Josephina the Player

So anyway, there is Josephina, this popular player we all seem to love or hate, within reason, and many seem not to care too much about because we are the kind of people who all do many of the things she does, and yesterday she did something we might find amusing on a good day, but on a bad one we definitely don’t like it, or maybe we’re reminded of something that we didn’t like but it’s not clear we did it or she did it or they did it. To continue to speak absolutely clearly, I don’t know what really happened but I know we look up to this person that constantly needs a lot of help and encouragement, as we all should and some do and some don’t.

Still, no matter what happens, it seems a lot of us want to see her performances! Many are saying it. In fact, some say she is one of the best, maybe better than all the performers we have on our small poker stream and when the festival isn’t in town. They cheer her, and even when she doesn’t perform quite well, they still like to see her doing her thing and in that special costume we’ve all grown so fond of. In fact, her performances of late don’t seem to be all that great and many are saying that they never were, which is strange to me because she is obviously a star and a great performer, one invited all over and showered with acclaim everywhere she goes.

Yesterday, though, when they didn’t like the performance some people in the crowd got awfully impatient and were whistling and booing at her and I think some journalists here for the festival who might have been at the bar got ahold of the story, and you know how they are, well, that’s where we are now.

What you might not know is, I heard a different story that really blew my mind, really threw me, and that’s that she was at the bar later too and wasn’t sorry at all but was laughing at the bar with some of the other swells and literati and stakers and lumpenlowlife troublemakers, laughing about what had happened.

That’s not all. You see, I also I heard said that she was much larger than she seems when she is not in that costume we all love so much, that it actually makes her seem much more delicate than she really is. They told me that that in reality she is frighteningly big from a certain point of view or angle, that she was muscular and had infinite potential, and that the journalists were spending time sitting on her knees and that she was having her way with them. They were even saying they were going to make a statue of her to show just how strong she really was and what an inspiration she is to all the other players like her. Well, I don’t entirely believe that. I’m not a superstitious person and have a lot of very strong opinions that aren’t easily changed unless I see a reason to change them.

Anyway, that’s all in the past now, because after all the media coverage, today’s performance is sold out, despite the signs and protests by the activists who want to her not to not perform in order to protect her from herself and everyone else. I see the crowd coming, some with tickets, some buying, and the protestors are there too, some with tickets, and it’s a great big milling about. Some were wearing her costume, which you would think might seem like a sacrilege but in fact it occurs to me that lots of our players wear this costume, every day, and that it’s really nothing special at all, and that it’s even kind of well, common or trashy depending on how much money you have. Nevertheless, it’s a growing and uneasy thing, this mob, it seems like it’s too big, it seems too large, too furious, too rowdy, that it won’t fit into the performance hall, and don’t see how this is going to work out, not just for her, who is such a small, fragile thing despite what they told me.

It seems to me that even the chairs and ropes and tables are going to be overturned and there is going to be a lot of howls and screams and fighting. I’m really ready to run, that is, until the game starts and we’re all quiet and she begins her performance once more, one more time again, only one more time again, our eyes fixated on her in her familiar costume we love so much which is drooping a little but still hypnotizes, until she is very rich, and very fat and doesn’t want to perform anymore for anyone.