That Time I Accidentally Played Poker With The Lakers
A Memoir
The year is 2012 and we’re arriving at my great uncle Seymour’s house for his 90th birthday party. It’s a hot and humid July day as we pull up on the Malibu street in a confusing rental car.
“Yes… I’m saying that I literally can’t figure out how to remove the key from the ignition,” explains my dad tenderly after a couple minutes of back and forth.
“Damnit Kenny, you just — ” my mom grabs for the key and attempts to remove it, too, but quickly begins to understand his struggles. “Your foot’s on the brake?”
“Yep and it’s in park,” he brings her pleasantly up to speed.
“Hate these damn things,” she says. What she’s referring to precisely isn’t clear.
“Is there a manual in the glove compartment?”
“Ughhh,” she responds exasperatedly. The plane ride from Philadelphia and subsequent hours spent in the baggage area and inside of a car rental haven’t treated her well. She opens the glove compartment and pulls out a manual. But when she opens it, she practically winces. “Do you have glasses?”
“I think they’re in the trunk…”
After ten blundering, jet-lagged minutes and with what I can only assume is a magnifying glass, my mom slowly interprets the manual’s fine print.
The house isn’t exactly a mansion, but that it’s on the beach of Malibu means that Sting and Joni Mitchell are his neighbors. Seymour made his start as a doctor but found after awhile that real estate was a much more lucrative gig.
So he moved from home to home until he found himself living on the shore of one of the world’s most opulent beachfronts. Though not as large as the houses that line the hills of Hollywood, the museum-esque interior is a pretty clear indication that he has a few too many millions at his disposal. The fact that he has a house keeper and personal chef does little to keep him humble. He’s not senile but he is Republican.
Walking through the estate’s colossal wooden gateway, it creaks open into a courtyard with large, brick red clay tiles spread across it. Salt hangs thick in the air but we’re in a windless purgatory between two houses. On the left side there’s a koi pond, behind us is the guest house in which his staff are quartered and in front of us is the mini-mansion in which Seymour lives.
As we enter through the front door, we find ourselves in a multi-story room with indoor balconies that emerge from little nooks embroidering the room’s upper level. The cedarwood walls beneath it are covered end to end. They’re lined with books, art, an expansive, multi-cultural assortment of masks and a wildly eccentric collection of miscellaneous artifacts.
Some of the masks are childish in their patterned appearance and others are twisted and malevolent. Some are stately and some are outright godly. Some are African and tribal. Some appear to be based on Greek figures and others Indonesian and Indian ones.
Some are contorted in faces of animalistic rage and others feature native American headdresses that cascade gracefully along the walls behind them. Some have lions manes and others have elephant tusks; some are as long as long boards and others could hardly fit a pear.
And beneath the masks are sculptures. One of them is a red dragon meticulously crafted from wood. Beside it is a glimmering metallic sculpture of a robed man guiding a camel through a desert. One sculpture appears to be an opossum being constricted by two snakes. Beneath it is an innocuous set of clay doves. And that sits immediately beneath a less-than-innocuous display of antique guns, rifles and knives.
Whether this aging doctor has ever fired a weapon I somehow doubt. Whether he’s ever even held one of these machetes lining his wall is a little more than I can even fathom. But the more I try to picture this cane-bound nonagenarian brandishing a medieval dagger, the more amusing it grows.
Seymour and I have never been very close. He was never very warm and he can often be standoffish. The tiger skin rug lining the floor beneath me now is a fairly decent display of character. He’s not a cruel man but in his crotchety demeanor he bears a certain similarity to the late Walder Frey. (The dead may never die!)
A forbidding stone floor leads toward a lavish dining room and all the way out toward the back porch. There, a ceiling-high sliding glass door separates the two-story sitting room from the patio beside it.
The patio today is lined with tables in celebration of Seymour’s big day. His birthday is July 5th but each year he celebrates it on the 4th so that he can fully appreciate the fireworks display held just off the shore.
On each table is a white cloth and on each cloth a different flavored pitcher of alcohol. I’m the only one here beneath the age of 20. I’m too young to drink but too bored to care. But as I take a sip from the glass that I sneakily pour myself, I quickly remember that alcohol tastes terrible.
So I pour the remainder of my cup into a decorative plant and proceed to text my teenaged cousin who lives in the area. If he were here, today might be a little more bearable, but I don’t hear back from him. Apparently, he has better things to do with his Saturday than spend it at his Grandfather’s 90th birthday. I can hardly blame him, but even still, I wouldn’t have minded an invitation to join.
