A Day at the Races

it's been one of those days where i just can't get comfortable. The heat and humidity outside is sticky and gross, and the AC pumping in my apt. just feels fake and annoying. Plus, it reminds me how much money I'm spending trying to make myself comfortable, and it makes me more annoyed to know that it's not working. An evil, vicious spiral of annoyance... sweet jesus, when will it end?

On top of that, I got cable last week and so I have the TV on a lot more than I usually do... frequently just CNN playing in the background. I think I'm doing this to make myself feel justified in my cable expenditure. Like it's not a waste of money because I'm "using it" a lot. Stupid. I do much better with music. k, TV's going off now.

I spent the day at Belmont yesterday, for the 137th running of the Belmont Stakes. Even though there was no triple-crown at stake this year (Giacomo won the Kentucky Derby, and Afleet Alex won Preakness), it was still a huge event, as Belmont Park was celebrating it's 100th Anniversary. After reading the preceding sentence, it might appear that I know a little something about horse racing. I don't. I just learned that crap yesterday at the track, and it pretty well encompasses what I know about the sport. I used to go to the track every now-and-again when I lived in Boston, and I'd buy the racing forms and look at them, but only so I'd know the names of the horses. I'd look at their names, get "good feelings" and just bet on a horse to win. I'd say I won about 1/3 of the time using that method and usually ended up just below even: maybe 20 or 30 bucks spent throughout the day.

The night before (Friday), my friend and downstairs-neighbor Chris reminded me that he'd be going to the race (he'd sent a mass email early in the week) and asked again if I wanted to come. I told him I didn't think so. I was under the impression that a lot of his friends were going and, as I'm more omega male than alpha, I tend to get lost and bewildered in crowds of stangers. So I politely declined, and told him why. Chris explained that it'd just be him, his girlfriend Jenny and me.. everyone else had bailed. AND, as luck would have it, someone at his restaurant (he's a waiter at Lever House) had given him three tickets which entitled us to the clubhouse and reserved seats on the 2nd tier. "That's where the Governor sits!" he said, handing me the laminated tix for approval. The face value on the tickets was $65 which was impressive. I told him to call and wake me up at 9 AM. "Oh, and look at the dress code on the ticket", he shouted after me as I was leaving, "you have to dress up". I came back into his apartment to re-examine the ticket. Apparently, I had missed some small print. The dress code was confusing... it said stuff like "elegant attire is a tradition at Belmont Park. Ladies and Gentlemen who honor this tradition are always appreciated". What? I read further, and found that "abbreviated attire", whatever that is, is never acceptable. At first I thought maybe that meant shorts, but then discovered that shorts had their own rules, distinct from "abbreviated attire". I gave up. "Well, what are you wearing?" I asked him. I wanted the folks at Belmont to appreciate us...I was feeling needy. He told me he'd be wearing a recently acquired seersucker suit. "Dude, I have a seersucker suit, too!" I told him. I'd been waiting for a chance to wear that effin' suit since I adopted it from my dear old deceased dad three years ago, and this was my big chance. My ex-girlfriend Holly tried to convince me to throw it out a couple of years ago, but I was sure that I'd wear it someday. I went back upstairs and took the suit out of the closet. Upon close examination, I found that the suit was covered by mysterious and subtle yellow stains, including one right on the crease of the butt. I put it on and when I checked it out in the full-length mirror, found that the jacket covered the ass quite nicely, and the other stains were so subtle that you'd really have to be looking for them to notice. I took it off and hung it on the 'to-wear-tomorrow' rack above my door.

We left at 10 am on Saturday, and took the subway to Atlantic Ave to meet Jenny. I had chosen a white shirt and red plaid tie to go with my blue and white striped seersucker and felt like Joe the pimp from the Nick Cave song, in his "ridiculous seersucker suit". Chris was impressed when he saw me, "Dude, you even got the pants!" he marveled. He only had the jacket, but complemented it nicely with a pair of white chinos. Everyone on the 2 train stared at us, 2 ridiculous pimps from a Nick Cave song. I would've too. We looked great. We met Jenny outside the Atlantic Ave LIRR station. She was all dolled up in a custom-made funky-fashionable sun hat - de rigeur for the ladies at a stakes race, I would later find out. Hers was straw with a big pink flower thingy on it, and could be worn either cowboy-hat style (folded up on the sides) or as a sunhat (sides down). Neither Chris nor I had thought to wear hats, but it was too late to do anything about it.

