enjoyed.
Holy hell. LOVE this.