Anyone Who Was a Nerdy Teenager...

...just might relate to this excerpt from Ruthless, by Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara. 

CHAPTER 16: THE GAME OF MY LIFE

            

Even as a ruthless vampire unable to remember who, where, and why, I can never forget the game of my life.

              Time was running out as I scanned the opposition’s defenses. Sweat from my eyes dribbled down my face. With a little more than a minute left on the clock, I tried to keep my poise. Before the game started, a loss of this type seemed unthinkable, but there it was, with only seconds separating winner from loser, and the rest of my life in the balance. It was all on me to find an eligible man deep and uncovered, but I still had to deliver victory. No other options were present. I was tactically overmatched, and time pressure forbade any other chance for a win. Sure, many other fifteen-year old boys must have felt this same pressure, except this game really was the one to set the tone for the rest of my life. There would be no second chance, no redemption, no forgetting.

              I made my move. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I dreaded. A red flag rose. I knew if it fell, I’d wonder for the rest of my life what might have been if I only did this game differently. A strange thought came to me. Fighting the daze of fatigue, I reached within my soul to put out better than I ever was.

              Why was I doing this? What was it that made this game so important?

              Remember now, I was fifteen, so there really was only one possible answer. Why does any teenage boy give his all? Teenage girls! I was no different, except I was willing to work for it. I knew that an average effort towards football wouldn’t get me noticed. Two hundred other boys tried out for freshman football, and nearly all of them were faster, stronger, and heavier than I was. I knew my efforts had to be superhuman. Before the first tryouts, I had already put myself into training. Every morning before my paper route, I’d wake up an hour early and do pushups till I could do them no more. Then I’d do sit ups, pull ups, and jumping jacks, same way. After the route, I’d put away my bike and run until – you guessed it – until I could run no more.

              Tryouts could have gotten me discouraged. By the way, since coaches knew the better candidates by name, I understood that many of the boys felt they’d already decided who’d made the team. In this private, Catholic school, many of the chosen had been given a full ride, saving $500 per year on tuition. I had to work part-time to earn even that, as my single parent home couldn’t afford the expense, nor were my grades sufficient enough to earn such a ride. I did have a “poor boy” scholarship, which I suspected Fr. John Chokey had arranged, but that only cut the tuition in half. I had to earn the rest or attend an inferior public school.

              “Winners never quit, and quitters never win!”

              I heard that and other inspirational messages at least ten times during each tryout/practice. Every day for a month, fewer and fewer boys came out. Then school started and even fewer boys came out, with even fewer placed on the team roster. But football games aren’t won by sitting on the bench. I fought hard, worked with uncomplaining relentlessness, and stayed committed to getting a spot as a starter. By midseason, it was clear that, despite my devotion, I was too slow, weak, and small to actually play for the school. My freshman season ended without me on the playing field for a single snap.

              I was also having problems with grades. That was nothing new to me. I struggled all through my schooling career, although I’d managed to qualify for a top high school and even a top college. Nobody really understood dyslexia then, and I wasn’t diagnosed till my last year in college. I tried hard,  or I didn’t try at all, depending on perspective of teacher or student. Still, my grades left me eligible to try out for varsity my sophomore year. So I threw myself into spring training with a vigor that was viewed as comical, even by some of the less sensitive coaches. ‘Let them laugh,’ I told myself. I’ll find a leadership role on this team and pull us all to victory.

              I had plenty to be discouraged about my sophomore year. The team did well, but once again I never got on the playing field; in fact, I never dressed for the game. While they had sixty complete football gear for practices, they only had fifty-five game jerseys, and I was one of the five who was on the team every day but game day. Still I hung tough and didn’t quit. Of that five, I was the only one that tried out again as a junior.

              My junior year was a breakout year for the name “Calkins.” Though the season ended with a playoff loss, the best offense center in the league was Calkins, but not Ed Calkins. My cousin Larry held that honor for that season and the next. He would go on to win a full ride to an ivy league university. I don’t mean to dismiss my contributions to the team for I had found a role for myself. You might have heard of the joke: I play guard, tackle and end…coach told me to sit at the end of the bench, guard the water bucket, and tackle anyone that comes near it.” Heard that one? No, I wasn’t even good enough for the bench. As in the previous the year, I was only on the team during practice where I found my true calling… blocking dummy.

              Though I was only one hundred and forty pounds in a downpour, I was the right height to give real football players a surface to practice hitting. Better than that, I never quit, which was quite annoying to blockers, thus fueling a better effort. And, too, my obligatory grunts were so high pitched, they irritated the blockers’ ears and, thus, inspired greater force.

