Roads, Mills, Laps

First, an encounter with the bookie Nazi:

Before the concert, we hung out in the Borgata’s race book. The place is a giant room filled with nervous, chain-smoking men who yell at vast screens that display simulcast horse races. I wanted to get a drink and so I went up to place a bet. (You get drink tickets when you bet: You get drunk: You bet more: You get more tickets: Your bets get stupider: Money flies: ATM’s are consulted: How about another rum and coke: The next win is one win away: That’s how it goes in casinos.)

I’ve only bet on horses one other time in my life–at the Flamingo’s race book in Vegas; I waved my hands, arrogantly, at my companions, telling them that I was an expert and I knew what I was talking about. I approached the betting cage and tried to place “Lucky Brit” for the win. (Get it?)

The bookie, an emaciated specimen, a Sleestak creature hailing from Atlantic City, a card-carrying member of gamblers anonymous, looked me up and down and said sarcastically, “Don’t give me the horses name, pal, give me the horses number. Ok?”

I walked back to my companions, a bit embarrassed, and grabbed the race sheet that I was consulting and looked up the horse’s number .

I returned to the bookie and told him, “Six, horse number six.”

The man laughed and asked, “Which track?”

Back to my companions (head down, a bit red at the cheek this time, back to the sheet at the bar, now back to the greasy man).

“Meadowlands”

The bookie was enjoying this, milking it for all it was worth on a Tuesday night: “What race?”

Back again.

“Race 9.”

“That race just started. Pick another race, pal.”

I slid my hand to the next race on the sheet and settled on the horse where my finger landed: a horse named Casual Dresser, a dark horse, 12/1, for the win.

I made my bet, begged for my drink tickets, and then watched the race unfold on the topmost screen. It was at the Meadowlands. An enormous red Ford F-150 with those hideous wheel wells started the horses from a trot. The horses in turn pulled carts straddled by tiny jockeys wearing entomical-like goggles. The jockeys all whipped their horses and the race was off. (The F150 veered out of sight.) Casual Dresser labored, but gained no ground on the leaders. He was in 6th position at the 2nd turn. Casual Dresser’s jockey’s knees were bent as he slapped his horse’s back repeatedly–into fourth now! Have we hope? The whole thing reminded me of that scene out of Ben Hur: frenzied men holding onto draped reins whipping foaming beasts around repeated turns. After the first lap (This thing was a 600m-looking race on a human’s track: a lap and a half), I started to feel sorry for the horses. I thought about my own desperate stabs around endless turns on long tracks–when lactic acid seared holes in my legs, when my oxygen debt made me bankrupt (could a whip help me run a 2:29 marathon?); I felt awkward sitting there with my little beer, staring at a stupid grainy screen, sitting in the stands–holding my little $2 ticket egging on an animal on the hairy edge of existence. I stopped rooting and crumpled up the ticket. Casual Dresser ended up holding onto fourth. He disappeared from sight as the camera panned away to race #10.

It was time to throw some dice.

We only bet about $50. The table was one of those sad tables where crumpled people finger dwindling chips and prop their heads up with their nicotine-stained hands; where dice move quickly around the table; where the stick men grow weary raking in everyone’s lost dreams. I tried to change the mood, as I always do. I yelled and patted backs. I high-fived and pointed at the fat man with the pinky ring who just threw a fever five. I was going to change the mood–it’s all about the mood. It was my turn to throw. I palmed the dice and tossed them high. I called the number: a “YO”, an eleven, and it appeared. A few people took notice. I called the number again and it appeared again. The table clapped. I threw it again; I got a backslap and a high five; the pit boss watched me closely.

I threw a five.

Then I threw a seven: I became a villain. The table sighed; those men put their heads back on their hands.

Time to go see Morrissey.

