I woke up to a phone call this morning, today being the 12th of December, 2024, from Raven — the younger sister of my most recent ex-girlfriend, named Niña, whom I was with from 2019-2021. Raven called to let me know Niña passed away sometime last night. She was 28 years old.
I’ve had a deep feeling of sickness in my stomach all day. I tried to play a video game here and there to pass the time, as a means to distract myself, but in spite of the emotional drain my body has gone through, every time I tried to sleep I’ve been confronted by the passing of memories, hither and thither, from the very first moment Niña and I met all the way until the last time I saw her, a few months ago, while she was charging her Tesla at one of those charging station things.
I called my mom when she got home from work and immediately broke down. We spent about an hour on the phone, my mom and I, trying to figure out the why even though such an answer is likely destined to be elusive forevermore. To be a human means to have these natural feelings of guilt that have overcome me, I guess. That if I only knew — how exactly she was feeling, what exactly she was going through — I might have been able to alter Niña’s outcome.
Because in spite of our breakup, which occurred around the end of July, 2021, Niña and I maintained a very steady and sturdy friendship. We took a couple breaks here and there when she was dating somebody she considered serious, or when I was serious about someone else, but always in the meantime we would play games (such as the card game Pineapple) on our phones, tune in to watch various cooking shows or garbage reality TV using Teleparty, and it was one of those things — with Niña and I — where we’ve really been through it, together, and I considered her always one of my best and closest friends.
* * * * *
Niña arrived in the United Stated from the Philippines after she graduated from De La Salle University in Manilla — where she was born. She was a true Tagalog. She had the slightest of all petite frames, about five feet tall with tiny legs and arms and a tiny waist. She had pale skin for a Filipino but possessed a really sweet smile and was in almost every way quite adorable.
I originally met Niña my first time around working the swing shift, towards the end of 2018. She was a cashier, and I was a dealer. Born in 1996, she was six years younger than me; I think she was, like, 22 or 23 when we met. Before getting her job as a cashier at the casino we shared she worked two different jobs, one as a clerk at Home Depot and the other as a receptionist at some business one of her family members owned.
During our first date we ended up at one of the local casinos and I remember at the time I still had a breathalyzer in my car, stemming from my DUI a couple years earlier, and it was kind of embarrassing and I really hated to make such an impression. But Niña really liked me, so I suppose it didn’t matter. I got her a couple drinks and I had some water and there was a brief moment where our legs touched while we were sitting down and neither of us decided to move them, and it was just so cute, everything we did.
We became officially boyfriend-girlfriend on my birthday — March 20th, 2019 — during a party one night at my friend’s house. I think Niña got mad at me that night because I didn’t want to go home with her when she was tired and ready to leave, due to a fairly epic game of poker that I was in the middle of, and so when inevitably I did make it back to her parent’s house she was still none-too-thrilled with me and I sort of pulled her in really tight and I told her for the first time that ‘I love you,’ and somehow that seemed to extinguish all of the night’s fires.
She didn’t have a good relationship, at that time, with her dad, so remarkably I never met the man. I went back to day shift (at the casino) while her dad worked the night shift, and even though my black Mercedes Benz was very regularly parked somewhere out in front of their house in Palm Desert CA, and although her father had his suspicions that maybe, perhaps, Niña was hiding a boy in her room, it turned into a game that Niña and I would play. To sneak me in during this night or that one, or to sneak me out at this time or that.
After six months or so Niña started dealing school at one of the nearby casinos, Spotlight 29 in Coachella CA, and so seemingly every night I stayed at her parent’s house I would help her practice by teaching her some of the things that I had learned from my own dealing school experience, along with what I already knew having been in the industry for five or six years.
Niña was a natural at dealing, and in general she just really liked cards. Oftentimes before going to bed she would put a vinyl record on the record player she was so proud of, and the two of us would play Tong-its, a Filipino card game, but she was so competitive and, like me, absolutely hated to lose, but then we would eat some snacks and watch TV and make love and everything would be fine.
For being so tiny, Niña really, really liked to eat. She had this strange ability to absolutely demolish an entire plate of pasta at the Old Spaghetti Factory, a restaurant she always loved so much, and whenever we ate Korean BBQ she would just keep ordering, and ordering, and ordering, and cooking the shit on the grill and eating it before ordering some more. She was also really quite a lovely cook. By the time she moved out and got her own apartment, sometime towards the end of 2019, one of her favorite things to do was to play the role of domestic housewife and cook delicious food for the two of us to eat. She always just wanted to take care of me. That’s probably why I gained like 40 pounds when Niña and I were dating.
And so it is these thoughts that I haven’t for so long thought about that are breaking me right now. That keep flashing through my head. That we were there, together, doing the things that man and woman do when they love each other. And that now Niña isn’t here anymore.
I’ll never forget sitting in her living room at her parent’s old house in Palm Desert CA, sometime in December, 2019, listening to an Australian-ized Chinese man who was stuck in China because some pandemic was going on. We always, Niña and I, would watch Filipino news whenever we were over at her parent’s house. And I remember thinking, that night, that there was no way such a pandemic in Asia would ever make its way into the United States.
In January, 2020, soon before such a pandemic arrived, I took Niña for her birthday to Huntington Beach CA and we stayed at this really nice sort of hotel called the Omni, because Niña always loved the water so much. It reminded her of being back home in the Philippines. I remember it being really cold and the two us were all bundled up, but it didn’t stop us from walking around and going on the beach to see and feel the water and let the cold breeze penetrate our jackets.
The most memorable aspect of that night/weekend was that I had on me a weed pen, and before Niña and I went to dinner we hit it and got high out of our fucking minds and walked for seemingly forever from our hotel all the way to Market St and it was like the longest walk of our lives. It was cold outside, and we ended up at an Applebees or a TGI Fridays or some shit and ate our food and were laughing the entire time. Then after we finished we realized we had to walk all the way back, block by block, on these streets where the sidewalks lasted forever.
We each woke up the next day with sore legs from how much walking we had done. Looking back on it, however, I wish we could make that walk again. That walk, which lasted forever.
* * * * *
I don’t have the heart right now to search my phone and post the pictures of Niña and I, but I assume a time will come over these next few weeks, before this blog is posted, that I will come to grips with her not being around anymore. Currently I am devastated. Before getting off the phone with her sister, Raven, this morning, I let her know that I wouldn’t be saying anything to anyone. (As far as the details are concerned, those which no one needs to know about.) In lieu of sleeping I decided to go outside and write on this blog, but before I got even two sentences in I received a phone call from my friend Dominic — whom once I went to dealer school with, whom I have always considered my best friend in the industry, who is Niña’s manager on swing shift at the casino they work at — who called to ask me if the rumor was true.
For the sake of timing, Raven and I spoke at roughly 12:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, and Dominic called me at roughly 9:30 P.M. PST. That is a mere nine hours. I have made reference in the past about how closed of a universe the casino industry is, about how everyone knows everything about everyone, etc., and if this isn’t the type of example you were looking for then I don’t know what is. Dominic heard from a dealer at Morongo, who heard from a dealer at Fantasy Springs (where Niña’s mom works), and Dominic called me — I, who works at Agua Caliente — to see whether or not there was any merit to such a rumor.
Selfishly I hate this dynamic, this idea that in many ways I am going to have to answer for not only Niña but her entire family. I am going to field questions about this and that, the who’s and the what’s and the why’s, and my mind isn’t anywhere close to being right for all that bullshit. Not at the moment. My heart and my thoughts are not only with Raven, and Niña’s mother, but for my own personal relationship and attachment to this woman whom even long after we broke up we still told each other ‘I love you’ every time we got off the phone — whether out of instinct or habit or otherwise.
While guilt is certainly something that I feel right now, I know it won’t last forever. I have been Niña’s biggest cheerleader over the last handful of years, from the days of encouraging her to move from cashier to dealer, to moving from a casino she was unhappy at to a place she might be happier, all the way up until more recently when she started going to school to work in the IT department. If she wanted to do it, then I wanted her to. I was always there for her.
* * * * *
It was June, 2023. Niña was wearing a white dress that showed off her body that she had gotten done, along with veneers, about a year earlier in the Philippines. We made plans to see each other again, to check in, to say hello, etc., and she looked especially beautiful. It was warm outside. The restaurant I took her to was called Porta Via in Palm Desert CA.
I’ll never forget this day for three different reasons and three different reasons specifically: (1) The first was that I was seeing Niña outside of work for the first time in I couldn’t even tell you how long it had been. Several months? More than a year? (2) The second was that it was the day my good friend Heather turned in her two week notice at work, and I remember being on the drive to Porta Via to see Niña while texting Heather and being, like, yo, ‘Do you have to [put in your notice]?’ (3) The stripper I was dating at the time was blowing up my messages when I told her I was having dinner with my ex-girlfriend, but, as I tried to convince her (the stripper), that it wasn’t like that. To no avail, of course.
Niña and I had a lovely sort of dinner and interaction. Mainly it revolved around her recent ex-boyfriend. His name was Andrew. Niña started seeing him around the time I disclosed that I was feeling a certain type of way about Heather — because if we are being frank here, back in the days after Niña and I had broken up, Niña told me that once I started quote seeing someone else, or caring about someone else, to let her (Niña) know. So that’s what I did. I didn’t disclose any names, but Niña was a clever sort of girl and she could see the writing on the wall.
Andrew was a real winner, if you know what I’m saying. I guess he came from money — like his family has it — and Andrew was like the ugly duckling/fuckup of the group. And, that night, Niña went on and on about this and that, and how Andrew had once fucked a transgender person who had a micropenis — and if it wasn’t for the stripper I had been dating, and her having explained to me what such a thing is, I wouldn’t have known what a micropenis even is (context clues aside) — and the moral of the night was that she, Niña, that is, was much better off without Andrew in her life.
As it were, however, Andrew would very much be a part of Niña’s life all the way until the very end of it. Off and on, and then off again, and then on again, and then off, and again on they went. In the days of our friendship I would sometimes let Niña know that this was not the way, that there was no shame in taking some time for herself. Always better at giving advice to others than I am at delivering it to myself, this seemed to be obvious. That Andrew was no good for her.
About a month ago, somewhere in late October or early November, Niña told me she was going on a date with a new guy. She told me he was a doctor. And I remember telling her that I hoped it went well. A couple days later I sent her an 11/11 text, because Niña and I always texted each other whenever it was 11:11, whether A.M. or P.M. — out of familiarity — and then when it was actually November 11th (11-11) we would make the joke about it, and so on. She never responded to me, though.