              So football never got me noticed, expect for ridicule, even though I gave football everything I ever had. My athletic career, like my academic career, was something I survived and I’m proud of that much, but it never gave me a sense of manliness or a well-paying job. It did, however, teach me lessons of value. On the football field, I learned that everyone, no matter how small or physically flawed, is tougher than me so if I didn’t want to look foolish, I’d better act respectful lest I get my butt kicked by a midget - or even a girl. School taught me that no matter how much I learned, how much I studied, or how much I knew, anyone who listened to me or read anything that I wrote would assume they were smarter than me. So I learned to get the thing I wanted out of life by acting stupid.

              I also did learn to take pleasure in doing hard work. Because of that alone, I am luckier than most.

            During my high school years, other important things were going on in the world. In Vietnam, the United States was losing its first war, which was unthinkable a decade earlier. Hippies still refused to cut their hair, and Catholics started living in sin, rather than getting married. With all this corruption, coupled with a president resigning and the sexual revolution breaking out of bedrooms everywhere, someone, mainly Catholic teenage boys, had to fight back. We heard one message everywhere we went. It was our moral responsibility to never believe the crazy notion the times were changing and that all was right with God and the USA.

              We were told long hair on boys was unnatural, disgusting, immoral, and made young men cowards. They felt only short haired boys too young to get drafted would lie about their age for God and country.  Corruption? Forget about Watergate. The real corruption was easy to spot in any man’s hairline that didn’t reveal ears. Hair that covered ears, that’s where the devil speaks…and the woman with him? She’s probably on the pill instead of making babies like she’s supposed to. Together, they were the reason people had to pay taxes, not to kill Charlie, but to support marijuana farms in crazy sex-filled commie communes where nobody married anybody.

              Then there was the sexual revolution. Now, I’ve heard of the double standard that might have existed around the country, if not the world, but in our all-male Catholic high school, we were lectured daily on the perils of damnation for having sex before marriage. Not that we were encouraged to get married. Marriage was a bad thing, but it was survivable if you prayed a lot and worked hard. After all, not every man had the stuff to become a priest. But if you’re going to be weak and go for marriage, avoid the eternal fires and get some priest to marry you. At least that way, your suffering will come to an end when you die.

              One of the Dominican brothers that taught was more vulgar than most in his lectures.

              “Remember that every date with your girlfriend is a fight for your soul,” he told us. “You know in your head that anything you could do with her isn’t worth burning forever in hell, but your little head (yes, he’d actually point to his crotch) doesn’t. It’s a battle between the big head and the little head. Yes, if you go down that way, you can be forgiven, but you’re much more likely to blow off salvation altogether. How many of those hippies do you think go to confession?  Remember that. Unfortunately, some of you will only remember that in hell.”

              Of course, I was a nerd, so damnation by the traditional “date with girlfriend” route was kind of slim. My plan to win damnation was as simple as it was ruthless, with a touch of elegance that bordered on genius, even though the objects of my affection swore it would never work. My method for carnal knowledge? Being the last man on earth. No, I wasn’t going to play mad scientist and kill every other man on the planet; that idea lacked elegance. I was going to wait for some less nerdier nerds to have the same thought and start killing the other guys while I hid, waiting for the numbers to go down. Then I’d spring out and kill the last surviving killer. The plan might seem extreme to you but having every woman or girl on earth seemed like fair compensation to me. I also envisioned less extreme versions of the plan; I could be the last man in the state, zip code, or village. That would work, although it would create an American postal bride wave. Or I could be the last single man in the world, country, state, zip code, or village. Maybe I’d have to settle for being the last man that some bad girl never had. I might have to settle for that. But in either case, it involved a lot of waiting things out.

              Then there was the biggest conflict of all. The commies. Yes, the cold war was in full swing, and although my age group was just a little too young for the draft, we still had to fight the bigger picture. With a remorseful apology to Vietnam vets, I have to admit that my age group was told that “Nam” was a little war compared to what we’d see if we didn’t stem the flow of communism. That’s how truly evil communism was. Sin could take us to hell when we died, but commies would make sure we didn’t have to wait.

              On that front, we didn’t have lot of good news, but we did have Bobby Fischer. Except for a few nerds, everyone knew that chess was a commie game that no real American would bother to learn. Some even felt the game itself was a communist plot. Nevertheless, the year 1972 saw the greatest chess players in the world square off with Fischer representing the Free World and Spassky representing the Godless communists. This time Godly won, crushing the way for this ill-charmed contentious man to be the media sweetheart of the free world.

              Quite suddenly, everyone in America started playing chess. In bars and hangouts where the incoherent used to argue politics, religion, and philosophy, they now argued chess theories and, in some cases, even played the game.

