High life
Hustling
Taki
St Moritz Now that luxury liners have gone the way of high button shoes, honourable politicians and thin African guerrilla leaders, card sharks and backgammon hustlers have been forced to abandon their natural habitat and come in from the wet. They are now crawling all over Gstaad, St Moritz, Palm Beach and Acapulco during winter, and Monte Carlo, Cap d'Antibes, Deauville and Marbella during summer. London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles serve as main hunting grounds the rest of the year.
And like everything else, everything traditional that is, the hustlers themselves have changed. They used to be known for their impeccable manners, faint Balkan or midAtlantic accents, gomina groomed hair, sar torial splendour, athletic prowess and danc ing ability. But with the exception of two (an Englishman and a Frenchman) hustlers today remind one of Runyonesque characters without the warmth and certainly without the humour.
They are a seedy crowd, nearly all male, sporting gold chains, nylon shirts, platform shoes and small diamond rings on their pin kies. No elegant lady with long cigarette holder ever looks over their victim's shoul der and signals his cards. Technology has taken care of that too. A slob friend sitting thirty yards away and wearing high powered sunglasses signals him electronically. Who needs women? Who needs elegance?
Needless to say, the hustlers are simply following tradition. The collapsed standards regarding dress, speech and manners have simply made it easier for anyone bent, to hustle. They fade out among the crowds in grand resort hotels like tiger-suited guerrillas in the jungle. Once the rich pigeon has been spotted and lured to the table, it is impossible to tell the shark from the victim. Both look horrible.
The newest enthusiasm of the Borgd and Beautiful (in reality the Cynical and Ugly) is the game of backgammon. It was once described as a game for the higher classes which had never been vulgarised or defiled by uneducated people. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Backgammon has become such a status symbol that no gay assistant hair-dresser in Los Angeles or black dope-peddler in Harlem would be caught dead without his Asprey's leather executive case.
Card sharks have been dealt a cruel blow when gin rummy and poker went out of style. (American hustlers always knew how to manipulate dice, because of crap games.) Skills which took a lifetime to perfect, such as hitting seconds or dealing from the bottom of the deck, had to be abandoned. Now it is imperative to be able to control one dice by dipping a finger in the cup or be an electrical expert and wire the backgammon board or the table its placed upon.
Many old timers could not keep up with the trend. Some were too old to learn the new tricks. Others simply refused to debase themselves and specialise in a game played by every fellah in Middle Eastern cafés for centuries. A new breed of hustler came into being.
Despite the new etiquette and crashing standards there is still some hope. The most successful hustlers are two gentlemen (mentioned previously) who have refused to join the great unwashed brigade of sharks, and with terrific results to show for it. Mind you they are hardly Beau Brummels but both refrain from growing the nail of their little finger in order to show they are not indulging in manual labour.
The French member of the entente cordiale has the dexterity of a Houdini as well as being one of the best players in the world.
His real talent, however, lies in his thespian ability. This giant of a man puts Lord Olivier to shame by managing to convince one and all that he is an easy mark. He specialises in pigeon killing; that is when his English partner comes in.
Once the 'apple' has been stripped by the Frenchman, the perfidious Englishman (a minor-public-school man) approaches him and proposes an alliance. Greed being a common human trait the victim usually agrees. And that is when the fun begins. Backgammon is a game which gives the impression that instinct is more important than a scientific approach. The Englishman being a player known throughout the world for his virtuosity in backgammon, it is a rare person who refuses to follow his advice. Needless to say the advice sometimes backfires as the wrong play turns out at times to be the right one. That is when strange encounters begin taking place. A trip to the loo costs the victim a fortune as the Englishman loses a 64 game. ('Where were you? We were winning a double game and then he threw four double sixes'.) Mysterious calls, usually from girls, take the 'mark' out of the room with the same results.
This year alone the pair have made over a hundred thousand pounds. In public they abuse each other to such an extent that hos tesses are embarrassed to invite them to the same party. Notwithstanding their recent winnings (last year was their best ever) they are now very depressed. The reason is the financial demise of an elderly Greek who could be relied upon when Italian, Spanish or German financiers had to go to the office.
The elderly victim has been going blind slowly but continued to play the pair relying on their . . . honesty. After the shipping crash, however, it was curtains. All of a sudden the pair discovered his accent to be vulgar and his habit of swearing in Greek unacceptable.
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