#261: “The Trapeze Artist” aka “My Poker Story”

There’s a short story by Franz Kafka about a trapeze artist who never came down from his trapeze. An acrobat with a singular dedication to perfecting his art, so special was his act that the circus manager accommodated his every wish and idiosyncrasy. When the circus travelled from town to town, the trapeze artist was transported in the fastest car straight to a second trapeze, erected ahead of time, so that he would not have to endure an unnecessary moment on the ground.

I’m not a gambler. If I was, I’d be a writer. For twelve years, poker has been my safety net, my sleight of hand, my shortcut. The hardest way to make an easy living? It’s more like having the cheat code to a video game. This week marks the completion of my twelfth year playing for a living – a complex, swingy and circuitous journey; a coward’s odyssey through a landscape of quixotic dreamers.

When I started off, I gambled more than I ever have since. I had a couple of grand to my name and the temerity to think I could win other people’s money off them. Knowing what I know now, it’s clear I was incredibly lucky, running way above expectation in those early months. Although I will admit it was nice being oblivious to that and to have a fire burning inside me, even if that fire was fueled by the desire to prove that I was right and those who said ‘you shouldn’t be playing poker’ were wrong.

As time wore on, I became more conservative – knowledge tamed me as game selection, Kelly Criterion and a more tight-aggressive style transformed me into a nit. It was an ignoble metamorphosis. The flames were extinguished, replaced by glowing embers as consistent poker success blinkered me and made me insouciant and satisfied; a smug, fat, self-satisfied bastard.

The thing is, though, the people closest to me hadn’t said ‘you shouldn’t be playing poker’. They said ‘you shouldn’t be playing poker. You should be writing” but I chose to hear only the first part. They could see that I had become gun-shy after putting it all on the line for a couple of writing projects. Laying myself bare on the page and having it come to nothing had left me feeling worthless, humiliated and angry.

I could have got back on the horse and put myself at risk again but instead I chose poker. Somewhere in the chaos and capriciousness of a card game, I found a foothold. It was like being in the eye of the storm. I know now that decision was only superficially brave. I was tilting at windmills rather than tackling the enemy within. I had developed a fear of failure; a malignant fear that metastasised and infected everything; every introspection, every decision, every reaction. It paralysed me, becoming unrecognisable through its omnipotence.

With poker bolstering my wallet and my ego, I let writing play second fiddle, keeping my vulnerable parts at a safe distance. I’d like to think my poker story hasn’t been written but the truth is it has. It’s been written by me, over and over again, baked into the backstories of half-written protagonists, sublimated into the characters of tv shows that never got made, weaved into the narrative structure of screenplays that were liked, but not enough.

Every time the circus moved to a new town and the trapeze artist had to climb down from his perch, Kafka described how it changed him. His brow furrowed and his nerves began to jangle. His childlike fearlessness dissipated until, eventually, one day, he asked the circus manager to replace him. The abyss that had always been beneath him was something he had only come to recognise for the first time.