              My remarkable opportunity came with an unlikely invitation to a teenage party. I should note that this might not be as unlikely as it seemed, as the party was sponsored by an adult group, which marked it as a party for the unattractive or socially inept. Parties that cool kids went to were mostly “goodbye” parties for parents leaving for somewhere, usually vacations, trusting their teenage children would behave sanely and not do anything rash, like throw a party. Parents of that era were experts at misplaced trust.

              Misplaced trust could have been the buzz phase to describe the 70s, as pedophiles seemed to lurk around every trusted institution where children or underaged teens were served. The abuse of Churches is well-known today, but back then a child could find molestation by pediatricians, nurses, child psychiatrists or psychologist, carnival workers, juvenile case workers, crossing guards, daycare workers, teen club moderators, and parents. Anywhere children were, so were pedophiles, and no one ever seemed to catch on.

              We didn’t know it then; it wasn’t a party talking point even for the socially awkward, but everyone in this teen club was molested by someone from the above occupations at some earlier time. Though a different definition was assigned to this club, Trudy, a girl my age whom I met at Wraith Park, suggested that I, coming from a single parent home, qualified as a member and could attend the party as one of her guests.

            Luck favored me. Among broken teens, I was less likely to stand out. By now, it was the September of 1973 and I arrived late to the party as I had football practice, a fact I hoped to use to impress some gullible girl. I never got the chance to mention that. In fact, I never got a chance to introduce myself as the party was dominated by a chess board, where Trudy was proving her intellectual superiority over her new twenty-something boyfriend by beating him.

            Knowledge of chess was mostly required of nerds back then in that there was no Klingon language to learn yet, and “Dungeons and Dragons” had yet to spawn. True, there was Star Trek and the “Trekkies” that worshiped it, but Star Wars had yet to debut; so true nerds had only chess, philosophy, or homework to replace our lack of companionship.

            “Do you know how to play?” Trudy asked, seeing me sitting there, looking out of place. I could play winner, if I wanted, but there were three others before me. I waited. It wasn’t like me to keep my mouth shut, but I already realized that anything that came out of my mouth would make me less attractive to the girls, who were in equal number with the boys. So I endured the running uninformed commentaries of the next three games, hoping for my chance.

            Yes, I played chess. Before high school, I was the best player I knew. My dad taught me the game because he was bored with the other “family” games he felt required to play with my siblings and me as proof that he did more than drink all the time. Monopoly was too long, checkers too boring, and we kids didn’t have enough money for poker. In a couple years, I excelled in the game and could beat my dad, so he quit playing, claiming it was the game that drove him to drink. With no one to play against, I played myself, turning the board after every move.

            It was after football practice finished late one evening, and I discovered I needed a book from my school locker, that I heard chess pieces moving in one of the classrooms. Investigating, I discovered that my high school had a chess team I could try out for. Of course, this was out of the question, as all the matches coincided with freshman football, but there was also a club, and anyone could play. I played three games on the spot with team candidates, losing each one. Still, I was evenly matched enough to get instruction on how to improve and how to read chess notation so I could review that games I played.

            By the time of this party, I had gotten better, sometimes beating the players that had made the team. Because I could only play after football practice, I was playing only the players that practiced the hardest, or at least the longest.

            When it came to my turn at the party, Trudy still held the board, having beaten the other three players. I knew by then that I could easily take her apart and did just that with a “Scholar’s mate” in three moves. After that, I found myself still playing Trudy, but really the whole party, as kibitzing replaced any conversation.

            By the fourth game, I was really feeling good. While the games could have bored me to tears, I was the focus of a party and not through ridicule!

            I was being set up for a knockdown.

            “He’s really good,” Trudy remarked as her loyal followers marveled. “But I don’t think he could beat Malcolm.” Then looking at me she asked. “How many players in your school can say they never lost a game…ever?

            I knew I wasn’t a very good liar, so I admitted that I didn’t know anyone who never lost. Unable to keep silent, I admitted that I lost about one third of my games against chess team members and drew still another third. Surely, this Malcolm didn’t win every game he played; draws were the most common results in high level play. But no, Trudy claimed he won every game he ever played.

            Not everyone agreed with Trudy. One of the girls pointed out that I had beaten her quicker than Malcolm had. Apparently, he liked to play with his food, removing pieces one by one like pulling the wings and legs off a fly. I always went for the kill, checkmating where I could with all the pieces on the board.

“Maybe I could play him,” I suggested. “That way we could know.”

            That way, too, I’d get invited to another party with girls in it.

