My Short, Ugly Life as a Bookie

By Joel Stein

I have a gambling problem. It's not that I'm addicted to wagering, it's just that I'm not very good at it. I have lost bets this year on Robert Downey Jr.'s ability to stay out of trouble, on my certainty that a turkey-hand drawing Emeril Lagasse made for me would not contain "Bam!," on the actual lyrics to Christopher Cross's Arthur's Theme--and a sizable one on the presidential race that the Supreme Court totally screwed me on.

Gambling was instilled in me as an eight-year-old, when my grandmother would take weeks' worth of my allowance during post-Thanksgiving poker games and Mom and I would wager $5 over which Hanukkah candle would go out last. More often than not, I lost that bet, but I figure I'll get even when Mom goes to hell for that particular piece of religious training.

While many people lost more money than I did on the Super Bowl, none lost theirs as stupidly. On Nov. 10, I overheard my co-worker Josh Tyrangiel, who is from Baltimore, say he was going to put $10 down in Vegas on the Ravens' winning the Super Bowl, for a 20-1 payout of $200. Despite the fact that I knew nothing about the Ravens, oddsmaking, or, sadly, something called "the vig," I was convinced he was wrong and offered to be his bookie. Turns out accepting one bet isn't how most bookies make their living. Oddly, collecting garbage is.

Still, I figure the $200 I lost was a cheap lesson. Actually, it was very expensive and offered no lesson at all, but that's what people always say when they lose a big bet, so I'm going to play Aesop here and try to make myself feel better.

There was once a lemur who wagered 200 acorns against an ice weasel and lost. Stupid lemur.

Analyzing my situation in more detail, without the aid of rodentia, I realized I don't even enjoy gambling. All those NCAA and Academy Award office pools generate far too much e-mail and sometimes require conversations with people in the marketing department. Yet I endure it because, like most men, I think I can boost my self-esteem by trying to prove that I am always right. Women's self-esteem seems to come from healthier places, like starving themselves.

It turns out the reason I take any bet, no matter how long the odds, is not that I am very, very dumb but that each wager is a challenge to my masculinity, and that, for those who are not regular readers of this column, is something about which I'm a little insecure. It's the same reason men day-trade and look at pornography. I know that last part doesn't make sense, but I'm always searching for an excuse for the porn thing.

Gambling is a desperate attempt to demean my co-workers through false bravado about things that I don't even care about. All this time, I haven't been betting in order to win money; the money is simply a prop to hold over the loser's head while I take a picture of myself smiling. So now, instead, I will resort to more economical ways of humiliating people. Like printing that Josh has recurring dreams about riding on a motorcycle with Shaquille O'Neal. I'm feeling much better already.