Free Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage Page B

pretzels in front of me on the bar grew. I was winning. It wasn’t money, but it was something.
    I thanked the old dealers and the bartender, and offered to pay for their beers, which they refused to let me do. I settled up—$6.75 for four beers and three bags of pretzels—and walked out the door a little unsteady on my feet, thanks to the four beers I downed in the two hours I’d spent with my coaches. No one else came into the bar during my coaching session in deserted, downtown Dubuque. Later on, back at my hotel room, I realized that I hadn’t introduced myself by name to my coaches, nor had I thought to ask their names.
    â€œOne more thing,” said the old smoker when he was standing in the door of the bar, saying good-bye. “You know the only thing worse than losing big the first time you go into a casino?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “What?”
    â€œWinning big.”
    Â 
    L ater that night I headed to the Diamond Jo, after I slept off a rare midday hangover at the Julien Inn. I got three hundred dollars out of the cash machine, checked my coat, and found an empty table. It was my regular dealer’s night off, so I got a fresh start with a brand-new dealer, a younger guy, a dealer who didn’t look at me, didn’t smile, and didn’t think of me as a total, hopeless, helpless loser. I did my best to play basic strategy, I was conservative with my money and stupid with the casino’s money. I double-downed, and I always held on sixteen, and I played the dealer’s hand, always assuming the dealer’s down card was a ten. When he had five up and I had twelve in my hand, I held, hoping he would bust trying to get to seventeen, which he often did. When he had ten up and I had fifteen in my hand, I took a card, hoping I would get closer to 18.6.
    I doubled my money—I more than doubled my money.
    Two hours after I walked into the Diamond Jo, a week after I got to Dubuque, years after my first trip to Las Vegas, for the first time in my life, I walked out of a casino with more money than I walked in with—a lot more money. I sat down with $300, and I got up with $710. At one point, I had to remind myself to stop gambling. One of the dealers in the bar had warned me about people who gamble, get up a few hundred dollars, and then figure they’re either geniuses or that their luck can’t change. They’ll keep gambling, fall back down to the money they came with, and they’ll feel like they’re in the hole, when they’re actually breaking even. So they’ll keep on gambling, trying to get back up to where they were, to their new “break-even” point, and they’ll wind up losing all they came in the door with.
    â€œI see people who could get up with three months’ worth of rent in their pocket,” the dealer-turned-bartender warned me, “or a half a year’s worth of car payments. They get greedy, and then they blow it. You should decide before you go into the casino at what point you’re going to be satisfied with your winnings. If it’s double your money, then make yourself get up and get out when you’ve doubled your money.”
    I could hear his voice in my head after I doubled my money, but I played a few more hands. I went up some more, but I knew I was pressing my luck, and I didn’t want to get greedy. I gathered up my chips. The other players at the table—three men had joined me, since I was winning, and gamblers like to sit next to winners—couldn’t believe I would just get up and leave in the middle of a winning streak. But I had more than doubled my money—I won more than enough money to pay my bill at the Julien—so I cashed out and left the casino.
    I wanted to rush back to the bar and buy a round of Hamm’s for my coaching staff, but it was almost midnight when I got out of the Diamond Jo . Walking across the parking lot and over the bridge that