            But I was not invited to the next party. I found out because my mother had joined the adult club that had spawned the teen club. She was having trouble meeting single men who properly justified her loathing for the gender. This club was perfect for her. My exclusion was explained by the host’s parents not knowing me and the fact that it fell on one of the teen’s birthday.

            The next party was different. Trudy called me herself, informing me that Malcolm was coming and bringing his chess clock. I’d never played with a chess clock, but I had a week to prepare. The high school chess team did use chess clocks, and after explaining the importance of the game to be played, the boys were willing to coach me.

            Now Trudy was not a beautiful girl, but she had a directness that fed into her charismatic sex appeal. At a time when teenage girls were divided into the ones that did and the ones that did not, having a girlfriend was no guarantee of more than a peck on the cheek lest boys not respect her. There were good girls and easy girls, with none wanting to be the latter. Trudy broke the mold. No teenage boy could call her easy, because to teenage boys, she was completely unavailable. Neither was she a good girl; she was the prototype of the selectively promiscuous attitude that would come to her peers a decade later. I was expecting to score not with her but with the boy-crazy girls that orbited around her because they were unable to navigate the slut/princess mentality of the day. I didn’t have to explain all of that to the chess club. They understood perfectly when I told them there were girls at the party.

            The week passed quickly, and I went to the address ready to play chess, but there was a change of plans. The party was in the basement. That alone wasn’t enough to change anything, but the teen club moderator was upstairs drinking with the host’s mom.

            “Not now.” Trudy said to Malcolm, pointing to his chess clock. “We may never get a chance like this, so this is a make out party.”

            Everyone liked the sound of that, but no one except Trudy seemed to know what a make out party was. Simple! Pair up, shut off lights, and make out. Trudy’s boyfriend wasn’t present, so she pointed at a guy and then at a couch. Something like, “You! There.” Each of the remaining girls were to do the same thing. Giggling or blushing, each girl complied. But of course, there were three more guys than girls, so Malcolm, I, and someone else went unselected and bore the duty of lookout.

            What could we do? It was too dark to play chess and we didn’t want to sound rude. Someday there would be both a make out party and enough girls to go around. What else could we talk about? Only three things interested me; girls, football, and chess. I didn’t know much about girls, and Malcolm didn’t care about football. For the first three minutes, we waited for the third guy to start us off. It took us that long to realize he had left.

            So we discussed the Fischer-Spassky match down to some of the chess notated moves, which might have convinced Malcolm that I would be worth beating. He felt that Spassky was the better player, but Fischer had gotten in his head. I felt that Fischer had gotten in his own head but was the better player.

            While listening to the soundtrack of teenagers making out, chess wasn’t going to carry the party. Malcolm admitted he was hurt, but not surprised that he was not chosen, while I admitted to being only frustrated. Which girl did we want? Both would have been happy with any, but Trudy was our first choice, as it was sure with her that there would be some running of bases…even if she did the running. The fact was, neither of us had ever kissed a girl, but Malcolm was confident that future make-out parties might have enough, or more, girls than boys. He figured if he just stuck around longer and was better known, he would be better liked and not last all the time. We seemed to share a mild version that of “last man alive” plan.

            He wasn’t there the day that the conditions for such a party included one extra girl, so Trudy offered to share her choice with the unpaired girl. The lucky guy didn’t say much, partly because as Trudy’s boyfriend he was neither a teen nor a virgin, but it’s rumored all bases were skipped, and the party of three went oral.

            In my time as a teen, to get close to that far with a girl, you had to have a car. None of the teens in the club had a car, but we had Trudy.

            The party ended quickly with a smashing bottle and some yelling from upstairs. The parents, who were supposed to be chaperoning the party were also having an affair, but now they were fighting. Kids took their cue and ditched the place through the basement door, even the daughter of the mother hosting the party.

            Trudy apologized to both of us once we were outside. If there were only one of us, she’d have let us share her, but four boys and one girl was too hard to do, and boys tended to get all inhibited with having to share anyway.

              The next three parties were not nearly as enticing, but by then my mother had joined the club, so I became a member of the teen club and not just a guest. Her joining was predictable even though I had the good sense not to tell her about the club. She, while looking for a husband, loathed men in general. She cited them as morally weak and repeatedly found those men who could support her theory. Most of the male parents kept very loose or no contacts with their own kids and thus were free to screw up somebody else’s.

              Still, teen parties were scheduled monthly, and each one seemed an opportunity to make out or play chess against the undefeated Malcolm. But fall had turned to winter, and winter to spring; thus like the melting snow, interest in chess waned. No longer was chess a center of activity. That gave way to listening to four guys practice their ‘air’ instruments to the radio. We were to believe they were a band, though none of the had musical instruments, let alone ability to play them.

