Over the Top

Drunken coffee table arm wrestling.
I don't recall whose idea it was.
In all honesty I'd say it was mine
since an over-served display of bravado
made interesting by monetary wagers
sounds like something an intoxicated me
would whole-heartedly endorse.
Rallying the troops and funneling them
into the living room to gather round
the coffee table brought the excitement
back to the party that had long since fizzled out.
It seemed like a good idea at the time
as most of my failures do.

The first match was the most obvious:
my three-hundred-something-pound roommate
with biceps the size of baked hams
versus the kid I've known since junior high
who was captain of the varsity wrestling team
and gave a few headaches on the football field.
The latter was the underdog so I naturally threw
my ten dollars down on him without hesitating
in order to get things rolling.
I remembered when he would spend hours in
the weight room every other day and could lift
numbers that some of our fellow classmen
could not count up to.
That dedication was what I was banking on.
Three more guys got sucked into the bet:
the first two with ten each on my roommate
the last making a more pensive bet on my side.
Judging the match would be difficult
since only one person was right-handed
so we decided to make the competitors go both ways.
The two rounds were grueling battles
of sheer strength with sweat running down noses
but in the end mass beat heart as it usually does.
I was out ten bucks.

It was too early in the night
to let our new-found source of entertainment
disappear forever into a funny fuzzy memory.
We summoned the two lightest guys
in the house and coerced them into
assuming the position at the coffee table.
No one would bite at placing money on
the smaller of the featherweight fighters
so I tossed another ten into the pot
so there could be a match
knowing damn well that I'd just lost more money.
Two instantaneous wins by the opposition
proved my hypothesis correct.
Down twenty.
It was starting to be a rough night for me.

I wandered around the living room
in a frustrated daze while the commotion calmed down.
There weren't many other similar pairings
that would make for a good match.
I looked across the room at my muscle-bound gym-addicted pal
and challenged him to the final arm wrestling match of the night.
He accepted jovially and we hashed it out for a few short minutes.
The shame of having lost the first two matches
coupled with the whiskey and rum coursing through my veins
fueled a victory that I felt I'd earned fair and square.
It was all over and I almost felt better.
I say almost because in all of my vengeful glory
I'd forgotten to bet on myself in an attempt to cut my losses
down to only ten dollars.
I looked over at the kid in town for the first time in years
as he proudly boasted in between sips of his cocktail
that he'd won thirty bucks in less than thirty minutes.
Then I looked around the room at all of the other drinks
in the hands of my guests made with the booze
from my bar and realized that between that and
the twenty dollars already flushed down the tubes
it was going to continue to be an expensive night for yours truly.
The resounding blow of not betting on the one who matters
in the one that mattered only made matters worse.

I shook hands with my buddy as we rose to our feet.
We laughed and rubbed our sore arm muscles.
It wasn't his fault.
I was my own worst enemy again
and so in the morning when I woke up
I made sure to curse myself as I washed all of the glasses
in the sink after collecting them from their various
final resting places around the downstairs half of my house.

Endings can always be better
but sometimes the truth counts for something.