Bar Bet

Bar Bet

A five round championship fight.

A kid at the bar wants to make a $100 bet on the challenger, who’s also the heavy underdog.

I say, “No.”

The first round. The challenger clearly loses it.

“C’mon,” the would-be bettor says. “I still take my man for a hundred bucks.”

Even though his fighter clearly lost the round, I still say, “No.”

“He’s gonna come back,” the kid says.

“He’ll have to,” I say.

The second round. The challenger clearly loses again.

“He’s down by two,” I say.

“I don’t give a fuck,” the kid itching to lose his hundred says. “A hundred bucks. C’mon. Put down a hundred.”

He reeks of the need to be committed to a cause. In this case, the cause of his chosen fighter.

“No.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” he says. “He’s gonna win. I know it.”

“It’s not looking good,” I say. “But you never know.”

“How about fifty bucks, then? Fifty bucks.”

“No.”

“Twenty?”

“Five,” I say.

“Fuck that,” he says. “Five bucks is nothing.”

“Okay,” I say.

This kid is drunk. I’ve seen it many times. I see it with the fights, with football and with the horses. With slot machines and pull tabs and lottery tickets and playing cards. Men and boys with Hail Mary’s of hope that they can impose their will upon the world. Their money – their bets – are their commitment to the way they need the world to function, if only for an instant. And a win confirms – in the smallest of ways – they possess some influence over some worldly outcome. That everything isn’t completely outside their control. It allows them to believe they’ve helped will some favorable outcome into existence.

It seems to be that. Or, with a win, the validation of a feeling that the bettor has some special mechanism for understanding laws that are beyond the comprehension of everyone else. In that way, he is special. Or, the feeling that, for just a moment, the world affords him a bit of grace in the winning of a much needed bet. Needed, not necessarily for the money, but mainly for the delight and solace in winning because so much else in life has been chalked up as losses. In this way, the win affirms there is good cause for hope, since hope sometimes – though rarely – pays off in the form of momentary ecstasy. Today’s win affirms his reason for believing that the future offers even more of the temporary joys and affirmations he craves.

Of course, it helps being drunk to both feel and believe any of this.

We settle in for the third round.

At 4:19, the challenger loses by TKO.

“Fuck,” the would-be bettor screams.

I say nothing. I allow the kid to compose himself.

“See, it would have been easy money,” he says, slapping his hundred on the bar. “It could have been yours.”

“Yeah, but it’s not. It’s still yours. I’m not even mad. Good for you for keeping it.”

But he couldn’t be grateful. He’d lost that shot at imposing his will upon the world. I’d denied him the opportunity by denying his bet, even though he’d have lost. Unless, of course, I’d allowed him to commit by accepting his bet. And that commitment might have tipped the scales.

And he couldn’t be grateful because who knows when he’ll feel the same way again. It’s a complicated milieu of the right environment, the right mix of substances affecting the heart and mind in a very particular way, and the right physical and emotional state that allows a man to believe he might impose his will upon the world, even in something as petty as a five round championship fight.

He saved his hundred bucks, and he didn’t even bother to offer me a drink. That’s how I knew the bet on his chosen fighter meant so much more than the hundred, fifty or twenty he’d have gained or lost.

To be fair, he’s just a kid. And drunk. Someday, with more experience and clarity, he might learn.