I picked up my phone the early morning of December 11th, about 4:00 A.M., through some coincidence, and wrote Niña via iMessage, verbatim: ‘Are you upset with me or something?’ It had been exactly one month since I had sent her the 11/11 text, but given that I hadn’t heard from her, in my stupid guy brain I just assumed maybe, who knows, they (she and her date) hit it off, and that Niña was turning over a new leaf, one where she was going to commit herself to the guy she was seeing and not revert back to the comfortability of talking to her ex-boyfriend, and former lover, and current friend — that being me — and so I didn’t think too much about it when I didn’t receive a response. I was just trying to be respectful.
I had no idea that my instincts, or impulses, from sending such a text on December 11th, 2024, were telling me that Niña was on her way out, and that I needed to reach out to her one last time.
* * * * *
Back in the days when Niña and I were in a very loving relationship, we spent several hours on her back patio on the second floor apartment complex she lived at. Just talking, you know? About life. The past and the present and the future. And she would cook dinner, and I would be out on that patio, writing on my blog, drinking my beers, and for a time it bothered Niña that I was spending my time alone while she probably would have preferred me being right next to her, cooking her delicious food. But the more she learned about me, and needing my time alone, she came to understand.
And there were nights we fought, and there we nights that she cried, and there were nights where I didn’t know if the two of us would come back from it. But we never went to bed angry. We always figured it out. And then even when times were bad, we would have our snacks, and we would watch our shows, and we would cuddle, and then she would turn her way, and I would turn my way, and then the next morning we would wake up in each other’s arms.
But out there, out on that patio, that is where we did our damage. That is where we truly got to understand one another. I would tell my stories about love and loss, and going to jail and getting a lawyer and paying my fines and going to college and paying my debts, and she would tell her own stories. About La Salle. And being in love for the first time. And how traumatic a thing it was for her.
Her first love gave her significant psychologic damage, something she obviously never recovered from and that hampered our own personal relationship, and that inevitably bled into her relationship with Andrew, who was much more like her first love, back in the Philippines, than someone like me.
And I know this because sometime during this summer, 2024, Niña and I were on Facetime together, and I was figuring out my own life at that time. I started crying, out of nowhere, and I asked Niña: ‘We were happy together, weren’t we?’ And then she, too, began to cry, and asked me why I was crying, and I said I didn’t know. Crying was never something I did.
Looking back on it, I imagine my tears came from some epiphany I was having — talking to Niña — about how volatile my life had become over these last couple of years, and how, even though Niña and I had our problems while we were in a relationship, it was a generally stable time for both of us. We could count on one another. We knew what to expect. We loved each other.
She told me that night, after we were done with our tears, that in the off-and-on era she was in with Andrew, that all the things he was bad at. . . I was good at. That he always blamed everything on her, and that I always took the blame for myself (in hopes that Niña and I would just move forward). That Andrew was always so bad at communicating, and that I wouldn’t allow us to fall asleep until we were on good terms. That his family was very judgmental, and that mine accepted her with open arms.
Regardless, from the first moment she told me about Andrew and the nature of their relationship, I encouraged her to leave and never look back. That there was nothing wrong with being alone for a while. Niña’s sister Raven, as well as Raven’s boyfriend, and Niña’s own mother, echoed my sentiments. But you know how these things go: It’s always easier to give directions when you aren’t in the driver’s seat.
From everything I came to know and understand about Niña, I believe all she ever wanted was for someone to love her. That’s the tragic irony about her life. The fact that she really was so full of love, throughout every fabric of her being. All she ever wanted was to take care of somebody else. She simply never found that person to love her in the way she needed to be loved.
* * * * *
This has obviously been a difficult last few days for me. In the midst of all this guilt I have been feeling, wishing I could have done more, I’m confronted also by an incredible sense of selfishness. As if I am making this about me when it really has nothing to do with me. This is about Niña’s life, and I am here to write about how much Niña’s life mattered, and always will matter to me.
I was talking to my mom last night about how blessed our family, the Reining family, has been insofar as death is concerned. One of my uncles passed away in a motorcycle accident when I was in high school, back in 2005 or something. Both of my grandmothers, only recently, passed away in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Other than that I couldn’t ask for a more fortunate situation as far as these things go.
Niña was only 28 years old. She was three months older than my younger brother, Jeffrey. I met her when she was still basically brand new in the United States. I was not her first love, and I was not her first boyfriend once she ultimately made it to America, but I feel comfortable, and am very proud to say, that Niña never loved anybody as much as she loved me, and that she was never happier, being in a relationship, than she was when we were together.
She really loved watching Anime and reading Manga. She tried to get me to watch certain shows with her, such as One Punch Man, and others. She was always very curious about becoming more Americanized, so we watched certain kids movies that I grew up with, and watched shows such as Seinfeld. Most recently she really enjoyed The Golden Girls, and was particularly disappointed when she finished every season and had no more to watch.
She became an official American citizen sometime over the last year or two. And she was always very proud, once her and I began to date, to show us off to her family members back home in the Philippines. I guess a Filipino girl being with a white guy is a pretty big deal. Back when we dated I would offer various clothing items of mine and we would pack them in a really big box and then some months later we would be on Facetime with her family and I would see some of the men wearing T-shirts that I used to wear.
And we never called each other by our names, Niña and I. She always called me ‘PB,’ short for Polar Bear, because whenever the nights got cold she always found me to be so warm, so I was her polar bear. It was never ‘Love you, Eric;’ it was always ‘Love you, PB.’ And I always called her ‘NB,’ short for Niña Baby, because that’s who Niña always was to me. I called her my baby. She was baby. So whenever she told me that she loved me, I would return it with: ‘Love you, NB.’
I’m just so fucking hurt right now. I finished my November blog early and was pretty much wrapped up with my Year In Review. I’d pop in every two or three days to edit this and that, but it was mostly done with. It was relatively short and sweet and didn’t really say anything that you didn’t already know.
Somehow, however, a woman I never really dedicated the time to on here — while in the middle of writing about all manner of various females, who most of them didn’t and don’t mean a goddamn thing to me — I always kind of kept Niña out of it, mainly because she was always so aware of my blog and since she was virtually the only woman I was still in any kind of contact with (aside from people like Heather, whom I talk to every so often, or Sarah, whom I talk to more regularly). It almost felt, to me, anyway, that Niña was always too close to me to be talked about. If that makes any sense.
And by now Niña and I had been so close — we had been all the way there, in a relationship, and came all the way back, to being friends — that we had already transcended everything. Since I moved out to the desert, in April, I think I saw Niña, like, five times. The first was going grocery shopping at Albertsons. The second was hanging out with Raven and her boyfriend. The third was going shopping at Trader Joes. The fourth was some night I stopped by to say hello after spending time with my friend Alan earlier in the night while he was playing in his pool league. The last time was when she was at the charging station with her sister.
Mostly, we would just text and shoot the shit. We watched shows every now and again, and every month or two we would appear on Facetime in front of one another. And now, all I have are these memories of this girl I loved. I wished I had known more about the way she was feeling. I wish I could have helped. I wish I could just wrap my arms around her and give her a big hug. I wish I could tell her, just one more time, that ‘I love you, NB.’
* * * * *
I tried to go back to work tonight, it being now three days since I heard the news. But I couldn’t make it. I only lasted some three and a half hours before I went home. I thought being back would be the distraction that I needed, but I realized that I hate being around people right now as much as I hate being alone. I’ve found that this, writing, is the only real thing that gives me any sort of peace. Because, on here, I never quite gave Niña her due.
It took only nine hours, give or take, before word spread from this casino to that one, and got back to me to offer confirmation. The outpouring of condolences has been overwhelming, which is funny because I am nothing more than a simple ex-boyfriend of Niña’s.
But I know she was always very proud of me, whether it was with her own family members while she was back in the Philippines or coworkers at whatever casino she was working at. Whether she was at Spotlight 29, or Fantasy Springs, or Agua Caliente, or Morongo, she would call or text to remind me that she ran into such and such person who used to work with me, and that she would describe me as her ex-, and so on.
I know we had our problems, but the fact that Niña and I were able to maintain not only a friendship but a particularly close one says something about her. I don’t think it is any coincidence that upon letting Niña know of my friendship with Heather, back towards the end of 2022, that Niña almost immediately found a new boyfriend (Andrew). It was a difficult situation for Niña to be in, having just made the jump from Fantasy Springs to my place of work, where perhaps the man Niña loved more than anyone had his sights set on the so-called It Girl at Agua Caliente. In other words, Niña needed her own distraction.
And I recall one night being out on the front bench, outside of Agua Caliente, talking to Heather, who by that time had tried to deliver me a second book in the Book Club we invented, and it was called The Last Lecture — unironically about a professor who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer who was on his own way out — but then I told Heather that I had already read that book, so she found another one later on.
Anyway, what I remember about that particular night was letting Heather know that Niña was soon to be working with us, and that I had a suspicion that Niña still had strong feelings for me, and Heather was really the only person, aside from my own mother, that I got completely honest with about Niña, and so I told Heather that the reason Niña and I were still friends, and still in communication, was due to the fact that after Niña and I broke up she (being Niña) threatened to take her own life some days or weeks after we split up a couple years earlier.
After several months of no longer speaking to one another with any sort of regularity I was encouraged when I looked Niña up on Facebook — in the days when Heather and I were close friends and when Niña and I weren’t in communication because she was in a relationship — to see that her and Andrew went on hikes, and took vacations, and that Niña was smiling and appeared to be happy, and so on.
After Heather moved away, about seven months after that brief interval we had by the bench during Christmastime, 2022, and after Niña and Andrew broke up for the first time, Niña and I were in regular contact for the rest of her life. This most recent month-long absence from hearing from her, Niña, that is, was by far the longest stretch that I hadn’t heard from her.
Again, this was because the last time we spoke she told me she was going on a date with somebody new. Since I hadn’t heard from her my assumption was pure — that such a date went well. Had I known that just a month later Niña would take her own life, I would have done everything in my power to tell her how much she matters, and how much I still love her. I would have done anything to change this tragic situation.
So when I talk about this guilt that I feel, it revolves mostly around putting Niña in such a fucked up situation at Agua Caliente. Had I not encouraged her to move from Fantasy Springs (where she was unhappy) and come to Agua Caliente, which led to Niña being confronted by the man she perhaps still loved having a new type of love for another woman, which further led to Niña leaving Agua to return to Fantasy Springs, and further leaving Fantasy Springs for Morongo, who knows how different Niña’s life, and our lives, would be?
