I'm real.

Jamie sat across from me at the poker table. She immediately caught my eye, and saw that I was noticing more than everyone else at the table. She was probably 38. I was 22. I caught on that she sat down with her friend Dusty, who was this scrawny white guy that was missing a couple side teeth on his upper maxilla. His scruffy face and faded t-shirt told me he wasn't playing Hold 'Em with his excess cash, it was most likely his paycheck (it was Friday).

Her eye-liner was just a bit too dark for her age -- she had to be still single. She bantered with Dusty about the Flyers and how they traded this player to the Ducks, and that player to Montreal. I shoved pocket sevens on a 8-8-6 flop and thought I was good. She showed me queens, but of course I spiked a 7 on the river. Now our relationship mattered.

"How could you do this to a poor girl like me?" she inquired of me in a manner that did not inspire any sort of sympathy in me -- she likely knew how to play poker better than most of the guys on this table. I stammer out some sort of apology, despite being 20 red chips richer. "You're not sorry" she points out. I wasn't. "I'm Jamie".

Three shots and a couple stacks later, I'm suddenly the "MIT kid" despite at least 3 Asian dudes who are my age sitting at the table. Dusty and I began laughing together about some of the craziness at the table -- what can I say I was running hot as the sun. Jamie openly calls me "so cute" at the table, and told me that she too went to PENN for grad school. I ask her if she graduated, to which Dusty said "you had it until that, buddy". She reacts quickly - "Did 'I' graduate? What do you think?" Obviously I thought she didn't judging by my previous conception of her.

The funniest part -- I think she never did graduate from grad school there. She never answered the question. She volunteered how I was the most attractive player at the table after her last shot, to which I saw the opportunity to leave. Dusty contends "She likes the young guys", and I postulated that maybe it was a good time to exit the situation before I either deflate her ego or subject myself to an awkward situation. She got stacked again, and I gave her a side hug and shook the hands of the dudes who had given me several hundred dollars. Her hands slipped inside of my shirt for just a second, and she wiggled her fingers. I told her "I'd be around", and left as fast as I could.

The reality of these people was fortunate for my current predicament of feeling dreary and dull towards social interaction in general. I lost my social core, it was raped and pillaged by graduation. Thank God for real people who have real desires and emotions. They continue to teach me what it means to be human.