Billy Bullfight Sucks At Gambling

Sometimes, just sometimes, a Billy Affair works itself out with more than an ample supply of shadenfreude. To wit:

Punchin' Judy and I have a long-ongoing joke we like to call The Decade of Cats. It goes like this:

For every year past 30 that you are single, you should go ahead and get yourself a cat. If, approaching age 40, you are also approaching 10 cats, well... there's your final answer.

Naturally, since Judy is a comforter and a nurturer and hilarious but also a total bitch, she immediately brought my hypothetical Decade of Cats progress to my attention in the aftermath of Billy Bullfight's U-turn on me:

(Friends like these.)

Unfortunately, even after the above Final Call, I still had to deal with him for the usual collecting-of-my-shit/destroying-of-your-shit-and-denying-I-ever-had-it logistics. Occupying highest priority on this to-do list was the reclaiming of some rare/expensive wood I'd scored, which was residing in his workshop, as he'd jumped on my idea-wagon and the usual Susie's Half-Baked Project Hour had turned into a joint furniture-building endeavor.

This reclamation of property, much to Judy's delight upon dramatic reenactment, was a task which involved an incredibly heavy slab cut to fit my project, a small hatchback, a diminutive female's upper-body strength, a general lack of geometric intuition, a refusal to ask for loading help, a series of comical problem-solving failures, a minor solo shit-fit, and finally, a semi-defeated confiscation of every single one of the remaining slabs (which were cut to the smaller dimensions of Billy Bullfight's intended project), because no way was I letting that fucker win the entire burl-war. No way.

(One of us can always break out the chainsaw and cut more.)

But still, it took a few weeks to get my poker face back on and make the best of the shitty deal, and a few months of complete radio silence before I'd really seen enough cards come out to calculate the odds and conclude what betting high-stakes on Billy Bullfight had been: Not Even Fucking Worth It.

And you guessed it: in the style of all Billys who get scraped off into the NEFWI discard-pile, Billy Bullfight, once thusly classified, began to make apologetic noise on my periphery again. He started sending stupid peacemaking joke-texts my way. And when those went unanswered, he left a couple voicemails of ambiguous intent. And when those, too, went ignored, Billy Bullfight played his trump card, his four aces, the one thing he must have known would elicit a response from me: a picture of himself.

I won't share the pic, but it was a selfie of sorts. It was captioned "Look what I've got now!"

Billy Bullfight is on his couch, and the camera is pointed down at his lap, where (NO, not that kind of selfie) not one but two cats are lounging.

(Should've just stuck to dick-pics, dude.)

I've never really been one to need the last word.

I've never really been one to give a shit about "winning the breakup."

But right at this point, if my life had been a poker hand, I would have just tossed my final few pennies in ante, only to be dealt three Uno cards and a dead monkey. I mean, even aside from my recent Billy-induced battle wounds, nothing else was going my way on that particular few months' deal, so to speak: job, finances, school plans, living situation, social complications - all of it was coming up mismatched low numbers. It should have been - nay, it was - my weakest moment, the point in the game where I had no chips left and the casino wasn't even serving drinks anymore and even though I knew better, I just needed the safe ride home that Billy Bullfight could offer and might have been on the verge of taking it.

And then, there was Billy Bullfight showing his hand. "Look what I've got now!"

(Actually, sorry, not sorry at all.)

Right then, he folded! Billy Bullfight's cards hit the felt and I was somehow the last player standing! It really wasn't much, admitted - but it was enough. I cashed it all in and left the table laughing, with just enough gas money to get the hell out of Vegas, back over the Clark County line and on with my life.