Fearlessness Broke Me — Fear and Daring Restored Me
Sometimes the only way to rise up is to find yourself at the bottom.
The Trick of Memory
Memory is tricky. Over time memories warp, shift, change, and follow the mold of the stories that we like to tell ourselves so that the narrative of our lives fit in one cohesive mold. Some memories, however, never change. They never fade because the impact and circumstances force themselves to fasten their tendrils on our conscious and unconscious minds. This is one of those stories: indelible.
It has been almost seven years since it happened. The weeks before barely exist. I can’t remember who I was aside from empty and purposeless. The moments during, however, resonate with perfect clarity. They shaped and honed my current drive, desire, and daring to chase life.
The Beginning:
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” — Alexander Pope
Ah, Vegas! There’s an acute feeling when I gamble, and if you’re not a gambler it’s hard to explain. I only sleep 90 minutes per night, if I sleep. I become hyper-aware. Every sound, light, and plume of cigarette smoke increases my heart rate and I feel high. Not like a stoner on weed. More like the ferocious drive of cocaine, meth, and heroine co-mingled with the heart pounding excitement of a 1970’s orgy.
I looked out the window of the plane as it touched down. My best friend sat beside me — this was his first time. I had $6,000 in my pocket, and I could barely contain myself. Vegas was my stomping ground. I knew the ins and outs of every casino on the strip. I knew the timing of the water shows, the best eateries, the cheapest places for drinks. My casino status let me bypass every line. The Bellagio was my second home. I knew the dealers, the hosts, the cocktail waitresses. A $50 makes you fast friends with almost any worker in the poker room.
The limo picked us up from the airport and took us to a side entrance of the hotel for special guests. We checked into the hotel on one of my comps (complimentary) for our two bedroom suite. My best friend wanted to drink, and I wanted to warm up my gambling juices.
Warm up we did.
I fully believed I was going to get lucky. I wanted to get lucky. Because I wanted to parlay that luck into my poker skills and get rich fast. I fearlessly slid $100 bills into slot machines like they were $1 bills in a pole dancer’s g-string. Lights, bells, sounds, cheers. Then it was off to the dice pit. I both loved and hated the game of Craps. Money came so quickly, and it disappeared twice as quickly. On to tri-card poker. $125 per hand at a rate of 60 hands per hour amounts to $7,500 wagered per hour. The stacks of $25 green chips grew. Then shrank. Then grew. Christ, I was excited! Then they vanished. But it was all good. I charged ahead because I never believed I could lose. Another round of champagne, a dinner — it might have been brunch — and back to the tables I went. I was down $4,000 at this point. I needed to win that money back. It was my poker money. Here I was playing the sucker games. Losing!
I was accustomed to winning $2–3K per weekend playing poker. Poker: my game of skill, people reading, mathematics, bluffing, semi-bluffing, and mountains of chips!
But I was only down $4,000. I could make that up in a couple weeks, right? Push on I did. Fearlessly, I chased down more dice, more slots, more tri-card, more booze, some kind of pill, food. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse — fuck!
Broke.
My fearlessness led to me pissing away $6,000 in under 30 hours. Thank god the rooms and food and booze were free. Not really. That $6,000 was the casino’s way of making up for my ‘free’ life. I managed to spend almost $200 per hour.
I slid out of my seat and stumbled through the casino. My vision narrowed. The clarity and heart pounding stopped. I was furious with myself. Or, as furious as I could be, as drunk as I was. My best friend just stared at me. Jaw slack. He had been with me the whole time, and he watched me throw away my money, which could have amounted to 6 months of his rent. I told him, ‘Don’t worry. I can make it back.’ Then I saw the cigar shop. ‘Let’s celebrate! I mean winning is great, but losing demands a celebration!’ He just followed helplessly. We got cigars and smoked them throughout the casino. Then I bought a Monster at one of the stores and slammed it. Then took another pill I found in my pocket. I was determined to lose myself.
Clarity Through the Haze and a Porcelain Revelation
The cigar was just a nub. One last puff. The pill was making the world hazy and elegant. I had achieved my goal and lost myself. But I was hot and cold at the same time. I was sweating but wearing shorts and a thin shirt in the halls of The Shops at Caesars — right by the fountain of Poseidon. My stomach gurgled. My vision shifted. I stumbled. My temples felt like concave parabolic lenses pushing together. I wanted to scream at the agony. Reality was creeping in and the full weight of my choices was screaming through the hallway of my mind with the pitch of a rape whistle.
My nose emptied onto my shirt — a mixture of snot, tears, and blood. The bile in my stomach rose. My eyes rolled and a bitter metallic taste filled my mouth. I knew what was coming.
The world shifted and spun. I sprinted and stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom and kicked open a stall door. Hell. Hell spewed from my mouth. All of Satan’s demons came screaming out in green and yellow bile. Chunks of half-digested food. Alcohol. The toilet water fizzed and splashed all over my face. Again. Again. Again. I vomited into that porcelain god. My arms wrapped around it. Holding on. Praying those demons away.
