Carrie Nations

“He called me last night,” Ashley told us, excitement showing on her face. The guy she was referring to was the “love of her life.” We knew nothing about him except that she had met him years ago and they had kept in touch ever since.

She had not even told us his name and we only got the pronoun version of him whenever she was sharing a story of her deep admiration for this guy that meant sooo much to her. Still, we ate up anything she had to tell about the romantic things he did for her, or said to her on the phone. We knew it was a long distance relationship of some sort, which made it all the more exciting because we held on to hope that one day our friend would be able to be with the guy that made her so happy.

We were used to Ashley being secretive. The girls and I would sit around often and tell about old boyfriends, our family, good and bad sex encounters and basically anything you’d share about yourself to your friends, but Ashley was the only one who didn’t join in on the conversations as much. She’d sit and listen and laugh along with the others, but she never offered a story of her own. We didn’t know much about her family except that her mom and dad were divorced, and that she had an extremely close relationship with both her mother and her brother, but that was pretty much the extent of things. The same went for her lovelife.

At times, we felt she was trying to be secretive on purpose, which puzzled us since the six of us were so close. We felt it was evident that her and Russ, a guy that hung out with us occasionally, had a certain chemistry. It had been brought up to her before that the two of them should consider going out, or at least hooking up. She would shrug it off, and claim she had nothing for him, yet his car was often seen parked outside the apartment she shared with Casey and Autumn, at odd hours of the night indicating that he had probably stayed over.

Once, Autumn’s cousin shared to us all about how he was going through a breakup with a girl that meant a lot to him, but was very hard to reach. We all wondered who this mystery girl was since we weren’t even aware he was seeing anyone. It turned out to be Ashley, leaving us all the more surprised. I never understood why Ashley didn’t tell us things about her personal life, but then I figured that it’s called “personal” for a reason, and that just because we all made announcements about our love lives constantly, didn’t mean she had to do the same. The more I thought about it, it actually seemed like the smarter thing to do anyway.

Still, the mystery guy intrigued us. He was the only guy she would share stories about, and because of this we felt like we were being let in on something big. I’d go over to Ashley’s apartment to find Autumn, Casey and Jamie huddled in the living room in a circle on the floor. No TV on. No music playing.

“Hi guys. Where is Ashley?”

“Shhh.” Autumn would say. “She’s on the phone with him.”

“Ohhh. She is? Did he call her?”

“I guess so. She just grabbed her cell phone and said, ‘It’s him’ and ran to her room.”

“Are you trying to listen in?” All three would nod. I’d join them after a few minutes. Soon enough, Ashley would emerge from her room, her big blue eyes wide.

“He told me that he loved me!” she squealed.

“Oh that’s great!” Casey said. “I’m so happy for you.

“I think I’ll see him soon.”

“Where is he again?” I asked.

“California.”

“Why is he there?”

“He’s an actor,” she said. Ashley always fell for the actor types. I blamed it on her being a bit dramatic.

“Has he been in any movies?” Autumn asked.

“A few.”

“Any we’ve seen?”

“Only if you watch a lot of movies.”

“How did you meet again?” We had heard the story many many times, but someone always asked her to repeat it.

“I was up in Wheeling, at a park, and I was about 13. I was sitting outside when this beautiful guy just came up to me and started talking to me. There was an instant connection. He asked me if I wanted to smoke a joint, so we shared one, and we talked about life and love. He told me I was mature for my age and he felt like he could talk to me about anything. We exchanged numbers and addresses, and he said that he would always keep in touch with me. He has done so ever since.”

In the weeks that followed, Ashley received flowers from her mystery man. We “ooohed” and “ahhed” as she placed them in a vase in her room and let us read the card. “Thinking of you always and forever.” It was signed by just a single letter, “J”. For once, we had a clue about the mystery man. His name began with a J! Thanksgiving week came around, and we all were going out of town to our respective parents, so like every holiday, Huntington became a ghost town. The only one of our friends staying was Karolina. She was a member of the school’s tennis team and couldn’t make it back to her hometown of Maine for the holidays. Ashley, Autumn and Casey offered their apartment for her to stay in while we were gone. When everyone else got back into town on Sunday, we were surprised to see Ashley’s old Mercedes already at her apartment.

