2.6. Babes in Babylon.

Let's talk about drugs.

They come in all forms. Addictions don't have to be reserved for a chemical, or tobacco, or alcohol. They can attach themselves to all kinds of things. Food, sex, exercise, gambling.

Friends, I left Wisconsin and moved to the big city on my own to figure out who I am, and I've learned a lot about myself since Balki's arrival - almost all of it terrible. This week I learned that gambling is a very potent and addictive drug for me. As you might expect, the way I came to learn this is 100 percent Balki's fault.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a long and sordid tale, during which Balki and I each hit several new personal lows. We'll get there, but first I have to set the scene for you. It begins - like many of my stories - with a Myposian idiot yelling at the television.

Balki was on the couch in the apartment, watching Gilligan's Island and fruitlessly trying to encourage Gilligan to change his behavior. I burst in, bedecked in my bomb-ass new leather jacket and full of mirth and vigor. I'd received an exciting letter from the management at Shop and Spend grocery stores, which I shoved into Balki's hands.

He attempted to read the letter, sounding out each syllable so agonizingly slow that I lost patience with him immediately. Can I point out that Balki seems pretty well conversant in English, and so it's not a language barrier that is causing him to read so slowly? Balki can't read. Anyway, the letter informed me that I was the lucky winner of a state of the art double door refrigerator!

That was enough to get my motor running. I get so few wins in my column around here; I'm a college educated, certified bull-stud earning minimum wage at a piecemeal department store owned by a shady asshole. I don't have a girlfriend. And I spend all of my waking hours babysitting an illiterate walking hurricane, living in constant fear that he'll eventually get either bored or self-sufficient enough to murder me. So when I get a win, you're damn right I'm going to celebrate.

There is, of course, a catch: as Balki continued to stumble through the rest of the letter he discovered that instead of the refrigerator I could choose a trip for two to Las Vegas. He went apeshit and demanded a Dance of Joy, which I'm proud to say we NAILED. We had enjoyed a full sixty seconds of pure and mutual celebration, which was a record in our apartment; because immediately after the Dance of Joy, the conflict began.

Balki apparently has always dreamed of going to Vegas, which comes as no surprise to me; the overstimulating and exaggerated melange of flashing lights, loud noises, trampy women and people in costume probably lines up pretty identically with Balki's Dr.-Seuss-meets-Hunter-Thompson lens on the world.

Like always, one of us needed to be a sensible adult; and like always, it would not be Balki.

Point one: we could actually use a new fridge. Balki eats some seriously deranged foodstuffs, and if I can't change his diet the least I can do is reasonably expect that it will be kept refrigerated. And we had won the world's greatest refrigerator! It TALKS to you. It monitors your eggs.

Point two, as I laid out clearly to Balki: Vegas is a moral wasteland that goes against everything I was ever told I believe in. I've never been there. I never wanted to go. Balki, however, launched into one of his standard guilt trips about how everything we do should be designed to satisfy his every want and need of the American Experience, and if I don't cave to his completely selfish personal desires then I'm a bad guy. Then he decided to let some twisted Myposian hand game reminiscent of paper rock scissors decide which prize we'd take, without explaining the rules to me and using the "game" as an excuse to slap me across the face several times. The constant physical abuse continues.

I told him we'd decide which prize we'll take with a classic coin toss, which guess what? I lost. I always lose. Larry and Balki were going to Vegas. Cue the mood swing; I'd gone from experiencing one of my rare windows of pure joy to misery and fear, just because Balki wanted something. I told Balki I'd go, but I wouldn't have any fun.

His answer: "Well of course not. I wouldn't expect you to."

Fuck you, Balki.

- - -

Cut to Las Vegas, Nevada. We arrived in a garishly decorated, hot pink hotel room with porno on the walls, which Balki of course went nuts over and I immediately noticed there was only one bed. He pounced on the complimentary champagne, but I warned him off of it because "they want you to get drunk so you'll gamble more." What would Balki do without me?

