Read Online Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage - Free Book Online

retail operations in downtown Dubuque. A clean, white storefront with shelves that go up to the ceiling, Catherine’s Used Books had, “Over 80,000 used books in stock—come in and count them!” and had that wonderful paper-ink-rot-dust smell that only a room packed with used paperbacks ever does. In addition to used books, the dealer who urged me to learn something about blackjack before running through my money at his table—his name was Bob—also sold Native American prints, dream catchers, and knickknacks in his shop. He opened the store a few years ago with his wife, herself a retired card dealer. His daughter, a dealer, also lives in an apartment above the store.
    The store was empty when I dropped in to pick up a book on casino gambling. Bob was in the back shelving, heard the bell, and came to the front of the shop. He laughed when he saw me.
    â€œSo you’ve come for the book, eh?” he asked. “You might have saved yourself some money if you’d come for the book as soon as you got to town.”
    Then Bob asks me what I’m doing in Dubuque. I tell him the truth. I’m here to write about gambling. And sin. Bob stiffens and folds his arms across his chest.
    â€œDon’t write the same stuff that everybody writes,” he said. “Don’t you go on and on about, ‘Oh, it’s so awful, all these people losing their farms, their houses, all these people getting addicted.’ ”
    But surely some gamblers lose their houses and farms and get addicted?
    â€œSure. I’ve seen it happen. But people who don’t go to casinos lose their farms, too. It happens all the time. There are farmers who drink themselves bankrupt, too, but you don’t hear a lot of calls for making alcohol illegal again.”
    He had a point—even if he was wasting it on me. I wasn’t in Iowa to write about how awful gambling is or to call for its prohibition. Quite the contrary. I was here to celebrate the sin a bit, and to get to the bottom of gambling—what’s the attraction? What’s the appeal? Since the odds always favor the house, why bother? What brings people back—time and again—especially as their loses mount?
    â€œGood jobs, jobs that pay good money.”
    Bob was still talking me into casinos. He set a stool down in front of the cash register and gestured for me to sit. Then he sat at a chair behind his register, leaned back, and continued.
    â€œNo one ever writes about that—the good jobs,” said Bob. “The casino was the best thing that ever happened to me. I went from ten-dollar-an-hour district manager for a retail company to fifteen dollars an hour with the tips as a card dealer. Dealers in Chicago make more than that. Some make a lot more. You can have a life on a dealer’s income.”
    But surely there were other good jobs in Dubuque before the casinos came to town?
    â€œThe only two good jobs in town were at the John Deere plant and the meatpacking company,” said Bob. “John Deere hasn’t hired anyone in twenty years, and the meatpacking company went out of business two years ago. Some people say it’s not dignified work, that Iowans who used to make a living building things or farming have been ‘reduced’ to dealing cards. That’s a city person’s perspective. It’s hard to make a living farming. And dealing is all that helps some people hold on to their farms.”
    But surely some people don’t like dealing?
    â€œThey don’t last, the ones who don’t like it. They don’t last! And what they don’t understand is that they’ve got the best job in the world. You get paid to play cards! You’re not working in a factory floor; you’re not gutting pigs. You’re out there on the floor, interacting with people, playing a game . And all people gamble—all human cultures have their gambling games. You want to talk about a sin?