Unconscious Insulation
I handed over $4,000—half the cash I had left—to Dominick for nine months of rent upfront on a three-bedroom condo in Margate City. Twenty-four years old, soon twenty-five, and I went all-in before even sitting at a table. Logic screamed no, but the deck kept hitting. My father used to say I got dealt better hands than most. Dominick, watching me at Borgata, would shake his head at the rivers that bailed me out. I survived that move on pure run-good.
We met at a sub place in Margate that smelled like garlic and cured meat exploding out the door. Loaded Italians—sharp provolone, prosciutto, genoa, oil and vinegar dripping. Cracked vinyl booths, scarred tables, faded New York glamour still delivering. Jersey distilled. Over half-eaten hoagies we talked poker, and by the time the wrappers were balled up, the condo plan was real.
Three of us: me the elder at twenty-four, Dom my age, Matt twenty-two. No real responsibilities. Between sessions we played FIFA 11 on the PlayStation 3, flicked cards into a hat for dumb punishments—loser barefoot across frozen sand in thirty-degree winter, then pelted with eggs. I won one once. The relief of throwing instead of shivering drowned out how stupid it was.
The unconscious insulation wasn’t just the money—it was the weed smoke. I was high every hour I wasn’t at the table. Back at the condo, the air was a stagnant soup of weed and Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike and weed were Dominick’s life. When he wasn’t at the monitor, he was a haze rather than a person I could connect with, sermonizing about The Secret like it was a working theory.
He talked about manifesting abundance, about vibrations and alignment, convinced the universe would eventually reward him for wanting the right things. Meanwhile, the physical reality of his life rotted in real time. Dog shit sat in front of my door because Dom couldn’t even care for his dog, JoePa, despite the dog clearly wanting his attention.
“Yo, there’s dog shit,” I’d say.
I never complained. I just pointed it out. I don’t remember a real apology. No movement. Just the glow of the monitor and the smell of neglect. I drifted back into my own fog. I was winning forty thousand dollars in the real world, living in a place where abundance meant a full grinder and a floor covered in waste.
Janine, Dom’s mother, moved through it all without comment—working out relentlessly, sculpting herself, passing through the deleterious detritus of her only son’s existence without cleaning it up or naming it.
When the grind hit, silence descended. Hoodie up, headphones in, The Black Keys on loop: Gold on the Ceiling. Keep climbing.
The work was solitary. Odd morning hours, half-mile walk through biting cold to the bus stop, cracked vinyl seat, grey dawn, backpack never leaving my grip. It held my entire roll—sometimes thirty thousand in cash. Nick called me “Moneybags.” I laughed, but I slept with that bag within arm’s reach.
My only real interactions came when I stepped outside to smoke cigarettes on breaks away from the grind. Standing outside them double doors that were 15 feet in the air at the Borgata with people I’d just been trying to bankrupt, flicking a lighter, breathing salt air. For ten minutes the Moneybags mask dropped. We talked. We were human. I smoked Dunhams like I had sophistication. Those minutes above the parking lot escalators were the only connection I allowed myself.
One morning near Tropicana, heading for the Jitney—$2.25 back then—I wore old Gucci sneakers from my New York days. Five Black guys walked straight toward me on the cracked sidewalk. One locked eyes.
“Hey, nice shoes.”
They passed. Nothing.
Later I realized the only weapon was my imagination. I’d built a life around isolation—alone at tables, alone on buses, alone with cash—and started feeling entitled to connection without risking it. Fear was easier than openness.
That Thanksgiving came early in my Atlantic City life, when I was still twenty-five and didn’t yet know what I was doing there. I wanted to stay back at the condo—three bedrooms, empty, quiet. Dom insisted I come with him instead. Going back to South Dakota wasn’t an option either. Home would’ve meant being alone anyway, just with a longer history.
At the house, I recognized the Caesars executive immediately—not just from the casino floor, but because Janine was dating him. It wasn’t casual. It felt serious. I’d eaten meals with them before at expensive steakhouses, him covering the bill while I sat there in my Borgata hoodie, the same one I wore everywhere.
This wasn’t a small gathering. It was his entire extended family—easily thirty people. Kids running around, aunts, uncles, cousins, people who’d known each other their whole lives. I knew maybe three faces in the room. Everyone else was already placed.
I stood there holding a drink I didn’t want. Three kids chased each other around my legs, laughing, one bumping my knee with sticky hands. My eyes burned. It wasn’t the noise that broke me—it was the vacancy.
Months earlier, Eréndira had invited me to New York. I said yes. Then I disappeared. No explanation. No courage. Just silence.
Standing there, watching those kids move freely through a life that already had shape and witnesses, I felt the weight of that choice. It wasn’t guilt exactly. It was recognition. I had chosen disappearance over presence more than once, and I had dressed that choice up as independence.
Their lives were embodied. Mine felt provisional.
At least at the casino, dealers nodded. Floor managers knew my name. It wasn’t intimacy, but it was familiarity. Like the cigarette smoke on the sidewalk—connection that didn’t require me to stay.
Home was isolation with a longer memory. This was isolation with witnesses.
I did climb. That $4,000 turned into $40,000 before I left the condo. But the real gold was missing.