Sanction

by Roman McClay

  “Two, well, first let me explain the problem with the first: life is not amenable to the long run, we live finite lives. A casino always wins in the long run, but one gambler if allowed to -by the casino- can place a billion-dollar bet and win in the short run. That is why casinos don’t allow bets like that. I assume you know this? Casinos have strict rules about large bets, and they will not under any circumstances allow a bet so large that if they lose it, in the short run, they go bankrupt.

  “But, a player, he isn’t so smart. He places bets that do bankrupt him if he loses, and he continues to play after he’s won a big bet -a big bet, but not so big the casino forbade it of course- but instead of getting up and leaving the sucker continues to play, forcing probability to catch up to him, and the reversion to the mean; i.e., in the long run he will lose. That long run is what Casinos’ count on. But it is just a game, not real life.

  “Now, the second thing math people count on is… oh wait, let’s try this. I almost forgot. I have 100 bucks here, and I should have a coin, yes,” he said as he dug out -from his pocket- a roll of 100-dollar bills -almost $5,000 worth- and like pulling a tissue from a dispenser removed one bill. He also retrieved a quarter he passed around to everyone to examine; the boy looked, the father declined.

  Lyndon had peeled off one of the hundred dollar bills and placed it in the center, and said, “ok, I bet you 100 to 1, each of you put in a dollar, ok, get a dollar and put it in the middle, and I’ll flip that coin. If it comes up heads as you predicted it had a 50% chance of then you get the 102 bucks in the middle, 51 bucks to each of you since you both would be correct. So that is a 50-1 payoff for a 50/50 chance, which is a smart bet. You agree?” Lyndon asked.

  “Oh yeah,” the boy said with glee as everyone laughed; Lyndon and Travis’s father -the boy’s grandfather- smirked wryly and with almost no malice, at his youngest son and then at his eldest.

  Travis began to gain his humor back and grinned and chuckled a little as his wife, Cami, said something of no consequence in the background; something censorious and wet-raggish, but the caravan moved on.

  “Ok, here we go,” Travis said and put in two bucks one for himself and his young son .

  “No, no, Brock, go get your own, money, let’s play this fair and square, ok?” Lyndon said.

  “Ok,” the boy got up from the table in a hurry and ran to his room. Travis and Cami seemed to argue over whether betting or gambling was apropos ; Travis demurred and said it was all in fun and Lyndon said, “look, if he loses, I will give him his dollar back, ok? I’m trying to teach him a lesson, relax, it’s math, not gambling.”

  “Oh, that’s fine,” Cami said unconvincingly as if she had had no problem all along; but she didn’t like gambling, even if it was math. However, she knew that the boy’s uncle was around one day in 10 years it seemed, so she let it slide. She didn’t know it, but her cerebellum also told her that to fuck with this man was likely to end up in a big mess in her kitchen; her fear of his temper overrode the logic of her bourgeois values vis-à-vis degeneracy and games-of-chance this time.

  “I got it,” Brock said upon his return, and he placed a dollar in the middle as Travis retrieved one of the dollars he laid down. Then Brock added a $5 note and said, you wanna go 500 to 1? To which everyone laughed and Lyndon said, “I like it, you get the probability and pot odds, you get that it makes sense to bet more not less when you are getting 50/50 odds but a 50 to or 500 to 1 pot; but just so you realize at 500 to 5, the odds are still 50/50 and if you win it’s 90 to 1 and if your father, my brother, comes in with his own $5 then it’s back down to 50 to 1. But, at any rate, I will,” he reached for his bills in his front pocket, a roll so fat that when he retrieved it everyone was taken aback -they had not noticed it the first time it seemed- and the boy even laughed at its girth and ridiculousness of carrying that much cash. No respectable person carried that much cash, everyone agreed to that; implicitly, of course, as they did not say a word.

  “Here,” he peeled off four more hundreds and laid them at the table. “Travis you either match that with your own $5 or me and boy can have a side bet, but that’s between you and the boy, because if you don’t kick in your $5, and if it’s heads then he gets 450 and you get just 50, so, make up your mind so I can flip this thing and get it over with and see what the fate’s decide.”

