Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage Page A

blackjack on boats so long as they were in the middle of the river.” Iowa’s riverboats were packed with tourists—busloads would come in every day from surrounding states. Then the state of Illinois introduced riverboat casinos on its side of the Mississippi, and other states legalized casino gambling, and Native American tribes opened their own casinos. Other states didn’t require gamblers to float around the Mississippi while they gambled, and there were no limits on bets or losses. Pretty soon Iowa’s boats were empty.
    â€œHearing the sounds of slot machines while you’re stuck in the middle of the river is a circle in hell,” said Kittle. “People would come to Iowa, lose their two hundred dollars in a half an hour, and they had nowhere to go and nothing to do for four more hours, while the boat cruised around. They had to sit there listening to the dings and chirps of the slot machines for hours and hours. It was a nightmare.
    â€œSo the state legislature passed a law doing away with the five-dollar maximum bet and the two-hundred-dollar loss limit, and changed the law so that the boats only had to ‘cruise’ one hundred days a year,” said Kittle, “and our boats filled back up. Now we’ve got slots at the dog tracks and boats that are more or less permanently moored to their docks.” And the law that requires riverboats to “cruise” the Mississippi at least one hundred times a year? The Diamond Jo meets this requirement by cruising on weekdays only during the summer between the hours of 5 and 7 A.M. The boat is usually empty when it goes out.
    â€œNow Illinois is debating whether or not to allow video gambling in bars,” said Kittle. “If they do that, we’ll probably have to do that, too, to stay ‘competitive,’ just like we had to do away with the five-dollar maximum bet and the two-hundred-dollar daily loss limit.”
    You can’t be a little bit pregnant.
    â€œNo, you can’t.” Kittle nodded. “You would think farm people would’ve known that all along.”
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    B lackjack for beginners: You place a chip on the small circle on the felt in front of you. The dealer deals one card faceup to everyone at the table and then gives himself a card facedown. Then he deals a second card faceup to everyone at the table, before giving himself one card faceup. If the dealer has an ace up, he checks to see if he has blackjack; if he does, he wins. If he doesn’t, the players can ask for more cards, to get as close as they can to twenty-one. Hopefully you won’t take too many cards and bust your hand. When all the players have either busted or decided to hold, the dealer turns over his facedown card. The dealer draws more cards until he has seventeen or higher, and then he holds. If your hand is better than the dealer’s hand—closer to twenty-one without going over—you win. If you bet five dollars, you win five dollars. If you bet five hundred dollars, you win five hundred dollars. If the dealer’s hand is better than your hand, you lose five dollars. Or five hundred dollars.
    A few hands after I sat down, another man joined me at the table. I didn’t think my inexperience was obvious—it was blackjack, so all you have to do is count to twenty-one; how hard is that?—the experienced gambler could tell I was a novice and started offering me pointers. As it turned out, counting to twenty-one is a lot harder than it looks—the experienced gambler, who bore a passing resemblance to the actor Christopher Walken, was playing twenty-five-dollar chips. He walked me through different bets—double down, splitting my hand, playing two hands at once—while the dealer looked on, turning over cards and taking my chips from me one at a time.
    â€œBlackjack is easy,” the experienced gambler said, lighting a cigarette. “Gambling is easy—if you take the time to