Such a mentality is the wrong one, I am aware. If we are to play the infinite regression game — and what a game it is — then I would logically have to keep going and say if Niña and I had never been in a relationship in the first place, or if we hadn’t been friends in the first place, or if we hadn’t met one another in the first place, then who knows how different our lives would be? In fact: There is very likely nothing I could have done to save her.
This is so hard, man. I know it isn’t my fault in the way that it’s likely Andrew’s fault, who, according to the Doorbell app, got in a fight with Niña right before the moment she kicked him out, and went to the restroom, for her final thoughts, but whether I’m here here taking 100 percent of the blame or just 1 percent, I am still taking it. And I am still treating it as if that small sliver of blame means just as much as taking all of the blame.
* * * * *
In Christianity, I guess it’s like a thing where the only way in which one will not be granted a place in heaven is by taking their own life. We on Future Bets, in solidarity with Niña, believe that such a philosophy or worldview is fucking bullshit. On our very first date, after our casino trip, sitting first across from one another, and then later on directly beside each other, at an IHOP in Palm Desert CA, Niña and I established that neither of us believed in God — but that we each came from families who did. Then we started talking/agreeing about politics. Don’t ever let anyone tell you the rules of conversation during a first date, because Niña and I broke the shit out of all of them.
Some 15 or so years ago, back when for the first time I was dealing with my own existential crises, and had significant thoughts of ending my life — whether due to overdosing on pills (which would have been the likeliest of outcomes for me as a 19- or 20 year-old, given how frequently I abused such drugs) or otherwise — I spoke to my grandfather, his name is Robert, or Bob, and he knew exactly where I was coming from. My grandpa, that is.
And he went on this really long merry-go-round of a story about going from job-to-job, and working paycheck-to-paycheck, and being in a marriage that he was unhappy with, and having four young girls (one of them being my mother) as children, and how one day he just snapped. He left their house in San Bernardino CA and took a drive up north, to San Francisco CA, and got a motel room, and did all sorts of drugs — painkillers, etc. — in hopes that he wouldn’t wake up and he could just fucking end it.
And then the following morning the maid came in and found him sprawled out across the floor, still breathing, obviously, and then the paramedics came and my grandpa was revived. Then he went home. Found a new job. And he had a new lease on life, in a manner of speaking.
So my grandfather told me this story, and then he said that life — this one life of ours — is merely a game, and that the only way to win such a game is to make it all the way to the end and die of natural causes. Doing it yourself is the so-called easy way out. That’s how you lose the game.
There is all sorts of shit out there, whether it derives from religion or otherwise, about how suicide is such a selfish act, or how cowardly it is. I mean I have heard such sentiments discussed for most of my life, and I have heard it even from some of my closest friends after Niña’s abrupt departure.
We on Future Bets obviously understand the magnitude of leaving loved ones and family members, and so on, holding the bag, so to speak, and having to deal with all the questions and the guilt. In other words: We get it.
And yet also we understand that, actually, it takes an incredible amount of courage to follow through with such an act. We are obviously biased with the amount of love we happen to possess for one Niña Baby, but to me it seems entirely lazy and shortsighted to wash our hands and declare that Niña was merely a selfish girl committing a cowardly act. Maybe there are situations where such a declaration might be true. But not here. Not with Niña.
Because even though I took it seriously the first time Niña made such a threat, that which made me feel a compulsion to maintaining a friendship with her, I never believed she was actually capable of doing it. Had I known she was still feeling such a way, even after all these years, I wouldn’t have been so respectful in maintaining my distance from her over this last month.
So it is thus that I believe she, Niña, that is, was very brave in committing such an act upon herself. Just think about how far a person must go to get themselves to that point. Where they feel as if this was indeed their only way out. Their only escape. That she refused to pick up her phone and call me to tell her everything was going to be okay. That she refused to talk to her mother, or her sister. That she had already received all the help that this life could have offered her. Think about how much pain a person must be in, and must have gone through, to decide that enough was finally enough.
In actuality, this thought must have been in Niña’s head for many days and weeks and months, and perhaps years, and she inevitably found her reason. I will carry this guilt for long enough. I’ll always wonder if it was as simple as her not being content with her general existence, if it was the end of our relationship and her believing that there wasn’t anything better out there for her, if it stemmed from the move she made from Fantasy Springs to Agua Caliente, which began a chain of events that concluded with her getting with Andrew, and eventually ending her life, or if it’s something else entirely. I’ll never know, which is probably the worst part.
We were talking one night, out on the back patio of her second-story apartment in Bermuda Dunes CA, about how when she, Niña, was a little girl she was giving her grandpa a hard time because he was unable to get out of bed, and I guess every day the two of them went on a walk and he would take her to the store and buy her some candy. She loved her grandpa more than she loved anybody while she was back in the Philippines. And she was like 9 or 10, Niña was.
And she always felt really bad about this particular day, because her grandpa couldn’t get out of bed. So he gave her a few pesos, or whatever the currency is, and so little Niña went to the store all by herself. And she bought the candy that her grandpa wasn’t able to buy for her, since he wasn’t able to get out of bed. And then when Niña finally made it home her grandpa was dying. She didn’t understand it, of course, because she was a little girl. But then he died. And she felt so bad that her last memory of her grandpa was giving him a sort of like guilt trip that he wasn’t able to make that walk with her. To buy her some candy. She started crying when she told me.
* * * * *
You know what’s crazy is that my first instinct, once Raven told me that Niña was gone, was to pray. I got off the phone with Raven and suddenly I found my hands clasped over my chest. And then I came back to and decided that this had nothing to do with my own personal life philosophy, and made no fucking sense at all. So I didn’t actually say anything. To God. Or the Universe. Or whatever entity has authority on us small people. If there even is one.
I’ll tell you this, though: If there is a heaven and/or a hell, regardless of whatever The Bible or whatever fucked up minister tries to convince you of, Niña will only ever be in the best of places. She will forever reside in paradise, if there is such a thing. She was a very sweet girl. She had nothing but love to give. She was smart. She was kind. She ran into difficult circumstances, at various points in her life, and didn’t handle them as well as she perhaps could have, or should have, but always her heart was in the right place.
And I guess I was just so unprepared for moments like these. I’ve just been lucky enough throughout my life that I haven’t had to deal with them. Certain people in your life. . . you just always expect them to be there. My mom. My dad. My brothers. I can’t imagine what the world looks like without these people. Niña was one of them. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without her. I don’t know how I’m supposed to carry on. I don’t know how to make everything normal again. I met her when I was 28. And she has been one of the only constants my life has had. Even when things weren’t so good. I knew she was there. I figured she always would be.
Like I said, I tried to work tonight. I tried to get back to normal. And tomorrow I will try again, to get back to this normalcy, by waking up, and going through the motions. But nothing is ever going to be normal again, because Niña is never again going to be here. She is lost to the sands of time, and the memories that I cherish. I can’t possibly explain what it is that I feel. And I can’t get over the fact that she’s gone.
Some blogs I try to get through, like I need to fulfill a certain amount of space. And yet with this one, about Niña, I don’t really want it to end. I want it to just keep going. I want her to stay alive for as long as I continue to write about her, even though her journey is already complete.
* * * * *
We used to work the day shift together, her at Fantasy Springs and me at Agua Caliente. And usually I would get off at 6:00 P.M. PST and she would get off at 7:00 or 8:00 PST, and so I would usually have an hour or so to hang out at her apartment before she got home. And I would be in the living room playing a video game, or watching whatever sporting event was on that night, and then she would walk in the front door and we would hug and we would kiss and then she would get undressed.
And then we would take a shower together, because that is what we always did. And some nights I would pee on her leg while we were in the shower, because I thought it was funny whenever I peed on her leg when her back was turned to me. Just so she would exclaim: ‘PB!’ or whatever, as if it was some surprise. And then I would wash her back, and her body, and then she would wash my back, and my body. And we would kiss. And sometimes we wouldn’t kiss but then she would say: ‘PB kiss?’ and then I would kiss her anyway.
And then we would get out of the shower and dry off using our towels and she, or both of us, would say: ‘PB/NB Brrr,’ because that was our way of saying it was cold. Brrr means cold. And then the night would go on and she would cook some dinner, and I would do the laundry, and then when the food was done we would eat, and when the laundry was done I would take care of it. That was usually the deal, that Niña would load up the laundry and I would take it out and usually fold it all by myself.
And then I would take out the trash, and Niña would do the dishes. And we would go grocery shopping together, and that was always the best of times. Because she loved to shop. And I paid for everything. And that was our love language. Me buying the goods and her using them for both of our benefits. Doing those types of things. I think we both imagined that life was going to look like that for the two of us, forever, and it was for some time. A few years. That’s a whole lifetime, some would argue.
And then when the laundry was done and the cooking was done and the folding was done Niña and I would get into bed and put on some show. Certain days of the week was Master Chef, when it was in season. Other times it was Hell’s Kitchen, when that was in season. We really enjoyed watching all manner of cooking shows together. And then around Christmas we’d watch Die Hard. And then other times it was random movies. Or random Anime. Whatever we wanted.
And it all ended so abruptly, one night, because she thought I was cheating on her, and so she went off and cheated on me, and the guy was a stalker, and they used to see each other when they were working together at Home Depot, and he ended up coming to her apartment to start some altercation with me that night, while I was sitting on the couch eating a bowl of spaghetti, of all things, and I didn’t have the heart to fight him, because once I realized what was happening I figured if he was there then my girlfriend must have been cheating on me, and I didn’t appreciate that. So I got my things and left. And Niña was so hysterical in that moment — with her different world’s colliding. It was like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. She was crying and apologizing and shit. And amidst her uncontrollable tears she handed me her gold American Express card and told me to get a hotel room. But I didn’t do that. I just drove home. Back to Riverside CA.
And then a couple weeks later, after multiple phone calls where Niña was crying beyond repair, where I had to hang up on her because she was crying so hard and there was nothing I could say or do to stop it, she tried to kill herself. And then after that she, or her mom, removed all the stools from the kitchen, because I guess whatever she used snapped on her.
