You don’t choose writing; writing chooses you. Writing has been a source of great comfort as well as great discomfort to me. On a good day you feel like God. On a bad day you feel like hell. I’m anxious when I’m not writing. Writing may be an addiction as much as it is a calling.
I’ve written all my life—plays, screenplays, short stories, essays, novels, laundry lists. You name it and I’ve probably written it. Traveling around in my imagination puts me in another time zone. When I’m writing, time flows differently. I can sit down at ten in the morning, then get up, surprised to find it’s already three in the afternoon! I’d never found anything that made me lose track of time as much as writing—until I discovered poker.
Eight years ago I was trolling around the web when I happened upon Pokerstars, an online site that offered poker games for fake chips as well as real money. My grandmother had taught me several card games, including canasta and poker games like five card draw, and stud. She was a bit of a shark, my granny. I therefore knew what beat what in poker. But I’d never played No Limit Hold’em. So I put a cautious toe in and started playing online for fake chips.
I’d never found anything that made me lose track of time as much as writing—until I discovered poker.I amassed so many of these worthless ducets that I figured I must be pretty good at this game. (It’s called beginners luck for a reason.) I started playing for real money, wiring money to Costa Rica to enter tournaments mostly. My online persona was nothing like my real self. In real life, I’m a older woman and a fairly gentle soul, if you don’t count the fact that I write about murder. Online, I was “Bluffalobill239,” a twenty-something, out of work rabid football fan who was mad, bad, and dangerous to play with. I did pretty well as my young male alter ego. I enjoyed the power and the deception of being someone else and competing in what appeared to be mainly a man’s world.
Then one morning, I logged on, sipping my coffee, wearing a sweat suit and fuzzy slippers as usual, all set for the day’s tournaments and a little writing in between. Poker had become more of an addiction than a calling at that point. I was horrified to see an alarming sign on the screen. The site had been shut down by order of the United States government! Online gambling had been declared illegal in America due to massive violations of banking regulations and other chicanery. To poker players, April 15, 2011, would forever be known as Black Friday.
Faced with this forced withdrawal from online poker, I went into a mild depression. A year later, a friend told me about a home game I could play in if I was interested. I was. But I was also terrified at the thought of playing live poker where people could see me as I really am: An old bat. I went anyway. At that game I met some sympathetic souls who said I had good card sense but I didn’t know what I was doing. They offered to help me with my game. I learned the real basics of No Limit Hold’em. But I knew I had a long way to go.
To poker players, April 15, 2011, would forever be known as Black Friday.I started playing live poker on a regular basis where people could see me as I really was: An older woman with little experience of the game. As such, I looked like an easy target for the sharks. But I kept on playing, learning from experience. I played poker every chance I got with everyone from a Supreme Court Justice to the guy who delivered take-out from a pizza joint. I played in casinos, home games, a dicey venue off a back alley where I climbed up three flights of a rusting fire escape and was admitted by a password. I learned that poker is theatre: Every hand a scene, every player an actor. The writer in me was working overtime, searching for a way to fold poker into the book I was desperately trying to get a handle on.
Gradually, I got braver in poker, learning how to exploit my image as a harmless little old lady who plays Old Lady Poker when, in fact, I was learning to play Street Poker from the pros. That realization was the key to the book. Being underestimated is an asset in poker. Why couldn’t it be an asset in crime?
I’m still amazed at how quickly time passes when I’m writing or when I’m at the poker table. Are they addictions or callings or both? Whatever they are, I’m hooked. Yet, I often stop and think of the wonderful exchange between Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s great existential play, Waiting for Godot.
Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: But not so rapidly.
My sentiments exactly!
