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Every year I carve some time out of my busy schedule and travel with my gay boyfriends. As I get older my female friends fall prey to husbands, babies, and other obligations. Only my gay friends are always single, always fabulous, and ready to trot around the globe at a moment's notice.
This year it is Barcelona. We are staying at the Hotel Axel, a chic upscale gay hotel in the heart of the city. My room is all white and chrome and decorated with a large light box featuring a full frontal of a nude man. This same guy is in all the rooms in various other configurations… backal… sidal… Apparently I am the lucky one.
After we settle in, our days fall into a pattern. We wake around two and have breakfast (gazpacho and sangria) by the pool, where I am surrounded by a sea of tanned muscular bodies. I try to hide my lack of abs with my reading material, which is Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book. Unfortunately for me, it’s just that… green and little. My untoned flesh spills out on either side. However, no one is checking me out anyway, so it really doesn’t matter.
As the boys cruise each other, I highlight salient points (it really is a great book) and play Poker Academy on my computer. Every now and then, I fall into a sleepy wine-infused doze (like you do on vacation) and dream of cheering, punctuated by Norm and Chad yelping, “This is amazing! No one has EVER won the Ladies’ Event two years in a row!”
Six o’clock is tapas time, when we switch to red wine in preparation for dinner. Tapas lasts about two hours, and features a lot of greasy things swimming in oil… fried sardines, fried cheese, fried vegetables… After tapas, a tiny siesta to recover from our exhausting day so we will be ready for…
Dinner! Dinner starts at 11:00 and lasts three hours. I try to eat things that I see in the window; cranky lobsters, hairless suckling pigs, giant haunches of Iberian ham… At dinner we drink vodka (to clean out our system). By dessert, which everyone eschews but me, we are quite giddy.
Disco time. Okay, here’s where I die. I watch the dancers writhing around in a drug-fueled frenzy, pumping their fists to what my friend Paul calls “angry music.” There are lots of English girls clad in short chiffon dresses inexplicably paired with pirate boots, (thank you Sienna Miller) and lots of boys with footballer haircuts. It is very hot, and loud, and everyone dances with a cigarette in their hand. In order to truly enjoy the evening you have to drink more, and really, there’s only so much my body can take.
So after the first time, I opt to return to the hotel and play poker on the internet instead. While my friends, slathered in glitter, are dancing on the go-go boxes at Pacha, I am bathed in the glow of Mr. Full Frontal, happily checkraising mnstrpot all in. When I’ve lost a suitable amount (Scott Fischman says I play “trickledown poker,” which means as the evening progresses, my money slowly leaks away from me), I call Phil. He always picks up the phone with a scrambling sound.
“Hold on a second,” he says, breathing heavy. This is followed by two minutes of transatlantic silence while he logs out of his games one at a time. After the last game blinks into oblivion, he returns to the phone with his full attention.
Conversation with Phil requires some deciphering. He speaks his own special language. “Two, three of hearts…” he’ll say without preamble. “The flop; King, three, seven…two hearts. I bet. He raises, I call. The turn… blank. I check, he checks. The river, jack of hearts. I bet, he goes all in, I call! Crowbar!!! Uptick, seven thousand dollars!”
This means, I love you, I miss you, and the cat is still alive.
I am starting to get homesick. I thought it would be good psychologically to get away from poker for a while, but you can never really get away from poker, can you? With the internet, I am actually staring at the same landscape I see at home… green felt. Even though I am in Spain, I am really in the same place I always am at night, and playing the exact same people.
The World Series of Poker is beginning without me. I am missing the first three events. “Jennifer,” says Phil when I start to talk of cutting my trip short and coming home early, “the WSOP lasts a month and a half. You can’t possibly play all the events, you’ll get burned out.”
So I tough it out. More sangria. More suckling pig. I get tanner and fatter. I buy a Gucci necklace of gold and coral, we see an advance screening of The Devil Wears Prada, we ponder the swirly, sparkly Gaudi architecture, and then finally, hooray! Vacation is over! Phew! I don’t know how people do it.
As I board the plane I am filled with elation. Vacation is okay, but real life is better. There’s only so much shopping and drinking a girl can do. Sooner or later you want to use your brain. They say Idleness is the Devil’s Playground, but I know where the real Devil’s Playground is, and I can’t wait to get there. Las Vegas here I come!
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