After another hour, three labored conversations with nearing-centenarians and another fruitless attempt to enjoy hard liquor, defeat begins to sink in. I walk up toward the master balcony and look out at the ocean, briefly envisioning myself as a tortured magnate. I imagine an older me looking out at these waters and thinking some contrived thoughts about how, “I have everything in the world but… money can’t buy happiness.”
I then spend the next few minutes trying to convince myself that the rogue cluster of seaweed floating near shore is actually a sea monster preparing the attack that might finally kick this party into full gear. But alas, the seaweed is just seaweed.
As I amble back down to the patio, though, I’m suddenly accosted by a new guest. She’s slurring drunk and, by the seems of things, doesn’t even appear to know anyone here.
She’s about twenty years older than me but still about fifty years shy of my great uncle. They’ve never met before. But he’s old enough and lonely enough that a female party crasher of any age is a welcome sight. She’s an uninvited guest to a party no one in their right mind would crash.
She’s wearing a flaming red dress and an overbearing California tan. She has bright blonde hair, unusually plump lips and a dense layer of makeup atop her slightly befuddled face. She’s clearly in the wrong place but she’s a confident enough drunk that she doesn’t seem to mind — or notice.
“Do you know a place I can smoke this?” she asks me.
“Do you know where you are?” I think to myself. “Uhh…” I say aloud.
She begins clumsily searching around in her purse for a lighter.
“I’m Sandy, by the way,” she explains as she continues fumbling through the ostentatious little handbag in her hands.
“I’m Ben.”
“I was supposed to meet my friends at a party up the street in a bit if you wanted to come with, but I kind of wanted to smoke this first,” she explains with a prominent slur as she packs a bowl.
“Lady — we just met,” I want to say but settle instead on “Um…”
I’m bored enough and sober enough though that the weed she finally manages to remove from her purse makes my eyes light up with glee. That the weed is from California and pungent enough to alert even the neighbors as to what’s going on here hardly even matters to me. She’s 20 years older than me and she’s the one crashing this party; I think I might be blameless here.
“I don’t think I’d know anyone there, but — ” I admit, still happy to take my hit as she hands me the bowl.
“It’s totally fine! They’re all nice people,” she drunkenly reassures me.
After two hits of this unusually potent strain in a particularly poor smoking spot, she asks if I want to tag along with her to this party to meet her friends. So we walk back along the perfectly visible stone pathway that leads between the courtyard and the back.
With hardly a word from the nearly-wasted party attendees, I walk with my sketchy new smoking pal along the Malibu beach as a fireworks show is prepared just off of the shore. I measure my steps as I walk with my Nike sneakers along the sandy beach. I hardly know a thing about this party, but I’m not showing up to a stranger’s house in bare feet.
“This should be Leo’s place,” she confirms quickly as she looks at her cellphone.
“That’s a cool name,” I think innocently to myself as I stand meekly and unknowingly in front of Leonardo DiCaprio’s beach home. We walk up the stairs of the patio and come face to face with the single most official looking bouncer I’ve seen in my life. With a hulking figure and arms folded at his chest, he makes secret servicemen look like gingerbread men by comparison. I’m sure now that whatever this party is, we won’t be getting inside.
But to my surprise, with little more than an exchange of nods between him and Sandy, he opens the gate and lets both of us inside. As I try to pick up my jaw that’s now fallen halfway to the floor, she introduces me to a couple of her friends. Each of them looks a little surprised with her underaged choice of pregame companion. With red eyes and near-zombified stares, I try my best to stay afloat in my conversations with these high-class party guests.
But the conversations are superficial. They’re talking about cars and money and salaries and it quickly grows clear that I’m the odd one out here. I amble nervously through the house in search of sanctuary. Sandy’s too engaged in a conversation of her own now to even notice me.
The room is wide open and surprisingly modest for the home of such a renowned celebrity. A sliding door on the patio leads directly into a kitchen attached to the living room. On the right of the room is a sofa and on the left, a table with a few tall men seated at it.
I decide to take a seat at the table. As I take a seat, though, I notice I’ve interrupted a poker game. But the men seated at the table are too kind to object. They look toward me with subtle affirming nods and return to their game.
Judging by the copious amounts of money that they’re betting, though, this is no ordinary poker game.
“So what’s your name?” one of them asks. He has smooth, dark skin and a warm face that looks almost familiar. At first I don’t even think it’s me he’s talking to. But he looks directly toward me with an endearing smile.
“I’m Ben,” I respond a little nervously.
