One Fine Day 5

Here I am again, in the present moment. As you've probably guessed, I'm at a card table. I'm actually doing pretty well today. Looks like I may have a chance of sleeping with a dealer. 

I like my life now. It's a life lived from day to day. I go from casino to casino, drinking and gambling. I could not imagine it any other way. About three times a month, I hit it really big. After all, I'm pretty damned good at mathematics and I do count cards. When too may low cards have fallen, I know that high cards will come around the corner. Then, I really feel alive. And when I feel alive, I feel like sharing this feeling with another human being. For some reason, it's always the female dealers I fall for. I can somehow sense if they like me. What's there not to like? For a few days, I wine and dine them and show them the best things in life. Then, we part, mutually satisfied and knowing that our moods cannot be so elevated for a long time. Recently though, I feel that I'm being stalked. I'm beginning to think one of my former "girlfriends" may have had too much of a good time and is chasing me down for another round. I don't really care. It's always time for another round.

Oh, I've forgotten you, dear reader. Yes. I was trying to explain why I left my wife. First, I must tell you, TELL YOU, that I actually came from an upper-class Korean family except that I was the BLACK SHEEP of my family. And when my wife was trying to control every single aspect of my daughter's life and later, my life, I realized that I was living a deja-vous nightmare. You see, my father was the CEO of a Korean corporation and ran his family like a corporation. AM I being clear? Sometimes, I feel like I'm not making any sense. Anyway, let me go back to a scene in which I drove my daughter to a music camp in the Woods of New York:

-It's nice of you, Father, to drive me to music camp.

-I'm enjoying this.

-It's just that it's so weird. I never saw you the first 14 years fo my life. It was like you were a rat who only came out in the dark. The only times I saw you was late in the night. One time, at around 3, I saw you eating ramen noodles.

-I work hard.

-Is it true that you are working on a mathematical theorem? Are you going to be the only Korean in a future math book?

I think that, at that moment, almost everything inside of my mouth spat outside of my mouth onto the windshield. Of course, most of what was inside of my mouth was beer, liquor, and kimchi. So that's what my wife had been telling her daughter to save my face.

-No just working.

-Don't you ever want to see us, Father?

I felt really sad inside for some reason and I really wanted to cry. But I had to keep on driving.

-I work so hard so that you can have a good life. Look, I'm driving you to camp, aren't I?

-Do you love mom?

I saw a sign for a rest area. I got off the highway and entered the restroom and locked myself in a toilet stall and really just began to cry. I did not want my daughter to see me crying nor my wife. I just felt so sad because I had so desperately wanted my family, our family to be something different, something unique, and something perhaps born out of freedom, and now, I felt more trapped than ever. I cried more and more until my whole body began to shake. That's when I realized that there was no way in hell I could live this life anymore.