The Man with the $100,000 Breasts: And Other Gambling Stories

Book by Konik Michael

The Man With the $100,000 Breasts

When I first meet Brian Zembic, he is living in a bathroom.

This is not because he can't afford a place that has all the amenities, like a bedroom. It's because a couple of his degenerate gambling buddies bet him $14,000 he couldn't stay in a bathroom for 30 straight days.

Several gambler friends playing the poker tournament circuit had told me about some psychopath they knew who would do anything to win a bet. "The guy's an animal," they opined. "You gotta meet him." But my pals neglected to mention that Brian doesn't really have a permanent address, save for a cheap motel he often stays in when he comes to Las Vegas. Tracking him down is like hunting a fugitive; he seems to jump to another motel, another apartment, another country, every time I try to get him on the phone. That he is confined to a bathroom for a month is my best opportunity yet to actually confirm this cipher's existence.

When I arrive in Las Vegas, he's six days into the bathroom bet, and already he's going a little stir-crazy. As far as bathrooms go, it's a nice bathroom: carpeted, brightly lighted, bordering on spacious. But it's still a bathroom. The terms of Brian's bet allow him to keep the door open, but prohibit him from crossing the threshold into the adjoining hallway. Since Brian lives in the bathroom by himself--a $50-a-day housekeeper brings him sandwiches whenever he yells for her--most of his time is spent reading and practicing magic tricks. Rows of $100 bills are taped to the mirror to remind Brian what he's earning each day he serves his self-imposed sentence but, he confesses, his resolve is weakening. "Joey, one of the guys who made the wager with me, he owns the apartment and he's been sending people over here to take a dump," Brian tells me, reclining on the floor. "It's brutal."

Six days later his buddies cave in and buy Brian out of the bet for $7,000.

"I didn't think he'd do it, to tell you the truth," Joey admits, shortly after paying Brian off with a thick stack of hundreds. "I wouldn't do it. You wouldn't do it, right? I couldn't imagine myself or anybody else with half a brain staying in a bathroom for a month. I thought it was a good bet. I was wrong."

Anyone who knows Brian Zembic well understands the guy will do just about anything to put money in his pocket--as long as it doesn't require punching a clock. Ironically, Brian's a top Las Vegas blackjack player, one of the world's best at "shuffle tracking," a complex method of following cards through the mixing process. He could be earning thousands of dollars a day plying his trade. But he doesn't do it regularly because that would feel too much like working, a concept that Brian despises. Working, he believes, means somebody owns him, owns his time, his freedom. When he needs to earn some money, which happens occasionally, he gambles. Backgammon mostly, a little poker, ping-pony when he can find a sucker--anything where his skill gives him the edge. Anything where his superior talent or knowledge makes him a favorite to win. This includes taking insane proposition bets. Like walking around for a year with a nice pair of womanly breasts.

When I meet him at his bathroom prison cell that summer afternoon, he's had them for close to a year. He's wearing a baggy sweatshirt, so his bustiness isn't obvious. But you can tell there's something lurking under all that cotton. I ask Brian if the past 10 months have been humiliating. He laughs. "No. Not at all. It's been great. I've probably never had more fun in my life."

Fun? Playing with big beautiful breasts every day of the year I can see. But possessing them?

"Let me put it this way," Brian says, smiling conspiratorially, as his housekeeper shuffles past the doorway. "I've never gotten so much pussy in my life. I mean, I've never done bad. But since I got these," he says, giving his bosom an absentminded poke, "it's been like one woman after another."

* * *

For Brian Zembic, 37, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, life has not always been so busty. He's always been an attention-getter, a fast-talking high-energy maniac who usually reduces everyone around him to a chuckling mess. Even though he's notorious for never picking up a check--Brian's possibly the cheapest bastard on the planet--his buddies love taking him out to dinner and nightclubs, because he's a total chick magnet. Friends call him "the Wiz," short for Wizard. Brian's like a sorcerer. He does magic tricks and tells jokes and makes women you would be too scared to talk to giggle like teenagers at an Antonio Sabato Jr. underwear signing.

Brian the Wiz does not look like what you might imagine a hard-core gambler to look like. No gold chains. No pinkie rings. No dark sunglasses. He's got a boyish face and an easy grin. (And large breasts.) In terms of physique and looks and presence, you would probably call Brian average. Average height and weight. Average build. Nondescript. Indeed, a little more than a year ago, Brian was, like any other guy, flat-chested--and perfectly happy that way.