And then I used my key, one night when Niña was at work, as the two of us had planned, to stop by her apartment and collect all the things I had left behind. So I could return her Amex card. Etc. And so I went there, and I got all my stuff, and I left her a note on a napkin or something, that said: ‘I’ll always love you, Niña.’
And then from there a new sort of relationship developed, between Niña and I. Where we would play games on our phones. Where we would text regularly. Where we would Facetime. Where she would say certain things to me, about how she knew I was talking to other girls, and so on, but if there was ever a particular girl that I liked, to just let her (Niña) know, and then we could finally be on our separate ways.
And then we did go on our separate ways. She got with Andrew, and I was doing whatever the hell it was that I was doing.
* * * * *
In essence, Niña and I carried on two different relationships: The first being boyfriend and girlfriend, and the second being really wonderful friends. I have spoken a lot over the course of this blog about how proud she was of me, but that should not in any way discount how proud I was (and am) of her. We always, Niña and I, had a special kind of attachment. For how much happiness we shared while we were together, we also were very happy to admit, whenever it came up, that that was my ex.
I had the most difficult three days of my life after hearing the news of Niña’s departure, yet over these last couple days — through leaning on friends such as Sarah, and hearing the perspectives of parents who have lost children to such ends — I can see that things will get better. I have started to quiet the noise of the What If mentality and begun to choose to celebrate Niña’s life. Because she did mean so much to me.
Her mother and I have been texting, here and there, and she (Niña’s mom) asked if I wanted to see her — Niña — one last time. No one else has witnessed her body other than Niña’s own mother. I wish I had the heart to do such a thing. I just can’t get there. But I am honored that such an offer was made.
And as my mom said, when I told her about how Niña’s mom asked if I would like to see her again before her cremation, it was almost like we — Niña and I — were a married couple. We loved like a married couple; we fought like a married couple; we made up like a married couple; for better or for worse, till death do us part, it is very difficult, especially in this tragically enclosed casino universe, to mention either of us without mentioning the other. Our identities are forever intermingled and will forever coexist.
I suppose in some way that is what has made this especially hard, or rough, the fact that everyone knows of this dynamic between Niña and I. After these last six years the two of us were so close that I have become an extension of her own family. And, again, I feel very honored to have been part of it, and I am honored to continue being a part of it.
As I have alluded to over the course of this article, I wasn’t prepared for this news. And still I don’t know who it is I am supposed to be, or how I am supposed to act, in the aftermath of it all. I spend my life pushing down these feelings I don’t like to feel, and I play a likable sort of character when I am at work who just wants to joke around and be sarcastic and make everybody laugh and enjoy themselves, etc. And I just don’t have it in me anymore. To dedicate the effort and energy into making everyone else feel better when I know that I am not well.
And nobody really knows how they are supposed to treat me, either. Which is understandable. Many have reached out and given me hugs and offered their condolences, and I appreciate them so much. Others are having a hard time even looking at me in the eyes, because they don’t know where my mind state is. I appreciate those people, too. My least favorite version of person has been those who haven’t offered any condolences whatsoever but instead were only curious as to what happened. To these handful of people, I very much do not appreciate them.
I have found the most solace in those who had their own personal kind of relationship with Niña, who were friends with her, who spent time with her, who were there in the same places and times where Niña and I happened to be, back when we were together, who are able in some way to appreciate the relationship Niña and I had — whether we were dating still or just friends.
I look forward to a time where I can find a genuine sort of happiness again, where I can get back to the business of making those around me feel a little bit better about themselves on a day-to-day basis. Always that has been my biggest strength and value to humanity. For now, however, I am operating from the handbook that demands of me to fake it until I make it.
Since I heard the news I have pretty much been on a very similar routine. I will lay in bed all day, and then I will go to work and put on a face, and then I will come home and cry, whether I am on the phone with my mother, or Sarah, or, most recently, when I saw the Facebook post of Niña’s GoFundMe page. Something about the finality of it all just made me break down once more.
* * * * *
Niña was a very lovely human being. My favorite memory of her was this one night when we went out together, to this bar called Dringk, which once existed up at what is known as The River, in Rancho Mirage CA, and we did what people do at bars. We drank. We probably played some pool. We laughed and we went outside and we smoked some cigarettes together, and it was nice.
Then we went back to her parent’s house, in Palm Desert CA, and she made sure it was safe to sneak me in, and so the two of us went in Niña’s room. It was a really big room. So big that it actually had double doors on the outside of it. Sometimes when her mom and dad weren’t on good terms her mom would come in and the two of them would sleep together on Niña’s bed. Which is so funny because Niña was so tiny but she always loved to have an incredibly large bed. At her parent’s house she had a king-size; at her apartment she upgraded to a Cal King. And she, Niña, was so small that she only occupied a very small slice of it.
And so we got home from the bar, called Dringk, as it were, and Niña put on a vinyl of Lana Del Ray’s ‘Dark Paradise,’ and the two of us listened to it while we played Tong-its together. And I don’t know what it was about this particular night that made it so special, since Niña and I on countless occasions played music on that record player while we played cards together. But we were just so happy on this particular night. We were laughing and kissing and the music was just, like, perfect, for whatever moment we were in.
It was special in the sort of way where you have that feeling in your stomach, the one that tells you that you could be anywhere in the world and feel the same type of thing, but that you wouldn’t rather be anywhere else, and you wouldn’t rather be with anybody else.
Such a moment lasted so long that Niña had to flip the vinyl over to play the second half of the album, which by then the card playing had stopped and the two of us were just in bed together kissing some more and removing our clothes and making love. And then it was over and we went to sleep, in preparation for another day in this life of ours, where we would wake up again and do some more kissing and some more card-playing and some more music-listening on her record player, whether it was the very next night or some other night days or weeks or months or years later.
I knew how I felt in such a moment, but Niña told me that she, too, felt the same thing because at some point at some later date she referenced how that was, like, the perfect night. And I admitted it and told her that I, too, felt the same exact thing, way back when. Like I could remember all of the small details, how I kicked her ass at Tong-its and it made her so frustrated that I was kicking her ass at her favorite card game but that she didn’t care because everything, right then, was as it needed to be.
I miss her so much. She deserved more from this life. I aim sincerely to get the most I can out of it, life, that is, because in some way I will always have her in my heart and carry her along with me. All of her hopes and dreams. Everything that she ever wanted to be. Everything that she was trying so desperately to obtain, such that I would be even more proud of her, and be able to tell her — yes! this is why! — that I always believed in her. I always believed that she was going to make it, no matter it was she was doing.
Which was kind of the general impression I always delivered in her direction, this idea that Niña was so smart, and so pretty, and was doing better than most girls of her age. That the entire world was her oyster. One day it would open up and give to her everything that she desired.
Niña just didn’t have the patience to wait for it. Her and I, in our very nonreligious sort of way, used to say to one another, or joke, in moments such as these, whenever it related to other people, that ‘when it’s your time, it’s your time.’ But that was back when it was our time, together, when the world was ours, when we were young and in love, and nobody could ever tell us a goddamn thing. That is what we loved most about each other. . . that I loved her, and that she loved me, and that nothing else mattered.
Alas, she did it. She made it to wherever she needed to go. She will never again feel any pain. She had to go. There is time, and there is some time, and then there are other times.
But this was Niña’s time.
° ° ° ° °
What follows is the Year In Review that I had planned on posting before the untimely death of Niña. Forgive me for stating the obvious: None of it really means anything anymore. I will be adding addendums where they are relevant.
Since I already got into the painstaking details of my life once per month between January and November, I will attempt to make this — whether you want to call it December 2024 or Year In Review — briefer than the 30-plus-minutes-long, slug-it-out affairs that preceded it. It won’t be easy (to keep it short), but I think I can do it.
My god’s honest assessment of the year 2024 is that it would probably register as a C+ or B–, somewhere in there. While it was highlighted by my inevitable move to the desert via Riverside CA, shit got weird and I lived a good portion of the year as if I was on vacation and I blew a lot of unnecessary money and emotional energy pursuing meaningless nonsense such as gambling and dead-end women. I wouldn’t trade in the experiences or anything, but I should have known better. I should have been smarter about how I operated. But kind of like that line from the classic kids movie Camp Nowhere (1994): ‘Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I can’t act stupid.’
From Infinite Jest:
Sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place, and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack.
That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work.
That addiction is either a disease or a mental illness or a spiritual condition (as in ‘poor of spirit’) or an O.C.D.-like disorder or an affective or character disorder, and that over 75% of the veteran Boston AAs who want to convince you that it is a disease will make you sit down and watch them write DISEASE on a piece of paper and then divide and hyphenate the word so that it becomes DIS-EASE, then will stare at you as if expecting you to undergo some kind of blinding epiphanic realization, when really (as G. Day points tirelessly out to his counselors) changing DISEASE to DIS-EASE reduces a definition and explanation down to a simple description of a feeling, and rather a whiny and insipid one at that.
That most substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. That the cute Boston AA term for addictive-type thinking is Analysis-Paralysis. That cats will in fact get violent diarrhea if you feed them milk, contrary to the popular image of cats and milk. That it is simply more pleasant to be happy than to be pissed off. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. Then that this connects interestingly with the early-sobriety urge to pray for the literal loss of one’s mind. In short that 99% of the head’s activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven. That the metro-street term for really quite wonderful is: pisser. That everybody’s sneeze is different. That some people’s moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze. That no one who has been to prison is ever the same again. That you do not have to have sex with a person to get crabs from them. That a clean room feels better to be in than a dirty room. That the people to be most frightened of are the people who are most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. That you don’t have to hit somebody even if you really really want to. That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.
Addendum: It’s hilarious that I posted this sad type of shit even though I didn’t even know what ‘sad shit’ truly meant.
° ° ° ° °
The overwhelming majority of my 2024 was a juggling act, one where I weighed my time alone (which I appreciate more than just about anything) versus entertaining various women whom I knew I had no future with. In recent years this was an easy scale to balance, given that I was living in Riverside CA and most of the so-called ‘prospects,’ whom I made tentative plans to see, lived a clear hour (or more) away from me. The results of such a mathematical equation were simple: more often than not I would come up with some form of an excuse to flake on them and so the ball never really got rolling, so to speak.
The major paradigm shift of this particular year, 2024, was that by virtue of moving to Cathedral City CA — a veritable rock throw away from both my place of work and many of those women I spent the better part of the last half-decade blowing off — I didn’t have such a convenient get-out-of-jail-free card in my back pocket. And, thus, even when I didn’t necessarily feel like it, seeing these girls, I mean, most of the time I still went through with it.