“You got back early.” Jamie commented.

“I’ve been back since Saturday.”

“Why so soon?”

“I had a visiter this weekend,” she said nonchalantly.

“He came?” Jamie shrieked.

“Yes, he did.”

“Well, tell us about it!” I said.

“Um, I’d rather not. It’s kind of something I’d like to keep to myself.” She walked away leaving us disappointed.

“That’s lame,” I said to Jamie and Autumn. “I wonder why she isn’t telling us anything.”

“Well you know,” Autumn said, “Karolina stayed here too this weekend. So if she was at the apartment when he stopped by, I bet she probably met him.” So we hunted Karolina down to ask her about the visit. Karolina seemed just as puzzled as we were.

“I don’t know guys. It was all really weird. Like she told me he was stopping by, but she asked me if it was ok if I didn’t meet him. I heard her say he was here, but I never heard anyone else talking. It didn’t sound like anyone else was here. And there was no car outside. Then, by the time I woke up today, he was already gone. I just think that’s odd for someone from California to make such a long trip out here only to stay the night.” We agreed.

“The whole thing is odd to me,” Autumn said. “Have you guys ever noticed that everytime he calls, we never actually hear her phone ringing?” I found that odd too, but had just figured she had the ringer off. “I wanna get to the bottom of this.”

Ashley kept a journal about her love story with her mystery dude. She was so sure that one day they would be married and she would have this to show him. We knew getting to the bottom of the situation would require getting our hands on this journal. If anything, we’d find out the identity of her dude. Autumn called us later that week.

“You guys, I know this is horrible, but I read her journal.”

“And?”

“Y’all need to come over for this.” So we made our way to Autumn’s and got cozy to find out the identity of the mystery man. For once, we would see who this great guy was. It was exciting! Autumn asked that we sit down.

“OK. This is just really weird. I think Ashley has problems, guys.”

“Why?”

Autumn pulled a book from behind her back. It was the journal. She opened it up for us to see. Inside was nothing but pictures pasted onto the notebook pages of the same face. Sketches of his face were drawn on some. We read on some of the pages how one day they would be together, she just knew it. She wrote about how she fantasized about him at night, and no matter who she was with sexually, it would be nothing like the day she would get to be with him. There were rough drafts of letters, addressed to him, in which she confessed her love. It seemed that this journal had documented a whole relationship that had manifested itself out of one girl’s obsession with a guy. And this guy was Joaquin Phoenix.

We didn’t really know how to go about things after that. We stopped asking questions about her mystery guy, of course, because it was embarrassing for us to hear her share stories she was creating herself about some movie star romance with a guy she had never even met. We got to thinking about all the time she was on the phone with him. Was she talking to herself then? Was there ever anyone actually on the other line? What about the flowers? Did she pull a Cher from Clueless and send them to herself?

It all made sense now that we knew the identity of her man. She did watch a lot Joaquin Phonix movies, and had an almost bizarre, psychotic hatred for Liv Tyler, his girlfriend at the time. Either way, the topic of Joaquin and Ashley’s love affair eventually died down. We didn’t want to keep thinking our friend was crazy, which I have to admit I definitely was starting to think. To us, the journal never existed. Ashley was secretive, like I said, so stories about her mystery man were only shared when she was probed for information. Without our inquiring minds, it became an old topic of conversation.

Who knows, maybe she did meet him in a Wheeling, WV park those many years ago. Maybe there was some connection between the two of them and perhaps there was some secret romance. But I’m willing to bet there wasn’t.

Besides, everyone knows Joaquin Phoenix is a drinker not a smoker.

Carrie Nations once created a whole wedding album for her and James Van Der Beek. You can call her a hypocrite at sundaysgirl@gmail.com.

Annie Duke isn’t your typical poker player. As if being a woman in a male dominated sport wasn’t tough enough, Duke has to juggle raising four kids with a life on the road.

