Strange Dreams Always Come When You Have Been Awake for Three Days and Warren Zevon Fills the Room

I always have the most vivid of dreams after I have been awake for an extended period of time and Warren Zevon is raging on the Pioneer PD-F906. Those dreams tend to be filled with a great deal of weirdness and are remembered for their horrible characters and bizarre scenes that stay with you for a long time.

Last night I had one such dream. It was a head movie so vivid and detailed that I could not possibly forget.

Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead was on constant repeat when I finally shut my eyes and slept after three days of travel, drink and fun.

LeRoy says there’s something you should know
Not everybody has a place to go
And home is just a place to hang your head
And dream up things to do in Denver when you’re dead

My dream did not actually involve me thinking of things to do in Denver when I’m dead. Though I do enjoy the city and Denver is as good a place to be as any when you have left this mortal world. The plan would be to float around Uptown looking for fun before some burritos at Taqueria Patzcuaro on West 32nd Avenue and then onto an evening of heavy drinking at The Famous Door. There are worst ways to get through the afterlife, as most non-Catholics will find out in the fullness of time when they all of a sudden find out how hot things can get.

No, this dream was a lot stranger than scenes of afterlife potential in the Mile High city and provided the sense of being almost real. It was only the incomprehensible stupidity, and unthinkable immorality that convinced me that this could not possibly have happened in any place but the head of a weary writer returning to a state of equilibrium.

Your venerable author, in the dream of course, was working for a betting shop named TrailblazerBet. TrailblazerBet was a relatively new betting shop located on a rather spacious and well kept racecourse in one of the few jurisdictions amenable to those in the business of corporate bookmaking, a jurisdiction where turnover taxes are relatively low and setting odds is encouraged. The office was compact and cramped but this is always the case for new firms, particularly those without a huge sum of funds in the bank.

The primary asset of TrailblazerBet was, without doubt, the quality of the bookmaking staff. Many were the top oddsmakers in Australia and in some cases, the world. I was bought on to write entertaining screeds and assist in the running of the election book. I am well known around gambling circles as a quality elections bettor and with many contacts in the politics game, I was seemingly considered to be quite handy. I had been in the belly of the beast and I had seen the fat hit the fire on more than one occasion. When you make an ill-considered run at a Senate vacancy and wake up one lonely Friday morning to find you are being discussed in unpleasant terms by some ignorant radio shock jock with a penchant for arrogance and the state boss of a major political party that made Ernst Rohm look like a bleeding heart, you have pretty much tasted the filthiest of bile and seen the true machinations of big time politics. You make friends, you make enemies and you hope like hell that you have the bottle and the numbers to beat the bastards into severe disfigurement. It all made perfect sense that, with an election imminent, my knowledge of politics would be called upon. It has always been wise counsel to have the best with you rather than against you.

Political betting is somewhat different to sports betting. You have to be flexible and you have to be able to read both history and momentum and if you aren’t prepared to change sides, you are doomed and you will bleed from every orifice in your body. These are simple facts but they are not facts understood by all.

As the months ticked by on this relatively new shop, the sharpies seemed to have our number and the venture was not particularly profitable. Of course, most betting shops are not particularly profitable in their infant days and the name of the game is to stay afloat until your client list is big enough to turn things around. The financial situation was looking increasingly dire and funds were needed.

Those funds were bumped up, as they say, by some of the original financiers of the TrailblazerBet parent company BorderBet and subsequently through listing on the stock exchange. The prime financier in these early days was a weedy, awkward, uncouth looking man named Watts Ambler. Ambler had made his money in a most interesting business venture. The company, on which he was a director of, the publicly listed BananaRaw, developed a balm that supposedly cured intestinal cancer, syphilis and the gout. That is some kind of hot damn balm!

When news of the aforementioned balm reached public circles, via the marketing wing of BananaRaw, the share price rocketed. There are a lot of gullible folk out there and many bought into the notion of the all-curing balm, quite literally. The share price rocketed and continued to rise like the Manhattan skyline. Then, quite curiously, Ambler and another director sold their shares. Perhaps somewhat coincidentally, a release was made soon after refuting previous claims. To say that the share price of BananaRaw went through the floor with a violent thud would be a significant understatement. The medicine man cackled wildly as he held his glass of whiskey and watched the sharp descent. Many people died falling off that cliff.

Watts Ambler, unconcerned, sought out further business ventures and maintained his modus operandi of taking as much as he could for as little as possible. His stake in BorderBet increased significantly and somewhat disproportionately through the use of convertible notes that were approved by a most naive and desperate TrailblazerBet board keen to keep the company afloat. At one point the board toasted Ambler while drinking pina coladas at Trader Vic’s. I don’t recall seeing any werewolves.

For all intents and purposes, Watts Ambler had a controlling interest in TrailblazerBet.

BorderBet soon went public and raised a significant sum through the issue of shares. This was seen as a boon for TrailblazerBet, the long-term future seemingly now secure. The bookmakers drank wildly and shareholders seemed pleased to be on board such a promising company. TrailblazerBet would take the gambling game by storm and we would all get rich on cash and intellectual fulfillment in the very near future.

