The $10,000 Presidential Power Parlay: Roots

The 29th (and greatest) U.S. President, Warren Gamaliel Harding, was a renowned gambler, golfer and lover of life. As such, his sage wagering advice and stories of criminal bravado are brought here through the medieval art of necromancy. Seeing as President Harding ushered us into economic success unheard of in human history (before being tragically assassinated by his jealous wife — thus tanking the economy), his words might as well be chiseled into stone tablets. (All views and opinions presented should only be considered those of President Warren G. Harding.) 

WARNING: The content of the $10,000 Presidential Power Parlay is intended for mature audiences. Viewer discretion is highly advised. Seriously.

LAST WEEK: Mississippi (-3), Minnesota/UNLV (Under 51.5), Boise State (+4)
OVERALL RECORD: (1-2)
THE HONEYPOT: $-10,000

"THIS IS A STICK-UP!" I hollered after I put the sole of one of my Italian penny loafers through the termite-infested front door of a small-time drug emporium on the westside of Marion. I was high on crystal meth and looking for a payday. It was early Monday morning; I had been blacked out for roughly 48 hours, and after last week's embarrassment of a wager, I knew the only option was to bring a reckoning to these streets.

I was $10,000 dollars in debt to the gypsy syndicate, you see, and the deadline on that payment was due at sunrise. The gypsies are a mystical peoples, but they make terrible enemies. The crystal meth wracking my nervous system had stripped my ability to discern the exact time, but I knew the Sun and its devilish ways were rapidly approaching.    

"What's all this?" A heroin-infused, slovenly wildebeest-of-a-man said as he rose up from his seat on a couch you'd typically find in your grandma's parlor. The best way to a dope fiend's heart besides a needle to the aorta is the pearl-handle of a snubnosed .38 to the skull. Blood splashed over the cream-colored walls of the drug hovel before the fiend crashed to the ground — one fiend down. A fox had been let into the hen house, and the fox was about to eat.

These drug dens, they all look the same: barren walls, dusty furniture, a high definition television, a surround sound system, a children's video game console and a coffee table caked with drug residue. 

The obese slumbering fiend's partner came barreling out of the back room to see the source of the commotion; he was a sinewy, shirtless man wearing a bewildered look in his eye and a pair of Jnco shorts. I cocked the .38 and leveled it in his pointy, scruffy face. 

"Do you know whose house this is?" he said with tobacco-scorched rasp.

I stepped over the unconscious sap I had dropped upon entering this den of iniquity. "Do you think I care, nephew?" I kept the .38 level as I advanced down the hallway to the petrified man at the end of the hall. "Easy now," I said as I encroached on him. Fiends are an especially jittery breed, and depending on when the last time this guy put a needle through his skin, he could be especially dangerous.

Nagai Nagayoshi stayed wrapped in those chinchilla furs.

Upon that realization, I loosed a shot into his kneecap. The slug ripped through the cartilage encasing his knee, and the fiend fell to the ground with a guttural whimper. With the alacrity of a Serengeti lion closing down on a wounded gazelle, I was over the fallen fiend.

"You know what I'm here for."

The fiend's eyes widened as the searing pain from the bullet lodged in his knee washed over him. He didn't seem to get the message, so I cocked the pearl-handled .38 snubnose and aimed at his other kneecap.

"Fine! Fine!" he squealed, still clutching his knee as if it wasn't a flesh wound he could limp off. "The heroin — it's in the bedroom, stuffed inside the mattress.... please.... just take it."

I shot that son of a bitch in his other knee.

He yelled as if I was his wet nurse; he moaned as if I was going to bring him a binkie. I bent over and wrapped my massive, supple-as-a-whore's-bosom hands around his pencil-like neck. "Listen you dripped-out mong," I said as my vice-like grip tightened, "I've been staking you out since Sunday afternoon all whilst snorting methamphetamine manufactured by the great Nagai Nagayoshi! You think I came here to acquire party favors for a Baptist child's birthday soiree?"

When spittle and blood began leaking out of the corners of the fiend's mouth, I knew I had taken him to the brink. I threw his skull against the rotting wooded floor of the drug hovel and gave him a second to recover before putting the snubnose back in his face. 

