Pony up for OTB

During my first few visits to the parlor I refrained from betting, preferring to play by pretending to wager. It was utterly boring, like being at an orgy and opting to read "The Joy of Sex" instead of joining in. It wasn't long before I needed the adrenaline rush of betting with real money to sustain my interest. When your hard-earned money is at stake, the juice coursing through your veins as the horses thunder down the track takes over your brain -- and your body. The minute the thoroughbreds hit the stretch, the OTB regulars dig deep within themselves for what can only be described as a good-luck spasm. Lips flutter, faces shrivel, torsos and necks twist and turn in completely unnatural ways. One middle-aged man works himself into an ungodly position during each race. Crouching low, he rocks back and forth (slowly at first, then, as the horses enter the last quarter mile, frantically), straining with his entire face and torso as if trying to unlock months of constipation. It is a truly disturbing sight to witness, and goes completely unnoticed by the others, who are doing their own versions of the chronic gambler's two-step.

It's 15 minutes to post time now for the fifth race at Aqueduct on this balmy Saturday, and it's a real washout. Only three of the horses have even finished in the money in their last six runs, and none has ever won. Worse, they're all equally lousy, so picking a favorite is like a crapshoot. Good handicappers hate these kinds of races because the numbers don't mean anything. These are more like Vegas odds.

Jimmy has closed his program and is skipping the fifth altogether, preferring instead to talk to his buddy, an Italian with a white mustache that rests upon a dour, down-turned mouth, about the great ass on some 20-year-old whom he flirts with in church.

The rest of the guys know the race is a dud too, but they can't stand to be out of the action. They'd bet on a sewer rat if it could be relied upon to run in a circle, so they're walking around the room, scratching their scalps and fussing and fidgeting, just like the animals they're betting on.

It's 10 minutes to post when the maitre d' from Marco Polo, the fancy Italian place across the street, walks in, black tux and all, and heads for the betting window. No one even bats an eye. On the way out, he stops and talks to the Hemingway-esque old man about a hot tip on a horse in the sixth before darting back across the street to work.

The racing day is half over now and, from the long faces that pepper the room, it's not hard to tell who is going home flat busted. One guy with rotten teeth can't stop talking about the trifecta he missed two races ago. He wanted to bet it, but didn't, and his caution cost him a $200 payoff. He goes over the story again and again, and you can hear the quiver in his voice and almost see the tears welling up in his eyes each time he tells it. It's the only thought he's had for over an hour now.

There is a sickening desperation that grips the room every so often, and now, just before the fifth, it has returned. The day gets long and the air inside the OTB parlor grows thick and claustrophobic, polluted with a collective guilt, regret and frustration. Some walk outside to combat the plague, but they can barely stand to be away from the TV screens for more than five minutes, so they inhale their cigarettes as quickly as possible before rushing back for their next shot at financial salvation.

Two minutes to post and the room starts buzzing with the lifers taking roll call and offering last-minute speculations: "Who'd you bet on? Did you box the exacta? I like the four horse, good speed numbers. Who does Jimmy like?"

Up on the screen the jockeys have mounted and the horses are prancing near the gate, shaking their heads and hips and preening like the stars of the moment they are. I often wonder if the animals sense the hurricanes of emotion that twirl around them on race day, the suffocating weight of a thousand men teetering on the brink of financial ruin as they huff and puff around a dirt oval for a brief minute or two.

Jimmy is holding court now over by the bay window, busting the Cricket's balls and waving his winning tickets in front of those gigantic choppers. "Ah, fuck off, Jimmy," the Cricket retorts, secretly glad that it's his balls the old man chose to bust. Amid a sea of sweaty brows and worried eyes Jimmy looks as relaxed and peaceful as a baby in his mother's arms.

Just before the race starts, as the regulars are going through their good-luck rituals, Toothless strikes up a conversation with a big, oafish Pole. Jimmy may be the king of the OTB on Court Street, its undisputed ringleader, but its heart and soul is Toothless. In his cheap, fake leather coat, white-knuckled desperation and undying devotion to the unseen dollars waiting to be collected from the payoff window is as concise an explanation for why these men gather here every day as you will ever find.

Turning to the Pole, he begins to speak in a slow, somber voice. "My daughter is getting married in a month, and my wife says the caterer wants $400 to do her wedding," he confides. "Do you believe it?"

"Yeah, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime event, you know," the Pole says consolingly.

Toothless' mouth contorts in a sudden flash of anger, his wrinkled face looking worn out and old in the dim light, and he unleashes on the Pole.

"Where in the hell am I going to get $400? Huh?"

He lets the words hang in the air for a moment, standing in complete silence as the final odds flash on the TV screen above his head, before shuffling off to the betting counter just in time to lay $20 down on a long shot in the fifth.

• View blog reactions