              The game wasn’t going to happen at any party, but it was definitely going to happen. Though chess lost its relevance, the debate on who was smarter continued. While Trudy and her followers stuck by Malcolm, some of the boys, who must have viewed me as less of a rival for the girls in the club, sided with me. The way the guys were acting, it almost confirmed what I suspected. Even though this group was a collection of the socially undesired, there was a pecking order which allowed for only one smart kid. As far as academic achievement, the collection already had an ‘A’ student, Debbie, so the ‘brain’ slot was taken. Two chess geniuses would have to narrow to one.

            On the fourth party, Trudy had enough. The talk had to stop and the knowable had to be made known. The Malcolm and Eddie match would be held at her house on a Sunday afternoon, as it wouldn’t affect my football practice or Malcolm’s marching band. The date and time were set. Wagers were made and anyone who wished to watch the game was invited.

            At some point that day, Malcolm and I made a wager…one we’d never admit to anyone. The stakes were already as high as they could get, but with this wager…Malcolm must have been confident of victory. I had little to lose except this chance.

            I got there on time, but I could have believed I was early. Outside of Malcolm sitting in front of a set up board and his chess clock aside, no one was there but Trudy and her curious mother, who disbelieved that her daughter was hosting a game of chess that she was going to watch.

            I felt the blood rushing through my veins, but I tried to act confident with the obvious question and its heavy pull. Which seat was mine…that is: would I play the black pieces or the white? White had an advantage.

            Malcolm was fair. Solemnly, he grabbed a white pawn in one hand and a black pawn in the other, then placed the hands behind his back where he could mix them, then held both closed fists out.

            “Pick one.”

            I picked black, not a true disaster. If I were able to pull out a draw, Trudy might suspect me as the better player or at least declare another game with me as white. Malcolm set the clocks. A chess clock is a simple thing: two faces, one for each player, with an hour and minute hand and a button above each face. When a player made his move, he would press the button above his own, stopping his clock and starting the other. The most intimidating feature was the two red flaps, or flags, situated to the minute hand, which would lift the flap up at one minute to midnight. If that flag dropped before a win or draw was achieved, that player simply lost.

            I was sweating a little…I always sweated as I had over-developed underarms. But so was Malcolm. Trudy’s mother noticed the seriousness we players were radiating. She had to ask.

            “You’re not playing for money, are you?”

            Both of our hearts must have skipped a beat. If she knew what we were actually playing for…

            Malcolm recovered with a joke.

            “No, we’re playing for your daughter’s hand.’

            Trudy’s mother laughed and then monologued about how she would be proud to have either one of us as Trudy’s husband or boyfriend. Her continuing praise of our collective upstanding virtues was “parent speak” that we were too nerdy to score any sexual advances with her daughter. The game began while she was still talking. Malcolm started his clock, made his move, started mine, and scribbled its notation on the paper beside him as we were both recording this game. Trudy wanted to crawl under the table.

            Now, if you’re not a chess nut, there’s probably nothing more boring than watching to guys go into deep thought over a chess game. We each had forty minutes on our clock, the high school chess matches’ norm, so although we’d have to conserve our mulling over potential moves, we had plenty of time to bore any bystanders. Worse than that, we played a textbook opening called the “giuoco piano,” which means “peaceful game” in Italian, but boring, boring, boring to casual chess observers.

            Trudy’s mom left when she realized no one was listening to her. Trudy tried to stay interested, but she expected to keep appraised of who was winning by the value of the pieces captured. She couldn’t take it either and disappeared into her room.

            Almost as soon as she left, pieces started flying of the board.

            I know that it’s a bad idea to write about the moves in the game, but I’ve been studying this one game all my life. I wouldn’t be the nerd I am if I didn’t want to give you each chess notated move, complete with analysis and commentary. While I can skip that, I simply must get off my chest what happened on the board in the biggest game of my life.

            As if reading for a textbook, the predictable pieces left the board without any real advantage to either. Two center pawns apiece, black squared bishops, knight for knight, exchange evenly giving me hope that if I could keep exchange, it would end in a draw. Later, an exchange of my knight for his bishop but doubled my Queen’s bishop’s pawn gave him a slight strategic advantage and me a slight tactical one. With our centers squares vacated, we both castled king side.

            Then came the move. It was the only conversation in the game. While this game had no master strokes or obvious blunders, it did have a defining move, and this was it. I would never make the same move in the hundreds of recorded games that I would play before leaving high school. Still, on this day I would chew up nearly ten minutes of my clock trying to talk myself out of it. The move I was contemplating was both elegant and tragic with a sense of romanticized melancholy. Then, with a dramatic flair,  my red bishop took his unprotected queen’s rook’s pawn.