Then the hammer was bought down firmly and swiftly on TrailblazerBet and all associated with it. An announcement was made that BorderBet were getting out of the gambling game and looking to mine diamonds in the swamps of outback Northern Territory. TrailblazerBet was underperforming to such a violent extent that there was absolutely no future in the company. The client list, the most valuable asset any betting shop has, was full of smart punters and the prospect of profits any time in the future was assessed to be zero or very close thereto. That single announcement gutted the value of TrailblazerBet like an abattoir worker guts a pig.

To the surprise of only the shareholders who had invested in a sports betting company, TrailblazerBet was put on the market. BorderBet, less than a quarter after raising funds for a sports betting company, were getting out of the gambling business and entering the much safer venture of diamond exploration. Not only were BorderBet getting into the surefire diamond exploration game, they were doing so with a company that ran by the interesting name of Jesaulenko Mining. The head of Jesaulenko Mining was facing charges of contempt for allegedly lying to a parliamentary committee and was mired in an investigation by a government body that dealt with corruption.

Madness ensued as shareholders in BorderBet, in fits of panic and anger, demanded to know the score. “Jesus Man, we have put our life savings into a sports betting company and now we are mining diamonds…I want answers…I am not a prospector, I am an investor…I need to talk with someone forthwith…the riot police will be needed if I am not sent straight to the top…my wife has just fainted on the kitchen floor and I have a high powered semi-automatic weapon in my hand…desperate times call for desperate measure and I am capable of all kinds of violence when my future is suddenly filled with destitution and soup kitchens…”

Their voices were shrill and more than one wept openly to strangers they had never met. Most people would have been jolted awake at the terror that was filling their head had they have dreamt this.

Those taking the calls in the TrailblazerBet bunker could only empathise. There were no solutions from our end. These poor schmucks were on the verge of being molested while we poor schmucks were soon to be on the dole queue begging for food and dignity. We walked together, arms locked. But there was nothing that could be said. I was in the house when the house burned down. And the fuckers who set the place alight just happened to own the joint.

There was, of course, the hope that TrailblazerBet would be sold to somebody competent and intelligent enough to run the place properly. There were plenty of interested parties willing to take the company over, despite the fact that nearly the entire value of the company had been squashed by stupidity. There were still bookmakers and customers and physical assets.

And then the notice went out, like a siren in the dead still night. TrailblazerBet would cease trading. Despite negotiations continuing on, the dumb fools in charge of BorderBet closed the place down. The new board, pale ghosts of the evening with the collective IQ of a drowning emu, sunk one final slipper in. The company was now utterly valueless, not worth a mutilated nickel in Nicaragua. Bookmakers, phone operators, IT staff and administrative personnel were told to pack their bags and get the fuck out. All via email, of course. “You are all worthless swine…we don’t need you or your kind…Christmas? So what…you need to leave the country forthwith? Ho ho…”

We are all just lucky that this was only a dream because surely something like this could never go on. Nobody would abandon a sports betting venture for some strange mining fantasy after taking millions from the public. There are bodies out there to prevent this kind of thing and at any rate; surely there would be nobody out there foolish enough to proceed down such a path.

And the dream finished suddenly with the voice of Nick Carraway soothingly repeating the last line of Gatsby. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” I had not been dreaming about my Daisy Buchanan and there was no romantic context of Jazz Age New York for the moral bankruptcy in play. This was a subconscious lament on the unrestrained materialism of those who fall into wealth, not always in a manner that can be considered “on the up-and-up”, and have a never ending yearning for more, pursuing it with scant disregard for others and their own stupidity. This was Gatsby in a seedy Filipino brothel, a fat and sweaty man surrounded by fifteen year old girls he had just beaten and shamed. The theme is the same but there was no notion of romance to hide behind.

My dream was a vision of stupidity and the indecent whipping of good men by the Dumb Rich, not dissimilar to the conscious visions of Fitzgerald. In the end we will push on, against the current of the thoughtless debauchery of those born to privilege or those who can afford to buy luck, despite the realisation that the fight is hopeless and the Good Man will always suffer in the end. The Dumb Rich, the Watts Ambler’s of the world, for the most part can get away with whipping the common man and will laugh as heartily at this beating as he will when he opens his bank statement and realises he has fleeced another sucker. That is reality. And our green light on the dock will always be the knowledge that our image of humanity is decent and positive and for the most part, pure. We will get beaten time and time again by the Dumb Rich yet we will return in the hope that next time things may just work out and fairness and common sense will prevail.

And that one day, be it in this life or the next, will see Watts Ambler and all his kind get strung up by the testicles and stoned without mercy until the blood seeps from their ears and the tears drip onto the soiled ground one at a time and these greedy rapists cry for no more. Then a swift left foot right to the skull and we will be on the road to justice. Only then will these privileged few understand the meaning of providence.

When I arose, covered in sweat and realising I had been asleep for nineteen hours; I turned Warren Zevon off and wildly scribbled some notes. I then wandered out, made myself a cup of coffee and said to the Judge, who just happened to be around betting heavily on the NBL with Wild Bill, “I just had the strangest dream…”

This is an article of fiction. Any likeness to any person, persons or events is merely coincidence