As poker’s popularity continues to explode, so does Duke’s success. In 2004, she won $2 million in the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions (that’s a lot of poker chips) and her first WSOP gold bracelet. She also wrote a book during that time called Annie Duke: How I raised, folded, bluffed, flirted, cursed and won millions at the World Series of Poker, which was just released a few months ago. Recently, Duke was nice enough to take some time out of her busy schedule to talk to us about the life of a professional card player.

Poker is as popular as ever, but it’s unlike any other sport. You’ll never see an “Average Joe” play in a NFL game, but in poker, anyone can pay the entrance fee and play against the pros. Do you see this as a good thing or a bad thing?

I think it’s a great thing. There are events where only pros are invited, so you do have some of that, but the fact that there are a multitude of tournaments where anyone can enter, I think makes it a great game. I think it’s really good for the game and it keeps it popular because everybody feels like they can have a chance and they can interact with the people they see on TV.

Playing off of that question – more and more people enter the World Series of Poker each year. With so many amateurs joining the competition, is it easier for pros like you because there’s that many more individuals who don’t belong, or is it tougher just because of the sheer number of competitors?

The World Series is a very particular event. You’re not going to see a pro win that. There might be 50 pros that you can name and there’s 6,000 people entering. So, one of the 5,950 people is probably going to win the event just by sheer mass.

But, the fact is that not every tournament has 6,000 people in it. So having this one tournament that’s so huge where first place is seven and a half million is great for poker. Anything that’s good for the game is a great thing for me, for everybody.

It would be frustrating if every tournament had 6,000 people in it. They have it scheduled for the main event to take 13 days next year. But it’s a once a year thing. It’s a cool spectacle once a year to see all these people, this vast humanity, stream into a room to play poker for $10,000. But every tournament isn’t like that. I play plenty of tournaments that have 200 people in them.

Do you think poker is going to continue to grow in popularity or do you think this is its 15 minutes of fame and the bubble will burst at some point?

I don’t know that you’ll see as much poker on TV as you do today, but poker is never going to go away. Look, there’s a reason why golf remains on TV and it’s because so many people play golf, so when they’re watching it, they can relate to it.

Poker is the same way. The issue that made poker not be on TV before was that they couldn’t figure out a way to show it in a compelling way because they didn’t have the lipstick cameras. It’s very interesting playing poker when you know what your own cards are and you don’t know what everybody else’s cards are and you’re trying to figure out that information. When you’re watching a poker game where you don’t even know what anybody’s cards are, it’s like watching paint dry.

When they changed the situation so you’re watching poker and you know what everybody’s hold cards are, that actually puts the audience in a superior position to the player. Now they get to go, “Oh, that’s such a bad bluff” or “Oh, what a great call” or “Oh, don’t do it.” It increases the drama.

The thing that is going to make poker persistent is that the poker on TV didn’t create an audience. The audience was already there for it. Poker has been around for 160 years – all the way back to Wild Bill Hickock. Everybody plays poker. It’s on the Odd Couple with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. It’s not something that was created by television, it’s something that television tapped into.

While poker has a very glamorous image, your story is sort of unique because you are a mother of four playing poker for a living. What is it like to live that lifestyle?

Obviously, I have a balancing act between my family and my career, so I play probably half to a third of the number of tournaments that my peers play because I need to be home with my children.

When I am away, I have an ex-husband who takes the kids 50 percent of the time – that’s in our divorce agreement. He’s very accommodating of what my travel schedule is. And basically, you get on a plane, you go to a hotel, you’re hanging out in the hotel, you go play poker, hopefully it takes you seven days because that means you won. Sometimes it takes you an hour and you get back on the plane and you come home early.

Look, it’s a lot of fun and it affords me a very nice lifestyle, I have incredibly good friends on the tour and basically that’s what you’re doing is hanging out with your friends and working in between.

You do some online playing as well. Does that make things easier for you?