"I want the cash, you pissant, and I want every penny of it." 

He raised a bony digit and pointed to the bathroom. "It's in the toilet tank," he rasped. "Please... just don't kill me."

I thought this was a jape until I lifted the top of the tank off and saw floating, vacuum-sealed bags filled with crumpled dollar bills. There was too much money here for the level of dealers these two clowns were, and then it dawned on me: these two had purchased the heroin on consignment. They hadn't paid for it yet. I smirked at my good fortune.

When I turned around, I caught my reflection in the dirt-stained, partially broken mirror above the disgusting hair-shavings-specked sink. "God be good," I said as I straightened my blood-red bow tie in the mirror and scraped the methamphetamine snowflakes from my enflamed nostrils, "Warren, you're still looking mighty frosty in these streets." 

With the bags of money still dripping toilet water, I cocked my .38 snubnose and left the bathroom. I put a bullet in the skull of the kneecapped fiend, and another in the skull of his slumbering whale-of-a-friend on the living room floor. I did it because I'm a benevolent man, but also, I couldn't let those two clowns tip the gypsy syndicate off to the fact I had just robbed their left pocket in order to pay off their right one.

I parted the gold-threaded black silk curtains and stepped into the headquarters of the gypsy syndicate buried in the depths of Marion's catacombs. At the head of the bejeweled table, behind a swirling plume of opium smoke and flanked by scantily-clad slatterns of every Earthly breed, sat Gilderoy Scamp, the King of the Gypsies. 

Gilderoy idly spun his serrated dirk in his plump off-hand before digging it into the roasted banquet pig sprawled out in front of him; he was the only one eating. The Gypsy King shoved the stuck piece of pig into his gaping maw, closed his eyes and slowly began to chew. Swine blood leaked down his purple lips and into his ruddy, wiry beard and onto his hairy, exposed breasts. An immaculate crown shined bright on his head, but that could have been from chandelier catching his bald brow at the right angle. 

"Well, if isn't President Harding," the Gypsy King said while he picked his teeth with the tip of his dirk. "The Gypsy King thought your heart grew too weak for this here game and gave out decades ago; the Gypsy King thought one of his runner's had gotten into his heroin stockades when he came to me saying the legendary President of the United States had laid down a parlay on credit against the Gypsy King's betting syndicate. The Gypsy King thought he was going to have to send some young hooligans to bruise you up in order collect on your debt; the Gypsy King is sad to say." 

I threw the vacuum-sealed bags of money on the catacomb floor and lit up a Newport. "I'm still in this fight, taking punches, Gypsy King, and the only thing that ever looks bruised on me is the 13 inch purple anaconda dangling between my thighs in my knickers," I said. "Yet, I'm not here to quarrel. In these bags, you'll find enough money to pay my debt from last week plus enough for another fierce parlay." 

Gilderoy Scamp laid his dirk down on the table and pulled a slattern from the depths of the table by her long, brown curls and shooed her away. "Let the Gypsy King guess," Scamp said whilst eerily eyeing me, "You want a part of the action on Florida (-3.5) at Miami? The Gypsy King didn't believe the line when his bookmakers put it into the streets. 'He's making it to easy on these fiends!' he cursed."

"Do I look retired?" I sneered. "Do I look like I'm addicted to Oxycontin? Do I look like I'm too cowardly to cut a life out for myself in the blessed Midwest?" When the Gypsy King offered no reply, I finished, "Then what in the blue hells would be my interest in Florida? I don't care about Florida or the mass of gonorrhea that is Miami. I may have bet on Boise State and a game that included Minnesota and UNLV last week, but I am no fool!" 

This bemused the Gypsy King; he picked up his serrated dirk and dug back into his roasted pig. In the background, one of his slatterns plucked a few chords on a harp next to the hearth. "Well?" was all he finally offered.