But one night a couple of years ago, Brian was playing backgammon at the Ace Point Club in New York City. It's a quasi-legal dingy little place in midtown Manhattan that looks like someone's living room, except that it's filled with backgammon tables and a cast of shady characters you probably wouldn't want hanging around if it were your living room. This is Brian's world. On this particular night he's playing for $300 a point with his high-rolling pals, a gang of action junkies escaped from the pages of a Damon Runyon story: magicians, card cheats, sports bettors. Guys who are prone to bet on which raindrop will get to the bottom of a window pane first. The conversations in this crowd tend toward the deeply philosophical.

"What would you play Russian Roulette for?"

"I dunno. A million, maybe."

"Yeah? How much for two bullets in the gun?"

Tonight, a cold desperate winter night in 1996, Brian is engaged in a passionate debate with his cohort JoBo, one of the biggest backgammon players on the planet. Like the stakes he plays for, JoBo is a large man, a stout man, a man with thick forearms and a powerful chest. He tends to express his opinions with a stolid certainty that does not invite contradiction. JoBo's saying it's crazy how women get implants, how, in hopes of attracting men, they actually jam a bag of saltwater in their chest.

Brian suggests that getting implants probably isn't so bad. "Look at Maggie," he says, referring to a mutual friend with a substantial breast job. "She seems pretty happy with her boobs."

"You think so?" JoBo asks. "How'd you like it if you had to walk around with those things all day?"

Brian leans back in his chair and laughs. JoBo is not a man who likes to be laughed at. He's the kind of guy who frequently challenges those who contradict him to put their money where their mouth is.

"Tell you what, pal," JoBo says. "I'll give you a hundred thousand if you get tits."

Now, a hundred grand to JoBo isn't going to change his life one way or another. He plays backgammon matches against Saudi sheiks for stakes nearly that big. So Brian knows JoBo isn't fooling. JoBo really would pay $100,000 just to see one of his friends sporting a set of perky breasts.

And $100,000 to Brian Zembic--$100,000 for not working-- is a serious matter.

"How large would they have to be?" Brian asks.

"As big as Maggie's, of course."

They discuss the wager's fine points: Brian's responsible for the surgery costs; JoBo will put the $100,000 prize in escrow; Brian collects the money only if he keeps his breasts for a year.

"Okay," Brian says. "You're locked into it."

Sure, whatever. JoBo knows Brian is the kind of goofball who likes to talk a good game. It's part of his life-of-the-party shtick.

"And you know I'm fucked up enough to do it," Brian warns.

"No you're not," JoBo says. "Nobody's that fucked up."

For the next three months, JoBo and Brian play a lot of backgammon together. Every time they see a woman with attractive shapely breasts, they joke about their crazy bet.

After one long night of rolling the cubes, Brian confides in JoBo that he's going to put a lot of money in the stock market. Seems his pal Fat Steve, another Vegas wiseguy, has a can't-miss tip. "And if it does miss," Brian tells JoBo, "I figure I've got your hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy."

During the summer of '96, Brian, on Steve's advice, buys stock in some company that makes heart-scanning equipment. Coincidentally, JoBo already owns a bunch of shares, and also assures him it's the stock of the century. So Brian plunges a huge chunk of his savings, a total of $125,000, into the deal. Meanwhile, JoBo's unloading his shares as quickly as his broker can find some sucker to buy them. In one week the stock goes from 6 1/2 to 5.

Brian finds out he's been duped by his buddy. He unleashes a vitriolic monologue at JoBo, alternately calling him a scumbag-cocksucking-ass-licking-motherfucker and hanging up on him. This is how Brian typically deals with anger: call, scream, swear, hang up. His friends know this. The bitterness passes and Brian goes back to being the Wiz.

This time, though, the ranting doesn't bring Brian any satisfaction. He's still steamed. So, a week after his stock debacle, pissed off and stuck, he threatens to get breasts.

"No," JoBo says, "you waited too long. Bet's off."

Brian disagrees. So the two gamblers do what most gamblers do when confronted with an intractable difference of opinion: They convene an arbitration panel of fellow gamblers--in this case, three allegedly...