I had a bad, bad night of poker tonight. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to illustrate just how bad it was with the phrase “anally violated” without offending my mother if she happens to read this entry but I just can’t pull it off, so let’s just say “I had a bad, bad night” and leave it at that while I tuck the tattered remnants of my colon back into my sock so it stops dangling out of the bottom of my pant leg and dragging on the ground.

Anyway. Sometimes the Poker Gods smile on you and bless you with hands like AA and AK that hold up against everything, even 7-2 offsuit, and when they do you rake the pots and smile and life is good. And then other times they let you sit there for three hours seeing the same four or five hands — 7-2, 10-5, K-3, 8-5 — over and over and over again, and on the few occasions that you catch a real hand they give the other guy a slightly better one. Those times you just lose your cool and you lose your money. Tonight was one of those nights.

It was so bad, I even got into it with a dealer tonight. I’m a pretty polite player generally, even when I’m getting crushed like I was tonight. I get pissed off and go on tilt and start muttering and want to rip the cards in half, but I don’t take it out on the dealer. Some players curse at the dealers and throw cards at them and threaten them and blame them for everything that ever went wrong in their life. Me, the worst I do is mutter to them, “You can give me a real hand anytime now.”

Tonight, though, I got a prima donna dealer. I was folding yet another piece-of-shit hand — 7-5 os or some crap like that — and I was maybe just a little bit forceful when I threw them into the muck. Into the muck — that’s key. And since I was sitting right next to the dealer as I did this, I guess my cards brushed the back of his hand as I did it. Well. You’d think I had pinned him to the table and beaten the crap out of him.

“Sir! Sir! Do not throw your cards at me! And do not touch my hands with your hands when you are folding your cards! I will not allow you to assault me again!”

I felt bad for about a split second, then I remembered that I hadn’t thrown my cards at him and my hands hadn’t touched his and that I hadn’t assaulted him. Then I thought about going ahead and doing all those things if he was going to claim I did them anyway. Instead, I just gaped at him, surprised and a little baffled. The rest of the table reacted the same way — I hadn’t done any of the things he was bitching about, so none of us knew what his problem was.

So I was diplomatic about it. Sort of. I told him “I’ll see what I can do.”

Well. That triggered another tizzy: “No! You don’t see what you can do, you have to do it! I will call the floorman and he will make you do it!”

I sat there for a moment, he sat there for a moment, nobody said anything. Then he just started dealing cards again and the moment was over. And from then on, every hand I was folding — which was most of them — I would wait until I had his full attention, announce “Look out dealer, I’m about to fold, watch your hands, cards are coming in, look out!” and then carefully, delicately place my cards in the middle of the table, far, far away from his hands so he’d have to reach for them.

Juvenile, I know. I don’t care. Wah.

There was no best hand of the night this time around. Instead, I’ll share two losing hands that were typical of tonight’s session.

#1: I have A-Q and the flop comes Q-4-8. I go all-in with my last $35 and one player calls with K-Q. The turn was a rag, and of course the river was a K.

#2: I have pocket 4’s and the flop comes 555. I go all-in with my last $40 and one player calls. His cards? K-5. And then to add insult to injury, the river was a K.

Sometimes poker just isn’t fun. At all.