Heaven on Earth? - Part 2
I decided I had enough of San Francisco so I remember trying to decide where I would go next. I was on a quest to find something but just what I wanted to find I really didn’t know but I felt when I found it, I would know. I remember opening an atlas of the US and closing my eyes and pointing to a spot in the open atlas. My finger pointed close to Las Vegas, Nevada so that is where I decided to go. I had grown up a gambler and loved playing poker, betting on sports, playing pool and shooting craps. I figured why not go where the real action is.
I teamed up with a kindly, old gent named Willie who I met at the horse track just south of San Francisco. He occasionally went to Vegas and he said he would accompany me there. I only had enough money to make it to Bakersfield by bus so we hitchhiked the rest of the way. I will never forget the feeling of seeing Las Vegas for the first time. I thought I had died and went to heaven! I had fallen asleep in the back seat of the car and when I awoke I was so amazed I just couldn’t believe it! This is what I had been looking for all of my life! LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!!! I was so thrilled to be in the gambling capital of the world and I was thoroughly convinced I was going to hit it big there.
Willie had some money so we got a motel room and had to share a queen size bed. He tried molesting me the next morning. I pushed him away and told him to knock it off. He went and took a shower and I took his wallet with $60.00 in it and left him there. I still feel bad about that to this day but I guess I felt he deserved it for trying that stuff with me. I hope the old guy made it home okay. Willie, your probably dead by now but if you by some crazy chance you are reading this, please forgive me for taking your wallet and leaving you without any money to get home. I forgive you for what you tried to do to me.
I was only 18 years old at the time so I couldn’t work in the casinos, so I worked a number of odd jobs for awhile. I ended up visiting my old home back in Stamford, CT a couple of times in between but I always wound up going back to Las Vegas to pursue my “dream”. As soon as I turned 21 years old, I went back to Las Vegas to stay forever, or so I thought at the time. I wanted so bad to be a dealer in the casinos. I ended up dealing for about 5 years or so. Made pretty good money doing it as in those days the tips were pretty good. It is a hard, boring job though as you get tired of dealing with demanding tourists, overbearing pit bosses, the eye-in-the-sky watching you, deadbeat local degenerate gamblers and so on. It surely is not as glamorous a profession as it might seem.
One night I was out gambling in downtown Las Vegas and I decided to stop in the Lady Luck Hotel where I used to work. I said hello to a few people I knew and then I walked past a Blackjack table and saw the cutest little China doll I had ever seen in my life! She actually was Taiwanese and was born and raised in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her name was Liu. It was love at first sight, for me at least, and I asked her to go out with me after work but she declined. I kept coming back to the casino and bugging her by playing at her table until finally she agreed to go out with me. I was totally head-over-heels in love and proposed to her within a week. Amazingly she accepted my proposal and 3 weeks later we were married in a little white wedding chapel on the Strip. The minister was the only other person at our wedding.
Her parents, who were back in Taiwan, and her sister were shocked to say the least. They demanded that we get an annulment but I wasn’t about to get it annulled, as they desired. Thus started a long battle with her family as they had high expectations for Liu and I had just completely destroyed them all.
Neither Liu nor I knew what each other were really like and we were soon in for a big shock. She didn’t know how much of a degenerate gambler I was and I didn’t know how tough she could be. I thought I was marrying this cute, sweet, little submissive gal who wouldn’t harm a fly. Little did I know she would turn out to be a real tiger inside who I never could fully tame. Perhaps she should have caught on when I borrowed money from her to get married? I think she first realized what she had done when I came back to our apartment and confessed I had gambled away the money that was to pay for our wedding pictures. She had a real hard time with that and the reality of whom I really was and who she had just promised to be married to for the rest of her life set in. We had some real bad ups and downs for awhile but some how we survived those first two years in Vegas.
I wanted to start a family thinking that perhaps if we had kids, things would get better. I realized that living in Las Vegas was not a good environment for us to raise kids in so I made the decision to go back to school and I earned a degree in Computer Programmer from one of those Technical Colleges. I dealt Craps at night and went to school during the day. It was tough but Liu helped me make it through.
I graduated from the program and I was soon offered a job in San Diego, CA at a Japanese Semiconductor package manufacturer. I moved up pretty quickly in the company as I was working real hard and kissing up big time to the Japanese bosses. I started as a Computer Operator and took care of back up and maintenance of the computer system. In those days a 100 mb hard drive was the size of a small washing machine! We had three of them when I started there and that was what the whole multi-million dollar company ran on. I made a pretty decent salary at that time but I wanted more.
Liu soon became pregnant with our first child. It would turn out to be a boy. We named him Gregory. Gregory was my mom’s maiden name. We were hoping a child would help with all of our problems I suppose. Now I felt more pressure than ever before. I wanted a nice home and nice things for my new son and wife. I needed more income so I started selling Residential Real Estate on the side. I was fortunate enough to have sold 8 houses in my first 8 weeks! Now I was getting somewhere I thought! I soon quit my programming job and went into full-time Real Estate Sales. Every year I attained my goals and I was moving up the ladder of success! Or so I thought.
All this money I was making wasn’t really helping us at all. We were able to buy a nice home and I paid $25,000.00 cash for a top of the line, brand new Dodge Caravan. We bought a small boat but I was learning that these things didn’t really satisfy me the way I thought they would. They were fun for a short time, but I soon was restless again. Liu became pregnant again and this time we had the girl we had wanted. We named her Heather and she was a real joy to us! We were happy at times, and we both adored our children but we always struggled to get along with each other. There always seemed to be something that would cause a fight between us. (end of Part 2)