The Legend of Boobarella

Charles Town has joined the growing trend of adding casino facilities to racetracks, and created Hollywood Casino. It is a much larger and more stylish facility than one would expect from the mountains of West Virginia. Watching the hundreds of players lining up for the slots and crowding the table games is like witnessing the slow death of Atlantic City. Many cities, all across the country, are desperate for a piece of the gambling industry and states no longer seem content to let Nevada and a few others monopolize this lucrative market uncontested.

A little while back, I was playing some $1-2 NL Hold’em at Charles Town when there was a sighting of a legendary creature, known, in most circles, only as Boobarella. Boobarella is the poker equivalent of Sasquatch and Santa Claus, all rolled up into one. She is an extremely rare, almost mythical beast, but when she appears, there are presents for everyone. She is from the same family of poker degenerates as “Drunkie Red Nose,” who haunts the swamps of Tunica, and “Twitchy McSniffles,” who likes the low limits in Downtown Vegas.

This particular Friday night, Boobarella wandered down from the mountains of Appalachia and took a seat at my table. She looked to be about 57, but might have been aged a few decades by years of “hard livin’.” Boobarella had selected a low cut pink top that would be inappropriate in most social situations, including being a 57 year-old-woman, of her generous proportions, in any situation. The eyes that sat above her exposed cleavage had the glint of someone who has traded sex for money, drugs, or perhaps both, at one time or another in her life, and maybe recently. Her tone of speech and topics of conversation suggested the same.

Although her teeth were not her own, Boobarella was in a wonderful mood. She regaled us with tales of her broken marriage and the man she chose over a glamorous career in Hollywood. On her lap, she clutched a large purse, from which she regularly produced bottles of pills and bags of candy, before gobbling up the contents. A nomadic individual by nature, it is the custom of Boobarella to play a few hands before mysteriously disappearing for long periods of time. Where she goes, we can only speculate.

Unfortunately, luck was not on Boobarella’s side this evening. She got run over like a baby ocelot at a fur trapper convention. After bleeding off several hundred dollars, she began to playfully accuse people of picking on her. It was about one in the morning when Boobarella desperately shoved in the last of her money with King-2 suited. It was not a winner.

If she didn’t met the guidelines of mentally disabled, there are certainly some psychological acuity tests that Boobarella would not perform very well on. As he riffled the remnants of her stack, a friend of mine reflected that he almost felt bad taking her chips. Not me. Other people’s money is easy to spend. Some nights, the hopelessly fishlike creatures, like Boobarella, bite back. And when they do, they don’t contemplate how bad it feels to win.