"The first cog in this $10,000 Presidential Power Parlay is Cincinnati (-10) vs. Illinois. I have no love in my heart for the Queen City or the glorified dog food they call chili, but this here ain't a bet on the Queen City or its chili. It's a bet on the Bearcats, a team that absolutely dismantled Purdue last week. I've read first-person accounts about the Rape of Nanking that were easier on the eye than Illinois football under Tim Beckman. Cincinnati and its athletic teams have always played with a chip on their shoulder spawned by their massive inferiority complex, and I'm going to springboard that into an easy payday. Cincinnati should be laying at least 14 points at the door.

Warren hooked it up  for Pope Benedict XV's coronation.

"The second cog is Michigan (-4.5) vs. Notre Dame. I have even less love in my heart for Michigan than I do Cincinnati, but at least Cincinnati is like a semi-annoying Little Brother. Michigan, however, is a land fueled largely by Faygo and PCP. This all pales in comparison, though, to the desolate wasteland that is South Bend, Indiana. Why in the hell any 18-22 year-old male would choose to spend there physical primes there, I do not know.

"I am also still smarting from my comrade E. Gordon Gee getting fired for speaking truth to power against the Papists, and my grudge against them goes back all the way to Pope Benedict XV, whose coronation party was fueled by cocaine I provided. Was I compensated for my troubles? No, but their football team collapsing like a dying star will be somewhat of a repayment. Michigan is going to roll Notre Dame.

"The rest of the college football slate this weekend is disgusting, and frankly, I'm embarrassed most of these games are televised. With the opening week of the NFL, I want to make a power move and make this an all-sports parlay. Gypsy King, I want you to dial the final cog on this monster parlay as Cleveland Browns (-1) vs. the Miami Dolphins.

"For too long, the fine denizens of Cleveland have suffered in abject misery from their sports teams. Well, this is finally the year the Cleveland Browns rise up and strike back at the Cleveland haterz. The only thing I respect about dolphins is they're the only other species on the planet that is sensible enough to engage in sexual intercourse for pleasure. (As if there are any other reasons, you idiot animals?) But I have never seen a dolphin able to tackle Trent Richardson. I'm sure it would end with PETA calling for a death warrant. Fuck PETA.

"These are my picks, Gypsy King. After winning week one bets my last two years, I decided to spice things up by starting out in a hole before coming out with both barrels bucking."

The Gypsy King smirked, "I must say, President Harding, as a man of the Unwashed, I'm surprised by the amount of chalk you've laid in my lair."

"The only chalk I've ever laid comes from Colombia and gets put in lines across a table, but I don't see any of that here," I said as my nostrils took in the opium haze. "As for my picks, I think my history of picking ponies speaks for itself."

The Gypsy King took a drag from a hose attached to an unseen, undoubtedly opium-filled hookah. He stood up, exposing his disgustingly obese, naked body and flaccid member. He plucked the serrated dirk off his table and advanced towards me. 

His breath smelled of pork and dussy and his yellow teeth flashed as he talked, "We seal this wager the old gypsy way," he said before digging the tip of his dirk into his fat hand and running it across the width of his palm. When he was finished, he handed the dirk to me, handle first. I repeated the process, and my crimson blood ran down my hand and dripped onto the cavern floor.

With the bloodied handshake of the gypsy old country complete, the Gypsy King bent over, picked up the vacuum-sealed bags of money and threw them at a shrouded flunkie lurking in the shadows.

"A cross-sports parlay: $10,000 to win $60,000," the Gypsy King squealed. "So it is written, President Harding, and so it is done. You have made the gypsy syndicate even richer, and for that I thank you."

I took a final drag of the Newport and flicked the remnants into the sewer drain. "Consider it a loan," I said. "I'll be back next week to collect on it, with interest."

The Gypsy King's hairy white ass jiggled like a shaken vat of jelly as he walked back to his throne. "I trust you'll show you're way out," he bellowed, and indeed I did.

... It's the fourth quarter out here, folks, and I'm the one holding the rock. There's nothing easy in these streets, least of all acquiring currency and touching on these broads. Actually, what am I saying? Both those things are easy for me, LMAO. Have fun on your cubicles, comrades. I'll holla at y'all next week from somewhere swank.  

The Dime Collector-General, 

Read more of President Harding's legendary exploits in The Most Hated On, also available on Kindle.

© 2013 Eleven Warriors.