            Shocked, hurt, and maybe outraged at my boldness, he looked up at me but responded first, completely reasonably, with pawn to queen’s knight three effectively sealing off my bishop from play.

            “Did you forget?” he asked me gently.

            I shook my head. I hadn’t forgotten. No. I made my move as deliberately as the statement I was making by it, a sad statement, though bold.

            You see, the move I made under, as far as we could tell, almost identical positions, was the same move that Fischer made in that first game vs Spassky. Everyone concluded, including Malcolm and I, that move was the blunder that cost America that first game against the Russian world campion. What was I saying here? Was I trying to get into Malcolm’s head? Was I trying to undermine his confidence? Or was I in my own head and just being sad?

            There was some logic to my move. Malcolm was about to mount an attack on my king side, using all his major pieces and threating checkmate. My bishop, though out of play, would cost him two precious moves to claim my bishop for two pawns, diverting at least a rook away from his attack and give me a chance to improve my defense.

            But Malcolm would have none of it. He ignored a bishop that would never see play. With brute force, he doubled his queen and rook, while advancing his knight, keeping me in constant peril of making a fatal mistake. I was able to trade queens, then rooks, but that knight kept checking me, trying to fork my pawns. I’m not sure if he saw this right away, or later when I did, but he had to keep checking me, lest I advance my doubled pawn, forcing an exchange that would free my bishop.

            Trying to dance with his knight, I committed my last rook to my king’s defense which forced a hard decision for my opponent. He could trade our last rooks and take a two-pawn advantage, but I’d get my bishop back if he left me two free moves. The exchange happened.

            Realizing that I was unable to defend my king, I raced my king to the toward the center of the board. With my red bishop still on the board, the game was now a chase, him up in pieces, but one move short of queening a pawn first. If there was any way for Malcolm to reverse the game or get a draw at this point, he never found it, nor did I upon many replaying and reliving this victory.  My 25th move would be my last.

            Malcolm toppled his king.

            For what he lost that day, Malcolm was a true gentleman. He didn’t swipe the pieces of the board, cry foul in some way, or try to make excuses as I might have done in my immaturity. I, for my part, managed to mask my elation. I offered my hand, telling him that it was a good game and that he’d played it well. He shook my hand, though he must have been dying inside. Still, he had to leave right away. He had just remembered he was supposed to do something.

            Trudy must have heard the rustling of coats. Who was leaving without even saying goodbye?

            Running down the stairs, she caught him at the door with coat on and chess clock under his arm.

            Confused she asked the obvious question. “Who won?”

            “He did,” Malcolm admitted, waiting for a comment.

            I’ve found in life that just because somebody lost, it doesn’t mean his rival won. That would have been the case only if Trudy had looked at him sideways. Such a look would mean, “I thought you were good. How could you have never lost a game if the first guy I put on you beat you?” But Trudy didn’t do that. Instead she gave me that sideways glance. With nothing to explain, Malcolm left. I don’t doubt it was to cry in his pillow as I would had done.

            “Why didn’t you tell me you’re that smart?’ she challenged me the moment Malcolm was not among us.

            I saw the gambit. I could have explained that my high school had an extremely proficient chess team and that my being able to handle them on equal terms qualified me as a future grandmaster. Maybe she’d never know otherwise. Maybe I could believe the same and convince myself that I was the next Bobby Fischer. But I would have to defend that lie.

            The truth is often a buzzkill, but it’s the most powerful piece of anyone’s mind, if you  develop it. I told her what I had just finished telling Malcolm with my bishop takes queen’s rook’s pawn. I wasn’t that smart, and neither was Malcolm. We were just two guys with nothing more enjoyable to do then study chess after our homework was done. Neither one of us would ever be grandmaster no matter how hard we played, studied, and practiced. We were good, maybe better than a hundred random teens who knew the game. Maybe, if we kept playing and tried really hard, we’d be better than a random thousand, but to ever get national notice, we’d need to be better than millions. There were too many guys like us that couldn’t get girlfriends. One in a hundred thousand was bound to have a photographic memory and never have to study a losing position a second time.

            She resisted at first, pointing out the things the Malcolm could do in chess, like playing and winning without seeing the board or playing several games at once and winning them all. I could do those things as well. A lot of boys could if they played on a team.

            The board was still as it was when the white king fell. I offered to replay the game for her, complete with my analyses. She declined, disappointing me, but not surprising. She told me to leave; that she wanted to be alone. All I could think was that I somehow blew it with a girl again, and I gathered my coat. The exit out was not three yards from the table where the game was played. Trudy sat in Malcolm’s seat and touched the downed white king.

            She started getting teary eyed.