That’s incredibly convenient for me. Before I ever got associated with UltimateBet.com, there were a couple of online sites already and when I had my third child, online poker was kind of in it’s infancy, but there was some available. I had a baby, it wasn’t like I was leaving the house and it was a complete revelation to me that I could sit in the house with my baby in the bouncy chair sleeping and play poker on the computer while she was napping.

Now, I put the kids to bed, I read them their stories, put them in their jammies, get them to sleep and I can go into the bedroom and fire up my laptop and I get to play poker and I don’t have to leave the house to do it. For my situation, that’s incredible. I never turn on the computer when my kids are awake. It affords me an incredible freedom.

When you are online, do people know they are playing against you?

It depends on which name I use. I’ve got an account that’s “Annie Duke” and I play under that sometimes and people know and then sometimes I like to play in private, only because when I go online under my own name, it’s 200 people trying to chat at me at once. I don’t play poker for big dollar amounts online when I’m playing under my own name because it’s very difficult for me to concentrate on the game when I’m trying to respond to everyone asking me questions.

In your book, you talk about growing up in a competitive household where card playing was prominent. Do you play card games with your four kids?

No, I’m not sure I have a full deck in my house. It’s not something that I do at home for fun. It’s kind of an interesting thing, it’s like while I am incredibly grateful for the way I grew up, it was an extremely competitive household, it was all about winning and I guess that I just kind of went the other way.

The way that my kids and I hang out is we go to the movies or we go to Disneyland or we sit and read books or we watch Animal Planet. We’re not really a games playing household. I think that’s partially because the emotions I felt when I was growing up, playing card games every night and wanting to win so much. It was incredibly intense emotions for me every night. I always felt like I was losing.

And how would you feel if one of them wanted to be a professional poker player? Would you be supportive?

As long as they’d gone to college. The thing is that it’s a very high-risk profession to go in because of your likelihood of success at it. There aren’t a lot of people playing poker who are making their living at it. It’s a very complex game to master. And I had the power of an education behind me when I started playing. I had something that I could go back to.

I’ll be very honest with them about the pitfalls and the chance of their success, but at the same time, if this was what they really wanted to do and it’s going to make them happy, I’m going to support them 100 percent.

You’re probably the most well known female poker player in the world. Is it tough to make it in the poker world as a woman?

I don’t think so much anymore, but when I first started playing, I got plenty of harassment. I think when I started playing in Montana, there probably wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t get called the “C” word at some point. The ranchers in Montana weren’t particularly happy with a mid-twenties girl coming in and taking their money.

I think that poker’s just a really male game. It’s very testosterone driven. And because it’s not a work place, people feel they have a freedom to behave in a way that I think they wouldn’t behave away from the poker table. I got a lot of abuse. I had a guy say to me once, “Oh, don’t worry about losing, you can go across the street, go to the hotel, stick your legs in the air and get your money back.”

I never really got upset by it though because I just figured they’re not going to play well against me if that’s how they feel, so I’m probably going to get extra money from them.

Are there certain players you like playing against or don’t like playing against? Does it matter to you who is at the table with you?

The only thing I don’t like is people who are poor winners and poor losers. They bother me. It’s a game, you’re not going to win every hand and you’re not going to lose every hand either. There’s no reason in the middle of the tournament to celebrate over winning a hand. Save it for when you win and please shake your opponent’s hand first.

Let’s talk a little bit about Phil Hellmuth. Obviously, anyone who watched the Tournament of Champions last year saw you take him down head to head. I know you two are friends, but how do you feel playing against him?

He behaves very poorly at the table and he’s the first one to admit it. And we all just kind of shrug our shoulders and it’s like, “That’s Phil.” It’s an interesting thing; Mike Matusow is another example of people whose behavior at the table isn’t necessarily supreme. They are very good people and they have very good hearts and we understand where that’s coming from. It’s kind of a lack of self-control with them. Phil behaves that way whether a camera is on him or not. There’s something endearing about that.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, November 2005. Annie Duke: How I raised, folded, bluffed, flirted, cursed and won millions at the World Series of Poker is available in bookstores now. You can find out more about Annie Duke on her website.

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• One on One with Phil Hellmuth
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