This was sort of combined, similar to how different molecules bind together to create something much more toxic, with the fact that I sought actively whenever I could to distract myself from prior heartache — even though I wasn’t aware it existed. It would be several months before such an elephant in such a room finally lit itself up for me to see. In the meantime I lived irresponsibly, and spent money frivolously, as if I was on a permanent vacation.
The names and faces of these women still come to mind, this one and that one, and how we did this and that. But they don’t matter anymore. I came and I saw and I conquered, and the winner takes it all. My intentions weren’t like nefarious with any of them, it was just one of those things where (seemingly every time) once they gave me what I wanted I grew disinterested. So it goes.
When the aforementioned elephant finally shown itself and I realized just how dumb I had been operating I put a stop to it. I stopped seeing anyone. I stopped gambling. I stopped putting myself in positions where my judgement begged me to make the binary decision of doing the responsible thing vs. the irresponsible one, because the irresponsible one was generally always more fun and I wanted above anything to have more of it.
I believe the turning point of my year occurred somewhere in the heat of summertime, which coincided (whether ironically or unironically) with my reading of The Good Earth — a story about a farmer who falls on hard times only to be delivered from them by sheer luck, and eventually parlayed his good fortune into neglecting his wife and purchasing a concubine and having family issues, and so on. While I am not saying my hard times were really that hard, many aspects of the novel illuminated themselves before me as if I was looking in a mirror.
Always I have experienced a difficulty seeing that which is directly in front of me, which is why throughout my life I have more or less had to rely on teachers and parents and close friends and authority figures in general who can see the truth and are better than I am at predicting my future during phases when I am fucking up. This year I had none of them. I mean they still are all there, you know, friends and family, etc., but the lessons I needed to learn I had to discover on my own.
So I played it fast and loose and, as I am wont to do, found myself picking up the pieces and sharpening myself once more. In other words, my personal project in 2024 was a necessary one. I guess I assumed I had already transcended the so-called grieving process, which after a quick Google search begins with shock, goes to denial, goes further into anger and bargaining and ultimately reaching depression before, finally: acceptance.
My assumption was obviously wrong — that I had propelled beyond acceptance and was already back on The Road. I’ll get deeper into that shit a little later. The point is, I thought it quite big of me, as a man, to cut myself out of my perpetual interpersonal struggles with the opposite sex. Whether it was seeing some part of me transcribed within The Good Earth, or that it was simply my time to wake up, I found whatever it was that I needed during those summer nights out here, sitting on my back patio writing on my stupid blog, and had a clean two months or so where I didn’t do too much to harm anyone.
Then, as if the universe were offering me yet another challenge, a new woman entered into my life. Her name was Nohemi. She was a lovely sort of creature, tall and slender and soft-spoken but who possessed the type of tongue that can keep any man on his toes. She was so pretty that in the beginning it almost like triggered me at times the amount of attention she received from other men. It felt like some mistake that, in spite of all that, she decided that I (of all people) was the one she wanted.
I had a very honest amount of trepidation about granting her will, for, like I said, I was committed at that time to taking a severely extended sabbatical from females in general. But if you know anything about me then you know: Some things leave a man no choice. I had not the strength to sit back idly and deny a smart and attractive woman.
And so whenever it is I think about 2024, I won’t think about those who came and went, and came again, and went again. I’ll think about the girl that I respected enough not to go all the way there with. I could have, and certainly I wanted to, but I suppose the galaxy-brain four-dimensional-chess player that dominates my conscience wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he treated someone like Nohemi as if they were worthy only of another cheap and transient thrill.
Which is dumb, of course, this idea that so often I am willing to forego such respects for most of the fly-by-night women I come in contact with. Usually if I want it I want it only right now, and yet with Nohemi it was like she deserved for me to be in love with her as much as she was perhaps with me for such an act to take place. Because with her I wanted it to be right. I think I became too close with her for it to be any other way.
And I will remember where I was when I broke up with her, in a manner of speaking (since her and I were never an official item), and I’ll remember the sensation I felt directly after where I didn’t know if I made the right choice. I thought I would have been like happier, or as if some weight had been lifted off me, but all I could muster was a strange wave of sadness. That maybe I was cutting the cord before it was time.
Alas, it is perhaps also true that by virtue of not taking it there, with her, the two of us may be able to blossom again — even if it isn’t in the immediate future and the next iteration of our relationship isn’t at all romantic. Already we have made a type of amends that allows for both of us to be friends, and to wish each other the best, and to be there for one another, and so on. It has never been my particular style for things to end in such a way, because my comfort has always been found in these all-or-nothing types of relationships where the only way out is for bombs to burst in air and for the fireworks to be omnipresent.
My intention for the future wars, those that pertain to women, at least as we move headfirst into the year 2025, are going to be very much similar to the plan I set out on before Nohemi entered into my life. As I told her on numerous occasions whilst giving her the reassurance she needed: It was either her or nobody. She was never in competition with anyone else. Her only competition was me having an innate desire to be alone. So it is.
We on Future Bets exist only on either end of the poles; we have those moments, and phases, and year-plus-long stretches where we prove chivalry is not only not dead but alive and well; we are courteous and magnanimous and we show the doubters the way it is supposed to look in an ideal sort of world; we have love and we have care and we do the things that must be done for those who are at the top of our sometimes unattainable mountains.
And we have also those moments and phases and year-plus-long stretches where the absolute opposite is true; where we do not possess the kind of compassion and consideration for those that would happily lie down and wait for us to say when it’s time to come, and to go; where we act in a way that turns into the reason men like me are neither to be trusted nor given the benefit of the doubt; where we become the exact thing that we hate.
My problem, historically, is that I have been poor at diagnosing where I happen to stand — while it is occurring in realtime — insofar as my place on either end of such a polar diametric. I can never realize while I am trying so passionately to be on the right side that I am in fact losing, and I can never see it while I am doing so dispassionately the wrong thing that I am winning. And like I said, the winner takes it all. The winner always does.
Add: ‘And so whenever it is I think about 2024’ is the dumbest possible way I could have started a sentence. Each of these women played some role in this year that I lived. Nohemi clearly dwarfs over them all. But now that we’re here, it’s, like, unfortunately, only Niña and everybody else. She is who I will think about whenever it is I think about 2024.
° ° ° ° °
Literature
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace:
Can’t describe it. Won’t even try. It became a running joke at work week-by-week while I lugged that big bitch around, getting bombarded by the same people asking when or if I was ever going to finish the fucking thing. For the last handful of years I have been the Book Guy; along with being a snob and a sports fan and always in need of making laugh those around me, bringing with me and reading a book has become part of my identity.
But I was never like ready for Infinite Jest, even as I read it. I did my best to hammer out two or three pages every half-hour break I was allotted, and I did the thing where I would try to read when I got home. It was frankly the smallest print I’ve ever encountered and whoever published it made goddamn sure there was as little wasted space per page as possible. To read even ten or fifteen pages required something like an hour’s worth of effort. 7.4/10, probably won’t pick it up again, but who knows.
Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington:
More in the realm of my non-fiction wheelhouse, Washington’s autobiography offered perspective on slavery, his plight making it off the plantation and utilizing the little money his family had saved up to attend Hampton University and eventually working off his tuition by doing anything it took. By the end he became one of the most educated and influential black men in the United States. My biggest surprise was how sympathetic Washington was towards white Southerners following the end of the Civil War. 7/10, loaned it to a friend several months ago and haven’t gotten it back.
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
Very rarely do I pick up a book and become entrenched in it and consumed by it as much as this one. I am not even a sucker for rags-to-riches stories. My reading of The Good Earth perhaps influenced the changes I looked to make once I got all the riff-raff out of my life sometime during the summer. 9.8/10, will read again when the time is right.
Sons, Pearl S. Buck
There’s a theme developing here. Pearl S. Buck became officially stamped on the Mt. Rushmore of my favorite authors. Sons explores both the different personalities and different families of the three sons of Wang Lung — the protagonist in The Good Earth — and finally coalesces predominantly around Lung’s youngest, Wang The Tiger, who becomes a great warlord and falls in love and then kills his lover who betrays him to enemy forces and then he realizes how much he (again) hates women and decides to marry two different ones in hopes of bearing him a son of his own to carry on his legacy. 6.9/10, it was nice.
A House Divided, Pearl S. Buck
The third volume of this trilogy, A House Divided might as well be separate from the other two as it focuses, almost exclusively, on the life and times of Wang The Tiger’s son, Yuan. The great irony in this story revolves around how strictly The Tiger wants his son to be a warlord, yet Yuan only ever wants to be a farmer. The reason this is ironic is because Wang Lung (The Tiger’s father) didn’t want to educate The Tiger, and hoped he would stay back on the family farm, and The Tiger abandoned his family to go to war. Yuan, on the other hand, spent his childhood being groomed by The Tiger to be a warlord, and wanted nothing more than the farm and to live off the earth. 8.2/10, you can’t read one without reading all three.
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain:
Not gonna lie, after finishing The Good Earth trilogy I was as a reader lost and feeling melancholy and I found this book (Pudd’nhead) in a box when I moved out and placed it in my bookcase since it was such a beautiful looking book even though I had no idea where it came from. My little brother eventually told me he took it from our uncle like ten years ago and never read it and I suppose that is how some books end up in boxes that never see the light of day until a U-Haul truck carries them from place to place.
Pudd’nhead Wilson was good. I mean it was fine, you know? Mark Twain enjoys as a white guy using a lot of Hard R’s, if you catch my drift, but his writing style and talent is undeniable and this story of a lawyer who is corky enough to ascertain the nickname ‘Pudd’nhead’ finally gets his flowers at the end of the story when he proves via fingerprints (due to an unorthodox hobby he has of reading palms and recording people’s fingerprints) that the murderer was not who the Southern town assumed. 6.6/10, probably won’t read again but oh boy does it look impressive in the bookcase.
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ten or twelve years ago I read this book and to this day I still describe it as my favorite story of all-time. I’m reading it now only because I don’t know what else to read at current, and while I remain perplexed each time I see what I had underlined in a past life, it is remarkable just how little insofar as details are concerned one remembers after such a long layoff. Previously 10/10, would read again because I am reading it again.
Add: Thank god for books.
