The Game in the Synagogue Basement

Kaitz, Merrill

THE GAME MTHE SYNAGOGUE BASEMENT MERRILL KAITZ "Cover the underside of Jewish life," my editor said. "You have a twisted sense of humor, a slimy mind. Let's see what happens if you go out and...

...Nobody said anything to her...
...I wasn't getting anywhere...
...The only intelligent approach I could come up with was to get some help and go in near the end of the game with ski-masks and shotguns and heist the place...
...It was a complicated package of gear, different colored cards, blue, yellow, grey, strips of bingo-boards on newsprint, a couple of tickets with numbers on them...
...But when you win, Bingo...
...I had to do something to forget...
...Somebody said bingo...
...I had figured maybe the winner would jump up and scream and squeal, and that would have disgusted me, but what happened was worse...
...Throwing good money after bad, they call it in-five-card stud...
...I said, "What's the deal here...
...There might be a mistake...
...The minimum was $6.50 each, but I asked what most suckers played and it turned out to be three times that...
...My question was, how long do you have to play lucky sevens before the chances of winning approach zero, like one in a billion, one in a trillion, one in ten to the hundredth power...
...This was some of the ugliest action I'd ever seen...
...They didn't want to tell us how it worked, maybe because we didn't fit in, maybe just because we were competition...
...Gigolos at least acknowledge the needs of the aging ladies they rob...
...Just like that...
...I felt like retching, but I fought it down...
...His game can wipe you out pretty bad too, sometimes...
...A vague odor of disease or blood should surround it...
...We thought there'd be nobody there yet, but there were already 200 marks foaming at the mouth...
...The old lady was upset and sat there stewing...
...The married couple across from Anne and me were dumping on each other...
...They filed it under "editorial research...
...But this was just a Jewish bingo game, a meaningless dirty shakedown and not a Masters and Johnson clinic...
...How could they know how much pity mixed with contempt I felt for the patsies I was rubbing shoulders with...
...Not much did...
...The only connection between the game and religion was the clock with the Twelve Tribes instead of numerals, and maybe the Israeli flag on the flagpole, except the flag was so twisted you couldn't see if it was Israel or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...
...Flat...
...It was the ugliest, most sordid thing I've seen in a career of vice...
...I could see this packet was the first hook...
...I would have rather she said, "You dried-up mean old turkey, keep going and don't quit just 'cause you think it ain't worth it no more...
...They wouldn't get into such a noisy business...
...He said it would take about a minute and a half of pulling windows before the odds got that bad...
...The odds were such that you should win $30 for every hundred and fifty you spent...
...There's even more money there and the marks can get bombed and have a good time...
...The first game was regular bingo continuing on to double bingo and then a "cover-all" for more money...
...But they couldn't spit in our faces, so when I pushed for answers, they gave...
...When the temple and the state get so crude that the only sensible course is to out-shoot them, you have to wonder what's going on...
...The only way to find two seats together was to ask somebody to move...
...and they looked us over and decided our money was as green as anybody else's...
...If I hadn't known that they were absolutely bereft of the spirit to express the violence in their souls, I might have been afraid...
...It was a case of God and Caesar working together, the synagogue and the state conspiring deviously...
...I didn't want to miss the directions for the next game...
...The suckers never knew what hit them...
...She'd probably spent three hundred to get there...
...They got nasty when I called it a magic marker...
...These suckers needed something to care about so badly that they'd breathe hard listening to numbers all night and give up groceries to do it...
...They told us we had to buy more gear, colored plastic disks to put on the cardboard cards, daubers to mark the strips of newsprint...
...We took the usual...
...They felt it...
...Another hook, I figured...
...The only hustle on that street was God's own...
...Everyone's body was stiff, tense and straight...
...The only connection between the game and people's lives was exploitation...
...I couldn't believe it, that they could have such contempt for the suckers and the suckers would buy it...
...The grifters need a quiet way to roll the tricks...
...So I took Anne home and told her a bedtime story...
...You can't even win when you win...
...I don't blush much and I don't like to get holier-than-thou and tell people what to do, since I've been a lot of places and done some pretty low things to myself and my fellow humans...
...No, the big Jewish grifters are way ahead of me...
...If you're interested, maybe you can give me a call...
...It was like the packet of costume jewels somebody gave the Indians for Manhattan...
...So I took a woman writer with me and a few days later submitted a $50 voucher reading, "bingo for two...
...The tickets had five windows you had to open looking for sevens...
...The game's over...
...While the bingo game went on, gofers worked the aisles selling lucky-seven tickets, four for a buck...
...As the climaxes approached, breathing got heavier, although they tried to fake like nothing was happening...
...I wished I was in a church bingo game so I could snicker at the decadence of Christianity...
...I fingered the 'Chai' I was wearing around my neck and decided there was only one thing I could say...
...Muggers threaten with a blade or a sock full of nails...
...I wanted to know what it felt like and I was dumb enough to find out...
...I was ashamed for my religion...
...Let's see what happens if you go out and wallow in it...
...You couldn't win...
...I mean, a good piece of low work should be dangerous and intense...
...I know odds pretty well, but sometimes I ask him for special calculations...
...So I didn't think Anne and I deserved the hostile eyeballing we received...
...The big prize was thirty dollars...
...No, the truth was that I could feel the hook...
...I was beginning to despise myself, my fellow man, and my religion...
...It was not that I had a story to write, and I sure as hell didn't reflect on how the money was for Israel and the Synagogue and the Jews...
...Maybe if I went to a flick like "China de Sade" or "The Young Virgins" and took a walk down LaGrange Street I could relax and write something my editor might buy He thinks there are people who want to know what's really happening...
...Anyway, we walked into the game at Temple Beth Zion, Brook-line, Massachusetts, on Monday, February 27, at 7 P.M...
...Eighty percent were women over 40, but there were enough younger women to insure that the scam will continue unto the next generation at least, and a scattering of older and younger males not all of whom had been dragged in by their noserings...
...The lady didn't sound like she felt all that great about winning half a c-note, and I didn't blame her...
...When I went back out in the street it was dark, no moon, no streetlights, so I could see a lot of stars...
...Come off it, Estelle," he says...
...My brother is a mathematician at a fancy university...
...Just a harmless little low stakes game, folks, where's the harm, step right up...
...He said that there was probably never a single player to play that game, get lucky, and stop while he was ahead...
...There were Blacks, Puerto PJcans, Irish, Italians, and Jews...
...It was about their bodies and their lives...
...The innuendo was unavoidable...
...The suckers wouldn't quite buy it...
...But I could see immediately that like junkies about to get their fix they would accept any insult I could hand out...
...Like after you buy a B-girl a $6.00 split of watery champagne you're supposed to spring for a $30 magnum before you even know if there's any action...
...They won't even count the money they spend on the accoutrements, but they'll feel they have to keep playing to win it back...
...But I had to wish that my people would get out of this particular shell-game, this dry-hustle, this unrelieved trashing of suckers' souls...
...Maybe the temple could get a tax-break from the state and go into the liquor business...
...On the back of the tickets it said, "To be sold only at Massachusetts State Lottery Commission licensed premises during legal beano games...
...Don't stop when somebody says bingo," the old lady was saying...
...Purse-snatchers run, frightened and ashamed of their crimes...
...No smiles...
...But the bingo game that I attended in the synagogue basement had no redeeming sense of risk...
...But I suppose if I could come up with a grift like that for myself I'd probably wring it for all it was worth...
...Everybody knew it was no big deal...
...Anne and I did find an amazing operation, fast, efficient, immoral and profitable...
...I can't win anyway...
...Really, there weren't many guards...
...Maybe I was just upset that I couldn't get in on the action...
...They insisted it was a dauber...
...I paid...
...Anne knew it, and I was a little embarrassed, but that's what I was there for...

Vol. 3 • April 1978 • No. 5


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.