There's nothing like it. You look down at stacks of checks in front of you, you push them forward and say those three words - I'm all in. The gut tells you this is the one - the hand of a lifetime. Next thing you know, you're looking at an inside straight draw with salvation coming on the river. Somewhere along the way, you got careless, forgot about the odds, and now only got one out.

She was that once-in-a-lifetime hand. The one pot that would make you walk away from the game if you took it down. But she was a hand I had no business playing. You know, on those poker shows, they show you the percentages of each player. I always felt sorry for the guy whose percentage lowers with each card, oblivious to the eight percent he's riding. Yet he still calls bets, even raises for God's sake. Somehow he thinks - no, believes he do the improbable.

Then the river card. I don't remember much of what happened after. I saw flashes, then heard cheers. I heard the word congratulations and shook some hands. Then I walked away, into the darkness.

I've thought about that hand since - not obsessively, I don't think. My friends would ask if I'd ever go all in again on gut feeling. You know, she used to say love was a calculated risk, not reckless like poker...well, bad poker anyway. You say I'm all in, but how different is it from saying those other three words? I think I would.

posted by: proper villain

Bell's ringing @ 11:49 PM

 0 hands raised

Of the many things she said that enchanted me the one statement that always made me gag was when she compared her addiction to her ex-boyfriend to that of someone dealing with a health deteriorating drug-related disease. I thought, "shit, are you so lost in your self-victimization you didn't realize that what just said wasn't only ridiculous but incredibly insensitive?"

I AWOKE from a cough. As they say, a lung came up.

It was freezing in her room even though a beautiful Spring day was approaching our world in about 20 minutes. It wasn't any warmer in the sheets. A chilling draft ran down the contour of my spine to remind me where I was. A long 4 hours ago the same bed was as muggy and dangerous as Jurassic Park.

I coughed again. The whole night prior was swimming in my mouth: from the first Patron shot to the fifth last cigarette of the night. Oh, and she still was sweetening my lips too.

What was it about her? What was it that made me arrive at this same place even after every time I told myself the last was already one too late? Before the obligatory regret began to rattle my brain (or it could've been the dehydration - by now, it's happened so much that I can't tell the difference) she moved. Suddenly my back had regained warmth. And I broke.

"I can't fucking do this anymore," I muttered to myself but loud enough for her to take notice.

Unfazed, she turned around and pulled her arm around my bare shoulder. I sat up.

"I'm gonna smoke."

"What's wrong?" she asked - like she didn't know.

"How many times are we going to wake up to this before we realize we shouldn't fall asleep to it?" I said. The frustration had settled into my mood.

She stayed silent.

"I need a cigarette."

A year ago, all of this silly sex shit was fine. Shots, sweat, sex, sleep. Rinse and repeat. But things have changed. She talks about family and happiness, but leaves my name out of the equation. The dudes that made it into the punchline of those designs of the future, have come and gone. Literally. Each time, she knew where to cover her losses. We were all the safety nets - the defacto morning after "what the fucks" to cover up the "tracks" from her so-called addiction. Yep. We are all rebounds. I'm just the championed sucker.

I coughed again as I stepped onto the sidewalk under the window of her bedroom. It really was a beautiful day outside. I never understood what was wrong with the air in that room.

I coughed a few more times. Fucking cigarettes. I took a final drag and flicked the butt into a tin can filled about a quarter way up with stale rain water from the storm three weeks ago. "Someone's gotta clean that up sometime," I thought to myself, "but it ain't gonna be me."

I stretched under the increasingly blue sky, inhaled the freshness of a new day, and unleashed a string of coughing so strong my eyes were burning as badly as my chest.

"I really have to quit this shit," I grumbled to myself. Then I walked back upstairs to the cold room and crawled into bed to find warmth.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 9:38 PM

 0 hands raised

I earned this one. I'm not going to pluck it out to a) further thin my hair, or b)kid myself that there aren't a dozen more. Besides. I earned them. This one here, behind my left ear. That's "David". I didn't know what ipso facto meant when it counted most during student teaching, ipso facto, I'd never forget its meaning. This one on top, at my crown? The wiry short one that sticks up when all my other hair is neat in place on a rare day? That is "Rosa". She got good grades, passed the exit exam, and after we practiced day in and day out until she could write a flawless essay about the proudest day in her life, graduating from middle school in Mexico, she was denied the chance to cross the stage at graduation because she couldn't write a perfect essay in 70 minutes. "Rosa" who struggled through school all day, didn't have her papers, and worked all night cleaning offices at 17. "Mo" moves around a lot. I used to pluck him out, but the next day I'd see him. Class clown. Clowned so much that the one day he was serious, and he responded to the prompt, "If you could walk a day in my shoes..." everyone laughed. And he responded, "Why are you laughing?" And put his head down. This one is the one that was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got expelled. I didn't help him. And while sometimes I think if I watched the Breakfast Club, I could see Principal Vernon's point of view for once, I carry these gray hairs and refuse to dye them as I kiss my twenties good bye. They are little ghosts of lives I carry among those lives for which I was/am entrusted for 54 minutes, 5 days a week for 180 days. I wouldn't want them gone for anything.

posted by: *just lisa*

Bell's ringing @ 9:46 PM

 0 hands raised

Middle School was crazy for all of us. We were kids. We wanted to be adults, but still be kids at the same time. For most of us, it was the craziest time of our lives. When I got through high school I thought it would be done. How the hell am I back there in my 20s?

Welcome to the 19th Grade. It's back to the Middle School for us adults.

Bell's ringing @ 1:45 PM

 0 hands raised