Monday, June 30, 2008

On the Boardwalk in Atlantic City...

During college, I went on a few trips with Fred, all of which I paid for – hotel, drinks, the works. Invariably he never seemed to have the money to cover his part -- including things like gas, food, or even coffee. This wasn't too bad though I rationalized, since most of our trips were short and didn't involve major investments. So you can imagine my surprise when Fred told me he had saved up and wanted to take me on a vacation to the beach. I was absolutely thrilled.

Turns out, that beach was Atlantic City -- I don't gamble. Fred however does, but I assumed we would still spend some time together at the shore. I was wrong. From the moment we got there he dragged me from casino to casino and refused to even consider going to the beach. He hadn't even bothered to pack a swim suit. Not to say that seeing the casinos wasn't neat. It was. I had never experienced the glamour of endless chain smoking, the hopeless clicking of the slot machines, or the women “working” the floor before. All of these side acts however paled in comparison to the real fun I experienced watching Fred lose money playing poker for hours on end.

Now I feel I should mention that when Fred had said he was saving up it turns out he didn't mean for a nice hotel or for going out to dinner. The money he had been saving was strictly for gambling. And I got to spend two days of watching my boyfriend, who had never so much as taken me out to dinner, blow $800 playing poker. Ok, that is actually not true. I only got to watch him blow $300. The other $500 was blown while I was sleeping -- he snuck out of the room at 4 AM to “get his money back.” At this point you may be wondering how we paid for meals, gas, and pretty much everything else on the way home. The answer is yours truly got to cover it all.

In the long run though I guess that was a small price to pay for getting Fred out of my life – which happened not long after – permanently.

1 comment:

Eric said...

Atlantic shitty isn't going to the beach... no offense to the people there, but I sincerely doubt that I would even go near the water. And perhaps fred needs to learn not to play poker after the first $300 loss... common sense is far too uncommon