I'll Never Wash This Pen Again

In the last issue, I described my view from the center of the storm that is Mike Matusow's life. I joined him for the last day of the Tournament of Champions, in which he had once again placed himself near the pinnacle of tournament poker success. I drive to Mike's house, and although the tournament starts in less than two hours, he is just waking up. I am in his bedroom.



I know I am going to write about Mike Matusow – he wants me to write his autobiography with him – as I glance around his bedroom. I flash to my favorite celebrity profiles: Rex Reed on Ava Gardner, Truman Capote on Marlon Brando, and Gay Talese on Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio.



Matusow is a real celebrity, a larger-than-life character. He has a giant ego, a whopping, inflated view of himself. But he expresses it in the healthiest, most endearing ways possible. In discussions, he focuses on himself, full of declarations about his ability and potential. (Of course, he spends an almost equal amount of time lamenting his mistakes, weaknesses, and shortcomings – a cacophony of self-loathing that is completely sincere but almost theatrical to watch.)



When the world reinforces Mike's positive view of himself – calling out words of encouragement as he passes, asking for his picture and autograph – he is completely humbled, flattered, and compliant. It is almost as if he thinks so highly of himself that he wants to reward as extravagantly as possible those who believe it with him.



He has a celebrity's lack of self-consciousness. He gets out of bed, in his underwear, and walks to the bathroom. While I wait on hold with the airlines, we talk as he showers. He has elaborate plans for how to bait Phil Hellmuth, the only player at the final table with more chips than him. He describes intricate insults and put-downs, some even including props.



He doesn't care if I see him like this. I saw him in jail. Millions of people have seen him crying, ecstatic, miserable, jubilant, crushed, bluffing, cackling, boasting, and insulting. He has nothing to hide.



As he trims his facial hair into a neat goatee, we discuss medicine doses, a frequent subject with Mike. As a former user of illegal drugs, politically correct types blanch when he pops a pill at the table, or talks about how his antidepressants are working.



Family, friends, and agents have little to worry about. We both take the same medicine for ADD. Mike takes one-eighth of my dose. (Maybe my family, friends, and agents should worry: I'm taking eight times the dose of Mike Matusow!) As we take our respective medicines on the way out to Mike's car, he watches me swallow my pills as if I've just snorted a bucket of cocaine.



He talks on the speaker phone as we drive to Caesars, running late. He tells some of the friends and well-wishers that I am the reason for his tardiness (which is true; I failed after much trying to fix my travel plans, which involve my car, now stranded 300 miles from home, my outbound flight from Phoenix, a new flight from Las Vegas, a connection in Cincinnati, and a rental car). I tell the person Mike is talking to that if it wasn't for me, Mike would still be sleeping.



The voice at the other end asks, "Who's that?"



I realize that my intimacy with Mike is both selective and seductive. There are huge portions of his life about which I am completely ignorant. On the other hand, he is so open that it is easy to believe I know everything about him, including his army of friends.



He is on the phone with someone by the name of Mike. Mike Wattel? Mike Mizrachi? Some other Mike? But I notice they call each other Mikey.



While driving past the fountains at Caesars, Mike receives a call from a production assistant at ESPN. The call is expected; he was supposed to sit down for an interview 10 minutes ago, and the final table starts in 20 minutes.



"I have good news and bad news," Mike tells her.



"Oh, no. We …"



"The bad news is that I'm not at Caesars."



"I know, Mike. We need to …"



"The good news is that I'm pulling into the valet right now."



"Oh, thank God." I actually hear her breathe a sigh of relief. She explains where she will intercept him, and they hang up.



Mike chuckles. "I had her freaking out for a minute, didn't I?"



Mike Matusow has us all freaking out, all the time, I think, as we turn the car over to the valet. But I'm still here.



We're all still here. Mike is the storm, but he is also the calm in the eye of the storm. He is constantly at risk of losing control, which is why we can't take our eyes off him. But amazingly, he is almost always in control, close to losing it but still managing, however precariously, to stay upright.



As we walk inside, I try to counsel him to keep the jabs at Hellmuth light. Phil usually wears the black hat at the TV table, and really riding him, as Mike planned, seemed to me to be a way to get people feeling sorry for Phil, rooting for him to shut Matusow up.



He ignores me, and it's a good thing he did. Although always at risk of going too far, his jabs were usually good-natured, or humorous, or occasionally aimed more at himself than Hellmuth, or responded to by Phil in a way that assured that Mike never lost the crowd.



The production assistant meets Mike at the bottom of a giant escalator. As she whisks him off, I wish him luck. I take the escalator up to the Augustus Ballroom, suddenly alone in a crowd of people. Is the escalator that slow or the ride that long, or is it simply harder to fill the moment when Mike Matusow is suddenly absent?



When we walk out of Caesars more than 14 hours later, is it different? Is he different? He carries a trophy so heavy that most of it must be stashed in another dimension. He just won a million-dollar prize, something the 40 or so customers of Caesars Palace at 4 a.m. Wednesday must sense, because they flock to him like he was Mother Theresa in Calcutta.



They are all, it appears, gorgeous young women with pierced navels and little or no underwear. One woman has him sign one of her breasts. Another raises the first woman, dropping her top and the back of her pants, so she can get two signatures.



With the same equanimity that he signed the sweatshirts of two boys who waited outside the tournament room for him to walk by on a break, he complies. For me, the writer, the participation was being able to furnish him with the pen.



I realize that Mike Matusow hasn't really changed at all. But if we do write a book together, I'm going to have to make sure he understands that there is more to writing than he experienced at the Caesars valet, no matter how appreciative the audience.

I hope this profile provided a small taste of life lived in the vicinity of Mike Matusow. The events of Nov. 8 were bizarre and momentous, but I can probably tell you about another half-dozen days spent with Mike that were at least as unusual. And we don't even see each other much. If you have any comments to share, please contact me at [email protected].