So I learned a character trait: Balki's obsessed with Wayne Newton. While I was getting cleaned up in the bathroom Balki revved up the coin-operated Magic Fingers on the bed of our super-classy hotel room and thumbed through a flyer, in which he discovered Wayne Newton was playing and he flipped the hell out. In the spirit of compromise I said going to Wayne Newton would be fine, even though I'm not a fan.

Any adult would recognize that we were engaged in the push and pull of two people with different interests agreeing on an agenda that would satisfy both of them. Especially, I might add, since I had already agreed to use our prize winnings on a trip that I desperately didn't want to take in the first place. I said yes to Wayne Newton, and then pitched a diverse list of ideas that included a trip to the Hoover Dam, hitting up the Liberace Museum and a nice evening walk in the desert. Balki basically pretended he didn't hear me and said he just wanted to go to the casino.

It's times like these that I struggle to reconcile myself with the duality of Balki; he's somehow a vulnerable simpleton and at the exact same time a terrible person. Not easy to pull off. So that's when I decided it was time to tell Balki the real reason I was so worried about going to Vegas: we have a history of gambling addiction in our family. Our Uncle Pete ruined his life gambling. He gambled away his house, his car, everything he owned. We never did find Aunt Susan. It's in our blood - and that's why we can't go into casinos.

So that asshole just started to cry, because he wanted to go into the casino. Even though I had just explained to him that an Appleton going into a casino is like a recovering drug addict going to a party at Jerry Garcia's house, he whined so hard I agreed that we could walk through the casino but not stop. Then he had the nerve to say "we should have taken the refrigerator."

I have my flaws, but I firmly believe that in that moment I became a verified saint for not wrapping my hands around his throat and squeezing until his legs stopped kicking and I saw the light slip from his vacant eyes.

Later on, we sprinted through the casino as quickly as I could drag Balki in order to fight the powerful urge to gamble coursing through my veins. I left Balki alone to get our Wayne Newton tickets, and exactly two seconds passed before a seasoned Vegas predator closed in. A dirty hooker named Windy joined Balki at his table and - as I understand it, I wasn't there - asked if he wanted to have a good time. She attempted and failed several times to negotiate a price for whatever filthy garbage sex Balki might be into before I returned and told her Balki had no money. Bye bye, Windy.

So Balki had a quarter on him and just NEEDED to gamble, and I figured it would be mostly harmless to let him blow his quarter on a slot machine and get it over with. Once the quarter was gone, we could carry on with our lives; but because my life is a never ending series of ironic torture, Balki hit paydirt. Quarters poured out of the machine like water over a dam.

Next thing I knew, we'd drifted onto the main floor of the casino. I was twitchy and uncomfortable, and I warned Balki that we had to move out quick or else he'd catch "the fever." I forbade him to stay there, which he of course completely ignored and dropped some chips on 32 on the roulette table.

Frigging Balki hit the jackpot again. This was bad. I grabbed his chips and told him I'd help him lose his money so he could learn a lesson and we could make it to the Wayne Newton concert that I didn't even care about. We split the chips and hit the wheel again. Balki lost, and immediately entered a depressive funk. Unfortunately, I won.

The memories get a little fuzzy from there.

Even though Balki was satisfyingly done with gambling, I had set about to lose the rest of his winnings to punish him - which I'll admit fails a pretty glaring test of sensibility. I let my bet ride on the roulette wheel - a suicidal move considering the number had just hit - and miraculously hit lucky 36 AGAIN. Do you have any idea what the statistical odds of hitting the same number twice on a roulette wheel are? They're astronomical! Clearly, something more powerful was at work here, and I could feel it coursing through my body. The room moved in slow motion. My fingertips became electric, my voice deepened, and I was certain that I'd grown five inches taller.

I felt alive.

I put the chips on my birthday and it hit. The money was really starting to pile up. Balki's kindergarten level attention span had long since quit on him and he just wanted to go see Wayne Newton, so I gave him his ticket and told him I'd catch up with him once I lost his money. I dismissed Balki coolly, convincing him that I was just as excited about seeing Wayne as he was. It was like I was watching all of this from outside of my body while an insanely powerful hunger was in control. It felt like I was dying of thirst, and the moment I'd dispensed with Balki I could drink from the river of life. I would have said anything in the moment to make him go away. I NEEDED to gamble.

