Lucky Bastard

Good things do happen to bad people. J-Fed is living proof.

About a month or so, I noticed a trend. Whenever J-Fed called he "happened" to be in a convenience store. By now I had realized there were no coincidences in J-Fed's world. Itcould only mean one thing -- either he was drinking Fraps again, and lots of them, or he had relapsed on video poker. It didn't take me long to realize it was the latter. If J-Fedweren't so damn lazy, he'd likely be a candidate for GA (gambler's anonymous).

But I knew better than anyone that getting hooked on the slot machines would require actually getting in his car and driving to the casino. This might require he shower, shave and change out of his work clothes -- and that most certainly wasn't going to happen.

So J-Fed stuck to the basics, which meant settling for illegal video poker at the local gas station. When I first found out his dirty little secret, I couldn't fathom a grown man sitting in a dingy gas station playing video poker for hours on end. But then I remembered that J-Fed was just a boy, and suddenly it all made sense.

I did find it a little funny that there was this whole new seedy underworld I didn't know about, a place where someone actually paid video poker winners in cash. Boy, if the gas station owner only knew... You see, even if he wasn't collecting cash rewards, J-Fed would still pour money into the stupid poker machine.

Truth be told, what really pissed me off about J-Fed's video poker habit was that he won... and he won big. I wouldn't be so lucky. The only prize I'd ever won was J-Fed, and well, look where that got me. But J-Fed... he was always cashing in.

It was about a month ago on a Friday, and I had gone over to the Fedster's new house to run some stupid errand for him. After all of this time, the "big favors" all seemed to be a big blur so I'm not exactly sure what it was he needed on this particular day.