He was due to appear at 9:15. The lobby of the event center was full on an eclectic mix of people–hardly a crowd worthy of the man. A paunched man with a skull shirt talked to a bartender who poured him a $9 beer. A little child–about five or six–sat on his father’s shoulders. The father had a hip purse and wore a leather hat. There, in the corner, see that guy with the manblouse on, what the hell is he doing here? Ah, there are some people I expected: tattooed women with night-black dyed hair wearing Moz. tee shirts and skin-tight plaid pants. We walked into the arena and were led to our seats which were big-time shitty ones–up high and to the left. Here’s the surrealistic thing: there were 40 rows ahead of us with no one sitting in them. And now here’s the ironic thing: A fat woman sat right in front of me. The stage had three big black and white pictures of James Dean. Some lady was announcing over the speaker all these bad things–some obvious villains of the left: “Jesse Helms”, “Jerry Falwell”, “rednecks”, “the All-American way” (what about my Division, the 82nd Airborne, they are the All-Americans, are they bad?) “apartheid”, “miscarriage”, “the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela”, “the shadiness of his corrupt, murdering wife…” (wait, she didn’t say the last one)

The lights dimmed and the lady stopped her propagandistic rant.

Moz. strolled on the stage and the sparse crowd lept to its feet. I was here to sit down–I’m 35 years-old and so I remained sitting. I protested: I wanted to be in some lounge at some table ordering drinks, sitting cross-legged, listening to Bengali in Platforms, not screaming madly at some washed-up crooner with a gray pompadour. Finally, the tragic thing: The fat woman in front of me stood up and blocked my view. I grabbed my date’s hand and we walked down 39 rows to the first one. The ushers didn’t say anything. Good.

Morrissey is a fucking mess. He wore a long, untucked shirt and black slacks. A bit of a paunch appeared; a jowl formed. His band was made up of mostly twenty-something good-looking men wearing tight white tee shirts and black pants. They reminded me of the robotic servile women in Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love video: ugliness with beautiful bookends.

He sang well–that’s for sure. He opened with a Smith’s song (That bouncy The Boy With the Thorn in his Side) and then transitioned to his solo material. From time to time, he’d tear off his shirt–exposing his undefined flab, his manboobs–and bolt off the stage like a scared deer. This happened at least three times. People fought for his sweaty shirt. He’d reappear again in a new shirt and thus the cycle would repeat.

He didn’t want to be there; he mocked us, making fun of Atlantic City–his tour’s final destination. I found it fitting for him to end it all in front of a thinned crowd in a dumpy gambling town where crackwhores and serial killers are but a stone’s throw away. He was the loser–not us.

He had a cold and wiped his nose incessantly–his voice cracked. He royally blew Reel Around the Fountain, causing the poor girl next to me who was lost in a dreamy singalong to stop singing. At one point, he told a fawning woman who wanted him to kiss his hand that he couldn’t, that it was “disgusting.” She begged him; he refused and withdrew. He pleaded with the crowd not to scream, but they did anyway.

Oh the drama.

I just sat there with my arms crossed. I didn’t hop and dance or wave my hands in that modern rock motion to that tired, yet still good How Soon is Now? I supposed it was what I expected. I knew this man was washed up–like Elvis in his Aloha from Hawaii 1973 tour. He was a pilgrimage. I just wanted to come, witness, and then leave. I didn’t want his shirt or a bottle of his Lourdes-like sweat. I didn’t want to pass him a love note or hold his meaty hand. I certainly didn’t want to tap my feet and sing along like a Coldplay groupie. I wanted Bengali in Platforms and Dial a Cliche. I wanted a dark man–an introspective man that he once was–to sing softly in a dark lounge to but a few of us.

I got none of this.

Instead I got to be Bobby Brady when he finally met that guy who’s parents were gunned down by Jesse James. But my memories of where I was when I sang his songs, what I was going through, who I was with, they hold their own meaning and are beyond him. His flab and his greedy disinterest can’t smite them.

Sadly though, his ego, his tired, sweaty act in front of a small group of skull-shirted men with leather hats and salacious homoerotic tendencies has left me a bit scarred.

I’m never going to see Morrissey again.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 10:41 am and is filed under Running, Expression, Res Gestae. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.