In the middle of the night I went to get a glass of milk and found my roommate in his underwear underneath the dining table, unconscious, presumably inebriated.
"Lars, hey, are you okay?" I asked.
"I call," he said.
"What?"
His eyes were still closed but he put his hands up in the air, palms out, a surrendering gesture.
"I call," he said. "I call. I call."
We play a lot of poker, Lars and I. The sound of chips shuffling on the kitchen table is enough to draw us out from our rooms, to disrupt our reading and writing, to put our lives on pause. We're both sheepish slaves to it, to the endless hands, the infuriating beats, the rare moments of excitement, the even rarer moments of actual cleverness. I've been a casino poker dealer, and I've played to pay the rent, I've played in Vegas and AC and in underground clubs and at countless kitchen tables, and part of me always wants to give it up. On the whole, it's a masochistic activity. It's a game of confusion, of anticipation, of pain and self-doubt. And that's only when you're not bored. Often you do the right thing and pay for it. Often your wins are completely undeserved. You only feel confident when you've got the nuts, and even that can be painful if you don't get paid.
I do think poker teaches you something about life. It teaches the important lesson that no one really knows what's going on. It teaches you that there is only so much you can know and so much you can do and that fate doesn't care. It teaches you that people act in irrational ways, and just when you think you've got something figured out it will come un-figured. It teaches you that there's no good decisions, only 66% good decisions. Which means every decision is 33% bad. It teaches you that the best-laid plans of mice and men...
There are, of course, many pleasures to poker. Winning money is nice. Bluffing is a thrill. Also: being sneaky and being smart and being right. But as time goes on, as the years pass and I can't seem to shake the poker bug, I've increasingly come to appreciate the call. Let me be more specific, because there are several kinds of call. There is the "crying call." This is when you feel almost certain that you are beat, but you simply cannot fold. Perhaps the pot is just too big. Or perhaps you're just acting out of desperate hope. Sometimes the crying call pays off--a miracle!--but even still, it is a pathetic gesture, a kind of shrivel of the spirit, akin to begging or groveling. It doesn't make you proud. There is also the "good call." This is when you put in a lot of money with a mediocre hand because you think, based on brilliant logic or gut feeling or who-knows-what, that you're being bluffed. This is the heroic call--you slam your cards on the table and say, "Ace high!" Like the "crying call," like anything in poker, like anything, it can pay off. Your opponent shows garbage or mucks their hand and you feel like a genius. Other times, they show that they really DO have the flush, or the full boat, or even just a pair, and you look like a fool. The so-called "good call" is an attempt to beat fate, to take a stand, to turn something meager into something magnificent. It's prideful and foolhardy, with all the associated glories and ignominies associated with those qualities.
But I'm not talking about those calls. The call I am most fond of doesn't have a name, but I think of it as the "simple call." This is when you've weighed all the possibilities, and done all the tortured thinking, and you've replayed in your mind all the possibilities, and you've done your best to get a read on your opponent, and you still don't know what's going on. It could be this. It could be that. There is no new information coming. Your poor brain has done its best, and you're still trapped in the aporia. You will not be shocked by a loss or a win. You have accepted the possibility of both. Most importantly, you will not be tortured by what happens. You will not feel heroic or pathetic. You will not feel like a genius or a fool. You empty yourself of expectation and hope. You hold up your hands and say, "I call." And then, at least, at last, you will see the truth.
Slovoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher critic, once said that the only true emotion is anxiety. Anxiety is the human response to mystery. Most of life is a terrible mystery, full of terrible anxieties. We are buffeted by the unknown, battered by chance, constantly foiled by the capriciousness of people and the universe. We struggle mightily, like fish in a vortex. Our attempts to triumph and not fail are mostly useless. The world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik was once asked to bring his vast analytical abilities to bear on the situation in Iraq. He responded, "I have no idea how politicians proceed at all. It is as if they are playing a game of chess where only a single piece is visible." Life is impossible. Our happiness is unearned and our suffering is undeserved. When we are naked, when we are on the ground, when we are dreaming, there is only one thing we want from the world: Show me. We no longer care what turns up.