° ° ° ° °
It has sort of been a tradition on Future Bets to dedicate a certain section of my Year In Review to talk about my goals for the following year — next year, in this case — and while I’ll keep up with it here, in 2024, I don’t really have a lot to say about them (my goals) that hasn’t already been said in years prior. And, honestly, if it doesn’t involve buying a house or starting a new career or getting married or having some babies then is it really worth writing about?
But the other night I was lying in bed and the thought occurred to me that, aside from being a writer professionally, or owning a business, or coaching a sports team — in other words, things that range from being possible to virtually impossible at this stage of my life — what I have always had an interest in is law. Being an attorney. Doing that for a living, I mean. So I did the thing where I went on Amazon and bought me a book called Law 101, which essentially translates into Law For Dummies.
One of my high school English teachers, Mr. Tivey was his name, took an interest in me when I was a junior and was probably personally responsible for my diversion from being a quote Math Guy to someone who learned to love language and literature and in fact, for a time, went to college to study Communication and journalism. Mr. Tivey made English cool to me. And while math agreed with me insofar as being a closed universe, and having definitive answers, English and writing allowed for some interpretation and style.
Anyway, something Mr. Tivey once told me — upon my telling that I wanted to be a sports journalist — was that there is actually a hefty amount of crossover between sports writers and lawyers. That the two basically go hand in hand. But of course at that age I thought of writing as a completely obtainable career path, and viewed law as one of those pursuits that only well-to-do families sent their kids off to.
The thing about writing, though, is that it provides me with certain logical conclusions. That there is a time for interpretation, and a time for style, but then there are other times where the goal is to be absolutely specific and leave nothing open to interpretation. This, I find, is how law appeals to me.
I know this because there have been several times — too many to count (or recall), actually — where I had multiple business-major friends of mine at Virginia Tech who needed me to edit/rewrite papers for them and who paid me by using their on-campus meal cards, or there was this girl I went to high school with who had me write a couple essays for her when she was at San Diego State University and compensated me in a much different way, or there was this guy I went to dealer school with who had a bunch of legal problems and needed me to write various statements for him to the prospective casinos he was applying at and paid me (somewhat ironically) with a really nice bong, and so on. And it seemed to be only those moments, where it was for someone else and not me, that I removed my own style and left nothing to interpretation.
It was probably because of that fact — taking my own personal style out of it — that gave me a certain high off it. I imagine part of the excitement I felt was that I was helping someone break the rules (which made me feel like it was me breaking the rules), but it was there, somewhere in that sweet spot, where law offers such an allure to my sensibilities. That it is not about right or wrong, but rather what can be proven right, or wrong, using language and the rules of logic.
We run into these scenarios every so often as human beings, when we send emails to insurance companies over various claims, or have to give written incident reports in the workplace, etc. Where we can’t just be willy-nilly about what we say but instead get incredibly specific, knowing that the words actually mean something. Here, on this blog, the words do not have any consequence. In real life, they carry a certain weight.
And just as I long for pressure in my everyday life, whether it’s with a female or at my job, or whatever — the things that actually make my brain wake up, or turn on — so, too, have I longed for such a pressure in the one so-called hobby or labor that I love above anything else in my current reality: Writing. I am not saying that being a lawyer involves writing to such an extent, but it does require an attention to detail and an ability to communicate.
Really, was I ever destined to be a table games dealer for the rest of my life? I think for the last half-decade I have described it both as something I love to do and simultaneously a means to an end. The means are the stupid amount of money that I make for doing something that needed only a high school education; the end was always to use the money I make to do something else. Aside from becoming a partner in a business — since I lack the funds currently to do it on my own — becoming an attorney would be the perfect profession for me.
I know this for several reasons. Most importantly my dad has always hated lawyers. Secondly I have always wanted to wear a suit everyday, and I’d rock the fuck out of those. Thirdly, I became a dealer in the same way most people end up at community colleges: Because after my academic career came to a close I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. While making it into and attending Virginia Tech is something I am proud of, it has also been somewhat embarrassing (in its own way) to say I went to such a relatively well-known school only to end up dealing cards.
What I mean to say is I’ve generally sought, with both eyes wide ass open, and an ear to the ground, a career more befitting of my education and aspirations and affectations. Something that is more fulfilling than showing up to work each day pulling on the veritable slot machine, where half the battle is being in the right place at the right time and getting lucky. We on Future Bets believe in and aim towards creating our own luck, and the best way to achieve that is by putting in the work.
Don’t get me wrong. I am forever a slave to the knowledge and information that I possess in this exact moment, whatever moment spanning the duration of my life I happen to be in. As a 17 year-old such knowledge and information led me to believe that if I didn’t attend a four-year university that I would be deemed a quote loser, or underachiever, and that the near-$50,000 per year investment my parents made (and, as an extension, I assumed and paid off) would be worth it in the longterm since I was pursuing (of all things) a career in writing, perhaps the most moribund of all dying industries — even back in 2008.
But just as it required a certain level of intelligence to make my way from Southern California to Virginia Tech, so, too, do I think I made a smart choice as a 22 year-old to become a dealer in the casino industry. Since it felt so much as if I had been cheated by doing the so-called Right Thing by going to college and taking on such absurd student loan debt — punishing kids for going to school is the most American shit, ever — I can’t deny that dealing is one of hidden gem careers given the returns on such a minimal investment. So we can wash our hands from that tradeoff, I suppose.
My thing, though, is that I learned around the time I was 30 that I really do enjoy working. I love it so much that I constantly am (and have been) looking for my next challenge. Attempting now to dedicate my time to studying law is merely an admission that I have never truly understood what it was/is I wanted/want to do. We can talk about the money and the fashion and perhaps pissing off my father, in a cute way, but overseeing each and all of those items is the idea that I know I would be really good at it.
Just as I was in my days of being a student in public school, I cared about being good at it because I had a bigger goal in mind. As a dealer I wanted to be good, and then when I became good I wanted more — so I learned craps and became good at that, too. There are endless paths to be taken in this life of ours, and while I have struggled to find which path I want to take, always I have carried with me the belief that I’ll be good at whatever it is.
Of course, this is the point in the story when I tell you, my dear audience, that there is an equal chance that I’ll read a few law books and find out I have no interest in it and then I’ll write again at another date to let y’all know that I gave up on it. After all, it is Eric here. Mr. Fear Of Commitment. Mr. Fear Of Failure. Mr. I Would Rather Not Do It And Say That I Easily Could Have. Things of that nature.
I don’t think that’s the case (pardon the law pun), but, you know, I have to put it out there. I have to protect myself. What this is really about is similar to what I wrote about in November, about being inspired. And how rare of a thing it is to feel true inspiration. Whether or not it actually becomes realized is important, of course, but not as important (some would argue) as feeling such inspiration in the first place.
I typically get pretty annoyed at the people whom all they ever do is talk, and talk, and talk some more, about how they are going to do this or that, and they’re all the same. They rarely follow through. My impulsive nature has certainly before made me guilty of this behavior, but at the same time this is not only my blog but my Year In Review, and if I don’t discuss here my goals and plans and hopes and dreams for the future, then what am I really doing?
Add: Niña’s death kept me in bed and sapped almost all of my energy for a full week. It made me shed more tears than I ever knew I was capable of. And at the same time, in some way being now on the other side of it, it is incredibly motivating to follow through with this goal of becoming a lawyer. Maybe it isn’t even law, per se, but in doing more. In becoming more.
I have a life’s mission, now. To make her proud of me even though she’ll never know. Niña wanted to get out of this toxic industry. I like(d) it much more than she did, the casino I mean, but we share(d) in the dream getting out. I must see this through for her sake. And I aim to one day break down and start crying once more such that, in a sense, we did it together. We made it.
° ° ° ° °
The biggest lesson I learned in 2024 was the concept of personal responsibility, which is one of those things I have always more or less abided by — being the first to take the blame when I’ve done something wrong, and the first to pump out my chest and celebrate myself when I do something that impresses me — but never to the magnitude that was presented to me this year.
In other words, as I have chronicled before, this is not the first time I have lived on my own. In 2008-’09 I was obviously in a dorm in Virginia; in 2010-’11, I was living in an apartment with my best friend in Colton CA; in 2016-’18, I had an apartment of my own in Redlands CA; these phases became fractured and I had to move on, but they did exist.
When I was at VT I had a semi-clear objective in mind (of, you know, going to school) and possessed very little money. When I was in Colton CA with Trey we were each making like $10 an hour and spent such a large portion of our free time gambling. By the time I was on my own in Redlands CA, some half of a decade later, I had the money to spend but I also had a (relatively speaking) hefty amount of debt.
So this, 2024, was the first year of my life where the money was not only steadily coming in but the debt was not much of a factor. As a consequence of those two items, specifically, on top of being older (naturally) than I have ever been, and thus having more experience than I have ever had, and being single, and everything that comes and goes with that, new problems arose that I haven’t ever had to deal with.
And I didn’t think too much about it while it was happening, this Vacation Mode that I mentioned earlier. Something about seeing it and doing it almost every day makes it difficult to see. Therein lies the problem, you know what I’m saying? Gambling, drinking, girls, money in general being spent, that is the sweet nectar of this human existence for many of us men. Without any responsibilities, such as children, or obligations, such as being married, I was living in the devil’s playground.
I don’t believe there was ever One Night which made me reevaluate everything. It was an accumulation of nights which led to many days and weekends of mine where all I wanted to do each day was lay in bed. I made mention last month of experiencing for the first time a sort of disguised depression, or hidden depression, one that I wasn’t aware I was in for the obvious (and perhaps ignorant) reasons of having the ability to eat and sleep.
In a way this was worse, but only in retrospect. Depression for me has revealed itself in several forms, and when it hasn’t afforded me the comfort of eating and sleeping it’s been in a weird sense almost reassuring. That my brain was giving me body a certain kind of check engine light, so to speak, which let me know things weren’t okay. This time around — or for a large chunk of the year, anyway — felt as if I had just taken my car in for service and I was blinded by the security of believing everything was okay even though it wasn’t.
All right, enough with the stupid metaphors. The moral is that upon learning how much damage I had been doing to myself, particularly with respect to my financials but also the secondary factors of playing (in a manner of speaking) certain women and generally living irresponsibly, I began the process of undoing and altogether halting my poor behavior. But, again, I didn’t realize it until I felt as if I was at a point where I was being honest with myself.
