[A city series] Better people have lost bigger bets

Once again I’m doing a series of stories from other writers. This one is from the lips of a friend of mine. He’s given me permission to recreate the story here, straight from his mouth. Enjoy it:

“Better people than I have lost bigger bets” — A writer said one day when I called his life plan foolhardy. It’d struck me, in an awkward way, as truth. Truth is hard to find these days, and when I see something even remotely close to it, I perk up. That time was no different, though it was swiftly overtaken by a harsh melancholy in my chest, thus the foolhardy comment. The writer stating his reasons was no defeatist. He was usually chirpy — some would say never serious enough— but as he restated this, following my disapproval of his plan, I knew he was too serious.

You see, we were both writers trying to make something of ourselves. James was fresh off a broken engagement with a gorgeous professional-type with sterile friends; all of them exuding that upper middle class homogeneity that has become our city (they may be from around the world, but they all think the same). He claimed that he was tired of her, but I knew him for the romantic he was. He was surely heart broken. Hard for anyone to break with another human being with which there was some shared past and, the worst of it, a shared future.

Listen, you can’t just give up. I said.

I’m not.

We were in a dive bar in the Bronx, Reggaeton music blaring. I leaned in. His plan? Move to Barcelona with his meager savings, and when funds ran out, he would find some sort of income — he wasn’t against being a criminal — and then when that ran out, he would understand that all he’d done had been for naught.

And what then? Well, he would completely run out his money, run out his food, and not wanting to beg, he would walk out.

No, not leave and come back home with his tail between his legs. Yeah, leave like those old people of distant tribal lands who, once they knew they were a burden, would head out into the wild and choose an honorable way to die. Yes... I wanted him to write about it, but he refused.

As the music blared on, and curvy Bronx women and men walked and danced by us, I felt sickened by the thought of the man in front of me walking off into the wild, dying. Perhaps I too should have been planning the same as James. Being a veteran, I agreed with James’ assessment of there having been better men losing bigger bets.

James was attracting eye rolls from a few Latinas. I watched him look back as the smell of perfume as well as dirty carpet filled my head. Was he really giving up on us? Yet I could think of nothing more than the fact that what he’d said was true: That there were great men in history who had lost bigger bets. Who had even been forgotten.

And so he left that week, said he would email — he didn’t. Said he would send his writing — he didn’t. I’ve wised up since then. Become more practical. I help a security company “secure” people and keep them there. Of course, I wonder about James and hope he found a mamacita in Barcelona. I doubt it. I haven’t read anything by him, and I assume that he would have run out of money by now. He’s probably dead in some beautiful wilderness. His body feeding the same things all our bodies will feed, but since it wasn’t done with the ritual I’m used to, I find it abhorrent to think about.

Nevertheless, he didn’t leave nothing behind. I still think on his wise words: that better people have lost bigger bets. Such is life, but where I was filled with dread before, I am now filled with humility (perhaps those are the same things). Yet there is also fear as I remember some other things that James told me indicating a greater insanity I had previously ignored.

Think about it, James would say, think about the many people being shed from our nation’s roll call. Think of all those bets that didn’t work out. Now think of the fucks with whom all these bets ended up working out. Nothing about our species works rationally, and all that is unspoken is based on fear. Therefore all that is remembered is fear.

I should have stopped him then. But insanity has a contagious quality to it and we either run or rationalize it... Now I wonder if I should have spoken up. Called his family or friends. And it is with this in mind that I have a heavy heart for my friend, James. For he has more talent and worked harder than I ever did, and he was the one who eventually walked off. Didn’t win his bet, but made his payment without complaints. The End…. for now Want more stories. Visit my blog below.

Originally published at nelsonlowhim.blogspot.com on November 6, 2014.