  “I’m good,” Travis demurred, he had long since figured something was amiss, and didn’t want to look any more foolish that he already surmised that he did. His little brother was a dick, and he was prone to lording his cleverness over everyone, and Travis figured this was one of those times.

  Travis was certain he was right on the odds though, he and the boy were right, dammit, the odds reset each time and it was a 50/50 chance it would come up heads . He added, or tails for that matter . He was beginning to think that the real joke -what Lyndon was actually showing- was that Travis was too scared to put in 5 bucks, retrieve his single and put in $5 to win $250 instead of 1 buck to win $50.

  “Did you ever read that book, oh man I forget the name of the author,” Lyndon began with nonchalance , “anyway there are a ton of these memoirs from millionaires, and they all say the same thing, that the number one trait among the rich and super rich is tolerance for risk taking, did you know that?”

  He looked -and kind of nodded- at Brock who was eager for his dad to make a decision and see if they could get lucky and all that money. He hardly heard his uncle’s question but Travis heard it as their mother, fatuously, said that she didn’t know that little fact about millionaires and then went on to insist that it indeed, made sense in her little bird way.

  Lyndon smiled at her as if he loved her, as if he was happy she was adding her thoughts to this impromptu salon of math and wisdom and knowledge of all things in all hemispheres and in all domains .

  Travis was almost certain now that Lyndon was making a joke of his timidity, and the losses -the forsaken gains- the lost gains that incur from his meekness. Travis was wise to this now; fuck him , he thought and got out his wallet and exchanged the buck for the $5 bill as Brock giggled in expectation. His brain was firing with neurotransmitters and all manner of biochems as he loved this kind of thing.

  “But, now it’s $10 to $500, or 50-1 still. Like you said,” Travis said, catching -at the end of the sentence- that his brother had already in fact said that; Travis corrected himself so as to avoid looking foolish, and added, “so, Brock and I split it if we win.”

  “If it’s heads, you each get $250, plus each of your fivers back; if tails, then I get $10, plus my $500 back; correct?” Lyndon said and placed the quarter on his thumb half harbored by his index finger, ready to flip. Everyone said or nodded that they agreed.

  He looked around and flipped the coin and as it hung over the table he rose from the chair and walked away -toward the kitchen- to grab a beer. He heard the coin hit the table and vibrate a bit and then land a second time; it must have bounced straight up , he thought, that was good . He then heard it settle down and as he opened the fridge he asked his dad if he wanted a beer, but the old man said he was fine . Lyndon thought he and the old man might share a bit of a celebration, but this family was way beyond all of that. Whatever Lyndon enjoyed, they hated; and mutatis mutandis, he thought.

  Tolstoy had that famous line, Lyndon was embarrassed to think such cliché crap, but it was true, all families that were happy were happy in the same fucking way; his family was uniquely -weirdly- morose and evil and probably, a computer simulation , he thought, 75/25 odds, with a smirk as he drank from the Dos Equis bottle. He thought that he and his family were likely goddamn robots.

  “Ah man!” Brock said, and his grandmother -Lyndon and Travis’s mother- said with lament, “oh, did it come up tails,” to which everyone corrected her that it was heads in fact that was wanted, in which she immediately, to avoid any further embarrassment, said, “right did it come up heads then, Brock, did it come up wrong?” She had something inside her that knew that there w
ere two sides to this bet, not just the one, and so she then quickly added, “for you guys,” still getting the proper lament quite wrong.

  Everyone lost heart and couldn’t correct her again. Brock just said, succinctly, “it came up tails, and we lost”. And everyone just let that lie there.

  Lyndon stood away from the table so they would have to, be forced to announce that he had won 10 bucks as his 500 dollars lay on the table. Travis barely was audible; that was the voice Lyndon was honed in on. He wanted to hear his brother lament it; because of course Lyndon knew -he had already known- it was -and would always be- tails.