            I was wondering how much she bet on the game, but of course, I was on the wrong track. Looking back at me, she explained with anger in her voice.

            “We’re a bunch of oddballs in this group, all for different reasons. We’re a group of outcasts that no other group with take, but I always hoped for some kind of justice…like maybe someone would prove to be so good at something that everyone else that ignored or mocked us would be forced to turn around and take notice.”

            Yeah! That was it! Every nerd that ever lived must have felt that way. Wait till that ray gun gets invented that kills all the cool guys.

            “There’s always football.”

            “You’re too small, too slow, and too weak. Guys that lift nothing more than beer cans are stronger than you,” she responded coldly. “You’d have a better chance getting noticed for chess.”

            “Did I get noticed by you?”

            It was the question I had as I walked out the door. I don’t remember if I actually asked her, but she did answer the next day when she called me for the first time just to talk. Mostly, she apologized for taking her disappointment out on me. Yes, she did lose a bet, and someone was going to get head this month.

            I’m quite sure that I haven’t explained it yet, why winning that game was so important and how it changed the course of my teenage years. Maybe, I’m making too much of it, or the grandeur of defeating Malcolm grows in my mind with its retelling. I really don’t think so.

            Let me explain it this way, though I think it’s something more. Maybe winning that game and having this small group know about it gave me just a little more confidence and Malcolm the reverse. Maybe all the stupid or inappropriate things I said were now taken with that “He beat Malcolm in chess” grain of salt. I started to feel like I belonged to this group. While Malcolm still came to teen club functions, he faded somewhat.

            Trudy was out of my league and would stay so well into my 20s, but we did become friends. Trudy wasn’t just the first girl that was nice to me; she was the first friend that was nice to me.  I won the right to hang around and that worked the way I hoped it would, getting chance after chance with the girls that clung to her.

            There were other make out parties…five in all before the teen club’s demise. At that point there were eight core members, five guys and three girls. I sat out again for three of those parties but the last two…well, that’s when I kissed my first girl.

            The teen club was doomed, however, and would only last ten more months. At the start of my sophomore year, a mystery was solved about Tammy. She was quite attractive if she didn’t pick her nose, but she never spoke. Strangely, she was always the first to be picked up and the last to be dropped off during teen club functions. It turns out the teen club moderator, the same guy having an affair with Debbie’s mother, was doing her. The resulting scandal was enough to call the adult members into action. Being the rational parents of the 70s, they defined the problem and got rid of the teen club. How else were the forty-somethings going to compete for the men in the group if the fourteen-year old sluts were there to take all the men away?

            The result was that the fewer teens met more often, and I made the cut. By that time, I wasn’t just Trudy’s friend, I was her best friend. Although that wasn’t getting me in Trudy’s pants, it was giving me contact with other girls who were less desirable but far better than nothing. Dates were few, and none led to anything, but it did give me just a little more confidence. By the time I hit twenty-one, I lived with a girl that Trudy hand-picked for me. I lost my virginity and became an expectant father on the same night, and it seemed to me that my life was going exactly as my detractors expected it would.

            It turns out, we were wrong.

            I stayed with the mother until she found another less nerdy guy, but I kept support and contact with my son. The relationship lasted just long enough for me to learn about being a boyfriend and father, which almost had me scrapping the “last man on earth”  plan. Winning that game was the only thing the big head ever did for the little head. Or maybe it’s the reveres.

            Then I met my lover for life. At first, it seemed to me that, although I was physically attracted to her, she was on track to “friend zone” me, which is a great phase to describe so many relationships I had but the term didn’t exist back then. Maybe again, it was that little extra confidence that let me slightly push for something more…slightly being the operative word that might be replaceable by nerdy.

            I realize that if I end this tale here, I would leave out three important elements unexplained; what was with the beginning about the red flag dropping, why did I refer to chess notation but didn’t use it, and what was the bet that me and Malcolm had.

            As to the first, look, I’m writing about chess. It would have been hard for me to draw you in without as much drama as possible. It’s not that the game didn’t happen, just that it wasn’t as important. That game would happen two years later, when I was a much better player. As a junior, I would be co-captain of the chess team that played the last round in the state tournament. All other game were finished back then, and the opposition had just locked in first place. Our team would finish second if I won, third if I drew, and fourth if I lost.

            I lost.

            With not enough time on the clock, I made too many mistakes on the board and toppled my king before the red flag fell. I was too inexperienced compared to my opponent and had to find over the board answers to positions he had previously encountered.