“Nice to meet you Ben, I’m Kobe,” he responds with a booming voice and an enormous outstretched hand.
As I shake the giant’s hand, I look at him blinkingly. Whether this is because I’m still a little too high for my comfort or because I truly don’t know who he is remains unclear.
At this, a couple of them smile. They seem amused for some reason. A couple of them appear almost impressed with me.
“I’m Dwight,” a second responds. “Metta,” exclaims the third and “Pau,” the fourth. “I’m not going to remember any of these names!” I think to myself, concerned.
“Do you have any favorite subjects?” asks Kobe. He looks intently toward me with a supportive smile.
“I think English is probably my favorite subject,” I reply after a moment of hesitation. I still haven’t realized it yet, but I’m being asked about my personal life by The Lakers.
“You like reading?” He seems a little unsure how to speak to me. But their line of questioning is good-natured enough that I’m beginning to feel welcome here in this unfamiliar Malibu home.
“I do! I didn’t used to enjoy reading very much but I’ve had a couple really great teachers so far in high school.”
They all look toward me intently. At this point, their poker game seems to have taken a backseat to this conversation of ours.
“That’s awesome man,” Kobe replies. “A good teacher can really change everything,” he continues with a voice that’s equal parts caring and resounding.
“Seriously. Keep doing what you love,” chimes in Metta now.
“So do you have any idea what you wanna do in life?” Kobe asks.
I’m not sure exactly how I’ve ended up in this conversation, but it feels like just about the only authentic interaction taking place in this room right now.
“I’m not really sure I know yet… I don’t want to just end up working a 9–5. I — I want to make a difference. There are just so many problems that we’re facing and I — ”
The famed basketball icon looks at me curiously and understandingly.
“Hey man, it’s okay if you don’t have it all figured out yet. You’ve got nothing but time,” he responds. His cliches hardly feel hollow. He delivers each of them with locked, honest eyes.
“Seriously, seems like you’re a good kid. You have a lot going for you,” adds Dwight.
At this point, I’m beginning to feel emotional.
“You’ve probably heard it a thousand times before — but remember to believe in yourself. Always. And Fight for your dreams. Don’t ever give up,” Kobe continues again.
Tears well in my eyes as I struggle to get out much more than a “Thank you.” I’m not sure who these man are, but these words of wisdom could hardly have come at a more helpful time. And what’s strange is that they seem genuinely thankful for this conversation we’re having now, too. Maybe it’s because it’s so rare for them to be unrecognized that this conversation feels so authentic.
“Does this kid really not know we’re The Lakers?” each of them must be thinking sincerely right now.
They’re so used to the “Oh my god, you’re Kobe” and the “Isn’t that Dwight Howard” that this earnest look of unfamiliarity on my face right now must actually feel like a welcome reprieve for them. There’s a stunning intimacy to this interaction of ours. I’m naive and they’re glad for it.
Our conversation stretches on for an hour as we talk about everything from love and life to politics and climate change to drugs and alcohol to childhood and growing up. The poker game they were having has completely fallen by the wayside now.
As the sun sets along the shore, we spend a few minutes watching on DiCaprio’s deck as the display of fireworks goes off. It’s surprisingly underwhelming for a shoreline occupied exclusively by millionaires but could hardly be more perfect for the great uncle of mine now breaking in his big day a few doors down. I’m sure he’s hardly even noticed I’m gone. I briefly envision the cane-bound senior with a glass of champagne in his hand.
We return to the table and I spend a few more minutes talking with the four Lakers who I still have yet to realize are The Lakers.
But as I make my way to use Leonardo Dicaprio’s bathroom, I overhear a conversation. “Yeah the Lakers just have DiCaprio’s place rented out for the weekend.” As I use his surprisingly ordinary bathroom, I slowly begin to piece things together. “I’ve just been talking to the Lakers,” I realize. As I wash my hands in the bathroom of the Titanic and Inception star, I’m suddenly feeling a little star-struck by everything.
I make my way gingerly back to the table and continue talking with the Lakers for a few more minutes. But they’ve resumed their game of poker now and I hardly mind. I say goodnight to the four famed athletes who, in truth, feel a bit more like friends now.
“Remember, always believe in yourself. Stay in school, study and stay dedicated. You’re already doing great,” says the basketball superstar sincerely. I wave goodbye to the four of them and make my way back through the house in which I’ve completely forgotten that I’m a sore thumb. Where Sandy ended up, I’m not sure.
I walk disbelievingly back along the Malibu shore, the smoky remnants of fireworks still in the air.
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