A po-boy's tale of Nawlin's (Prologue)

The General and the Gambler (as told by Billy the beach bum)
Sunday, around 11:00 A.M.
The beat up Cadillac I woke up in was familiar, but not too familiar. The white leather backseat wasn’t quite comfortable but in my drunken state, I had no problem sleeping. I sat up and looked around. I had absolutely no clue where I was. I knew whose car I was in, but I didn’t know where she was or where the car was parked. I figured it would all come back to me eventually and decided to walk around and look for a place to grab some breakfast. I knew there would be a gas station or something like that somewhere around here. I dip into my pockets and realize that I have only a one hundred dollar bill. This is not good. I came down to New Orleans with 300 dollars; I must’ve wasted a shitload of money last night. The only thing I could think to do was head to one of the nearby “boats” or as us yankees call them casinos and play a little blackjack.
After chowing down a quick bacon egg and cheese sandwich, I decide to put my 97 dollars to work. I find a bus to the boat and make my way inside the casino. I’m not really used to the casinos down south, I grew up around the Jersey shore, and was playing the tables in Atlantic City at a young age. I had been in this casino yesterday with my friends, but chose not to bet too much (because I didn’t have much). However, now that I have somehow spent two hundred dollars on a mystery, I decide to not play the safe Pai-Gow poker, and instead play some blackjack.
Blackjack, mathematically, has the best odds in the casino to win. However, through experience I have found that although mathematically the odds are good, more often then anticipated you end up a loser. It is a fast game, and you can win fifty dollars just as fast as you can lose it, and everything you gain is what you are willing to lose. In the time that it takes to play one hand of Pai Gow or other poker games, you can play four or five hands of blackjack. But, I’m a gambler, and I really don’t have much to lose, so what the hell.
I made my way to the blackjack table and sat to the left of a man in a decorated army uniform. He was puffing on a cigarette and drinking some sort of mixed drink. It looked like he had over ten thousand dollars in chips sitting in front of him. I was truly going to look like a little sucker punk, and the dealer would not mind letting me win a few hands. I sit down at the table, a twenty five dollar minimum bet table, and decide to just buy two twenty-five dollar chips with confidence. I say hello to the man who looked to be about fifty years of age. He didnt nudge as he bet one thousand dollars and just puffed on his cigarette as I placed my fist twenty-five dollar bet on the table. The dealer then dealt us our cards. The general was dealt a 6 of clubs and a king of spades and I was dealt a jack of hearts and a queen of diamonds. The dealer was showing a 9. We both decided to stay, and when the dealer turned over a ten of diamonds I won and my “friend with the big stacks” lost. Four more hands went by and somehow I managed to win three of the four hands. In five hands I had won seventy-five dollars, and the general had lost five thousand.
He looked at me and then asked, “Do you mind if I play your cards?”
Confused, and somewhat intimidated, I said, “Sure.”
He then put 2500 dollars worth of chips in front of me and said if he won he would give me five hundred dollars. My heart was beating like crazy as the dealer dropped an ace of hearts in front of me. The general smiled. The dealer also had a little smirk on his face. He was a skinny black guy with a gold tooth and kept calling me “Cadillac Jack” because of the hat that I wore with the Cadillac symbol on it. I nearly shit my pants when Darnell, as his nametag read, dropped an ace of clubs next to the ace of hearts. The dealer showed a nine. I looked at the General and he didn’t even think about it as he moved the remainder of his chips over to my side of the table.
“I guess we’re splitting.” I said with a nervous chuckle. I had nothing to lose, I’d already won seventy-five dollars, if I lost I’d still be up fifty, but this crazy general had ten grand lying on my cards. Darnell flipped over an eight of spades, and I didnt even consult or look at the general when I said stay, then my man Darnell dropped a king of clubs over the ace of diamonds, blackjack. Woo hoo!!!, we at least made the five hundred back plus 1.5% for getting blackjack. Then when Darnell flipped over his down card and showed us a 3 of spades and then the 10 of diamonds which meant that he busted...the general and I both jumped out of our seats and high-fived.
“You sure are one lucky son of a bitch he said with a huge smile.” He then handed me ten hundred dollar chips and I suddenly had more money then I have ever had in my possession at one time in my whole life. The general then said, “Get your scrawny ass out of here and buy yourself a hooker.”
Breakfast with Grandmom (As told by Rusty Folsom)
Sunday, around 8:00 A.M
My buddy Scraps has been my best friend for as long as I remember. I don’t know why we are friends, or how or where I met him, or any of the particulars like that, he’s just always been there for me and I’d take a bullet for him. We drove down here to New Orleans with our friend Billy, a crazy beach bum alcoholic, his hippie girlfriend Lori and her older brother Danny. I never did more amphetamines in my life on the twenty-hour drive from Pittsburgh to New Orleans and ended up driving this shithole of a Cadillac for over eighteen hours. Scraps got his nickname because he never has any money to buy food so he usually just eats other peoples leftovers, or scraps. The funny thing about it is that Scraps is a big dude and usually ends up eating more then anyone else even though he never buys or cooks anything.
