March 2nd in Posso's Prompts

“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.” - ‘Fast’ Eddie Felson, The Color of Money

One time a friend of mine as me to dog sit while he and his girlfriend went on a week long trip. I was in the poorer north side of Milwaukee and he had been renting a little house in a desolate neighborhood at a dead end with a tow yard as the turn around. This was over ten years ago and it was already in a traumatic time of my life where I had been kicked out of UW Madison for academic integrity (Eventually you’ll hear about it but long story in one sentence - I let a girl cheat off me when I caught her and then filled out all the scantron answers wrong and she followed then I turned in the right copy in front of her, oops) and I was probably close to the heaviest I had ever been, around 340 pounds and just all around depressed. I’d go on 3 day binges of drinking, gambling, going to class smelling of weed and whiskey, not shower - just a shitshow of embarrassment all around.
While I was in Milwaukee, he told me to help myself to anything; he had stocked the fridge and shelves with all the junk food I’d ever ate in front of him, and left me books, games and even money in the form of online poker and petty cash for the casino - fuck was that deal good or what? I just had to let the little fucker out to shit and piss and I could literally sit in a casino and play cards for hours. That was the problem though. I had burnt through my paycheck and all the cash he had left me within four hours, making stupid prop bets on craps, $500 blackjack hands, shit a 23 year old had no business doing. I went home after the first day and the dog had chewed up three pairs of shoes, ripped the garbage apart, and shit and ran through the it and tracked it all over the house. I had a minor meltdown and threw a temper tantrum as well as a fat kid could have - flopping around and moving wildly until I had to catch my breath and was purple in the face. I didn’t want to handle it responsibly and wanted to run away from all of it. There was an out - this guy kept a jar full of casino chips on top of his bookshelf that he’d throw some into after every gambling session - sometimes $5 chips, some $25, and once I started looking into it, there were black $100 chips. I’d just start with a couple hundred, win, and put it back, easy, right?
Well, for 59 consecutive hours I did not leave the casino. The poker room, roulette, baccarat, $25 slot machines, high stakes blackjack. Around hour number 59 and down almost six thousand dollars, the casino floor people and a couple security guards came up to me and asked me to go home and clean up (I smelled like a homeless person and I could tell, I was just fixated on gambling.) I never did make up the deficit and when my friend and his girlfriend returned and I had to tell him what I did, I thought I’d be walking back from Milwaukee to Madison. His girlfriend threw my shit off the porch and went to say something to me and instead just let out a hyena like howl. After about 30 minutes my friend came out of the house, told me to get in the car, and we sat in silence for the whole drive back to my place in Madison. When we got there, I sat in the car and started to apologize once again but before I could get any words out, he said, “Did you take care of the dog at least?”

I can’t remember the dog’s name to this day.