Having successfully fed me his forbidden fruit, the Myposian Serpent left the scene. And my birthday hit AGAIN. 36, 36, 24, 24, all in a row, and I bet on every single one. People write songs about that shit.

Eventually my streak ended; sometime later, I'm not sure how long, I had played 12 and the wheel hit 22. The guy operating it was weirdly antagonizing toward me about it. So I played 22 and the wheel hit 12. In retrospect this was probably that same higher power telling me to pack it in, but I couldn't hear it anymore. Balki returned, having watched the entire Wayne Newton show by himself. He asked why I didn't join him, and I told him I'd sold my ticket to keep gambling.

I spread my money all across the table and somehow still lost, while the dealer seriously rubbed it in my face. This guy needed training on how to keep a loser at the table, but I barely noticed him because Balki was being all patronizing and playing ignorant about why I was super into gambling now, even though I'd been begging him since Chicago to NOT LET ME GAMBLE.

I confessed to Balki that I had sold my plane ticket too, and that I would have to win enough money to buy it back. Then you know what that prick said to me? "I think you take after the Uncle Pete side of the family."

Balki tried to physically restrain me from riding the wheel one more time, and when I tricked him into turning away I dumped every dime on Lucky 12. Balki then broke a cardinal rule by grabbing the marble off the roulette wheel.  The casino fell silent. Two mobbed up pit bosses descended on him immediately. I had to promise I wouldn't gamble anymore so he'd turn over the marble in order to save his life, and then he ran off with my chips.

The wheel hit 12.

I lost my mind. I chased Balki across the casino all the way back to our hotel room, where I stalked my prey, bursting into the bathroom and closet and screaming. I sniffed the air and crept around the room, having finally committed to murdering Balki. I eventually scared him out of his hidey-hole and pinned him up against the wall.

"Cousin Larry!" he pleaded.

"There is no Cousin Larry!" I spit into his face. "There is only Lucky Larry! I'm going for the big jackpot! I'm going to blow this town wide open! Now give me my chips!"

Balki saved his own life by shoving a mirror in front of me. The face that I saw in my reflection was not my own.

It was Uncle Pete's.

I collapsed, emotionally destroyed, into a sobbing puddle. Balki stood above me all high and mighty and told me I went off the deep end.

Quick recap: I begged Balki to take the fridge and keep me away from Vegas. He dragged me there. I begged him to keep me out of the casino because our family has an addiction. He dragged me there. I pleaded with him not to gamble, and he did anyway. Now he has the audacity to look DOWN at me and tell me I went off the deep end? NO. Balki rolled me up in a carpet and threw me off the deep end.

I confessed to how low I had sunk. I had sold my Wayne Newton ticket. I had sold my plane ticket. I apparently had even sold the free champagne in the room, which frankly was pretty shrewd on my part. I accepted that I am a compulsive gambler.

Balki tried to reassure me that I'm not a compulsive gambler, I just got caught up in the excitement of Vegas. He reminded me that I don't gamble on sports or the lottery, and asked if I wanted to gamble in that moment. I told him I never wanted to gamble again.

Then, inexplicably, Balki got mad at me.

He started yelling at me in Myposian and finally told me I always either go too far or not at all, and I need to find somewhere in the middle. This is enabling behavior at its absolute worst. It was like I'd accepted that I'm a drug addict, and Balki said "no you're not. You can just do a LITTLE heroin, like on the weekends." Clearly I can't, asshole, I have an imbalance. But then he stopped making it about gambling and tried to spin the whole experience into an analogy on my unwillingness to have fun.

What really happened is I begrudgingly did what Balki wanted to do even though it was unhealthy for me, and it went really badly, and rather than encourage me to avoid triggers for my addictive behavior Balki just shamed me about not being able to control myself so he can keep doing whatever he wants and dragging me along to keep him from getting killed.

For all of this, I ended up thanking Balki and telling him I owed him a lot. I'm so broken, I actually believed it. We set out to see Wayne Newton's second show.

I hope when I get home my food isn't spoiled. Our fridge is garbage.