            I still had a lot to be proud of. Not playing throughout the chess season because it conflicted with football made my making the tournament very unlikely. Further still, the chess team was under .500 in the regular matches, so qualifying against the teams that had beaten the team that didn’t include me made me feel impressive. Of five games in the semi-finals, I won three, lost one, and drew one. In the eight game finals, I won four, lost two, and drew two. Impressive as it was, it didn’t seem as important as the one game match with Malcolm.

            Once back home, I learned just how unimportant the downstate tournament was. Though the fourth-place finish did make the opening announcements, no one from outside the chess club ever congratulated us. More the that, when I was reunited with my father, who I hadn’t seen for six years, I excitedly told him about the downstate showdown. He thought for a moment then answered, “I guess that’s O.K., as long as it doesn’t take any of your attention away from football.”

            It was then I realized that girls were not the reason for either game, I was trying to impress my father. My senior year would be the worst year of my life, which my former coach kept pointing out. He claimed that I’d become a quitter. I didn’t go to the same school or play football or chess. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t take my own life, but I had Trudy. I didn’t need chess anymore; she and I had discovered poetry. Both from reading and writing, we learned a lot about triumph, despair, loss, love, and how not to seduce women.

            From that bad year comes a simple fact that makes me think I’m the luckiest man in the world. I don’t have to kill every other male, because since then, every year of my life has been a little better than the last, without exception.

            So, who’s the loser now, coach?

            Which brings us to the chess notation thing. If I know chess notation, why did I write “Bishop takes queen’s rook’s pawn” instead of “bishop to H2”  or the like. If you didn’t play chess back in the 70’s, you might not know that chess notation used to be like that. Since then (not sure when), the Chess Federation simplified it. Before, each move was described by the file of the major piece that was there in setting up the board, and the rank from the perspective of the mover. I found that very easy. Now, the files are described by the alphabetic order, left to right by white’s perspective, and the ranks are also by white’s perspective, no matter who moves.

            I’m incapable of learning the new way. I could master the ranks, but I never learn the alphabet. While I know all the letters, I could never place them in order. I know what you’re going to say. Learn the song. It doesn’t help. I know the melody, but like any songs I sing, I keep mixing up the lyrics. If there’s only the first three as in “abc,” I can do that. I also know “xyz,” but anything in the middle is a problem for me. All my life, I’ve lived in fear of going to a job interview and being asked to recite the alphabet.

            Now comes the last question, one I thought I might be too ashamed to answer as it plays into that, “last man on earth” mentality. Before the game, I went to Malcolm’s house to compose a letter with him to Trudy. In that letter, we explained that Trudy’s life would never be complete until she married either Malcolm or Eddie. Rather the duel to the death, we both agreed that the groom should be the winner of the first match between the both of us. We typed the letter, and both signed it, then we typed another copy and signed again. The plan was to wait until Trudy had slept with every guy she knew except the both of us. Malcolm told Trudy’s mother the truth. We were playing for her daughter’s hand - only Trudy didn’t know.

            Bishop takes queen’s rook’s pawn is a waiting move both bold and humble. I’d never get carnal knowledge of every woman on the planet that way, but I did find something that merely being the last man alive wouldn’t get me: love. While other nerds won their brides by wearing them down, that bishop taught me how to wait them out. Just stay there on the board until someone notices that you haven’t gone away and believes that, if you’re with her, you never will. My lifetime lover would become my wife, mother to my son, and, in time, grandmother to my granddaughters. Each step of that was a greater joy than the last one. I still get depressed, but it’s always about the past when I was younger than nineteen. Yes, I quit playing football and chess, but sometimes I can’t quit being that nerdy, lonely kid that wanted every other man on the planet dead. Just as true, I can’t seem to quit being husband, dad, and grandpa. If you ever meet me, you might call me happy-go-lucky, as many people have. You might catch me smiling in a quiet moment for no apparent reason and wonder about my mental health. You might worry what I’ve been up to or why I keep so happy where other men doing better see themselves as failures.

            Why? Bishop takes queen’s rook’s pawn.

            Try not to be afraid. I threw away my plans for being the last man alive before I threw away the letter making Trudy my wife, lest someone find it and either rat me out to the authorities or Trudy or use those plans themselves.

            So if you’re wondering how I expect to survive as a psychotic vampire, remember bishop takes quean’s rook’s pawn from the other side of the board. Will the would-be prime evil know enough to let his bishop sit? Will he/she/it have the patience to play the peaceful game and not reveal the true prime of its evil intent?

              Whether in undead or living life, I count my luck in every situation. Luck isn’t a passive thing. It’s the recognition, post-mortem, of how well you’ve lived by the luck you’ve been granted. The bishop will move, and I’ll be ready, if only by strange unlikely coincidence.

Illustration by Nancy Calkins for "Ruthless"