Throughout this catalog which I have offered in 2024 on Future Bets, the real story is one of progression. You, the reader, can lament how often I droned on about this or that. Things that you didn’t care about, or which I didn’t make you care about. You probably rolled your eyes at the latest and greatest female who was occupying my time. You may have leaned in a little closer and paid slightly more attention when I illustrated in which way and through which means I inevitably severed the ties. Then you skipped over the section whenever I wasted time talking about the Kansas City Chiefs.
You got to see me open 2024 by talking about how my mother got laid off from the job she had been working at. You got to see in February that the Chiefs, again, won the Super Bowl. In March you got to hear how excited I was to move out, and in April you got to read about how I did. In May you got to hear my perspective on why I complicated my life so much the year prior. In June I probably started seeing the light a little bit, but I wasn’t there yet. In July I talked about the stripper I dated in 2023. In August I probably wrote my best blog of the year, but that was only because at the time I was reading The Good Earth. In September I wrote about Trey. In October I wrote about switching shifts and seeing a new girl after my intentional hiatus from them. Last month I wrote about my family.
It’s been a ride, you know? I think it was like a ladder, progressing one rung by one rung at a time, and the more honest I became as a writer the better I was able to reflect on the impact of my actions both on myself and towards the world. I have a lot to thank for that, but perhaps at the top of the list is the fact that I had so heavily been fucking up. I have had lower moments in my life. That is to be sure. But I got pretty damn close. And the reason I know is due to this passage from August, which will ring true forever:
And now here, with the oft-regrettable wisdom inherited by the passage of time gone by, such a man can blame neither the acceleration of a world spinning as it always has at the same rate — regardless of age or experience in life — nor the ignorance in which adolescence demands of all its youthful subjects. He can only, therefore, rely on his own accountability. He can say this and that and have earnest objections towards himself when in his quiet moments, and yet none truly matters unless he is unimpeachable in his actions.
This is not one big thing in which requires course correction. It is not the folly one feels when they push the boulder up the hill for a week at a time or two only to see it tumble back on them, down all the way to the hill’s base, knowing they must now, again, start anew. Have we not been there before? Have we not been here?
Much time has been wasted toiling along with the challenges — seemingly manufactured — of such idle hands, and it is in these moments of weaving webs which often induce the tangler to become stuck. And no longer than at the point when one grows stagnant and bored that they realize how little they wish to be so paralyzed. But as one constantly jumps from one web to another, hither and thither, or like some clumsy fish who continues chomping down on the latest bait, they must recognize eventually whether by virtue of muscle memory or otherwise, such as a caveman who knew not the heat of fire until he felt how harshly and dramatically it scorched his flesh, that such another way was, and must be, more fruitful.
The August sun burns down during the daylight on my pale skin, and by nightfall the winds of summer bring with them a voice of reason. Unintelligible as such a voice sounds, its faint whisper signals only of change. One that speaks to the trees which are soon to suck all the nutrients from their leaves before they, again, collapse back down to the earth in time to satisfy the autumn months. One that takes with it from place to place the blustery desert sands. One that gives further work to the brooms that must be handled, from this weekend to the next, knowing that the broom-handler is fighting the type of cause one fights when they know the battle is already lost and that even more sweeping must be done.
And so along we go with this sun and away we carry ourselves with this breeze, unremittingly, as we humble ourselves against the whims and impulses which are surely to follow. Day by day we will check the tally marks and make full our hearts with a silent pride invisible to anyone, save for the one who takes pen to paper, such that one diagonal line follows four vertical ones, and so on, until perhaps a lovely sort of day arrives when the piece of paper is so cluttered and satiated with itself and without so much room as it had when the tally marks began, when the one with agency over the pen and the paper might tell himself: I did that.
° ° ° ° °
This here is the final section of the last blog I will write in 2024. By extension it is the ultimate article I will post on Future Bets until I publish my quasi-novel on here at some point in 2025. As far as my life is concerned, along with both the day-to-day trials within it as well as the memories that have come from it, which I have been diligent in chronicling on here during the year of our lord, 2024: This is it.
I look forward to taking a year off from this once-monthly burden of mine, which I committed to during last year’s Year In Review and was happily fulfilled by, but the work never stops. So long as I remain upright and continue making choices, among the highest of my priorities will be to use this medium as an exercise in not only getting better at the craft in which I love so ardently but in celebrating the art of storytelling, and using my own life experience to perhaps open a new window to help those who happen to stumble upon this silly blog to get better or smarter or more worldly.
The reason 2024 mattered, to me, anyway, is because never before have I exposed myself in the way I did this year. I don’t mean that in the awkward way where in a public space I like pulled my dick out. I mean in the sense that it left me as a writer significantly more vulnerable. I think in days of yonder — i.e. up until this year specifically — I would have talked my shit and done my dance and ended up eventually deleting many of the articles I posted. Going against such impulses during 2024 has defined this blog, and defined me.
I have so much love to give. A love for the persons and places and things that have occupied the sentences and paragraphs on this website. If it wasn’t worth it to write, then I wouldn’t have written about it. This blog, which for many years revolved around sports, and politics, and gambling, and the casino industry. This blog, which once upon a time wrote about the death of both of my grandmothers, which wrote about the deaths of both of Trey’s brothers, that wrote about the death of my one and only cat, Ranger, whom I adored so much.
This is my rifle. This is my gun. There are many like it. But this one is mine.
This blog, which without any regular or even semi-regular social media posting has become virtually the only proof of existence I offer to the outside world. This blog which began in 2013. This blog, which has documented to laborious lengths the rising tides that lifted boats, the tidal waves that capsized them, and all the ships that have passed through my nights. This blog, which was borne following the conclusion of my first significant wave of sadness and sorrow. Which remembered how to walk again following my second bite at the apple.
And now I think it’s an important time in my life. . . to step away from it. Not from the writing, per se, but in keeping up with myself, which, in turn, kind of like fools me into allowing my life to seem more significant than it actually is. One of the major themes of this blog in the early days was its nature of romanticizing all of the minor and trivial details that life offers everyone. It became almost arrogant in the way it insisted upon itself.
Although over this last decade I have found and fortified my own philosophy of life — you know the one — which believes in nothing, and nobody, and that thinks randomness accounts for far more than most people often give it credit for, etc., I can’t help but think that this blog of mine has crept closer in the year of 2024 to everything I once hated about it in its embryonic stages. And I never know when it’s time to leave until it is.
It dawned on me only last month that it was, in fact, time. Because what was ever to be my alternative? To continue on with this everlasting so-called monthly subscription-type of status report? To revert back to the days where it was all so scattered and directionless? To find a separate lane entirely and focus exclusively on a meaningless sports team such as the Kansas City Chiefs? These all would have been decent options, of course. But they all have been done before. By me.
And, I don’t know, in an abstract sense I believe one of the major inducements that brought me to doing what I did this year — by stretching out these monthly blogs and spending 90-plus per cent of the time writing about my life — was my way of keeping in touch with you. Because if it wasn’t for this, then what it be? How would I be able to convey that I’m still here? How else could I convince you that everything is okay? That I still smile. That I still laugh. That I still have such fond memories. That I’m not, like, stuck, withering away, in one of life’s labyrinths. I didn’t know how else to do it, so I did it like this.
This feeling of needing to communicate with you evaporated to a degree commensurate with the growing dollop of peace that arrived in my life when I began finally to give myself an honest assessment. . . which was overdue. Some wounds are never going to heal, of course. That’s what they say, at least. But we on Future Bets will never forget that I am a good man; I am an honest man; and that in spite of some of the details that find their way onto this page, this one, in front of you currently — I meant every word that I’ve said.
You will be out there, somewhere, in a distant place that I can only imagine, and I will be here. I will be living the life that you have come to know pretty well. The one with big hopes and even bigger dreams. The one that shared with you many secrets. The one who would have done anything to write for you just one more article — whether you liked it or not.
And now, it’ll be only silence, I suppose. It’ll take this once-per-month interval a step further. (Not farther.) It’ll be that thing that’s said about absence making the heart grow this way or that. Silence says more than I could ever be capable of, anyway.
Although I leave still many of my best stories, and greatest memories, untold, I would place a fairly substantial bet on the idea that — just as it was in 2024 — the more honest I become with myself the more honest I will grow to be on this blog. And just as progression was a motif on a month-to-month basis, and a theme over the course of this year, so too will it be whenever it is I happen to proceed with this nonsensical life of mine as a writer.
You know what makes a good author? It’s not vocabulary, and it’s not style. It’s experience. If you know you know type shit. You can have everything else in this world, but what trumps it all is the knowledge of having been there. The most offensive comment I’ve ever heard, directed at me, which made it even worse, according to my pride, was ‘I don’t want a normal life,’ which at the time was attached to the notion that I seemed like ‘the type of person who would get married and have kids at a young age.’
I never forget anything. I’m petty like that. But what I realized, later on, was the woman who said such a thing was right. Normal lives are fucking stupid. Normal lives create dumbass guys and basic ass bitches. They cultivate a type of culture among us that doesn’t understand the plight of everyday workers. They create the people who cut you off on the freeway without using their turn signals. They are the people whom you hold a door open for and they pass right through without saying thank you. They are the ones who run into you and never learned how to say excuse me. They talk too much and don’t listen enough. That’s what it means to be normal, and to live a normal life. Because those goddamn people are fucking everywhere.
If you spend any consistent time combing through this blog then you know I am far from perfect. I like to smoke, I like to drink, I like to gamble, I like to see what’s going on with this girl or that one, and occasionally I get high. I am impulsive. I like to shoot first and ask questions later. I like to fuck around and find out, always. I am far too critical of my own family members and not nearly critical enough of myself in the moments when I don’t know any better.
But I attempt every day between each breath in which I am so lucky to take to improve upon these occasionally cataclysmic deficiencies of mine. So I will continue to be courteous to those around me, even strangers. I will continue to be empathetic to each and all. I will continue to take my shopping cart to the designated space of the cart return area instead of leaving it sprawled out somewhere in the grocery store parking lot. I will continue to respond by saying Yes Sir and Yes Ma’am. I will continue being of the dying breed who uses antiquated technologies such as turn signals when I am switching lanes, even if it doesn’t require cutting someone off. I will continue being me in every way imaginable.
If that doesn’t make me normal, then normal is not what I want to be. The funny thing about it all is that likeminded people do exist, even (somewhat) quote young people such as myself, and when it is that we recognize one another, and really see one another, we generally find a way to congregate. As if it’s some secret language we are speaking, we are still here. We never left. And to us, it’s normal. It is normal to be this way. It is normal to be the way everyone should be. But just as the old saying goes that Common Sense Isn’t So Common, being Normal in this way isn’t really all that normal anymore.