The train ride was painless, and we arrived in time for the 3rd race of the day. We bought programs and entered the clubhouse on the 2nd tier, our big shiny tickets around our necks. We located our seats, which WERE very good - one pole past the finish line - and I looked around for the governor but didn't see him. Nobody, NO-BO-DY, was dressed up like we were. Most of the men were hanging out in shorts and t-shirts. The women did a little bit better, what with their dresses and fancy hats and all. I opened my program and tried to make sense of it. I looked at the names of the horses: I liked "Anew" and "Duango". Chris explained exactas and trifectas to me, and how to "box them" which was pretty simple to grasp, but I still didn't know who to bet on. I decided to go with my gut and threw a horse named "Ice Wynnd Fire" in with the other 2 for a trifecta. When I got to the betting window, the lady yelled at me for not placing my bet right (there's an order in which you have to give the info) and I retreated from the window, embarassed. I went and got my program, found the "how to place a bet" page and studied it, trying to memorize the order: "Race, amount, type, horse number". I practiced a couple of times and then headed back - to a different window this time. I didn't want to make that lady's day any more stressful than I already had. This time I got the order right, but found out that the 6 horse, Anew, had been "scratched" from the race. I retreated again and went back to studying my program. I chose "Biloxi Palace" to replace Anew and finally made my $2 trifecta wager. On the way back to my seat, I grabbed a $7 MGD from the "bar" (a table in the lobby) and the "bartender", a young latina, told me I looked great in my suit, making my previous embarassment melt away...at least I looked alright. The third race (the first for us) was about to begin, and we passed around my little mini-binoculors, although I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be looking at. I tried to see if the governor was in one of the other sections far-away from us, but still couldn't spot him. The race was surprisingly short - less than a minute - and only 2 of my horses came in, and those not in the right order. All three of Chris's came in, all in the right order. He won the trifecta on his first bet of the day, an $85 profit on a $2 bet, and ran to the window to collect. The rest of my day didn't get any better as I threw away bet after bet, wondering why my gut wasn't working as well as it used to. Must be getting old. Chris didn't win any more either, but he had already won 85 dollars and got no sympathy from either Jenny or me.

Both Chris and Jen kept on running into people they knew from work, from high school, etc.. and after that first race we went upstairs to the 3rd tier (ie GHETTO) to check out one of Chris' s friends' cheat-sheet that he'd obtained from a handicapper in Lexington. The friend had already won 50 bucks by using these tips, so I wrote down all the horses' numbers and their corresponding races. I tried betting a straight trifecta on those horses in the next race and lost again. I went downstairs to smoke in the yard out back where they parade the horses around before the races. I sat down on a bench and a middle-aged hispanic man came and sat next to me. "I like your suit" he said, but the suit compliments weren't cutting it any more. I wanted to win. The man told me that he'd had a vision (or maybe it was a dream) that "a very old friend - a friend I haven't seen in many years - came to me and said only '11 in the 10th'. I haven't seen this friend in a very long time, but he is never wrong".

"Wow", I said, "that sounds like a good tip". I wrote it down - 11 in the 10th - thanked him, finished my cig and headed back upstairs. Certainly this man's 'system' of getting his betting advice from visions of old friends couldn't be any worse than my system of pulling names and numbers out of my ass.

His friend was wrong. The 11 horse, Meteor Storm, came in 7th in the 10th race and I lost once again. The only other "tip" I took for the rest of the day was just before the 11th race - the big Belmont Stakes that everyone had come to see. Giacomo and Afleet Alex were the obvious favorites as they had won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness respectfully but many at the track were hoping for an upset. Before the big race, I went back down to the yard to smoke another cigarette. I'd already placed my bets and tried to "box" lots of different combos which allowed for both favorites AND longshots. I sat down to smoke in a different spot, this time next to a trio of Puerto Rican teens, a guy and his girlfriend, and the guy's friend. I began reading the letter from the Governor in the program. The girl kept nagging her boyfriend by repeating over and over: "You taking me to Puerto Rico in February? You taking me to Puerto Rico in February? You taking me to..." The boyfriend ignored her and chatted with his buddy about the upcoming race. "It's gonna be Pinpoint, yo." the friend assured the boyfriend. "It's gonna be Pinpoint all the way and the three of us is gonna have a little party tonight", at which point the two boys bumped their closed fists together. I finished the letter from the Governor (in which he lauded the racing industry for its "immense" contribution to New York's economy, and inexplicably thanked the troops overseas), snubbed out my cigarette and headed back up. On the escalator, I looked up Pinpoint in my program. It was the #2 horse, with 20-1 odds. I stepped up to an open window and delivered: "11th race, $2 to win on number 2" quite smoothly. I'd had a lot of practice.

I've already told you that this story doesn't have a happy ending, so I suppose there's no need to tell you that none of my combinations came in, and as far as I know the Puerto Ricans' little party was cancelled. The park emptied out after the stakes, but Chris, Jenny and I were all drunk on MGD and not quite ready to battle crowds for the trains. We hung out for 2 of the "nightcap" races, but I didn't bet. The sun was going down, and as the horses came out for the after-race, I felt sad for both the animals and jockeys... the stands were almost empty. No one cared enough about them to stick around and watch them do what they came here to do. I suppose they didn't care much, but it was still upsetting to me in my drunken and destitute state. I hoped that the horses were treated well, at least, and that the jockeys had some equivalent of a seersucker suit to put on and make them feel good about themselves after the sun was down and their race was over.