I wore my aviator sunglasses in the breast pocket of my silver sports coat.
Taking my seat among other obvious poker amateurs, I felt my pulse rate start its steady incline. By the time my first $20 bill hit the table, I felt like my head was about to explode.


To hide the pressure building behind my eyeballs, I pulled the reflective lenses from my pocket and slapped them on my head.
"It's sunny in here," whispered the young brute across the table, his smirk hidden poorly behind the day-old stubble on his chubby face.
His buddy laughed. The knowledge their giggles were at my expense only added to the swelling in my cerebral cortex.
"It just makes me feel cooler," I told my friend, below my breath. "That's what they wear on television."
A few hands later, I quietly took them off, hoping no one noticed. I didn't realize the other players were most likely disappointed - as I peeked at my hand, the other players could see my cards in the twin sunglass reflections.
This past Saturday night's poker match - four straight hours of seven-card stud at Connecticut's Foxwoods Casino - will forever be burned in my memory as my first table gaming experience.
I have visited casinos in the past.
Shortly after my 21st birthday, I survived a night of decadence frolicking through the winding corridors and glitzy, sense-numbing slots arena within Donald Trump's Atlantic City, N.J., Taj Mahal gambling mecca.
I played a few nickel slots. Won a few nickels back, but my naiveté stopped abruptly there. What's the point?
Straddle a sticky padded stool. Pull a handle. Wait for three strange fruits to align. Hope a swarm of aging slotsters don't dive at the stash that may or may not pour from the loud, obnoxious monster between your legs.
Instead of throwing more money away, I rocked the Casbah - the Taj's all-night nightclub.
I'd rather feel like I had a sporting chance. I'm a technophobe. I fear machines and those poor souls willing to place blind trust in machine morality.
When and if I gamble, I want to stare my opponent in the eye. Or at least look at myself in a pair of his or her reflective lenses (if they're dumb enough to wear them).
That's the thing about poker - of all the games of chance, it's the only one where skill really matters. Instead of playing against insurmountable house odds, you compete solely against other living souls.
I prefer No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, but those tables were full and required preregistration. I wanted a simple virgin gaming experience. I had but a few Andrew Jacksons burning a hole in my pocket. High-stakes tables were off limits.
So there I was - sitting with a seven-card stud dealer whose only command of the English language was her ability to point at the table regulations carved on a tiny plastic-coated plaque, one friend and six total strangers. They were a motley bunch, representing each of my preconceived gambler's haven stereotypes.
Two were drunken gangsta types - laughing and poking each other after each hand, their flat-as-a-Midwest-prairie baseball cap brims as distracting as they were impressively new.
Third around the padded oval sat a never-smiling, never-bluffing man of few words in a dark leather jacket. In his ears, tiny white earbuds looked like Easter eggs hiding in the crook of a dead, hollowed-out tree trunk. The wires hanging around his chin suggested he preferred the songs stored on his iPod to frantic casino racket.
Next to him, a shrewd elderly woman with bags under her eyes the size of fanny packs managed not to change facial expressions the entire night. The corners of her mouth seemed frozen in carbonite, like Han Solo in the wake of Jabba the Hutt's wrath. If she said she hadn't slept for weeks, I would have believed her without doubt. But she didn't say anything - not one word, for 50 hands straight. She kept silent as a mossy log until she won a monstrous pot, stood with a grunt and left the table about three hands before me.
She took most of my chips, but I couldn't help worrying about her well-being. I hoped she was retiring to her room for a nap. She needed it.
Father Time occupied the next seat - the mythical figure himself, wearing a three-day-old shave, trucker's cap and cheap tweed sweater. Like a skilled but unlucky poker mentor, he watched all of our hands more than his own. He wasn't afraid to question his fellow players' stupidity. Those he questioned rarely questioned back. He sat down with a stack of red $5 chips (about $100 worth). I took them all and felt guilty - but not bad enough to give them back.
One final player, a second woman - this one much younger and almost pretty - sat silent as well. Her hair was big, her poker intuition was bigger. She won every time the dealer handed her a decent hand.
She beat me unmercifully, winning back most of Father Time's chips.
Like her frizzy hair, I won big, lost bigger, but won a little back. By night's end, I left $10 richer than I came.
And thanks to free plastic Dixie cups full of Johnny Walker Black - dispensed by the slowest but busiest cocktail waitress in all of New England - I stumbled out the same path upon which I entered.
After all, the cards were dealt and played and it was time to go home - I realized if the drinks weren't free, the bartender would have robbed me more than the silent, foreign-tongued dealer.
Next time I'll leave my shades at home.