A year ago, during my Year In Review, in a way I was sort of celebrating my own heartbreak. I was gentlemanly enough to shoulder the blame for a situation that was never truly within my control. I think I forgave first of all every other involved party, and forgot to dedicate the time and resources which were required to forgive myself. Which, if we are being honest, is quintessential Eric. I go so hard on who I am and what I am and the things I do. And never do I really heal, for I have this urgency, always, to move on by accepting my mea culpa, as if that will heal me all by itself.
The irony of 2024 — and irony is what it’s all about, anyway, is it not? — is that so much of this year was within my control, completely, and what I chose to do with it was find other ways to feel the emptiness and unworthiness that came for me in 2023. Ironically I did find a way to heal, at least I believed so, by the all the nights that led me to the mornings of such emptiness. We lived in Opposite Land this year, in other words. Where no woman turned into many women. Where Riverside CA turned into Cathedral City CA. Where day shift turned into night shift. Where the feeling of depression turned into the feeling of non-depression, but it was all part of the same depression.
We on Future Bets move only in one direction, and that direction is onward. We have no choice. Would you rather love and lose, or never love at all? Would you rather experience things and be able to learn from them, or not experience, and not learn? Would you rather be happy, and at peace, and comfortable, or would you rather see what all this fucking bullshit is about? These questions are more philosophical than they are rhetorical. Only you will ever know the answers.
I have made mine obvious, for they are what I allot such a tragically concentrated amount of my time discussing. And the real answer, the one that continues to draw me back — both on this blog and in my everyday life — is simultaneously Yes and No. We don’t ask for it. We don’t want it. And yet when it comes for us we accept it wholeheartedly and with open arms. We choose to exist for the moments that bring out of us both our best and our worst. We love the things that hate us.
During this meantime, upon this self-imposed hiatus I will be taking from being a regular contributor on my own blog, I will continue to explore these very philosophical and not at all rhetorical questions. I will take everything in which I happened to gather from my 2024 campaign and allow it to lead me to further choices, both good and bad, and come back around when the time is right.
Until then, best wishes. My regards. Sincerely. With love. Love.
Etcetera,
ER
Add: Over the course of this blog I made several allusions that for the overwhelming majority of the readership will not mean anything at all. It was my way of peeking through the window to say hello, and ask how do you do, without it consisting of some weird or intrusive bullshit. 2024 was a year that was very New to me, insofar as unlocking new levels of life experience is concerned, but very little about anything I have written on here differentiates itself, emotionally and spiritually, from what I wrote at the conclusion of 2022, or the climax of 2023. It is merely a continuation, all of it.
And it revisits on here a concept I have discussed ad nauseam, as if I am some goddamn cartoon character whom you can expect to be in the same place and time at the end of one episode as he is when the next one begins, whereas we have these people in our lives who can make the so-called dial go from one to ten, and then we have these other people whom always you know what to expect. Where the dial remains at a certain level, whether it’s three or five or seven, and so on.
The headlines are generally reserved for those who can get us to reach for those levels (that most people quite frankly aren’t capable of) in the same way that they bring us down to levels that we would prefer not finding.
In other words: the things which so frequently make their way onto Future Bets are the comings and the goings. The people who come, and the people who go. There is an excitement to be met during the rising action, which has always been a worthwhile item to hypothesize over, to speculate about, etc. And there is a certain disappointment to be felt when always it collapses into nothingness, which also becomes a worthy sort of like therapeutic writing session. Me, as the storyteller that I am, must see these things through — from start to finish.
What does not receive the headlines is that which much more regularly should have, and that person was Niña. Never did she get my dial to a 10, but neither was it ever at a 1. She existed always in that sweet spot. The one where it never required much effort for me to get up, where always I looked forward to seeing her, and hearing from her; where always she had the street smarts to make me laugh and book smarts to keep me engaged; where I never looked to take advantage of her; where she never looked to take advantage of me.
It is thus how someone such as me can realize, only now, tragically, that the real magic — and the true rarity which exists in my life — are not those who came, or those who went, nor were they the ones who got my heart pumping at some unnatural frequency, or got me to lose my appetite over wondering what could have or perhaps should have been. . . But rather the precious collection who stayed.
In my 34 years of experience I’ve had meaningful time with my family, but that’s only by default. I have my coworkers, but that is more or less by default as well. I had four years of high school with Trey, and perhaps another decade or so where we were best friends. That is really the only example that compares to someone like Niña, whom I was a regular member of her life for the last six years and she was a regular member of mine.
What I’m saying is how unicorn-like that idea is. That unless you are a member of my family, which consists of two brothers, a mom and a dad, or unless I have worked with you at Agua Caliente, there is now a 100 per cent chance that you are no longer part of my life. Trey lasted about 15 years, total. Caitlin (my first love) lasted four or five. But even with them our relationships/friendships were never in a straight line, from open to close. There were breaks in the action before we picked it up at a later date.
A devastating aspect of my relationship with Niña is that I had plans of having her in my life for its duration. With her, there was never any break. We went from strangers to friends to lovers to exes to very close friends, and we weren’t ever, like, not there — even when we had significant others to attend to. Legitimately, she would have been someone I invited to whatever future wedding I have. I would have been someone she invited to her’s. Literally the only way she could have kicked me out of her existence is by executing this idea in which she fulfilled.
Because, per numerous references I have made, given that Niña and I went through so much shit together — the good times and the hard times — and found our way to wherever it is that we got to, it made our bond unbreakable. The foundation we made for ourselves wasn’t a flimsy or makeshift creation that could ever wash away with the tide or be blown over by some slight or inconvenient breeze. It was as real of a relationship as I have ever known.
I truly hate that it had to end this way, because I enjoyed our random grocery shopping trips where she quote wanted to help me buy this or that for myself and I ended up spending half of the grocery bill on whatever she needed at that time. It was cute. I miss her sending me silly little $10 or $20 items to get her on Amazon. I want again to receive a text about how she had somebody betting hundred-dollar chips for her on a blackjack game but that she couldn’t pay that person while also having someone at the same table whom she was paying, who wasn’t tipping her at all, just so I could tell her, just one more time, that this is what we do. We pay the people who we don’t to pay, and we kill the people who could make our entire paycheck.
But like I said, she had staying power. In my life, anyway. I wanted to see her fall in love, and have children, and I wanted her dreams to come true. I played my part in trying to convince her that all this bullshit we deal with on a daily basis would someday be worth it for such payoffs. Where we could say all the rewards were worth the turmoil. Where we could look back on this era of our lives and treat it as it was: not so big of a deal.
Niña was a competitive girl, though, and that’s another thing I loved so much about her. That her and I were never really, like, satisfied. With life. Even when things were so simple, and so ‘good,’ where we could say the average person makes that much (money), but we make this much, our conversations forever revolved not around doing better than merely the average person, but striving to do better than even the best.
And while I will miss all of these minor details about Niña, about her humility in going grocery shopping with me, or buying her small items on Amazon, what I will never truly forget about her is this mentality that she possessed — and that her and I shared. Some people don’t know what they want; others do but don’t know how to get there; but then there is an even tinier group which is almost, like, snobbish in their pursuit of a bigger goal. Niña was my favorite snob. And she believed in me in the same way I believed in her.
I suppose, again, that such a great strength of hers became her eventual downfall, and ultimate undoing. Because while somebody such as me can employ a certain strategy, or so-called long game, which derives from life experience, and the knowledge that not everything that we want can be obtained overnight, Niña’s struggles came from possessing a very similar mindset to my own but lacked the foresight to be okay with the day-to-day nonsense and bullshit. For the last six years I attempted to rub off, in a manner of speaking, my experience such that she could see what I see. But there was nothing I could do in this regard to convince her. If Niña wanted it, then she wanted it right now.
And I appreciate that Niña didn’t have such patience that I have. Selfishly I wish that she did, of course, but I am jealous in many ways that she had the courage and the bravery to go out on her own terms. Unlike me, who one day — whether it’s when I am 45 years old, or 65, or 85, or 105 — will go out kicking and screaming and wishing that I had just a little bit more time.
Niña let me know, in this one final act of her life, that maybe my long game was/is perhaps too long. That life is too short for some strategy, or some game plan, and that the time to act is right now. It is thus how I aim very sincerely to carry on her legacy by fulfilling the dreams in which the two of us were never able to enact.
It has only been 13 days since she left. She left everybody generally, and she left me specifically. I miss her everyday, as I will continue to.
I was talking to my mom recently and, pursuant to me writing on here that I don’t believe I ever gave Niña her due, I don’t truly believe I knew — or was aware — of how much I truly loved her, Niña, that is, until she was gone. It wasn’t a romantic type of love. It wasn’t in a way that made me wish she would one day be my wife, or the one to have my children. It was a real sort of love, though, where no ulterior motives existed on either end of the paradigm.
I have said so many words on this blog. About Niña and my life. A time will come when I make it an entire day without a moment where I break down and cry. Where I get some sleep without first imagining where she is, spiritually. Where I am able to order a cheeseburger and eat it without my body telling me that I can’t. Where I can get back to normal, or something close to it.
For now, however, I appreciate that Niña occupies so much real estate in all of my body and my mind and my soul. Because it reinforces how much she matters to me. If I could, I would come on here every day of the week and write a separate blog about when the two of us did this, that, or the third. I would write about the good times and the bad, the sweet ones and the tumultuous ones, the early days and the latter, the long walks and terse conversations.
And yet when I end up at her service this coming Saturday, on the 28th of December, 2024, I’ll be in my dress shirt and dress pants. I’ll wear a tie. I will be very concerned about my hair looking just right — because it’ll be Niña’s last gathering, where it’s all about her — and I will want everything to be perfect. And I’ll have my game plan about what I want to say about her. About how much she meant and will forever mean to me. I will have it down pat before I go to sleep, and when I wake up.
Then I’m sure once I get there my brain will betray me once more and all the perfect things I wanted to say turn into something much more simple, and all of my best plans will evaporate — as they usually do — and I’ll have nothing left to give but to steal a page out of Niña’s playbook and live for that particular moment. And whatever message I convey will, to be sure, capture this very special woman who has been part of my life for the last six years, but what it will truly be about is love. My love for her. My love for what she meant to me. My love that I will hold in my heart from this day forward, and forever.
Future Bets 
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