Quest of a Closet Poker Player

I like to think I’m not a particularly unlikable guy or have some sort of social defect, but I simply don’t have many friends.
This is the seventh part of a series where I am examining all parts of my life and how poker has impacted it. The criteria I will use in looking at this question include all parts of my life:

• Spiritual
• Financial
• Career
• Physical Fitness
• Marital Relationship
• Parent
• Intellectual
• Friendship
• Psychological

“Friends…how many of us have them?” Whodini

After I took the Myers-Briggs personality profile fifteen years ago, it all started to crystallize a bit for me. I am an INTP, with these folks tending to have deep friendships with very few people. Growing up, I don’t think I realized that this was the situation. I was a fairly popular kid but wasn’t necessarily the center of the social universe. I was a strange hybrid, the athletic, smart, good church kid who was into student government. I tended to have friends in all parts of school. Our high school was 50/50 black/white where race mattered constantly, and I was friendly with a big majority of the school. There were the rednecks and bad kids that I didn’t associate much with, but that was about it.

I really gravitated more to friendships with girls, my lunch buddies being a couple of girls in my class who I rarely did anything with outside of school. I had heartfelt relationships with a girlfriend from very early on. In kindergarten, the boys would chase the girls and bring them to me, and I would kiss them. One particular blonde named Laura bore the tell-tale signs of this activity on her knees, the red Mecurochrome (or whatever it was called, I don’t recollect) under a bandage where she’d failed in her attempt to escape my minions.

College was a fraternity with again a couple of deep friendships, but when I transferred to a state school from my original choice, my friendships vanished. I went into a shell where I rarely spoke to people as I tried to figure out who I was and what I was to become. I wasn’t as much a loner as I was simply apart. I may not be qualified to describe it, and I’m not sure how relevant it is.

My adulthood has been one of work and business travel and moving around. We’ve had a couple of couple friends, although it has been a struggle for me. Suburbia is about smiling and chatting, but it really isn’t about investing, or at least it hasn’t been like that for me. Probably the closest I’ve been to starting down the road to friendships is when I was playing tennis again on a neighborhood team. I was a very good player on a team of good to very good players, and the common bond of tennis started bringing back the familiar to me. Golf was never like that, as I’ve always been a single being added to a two-some or three-some. I’ve had a couple of clients who would be considered friends, but that has its own limitations and curses.

Sweetie is my best friend, and I am one of hers. My brother Econ has gone from someone half a generation my junior to a great friend, and my brother-in-law marshman is a great friend. Soccer theoretically could be the basis of friendship, but coaching leaves me no time to interact with parents for the most part.

Poker has been a platform for friendship for me.

I need to be very specific and candid about this, though. I am a defective friend, meaning I don’t really know how to be much of one. In the virtual world, I feel a strong pull to rav and fuel and kat, and I would probably do most anything for them. I’ve had a chance to invest in a relationship with Linda, and she’s someone I always enjoy spending more time with and learning more about.

When I’ve had a chance to meet other bloggers, I’ve developed friendships yet I have to say I’ve been reserved. A big part of that is that most of these folks already have a bunch of existing relationships, and I’ve always had a hard time with trying to wedge my way into their world. I do look back on the rides to the Rio with Pauly as a special time for me, and I think it’s OK to be one of many for him. My time with Otis has always been when he’s consumed with work and responsibility, yet I think there is some great common ground there. When IGGY and I have talked, I’ve felt both a deep connection as well as a great deal of respect for him.

The strange thing about poker that most people don’t understand is that it is a platform bringing a diverse, disparate populace together. It is a platform that is an enabler for me, an enabler to be open to both the courteous words of others as well as the investment in real relationships from the few. These investments can be in emails and chat like I have with peaker, they can be in spending time together, they can be in the camaraderie that comes from the late nights and experiences that bond.

I know many more bloggers especially have many more deep friendships that have evolved from poker than I do, but it is enough for me to have this vast pool of potential, of people who are more than acquaintances. Maybe it’s because we are all on common ground with our implied pot odds and weak/tight and gutshots. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re all winners and losers, regardless of how good we are. Maybe it’s that poker strips the traditional schema that we each use to force rank and categorize our acquaintances. Job, income, looks, personality, things, politics, religion, race, geography–all of my comfortable ways of determining why I shouldn’t let someone into my life evaporate during the Mook or Hoy’s MATH or at the WPBT gathering or the quick Vegas jaunt or the G-Vegas game or the low-stakes home game. Even in the comments on a blog, for some reason it’s a connection of the common, a unique language and experience that sets us into our own community. It’s not that everyone is nice to me or approaches me or reaches out to me or Dial-a-Shots me (coffee or Diet Coke in hand…). It’s that there is this community of friends that could be more yet don’t have to be.

Am I better because of poker in the context of friendship? It is by far the greatest benefit for me, the introvert who is trying to figure things out after they were all figured out. It has to be the three best things about poker, there really isn’t any thing else that comes close to Friends, Friends, Friends. And thanks to all of you for letting me into this world, even a little bit.

Any thoughts send me an email at csquard@gmail.com or leave a comment.  Have a great day, and talk to you soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 8:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized.