A POET'S NOTEBOOK

A POET'S NOTEBOOK

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Jackpot

on the beauty & terror of one-in-a-million good luck

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The Friend
Mar 28, 2025
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Sarah called me from the Northwest last night to read me a new short story of hers. One that she’s about to publish in a fancy lit magazine. It’s called “Jackpot.” And, aside from how calmly brilliant it is, I found it softly devastating. I’m seriously still annoyed about it. So I woke up early this morning and decided to write some thoughts about it. Why my feathers are so rustled.

For context: during COVID, Sarah and I met inside spiritualist Zoom rooms. After chatting in the void of the meditation circle together long enough, we realized we were both writers and—even better—devout readers. We wouldn’t find out until nearly a year later that we were both shaped by the same living writer in a profound way: a dear friend/mentor of mine was her college professor/mentor. Throughout most of 2021 and 2022 we started to call, chat, nerd out to this or that book, and discuss how as fellow poets we would ever learn how to write good fiction. She was working on her debut novel. Meanwhile, I had thrown myself into weird little meta tales mostly about obsession, lost love and the mystical role of Chance/Fate in all our lives. I was in love with two different boys at the time.

In “Jackpot,” her newest piece, a mere few pages, a single mother spends most of her weekends at the same dumpy casino in the Midwest. Not to drink, sleep around, or squander large sums of credit card debt, mind you. We learn it’s the same casino that her father periodically took her to as a little girl. The father we soon realize without being told died some time ago. And while Sarah’s character has never gotten into too much trouble from her gambling addiction (if you can even call it that, the story makes it sound much more like a ritual), it has become her chief solace, her go-to recreational pastime to self-soothe and zone out. In short, a refuge. From what? Well, I’d say from a world of emptiness and grief. To say nothing about the existential transitory nature of all human connections (I may be projecting somewhat). 

The protagonist, whom I’ll call X, doesn’t do much dating, socializing, or have any grand life plans beyond the small firm she works at 9-to-5 as a fairly well-paid executive legal assistant. Yet every new paycheck brings X back to the casino like clockwork. We do know she dreams of winning big. In a softly casual way. We know that she follows the same routine each visit. Slot machines, mostly. The occasional hand of poker or blackjack to spice things up is played.

It gives nothing away since this simply paraphrases the very opening sentence, but, suffice it to say, one day X wins big. I mean really big. In a random game she doesn’t even usually choose to play. That is, she hits jackpot. Within the first few sentences of her immense, almost supernatural winnings, we learn—abruptly—that X decides to stand up, gather her belongings then proceed to calmly walk out of the casino without collecting any of her prize money. What. The actual. Fuck.

The remainder of the story simply charts the rest of her rather mundane day. CVS. Laundry. A blah TV show before falling into bed to some light doom scrolling. TikTok reels, and so on. There is no detailed discussion of X’s character psychology. There are no great dramatic events that soon unfold. In short, she goes in, she wins big, then quietly exits. X traces the confines of another normal unremarkable day amid the immediate aftermath of her win. No deep regrets are alluded to. No haunting nightmares soon follow. And then that’s it. The story ends without bang or whimper. 

Oh boy.

I knew Sarah’s story was good because I soon became infuriated by it. I wanted to shake X (an imaginary being, mind you). Politely slap her in the face. Barge into the story universe and yell: “Don’t betray yourself like this, you big boob.” Not because I’m into gambling myself or have ever lusted that much for material things. But I felt, with I guess a resigned recognition, here was yet another character abandoning their desire. With no good reason.

This is a kind of melancholy, when portrayed believably, I find to be, if not sickening, low-key heartbreaking. Chekhov excels at it. An all too familiar zone of being in queer life. Self-sabotage disguised as indifference or acceptance.

The premise the story asks is not: Why is winning this or that game so impossible? It’s not a meditation on the lack of fulfillment, absence, bad luck, routine misery, or pitiful hardships without the glimmer of hope or real respite from mechanical everyday boredom. Nope. Nor does the story pretend that our lives are merely interrupted by seemingly strange, disconnected twists of Fate that have little to do with what we really, really want. As if winning at the casino would have been a mere evasion, some nice distraction. 

For whatever reason, and I think I’m right, I believe absolutely that X loves to gamble, if usually for petty stakes. That she not only needs and wants but deserves those big winnings. And one day she gets them. X is not depicted as a self-hating or otherwise destructive person.

So what gives?

The story is about receiving. About appearing. The weird dumb mystery of the all-too-visible. Actuality, in fact. It’s not a story about “What if? or “If only!” It’s not about a character who must wander in the grim haze of daydream or contend mightily against menacing fantasy. Everyone’s life is touched by some kind of magic, now and then. Whether they recognize it or not. I really do believe that.

As I heard the story and had it read back to me a second time, I tried to metabolize the series of events, like a symbolic compass to interpret not only my own life, but, well, circumstances in general. In Gertrude Stein’s phrase “everybody’s autobiography.” You hit the jackpot. You receive, find, get or manifest exactly the thing you seek. Something precious, invaluable, rare, pretty much miraculous, it’s fair to say. Then, inexplicably, you walk away. It’s a more common experience than acknowledged.

In order for the story to be believable, we have to buy into two very different as well as contradictory truths: (1) the character fully does yearn to win big; (2) the character will choose to reject said victory when it comes. Without much fuss. Either truth could be, from the perspective of the reader, hard to swallow. But arguably the exit is what risks, plot-wise, seeming ludicrous. Bizarre if not downright unrealistic. X could be pitied. Called coward or idiot. The story might be reduced to a tale of dissociated chic. Zen wisdom.

I don’t think that’s quite fair, though. Why?

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