  Brock showed his dad what Travis already knew -that the coin had come up tails- then the boy turned it to make sure there was in fact a heads on one side of the coin; and there was. He slammed the coin down a little too hard, not in anger but mere frustration, but his mother reminded him to be a good loser; and a good player of games.

  Lyndon drank from his beer and smiled; he watched the family all move like ruminants, careful of one another, unsure of where to go, and unsure of what life was, but that it seemed -life did- kinda good, they acted just like the oft-fed turkeys, he thought, right up until the day the farmer, the great farmer in the sky slaughtered them for their meat .

  “Well, that was fun,” mother said with no agreement from anyone including from inside of herself. She was hoping to fall asleep right then and wake up next week when this bad seed child of hers was gone and his odd behavior didn’t need commented upon or swept up or anything like that.

  “I take it I won,” Lyndon said to his father who nodded in assent.

  Brock was flipping the coin now over and over and each time it was coming up tails, over and over; he was beginning to twist his face at these odds; 5 then 6 now 7 times in a row it was coming up tails as he flipped; each iteration of the game the same.

  Lyndon drank his beer in silence and then broke it with this, “ok, Brock how many times have you flipped that coin now?”

  “8, and” as he flipped it again, saying, “9” and he kept going, as his dad told him to stop. Travis was afraid now, it was a nebulous fear, he couldn’t name it or corral it; but he put his hand out to stop the boy’s arm from flipping the coin any more. The boy wriggled free and the coin fell on the floor, coming up tails up, of course, and he picked it up with a look on his face that told everyone it was still fucking tails.

  Lyndon laughed at the fear in Travis, he knew exactly what was at stake. Travis was afraid that Brock would say what was true, that the coin was a fake, loaded, rigged, and upon this accusation, Travis was afraid that Lyndon would fly off the handle and the whole thing could end in rancor at least, and maybe even bloodshed. Lyndon was a hothead, armed, and the last time Travis had seen Lyndon’s pistol it was cocked. And when Travis had said something about it Lyndon had laughed and bragged, Travis recalled, that this was how a gun was supposed to be carried.

  Lyndon watched as the family began mooing and moving and avoiding looking him in the eye. They hated him, hated his ways, were suspicious of him in all cases. He felt true sadness in his heart at that. He had no malice, almost no malice, he was just trying to teach them a lesson on life; a lesson he had to learn in ways much harder than this, he had lost hundreds of thousands, maybe a million to this kind -types similar to this kind- of perfidy; he was just trying to -in a jovial manner- explain something bigger, deeper about life and about what had happened to him.

  He was in no way interested in their goddamn 10 bucks, in fact he had decided to let them keep his $500, even though he won. Because he had a code, and that code was that you don’t lie to or cheat good people ; and even though these weren’t exactly good people, they were close enough to it that he’d err on the side of not ripping them off for $10 and in fact would let them have his money instead, just to prove he was not a thief. He was attempting to prove he was a man, who had been beaten, ripped off, slandered, and betrayed himself.

  “Well, if someone told me that after 99 tosses a coin had come up tails and then asked me to calculate the odds of heads on the 100th throw; well, like I wrote down, I’d say 0%. Because despite them saying,” he was interrupted by Brock.

  “You said the coin was fair, wasn’t loaded or a fake though,” Brock said as he kept flipping the coin; now in the living room and wandering around as his sister looked at him with some wonderment. She thought Lyndon looked like Han Solo from the first ones and had told her mom that.

  “I did; and that was the premise of the question, the game, or in Latin, the ludic,” he let that clue sit there for a bit. He thought, but they were all too stupid -no , he corrected himself, they were all too scared- to get his little joke; they already figured it was a fake and thought they had gleaned the point. But as usual they had barely gotten half the point and he had to explain the rest.

  “See, in the ludic fallacy, the math guys, the guys who know the probabilities and know Bayesian inferences and Mandelbrotian models and Knightian risks and blah blah, what you guys always forget is the human element ,” he leaned on this word, hoping they’d get both his points, the layers of his points, “the human is irrelevant to you; it’s outside of the game. And that is the loci of the fallacy; you think life is a game, something reducible to odds and probability and equations and certainty and risk-management and on and on.