I heard toilets flush, piss streaming into urinals. Men farting. Zippers zipping. What I never heard: a single voice asking if I was ‘ok’? I held that toilet bowl tight. Knees scraped the ground, diaphragm spasmed. Hurl. All color ran from my face. I was cold. I was calm. I stared into that toilet and thought, ‘If I pass out and fall face-first into this vomit, no one will know. I will die in my own vomit. Pathetic. Forgotten. A life never-lived. A poker game never-played.’ Then, ‘I cannot die on this fucking floor in this shitty bathroom. I have to save myself.’
“It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…” — President Teddy Roosevelt
I pulled myself up and slipped into the toilet. ‘Fuck you, cruel irony. Fuck you!’ I thought. I flushed the toilet and walked out of the stall. Cleaned myself from head to toe. I tried to have some measure of composure before stepping back into the hallway.
My friend sat on one of the red sofas and saw me come out. I looked at him, ‘I have to change things.’
Man’s Greatest Achievement Is What He Accomplishes with His Mind
After grabbing several liters of water and two Monster Rehabs, I rented a car and drove my best friend and myself to the Hoover Dam. I imagined that there would be an answer there. I needed a purpose and driving gave me that purpose. I also felt terrible. I had turned a trip about us into a trip about my own ego. I wanted to make it up to him. He had never seen the Hoover Dam and he was excited to go.
When we first arrived at Hoover Dam we slowly drove by two Art Deco bronze statues of winged men. They look exalted. Inspiring. There’s an inscription that began, ‘They died to make the desert bloom…’ Those words spoke to me. I may not have physically died, but it was a psychic death.
Then came the view. The awe-inspiring view of the dam, with the Colorado River tamed, and the power lines stretching for miles. Life blooming and growing because men dared to dream, because they dared to achieve, because they dared to overcome themselves.
In the bottom of my soul I yearned to be like those men. I dreamed of overcoming my own frailty; I dared to change my fate; I demanded to overcome myself.
Back to Vegas
Between the fluids, drive back, some food, and the casino atmosphere of the Bellagio, I was feeling mostly human again. Actually, I was feeling a bit more than human because I concocted a story in my head. It was an image of what I could achieve if I focused, pulled my resources, and drew upon my skills. The downfall: I would be flat broke. Not just broke, but in debt. I would have no actionable way to pull myself up if I failed.
I took my debit and credit cards and maxed out the cash and cash advances. I got together almost $7,000. I approached the poker tables and looked at the board. I saw a game I had only rarely seen: $100–200 Limit Hold’em. The typical buy-in was $10,000. I saw people with twice that on the table. One Russian pulled out a $50,000 wad of cash from one of his cargo short pockets and bought another $10,000. That was going to be my game.
I bought chips and was guided to my seat. $50 tip to the Floor Man. The cards came, were shuffled, shifted, pushed to one winner, then the next. Riffle. Shuffle. Deal. My heartbeat was steady. My eyes keen on watching and reading my opponents. I could read the Russian’s every strength and weakness. He could hide nothing. A heavier Saudi man had a betting pattern tell. The slim 20-something was a shark, but unlucky. The black guy from Alabama was waiting for a woman and just wanted to get lucky. The business man was tipsy and sliding towards drunk.
The $100 black chips were piling up in front of me. The adrenaline pumped through my veins. I was terrified! I couldn’t afford a mistake. I was lean and fighting with everything I had. I couldn’t fail. I demanded to succeed. I needed this. I had to prove my former self wrong, prove the porcelain epiphany correct, and prove the measure of this man in line with the story I told myself.
90 minutes had passed since I sat down. The Bank night club was rocking, and the base thundering. My head screamed again. I may have been sober, but the headache and hangover were arriving. I didn’t know how much money I had in front of me. I didn’t count. I didn’t want to waste the mental energy. I focused on the only task that mattered: winning. My focus was being shaken by the booming base. That’s when I made the first decision of its kind that weekend: I stopped. I stood up.
The men around the table asked me to stay. ‘Let us win some back,’ they said. I smiled, racked my chips, and went to the cage. The win: $16,000 above my $7,000 starting stack. I had $23,000 in black and green chips in front of me. I was free! I won the $6,000 back, and made a $10,000 profit for the weekend. As the cashier counted my money in stacks of $100 bills, I understood something else President Teddy Roosevelt said:
“[He] who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I dared. I achieved. I could allow myself to know victory. From that moment to this one, I have striven to dare greatly: I continued to play poker, won large sums of money, and retired at 32 years old. A few years later, I dared to strive again: I started a company. Daring once more: I became a business consultant.
Soon, the desire to dare will strike again, and I will find a new adventure.
From the moment at the cashier’s cage to this, I have continued to ferociously chase every endeavor because if I fail to drive forward, daring to chase and dream, I know that I may find myself in a bathroom stall, drowning in my own vomit — cold, timid, defeated. I can never let fearlessness break me again.
At the end, dear reader, I hope you’ll join me and create an adventure of your own. Dare to reach. Dare to dream. Dare to reach for your dreams!
Keep the FIRE burning!