Last night was our first night here and Scraps and I got lost from the other dumbasses we came down here with when we decided to go to a strip club. All five of us were entirely too wasted to be doing anything other then sleeping, but being the complete morons that we are, we never reserved a hotel room and had no room to stay in. Billy was buying drinks all night and he promised Lori that he would buy her a hotel room for the night and the three of them disappeared soon after. Not ready to end our night, Scraps and I decided to go to the nearest gentlemans club on Bourbon Street. Scraps is probably the worst person to go to a strip club with because he has no money and is usually real loud and obnoxious and calls every girl he sees in the club a “skank” or a “dumb bitch”. As he was insulting some of the girls and getting kicked out of the establishment, I was getting a lap dance in the back room. For some reason whenever I get lapdances I always end up connecting with the stripper in an emotional way instead of a physical way. There is something demeaning about a lap dance, I cant treat women like objects, if a beautiful girl is dancing on me I treat her with respect, no matter how she decides to earn her living. Anyway, once our dance was over this girl followed me to my seat and I bought her a drink. We talked for a few hours (and since I was as drunk as a fifteen year old girl at a frat party) I decided to ask the girl if she wanted to go back to my non-existent hotel room. She excitedly agreed and we walked out of the place hand in hand.
“Daddy, where’s ya’ll staying tonight?” she asked with a smile full of holes.
“Shit. I got no clue. I don’t don’t even think I even got no place to stay baby. Do you know a place I ccould get a room for the night I ask.” I mumble.
“Hmm. Yeah I know a place.”
So, we walked down this main street and I was way too drunk to pay attention to where we were walking. We then entered a very nice hotel and I put the room on my trusty credit card.
We found our room and in the light I noticed that my mistress was about fifty years old. I looked at her wrinkly face, her saggy arms, her veins in her legs and I got up out of the bed went into the bathroom and puked all over the walls, missing the toilet completely. I then came back into the room and said, “I can’t do this, I’m sorry, I’m just too drunk.” She gave me a little smile and we both fell asleep almost instantly after I fell down on the bed.
In the morning I woke up not remembering any of the details of the night before. I looked over to my left and saw a naked old woman lying next to me and impulsively went back into the bathroom and puked again, this time I made the toilet though. I then walked into the room, looked at the old woman, assumed that I probably had herpes or some unknown disease from whatever I did to her the night before, and politely asked her out to breakfast.
We went to a nice bar down the street, and in New Orleans at eight o’clock in the morning bars have thirty-five drunken people in them. We sat down to a nice southern meal.
I found out that my mistress was a grandmom. She had a daughter when she was sixteen years old and then her daughter had a daughter when she was sixteen years old. Nearly puking again when thinking of telling my friends that I paid to have sex with a grandmom, Delores informed me that nothing happened and that my company and breakfast was all the payment she needed. We had a nice conversation about motherhood, life in New Orleans, why she ended up being a stripper, and the assholes that she has to deal with everyday. It was a weird night that I really hadn’t planned on sharing with anyone.
“Smoking a white boy” (As told by ‘Scraps’)
Sunday, around 4:00 A.M
I fucking hate strip clubs. They are the most overrated pieces of shit that I’ve ever been apart of in my short existence. I went to this dumb-ass dive with my fat friend Rusty and started yelling at all the dumb bitches in there. Of course the steroid pumping bouncer punched me in the face and threw me out on the street. I was wasted, had no idea where anyone was, and had no money. Lucky for me though, some black dude with two gold teeth sporting straight camoflauge gear saw me getting kicked out of the club and helped me up from the piss and puke stained bourbon street.
“Whats up buddy, you got a dollar?” he asked.
“Nah, man, I ain’t got shit man.”
“Come on man, just a dollar, I got to get the bus, you know what im saying.”
“Sorry buddy, I lost all my friends, they are the rich ones. I got ten bucks. If you can get us some weed with ten bucks, I’ll give you my ten bucks.”
“Shit yeah killer, just follow me.”
“Sweet man.”
I followed this dude (who I soon found out was named Melvin) through the back streets of New Orleans, or as the locals call it Nawlins. He then told me to give him my ten dollars and wait in the parking lot, while he “get us that shit”. So, there I stood in the middle of the ghetto standing in some abandoned parking lot waiting for some gold toothed stranger to come back from what looked like a crackhouse hoping that he wouldn’t spend my last ten bucks on a hit. I sat there thinking that I was the biggest jackass in the history of jackasses and each second seemed like a minute, each minute seemed like an hour, and after what seemed like two or three days I finally see Melvin bouncing out of the house. He walked, pretty slowly, across the street and said, “What’s up scrapper.” I looked at him and I could tell that he had just smoked some crack. His eyes were bloodshot, his mouth a little white, his teeth grinding a little bit, his whole body shaking.
“You got that weed, man?” I asked, hoping that he would just give me my money back so that I could get the fuck out of this neighborhood.
“Yeah man. You wanna smoke a white boy?”
I wasn’t sure if I heard him right. Was he mocking me? Was he going to shoot me? What the fuck did he mean...smoke a white boy? “Uhh what?” I asked. “Smoke a joint man.” Ohhhh I was completely relieved as I realized a ‘white boy’ would be a joint and I guess a ‘black boy’ would be a blunt. Melvin proceeded to roll his joint faster and more nonchalantly then I’d ever seen or ever will see again. He rolled it up in what seemed like one action, and in the middle of a busy street. We sparked the joint, started to laugh, and as soon as he entered my life it seemed he disappeared and I was all alone in the middle of no where, high as shit (I think we smoked wet).