  “But, in the real world, people are irrational, they make mistakes, they are tired or lazy or stupid and yes, they most certainly lie, cheat and steal. And that is why all the models in the world are useless. If a guy tells me the coin is not rigged then reveals that it came up tails 99 tosses in a row I already know that hundredth toss is coming up tails, not because I am oblivious to probability reset, or nonergodic systems or even basic math; I’m certain it’s coming up tails on the 100th toss because I know people. I know them now, anyway.

  “And I know the odds of a coin coming up tails 99 in a row is impossible, it’s a 1 to the 56th power chance; not once in 9 trillion years could it happen. So, I ask you, what is more likely, more probable, that a God be born to a virgin, or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?”

  They remained silent and he downed the rest of the beer, walked around the kitchen island and out toward the front door; they did not stop him as he went outside to his car, started it, drove away and left his $500 on the table next to their mere $10.

  10. Zendik LLC

  While we are all agreed that murder, stealing and ruthlessness of any kind are obviously inadmissible… yet these are all examples of instinctual behavior and the necessity for their suppression seems to us self-evident. Only in regards to sex do we feel the need of a question mark. This points to a doubt; the doubt whether our existing moral concepts and the legal institutions founded on them are really adequate and suited to their purpose. Nowadays we have no sexual morality, only a legalistic attitude toward sexuality

  Man and His Relation to Others [Jung, Carl G]

  For I would have you know brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel

  Galatians 1:11 [King James Bible]

  If you find my writing offensive, you’ll also find me offensive. Come listen to the dreamer, the idealist, the impractical unrealistic one; with ideas unworkable in this modern world. Ideas and ideals certain to lend you to chaos and dissention, turmoil, and conflict – or heaven

  A Quest Among the Bewildered [Zendik, Wulf]

  I. 1999 e.v

  The 12 men had slept in the loft of the barn built in 1899 e.v., it was built with large lumber and it was 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. The hay doors were open; and the cold air of the Blue Ridge preceded the sun. The moon was to their south, the animals were below. They all slept on single mattresses flush to the wooden planks and used old milk crates as shelving for books and razors and apotropaic of various sorts. A nervousness ran on the brain like a memory of some future mistake; the blood contained androgens of young men in tribe; young men in the center of something small but strong.

  The mountain
cats screeched more than they growled. The horses below made some noises as they bedded down. He owned nothing but what was in his little space; and he felt richer than ever. How often, he thought, had he had nothing and felt the whole world was his? This is intentional poverty and it was liberating in ways he would repeat; in ways worth repeating many times. He thought of Seneca abandoning all that he owned: 1,000 writing desks and refusing to speak of each word written, refusing to recall each letter read.

  Today’s breakfast would be in the kitchen which was on the porch outside of their four-room house built in 1879; 20 years before and 20 meters from the barn. It was ramshackle and unplumbed -and along with four outbuildings and the 128 acres it sat on- it was now all that Zendik Farm owned. They had sold the beach house in Fort Pierce and -back then, in February- he had watched Shey put on deodorant for once. She was wearing it because she was interacting with civilians and her black hair was sparse under her arms and he felt he could smell the best part of her odor being snuffed out like a soft candle flame doused just so everyone could go to -or back to- sleep .

  But he stayed awake in the dark of the pre-dawn barn and admired and maybe even loved her a bit.

  Zendik was like America, no place for romantic love, and so back in Florida he had sat in the car, as the driver, and let its engine run while the women from Zendik -Arol and Shey- spoke with the realtor that day.

  Zendik didn’t exactly avoid civilians , he would think, it’s just that they had so much going on that they rarely interacted at all ; and when they did is was usually the women who were the face of the large corpus of the farm. The women were the persona, the interface, of something feral and dark underneath. And they tried to clean up and smell nice, they turned on a dime, because body odor was the kind of thing not merely accepted but preferred on the Farm to the saccharine smell of eau de toilette . It was metaphor that even the olfactory nerves got; exemplifying the rule of Epictetus : not to explain one’s ethos but embody it.