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Authors: Saralee Rosenberg
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jacket and jeans, or an expensive designer suit. And always, his cologne matched the moment. Testimony less to his Seventh Avenue savvy than his ability to remove expensive bottles from his father’s dresser.
Everyone adored David. And why not? A room didn’t come alive until he entered, his massive form sashaying through the crowd, always tendering a smile, a kiss, and an inquiry as to the well-being of others. For if there was one thing he understood, it was how to win people over. And winning, more than breathing, was the name of the game.
Call me naive, particularly as we met at a cruise casino, but in the two years we dated, I didn’t know he was an addicted gambler. I knew he loved the night life, and the day life too. I knew he was upbeat and funny, and true to his last name, never without a wad of big bills.
But what did a Jewish girl from New Jersey know of addictions? The only thing my mother was compulsive about was cleaning, and my dad would rather have ridden a horse backward than throw money away on a bet that it could win a race.
I suppose that’s why I fell so hard for the guy. He was nothing like my sullen, life-is-full-of-disappointments dad. In fact, David didn’t just embrace life, he inhaled it.
Want to know his idea of fun? Getting up early on a Saturday, taking me out for a big breakfast, driving to Atlantic City in his little red Fiat, then spending the next two days enjoying the excitement, the entertainment, and, more than I knew, the gambling.
Precisely because my parents didn’t understand the point of these excursions, I relished every invitation to join him. “Mom, c’mon. Where else can you see the Righteous Brothers and Yakov Smirnoff on the same bill?”
I never told them about the hours I spent throwing quarters into the slots while David parked himself in front of a card game that lasted two straight days. Or how much I hated the smoke, the boob-job waitresses sniffing around for big tippers, and the sight of drunks genuflecting before tables full of dice.
Yet did the little bell in my head go off? The one that would have said, Robyn, wake up. Your friend is losing thousands of dollars a day. Of course not. Because just like at home, I had not only turned off my alarm, I’d thrown it against the door to make it stop ringing.
I had fallen in love with Mr. Stranger Danger himself, and though there were things I saw with my eyes, I could not deny what I felt in my heart. No other man had made me laugh ashard, feel as loved, or experience such exhilaration. For David truly believed that life was one big grand opening, with amazing prizes awarded to the luckiest customers.
Unfortunately, at the point I was living in fear of creditors, phone calls, and goons knocking at the door, I had to face facts. My husband was a conniving, substance-abusing, gambler who could not function in a world that expected him to act responsibly. Or let a day pass without betting on a horse, an athlete, a stock, a playing card, or, to my disbelief, the score of a high school football game in a Texas town he couldn’t even find on one of my dad’s maps.
And yet after a year of the three Bs—badgering, begging, and bribing—he still refused to acknowledge his mounting problems, our runaway debts, and his inability to show up sober. Finally, after it became necessary for Nate and Arlene of Denial, New York, to hire a Park Avenue lawyer to defend their drug-dealing son, I retained legal counsel myself, and filed for divorce.
Now only six, painful months since that decree, I was holding the telephone number of Ken Danziger, a man who, like David, was supposedly handsome and charming, flat-out funny, but also, coincidentally, an emotional train wreck.
Could you blame me for crumpling his number? Madeline may have been right that we had a common bond, but it was that we were both so beaten up from our previous matches, neither of us was ready to get back into the ring.
You know how early I wake
Everyone adored David. And why not? A room didn’t come alive until he entered, his massive form sashaying through the crowd, always tendering a smile, a kiss, and an inquiry as to the well-being of others. For if there was one thing he understood, it was how to win people over. And winning, more than breathing, was the name of the game.
Call me naive, particularly as we met at a cruise casino, but in the two years we dated, I didn’t know he was an addicted gambler. I knew he loved the night life, and the day life too. I knew he was upbeat and funny, and true to his last name, never without a wad of big bills.
But what did a Jewish girl from New Jersey know of addictions? The only thing my mother was compulsive about was cleaning, and my dad would rather have ridden a horse backward than throw money away on a bet that it could win a race.
I suppose that’s why I fell so hard for the guy. He was nothing like my sullen, life-is-full-of-disappointments dad. In fact, David didn’t just embrace life, he inhaled it.
Want to know his idea of fun? Getting up early on a Saturday, taking me out for a big breakfast, driving to Atlantic City in his little red Fiat, then spending the next two days enjoying the excitement, the entertainment, and, more than I knew, the gambling.
Precisely because my parents didn’t understand the point of these excursions, I relished every invitation to join him. “Mom, c’mon. Where else can you see the Righteous Brothers and Yakov Smirnoff on the same bill?”
I never told them about the hours I spent throwing quarters into the slots while David parked himself in front of a card game that lasted two straight days. Or how much I hated the smoke, the boob-job waitresses sniffing around for big tippers, and the sight of drunks genuflecting before tables full of dice.
Yet did the little bell in my head go off? The one that would have said, Robyn, wake up. Your friend is losing thousands of dollars a day. Of course not. Because just like at home, I had not only turned off my alarm, I’d thrown it against the door to make it stop ringing.
I had fallen in love with Mr. Stranger Danger himself, and though there were things I saw with my eyes, I could not deny what I felt in my heart. No other man had made me laugh ashard, feel as loved, or experience such exhilaration. For David truly believed that life was one big grand opening, with amazing prizes awarded to the luckiest customers.
Unfortunately, at the point I was living in fear of creditors, phone calls, and goons knocking at the door, I had to face facts. My husband was a conniving, substance-abusing, gambler who could not function in a world that expected him to act responsibly. Or let a day pass without betting on a horse, an athlete, a stock, a playing card, or, to my disbelief, the score of a high school football game in a Texas town he couldn’t even find on one of my dad’s maps.
And yet after a year of the three Bs—badgering, begging, and bribing—he still refused to acknowledge his mounting problems, our runaway debts, and his inability to show up sober. Finally, after it became necessary for Nate and Arlene of Denial, New York, to hire a Park Avenue lawyer to defend their drug-dealing son, I retained legal counsel myself, and filed for divorce.
Now only six, painful months since that decree, I was holding the telephone number of Ken Danziger, a man who, like David, was supposedly handsome and charming, flat-out funny, but also, coincidentally, an emotional train wreck.
Could you blame me for crumpling his number? Madeline may have been right that we had a common bond, but it was that we were both so beaten up from our previous matches, neither of us was ready to get back into the ring.
You know how early I wake
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