I once knew a man that I resented for more reasons than I could count on a handful of hands. He was born into piles and piles of money and didn't need to do a thing for it. Opportunities consistently fell onto his lap for many reasons:
1. He was lonely and in dire need of friends for a simple reason. He would frequently alienate acquaintances for an assortment of reasons, usually related to a mixture of his greed, immaturity, and ego. If this disgrace of a human being were remotely intelligent, money would never become an issue for him. That happens when you inherit millions.
2. Typical social environments that young twenty somethings are involved with (college, a job, a group of people with similar interests) did not appeal to him. This would create an artificially strong bond between he and whoever he would relate to on the street or in a casino, etc. Altering his perception of friendship messed with his ability to create healthy relationships.
3. His stubbornness showed through his disorder. He was a compulsive gambler and saw that gambling was something that I went about in a careful and calculated way. With his already warped perception of money, he tried what I made look easy. He considered himself a "professional poker player" without ever making a dollar profit.
Two million dollars later, he is now broke and it can be easily viewed as my doing. Only in part, of course, but my fault to a certain extent. I was a loose acquaintance of his for the better part of two years. Looking back on it, I was completely unconscious of it at the time, but he was a figure in my life for selfish reasons on both ends.
1. I perceived his friendship as a way to advance my then inconsistent financial situation.
2. I put up with his bratty bullshit because of it.
At this time in my life, I was hustling in illegal poker rooms in order to stay afloat financially. At 18, I moved out of the home that I grew up in to escape a family dynamic changing for the worst. Around this time, I was introduced to forms of poker that I picked up on fairly quickly, and steadily made money applying basic gaming theory to the felt (of a poker table). Having little experience in the art of the hustle, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Being 18 and unable to deal with complex social situations (especially involving those that I loved and continue to love with my entire heart), I jumped into the first apartment that I could find to give myself some space from my tense family. It was in Roxbury, a section of Boston that was the most crime ridden and the most affordable. Granted, I did live in a rapidly gentrifying part of Roxbury, but my guileless actions pointed me toward an intuitive and suboptimal direction.
Living on my own appealed to me. I was out of sight from any authoritative figures and could do whatever my heart desired. Suddenly having to pay for food, laundry, bills, rent and entertainment, the money that I needed to reach on a monthly basis was much higher than I had originally thought.In the underground poker clubs of Boston, work comes in heavy streaks. I think of it as one of those machines on game shows. You're placed into a transparent box where wind is blowing around a pile of money. In a set amount of time, you grab as much as you physically can. Some weeks, the machine was out of order. Other weeks, there would be so much money blowing around in there that it was impossible to pull out less than two thousand dollars. The inconsistency of the business always left me with this feeling of unease. Knowing that there were people in the city around the same age as me with exorbitant amounts of money left me with a sour taste in my mouth. This feeling was deeply rooted in jealousy, of course, but I wanted to work diligently on hitching my beat up 1990 Ford Taurus to their space craft heading straight for the moon. Not necessarily the moon, maybe Saturn or some other planet. You get the point. I wanted to position myself in a ready stance for success at someone else's expense. I was willing to do whatever it'd take.
To be continued...
