Imagine a world where logic and reason are
suspended. Where the inhabitants occupy an underground
lair, speak in a cryptic language, and practice their
own archaic customs. Its heroes are admired for
seemingly rash or ridiculous actions. No, this is not
some lost tribe still on the fringes of civilization.
This is the world of Thursday night poker.
For 14 years and in three different houses, our
host, Will, provided a sanctuary for our insane card
play. Over those years, I changed jobs three times,
divorced, remarried, started a family, moved overseas
for two years, and came back. Thursday nights
continued. Last year the games ended when Will took a
job in Atlanta and sold his house.
Will's second house, a bungalow, built from a
Sears Roebuck Craftsman kit from the 1920s, was the
most memorable lair for our Thursday night rituals.
Located in one of those funky, eclectic North
Arlington neighborhoods, his house shared the same
block with a used car lot, a church and the Virginia
Square Metro stop.
We congregated in his basement, an unfinished
room with a concrete slab floor and cinder block
walls, with little more than a hexagonal card table
under a bare light bulb. The entertainment system may
have been the last turntable sold commercially. Music
was limited to the same scratched collection of Johnny
Cash, George Jones, Patsy Cline, Johnny Horton and
Marty Robbins. CDs, tapes or anything new was not
tolerated.
The floor was littered with beer cans ankle
deep, and the regulars would be upset whenever Will
tried to shovel them into a garbage bag every couple
months. Maintaining the right ambiance was important.
We were a collection of government attorneys,
congressional staffers, executive recruiters, computer
engineers and PR executives and came from jobs where
the straitjacket of professional demeanor ruled our
day. Here, in the bunker, we could tell jokes, rant
and revert to juvenile behavior without recrimination.
Serious Texas Holdem poker players would find
our game a nightmare. A couple of us had skill at the
game but others would play a hand based on a whim or
because they simply weren't paying close attention.
Some players bet odd amounts chosen for no other
reason than the annoying number of chips others would
have to fish out of their tray. Yes, you wanted to
take your friend's money, but if you ever wanted the
money more than the camaraderie, you wouldn't last.
Like the British constitution, we had laws that
remained unwritten. Unlike the British constitution,
our code followed more the logic of Lewis Carroll than
Lord Blackstone. One minute we'd strictly observe the
rules of a "guts" game, where if only one player went
in on the hand, he should by rights "walk" with the
pot, and the next moment the sidelined players would
throw the rules out the window and force a challenger
into the game. We called it "taking the poke," and
seeing any hesitation in another player, we'd
encourage him with cries of, "C'mon, take the poke."
This had the entertainment value of forcing a fight,
like a slow day at the Roman Colosseum when management
was running short of contestants to challenge
well-equipped gladiators. The mob demanded that the
unwitting participant be thrown into the arena, if
only for the spectacle of more bloodshed.
You could avoid this humiliation by a concept we
called "honor." Instead of waiting for "the poke," you
could pound your fist on the table, which signaled
that you were playing. The others at the table would
say in mock Conan the Barbarian intonations, "he has
honor." The greater the stakes and the worse the
challenger's cards, the more honor he would have.
I can't explain the language that developed at
the table except to say that anthropologists would
have fodder for a few dozen case studies. Terminology
devolved to the point where we contemplated a glossary
to translate our conversations to newcomers. Verbal
and humor skills hovered at the sixth-grade level --
repeating movie and cartoon lines, rhetorical
flourishes, or brief debates on the lyrics of the same
songs we'd heard 100 times before.
Wives or girlfriends would ask for news of our
friends. "Well, how is Will?" "Is he dating anyone?"
or "How is John's family?"
The usual response was, "I don't know."
"Well, what do you talk about?"
It's hard to explain that you might have a
four-hour poker game and exchange only rude and
sophomoric comments but no real news. Catching up on
our personal lives did not occur to us.
The night before the bungalow was to be
condemned as part of the late '90s development pushing
through Arlington, we played one last game. For
reasons on which I was never clear, Will insisted that
we clean the mess of beer cans in the basement. Days
later, the house along with the rest of the block was
bulldozed into rubble, and a new high-rise brick
building with sterile, soulless condos was erected.
Will searched for a new house, telling his Realtor he
must have an appropriate basement to accommodate a
card table. We played four more years in his third
house, nestled in a respectable neighborhood of Falls
Church. This time we were forbidden to toss empty beer
cans on the floor.
Last year, when he sold his house and moved to
Atlanta, the games ended. I rarely see the regulars
anymore. A few times I've driven by the site of the
Arlington bungalow where the high-rise stands and
wondered if, like the spirits of "The Amityville
Horror," our spirits live on as
Texas Holdem
poker poltergeists. Perhaps some young urbanite
relaxing in his condo on a Thursday night is puzzled
by voices that whisper, "Take the poke."
