29. A Mean Story

“Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems.” —Dorothy Allison

The student of chess will benefit in all areas of life, for chess represents the quintessence of competition. The pieces take on both offensive and defensive roles, yet these two roles merge into one another. The strongest offensive pieces are also the ones that must act most defensively, because their power makes them vulnerable. The queen is so powerful that novice players are frightened to use her, and the king is so powerful that he is prohibited from being put into danger, as though he requires a curfew for his protection. The pawn is less powerful offensively, yet his expendable nature makes him at times the most dangerous piece on the board, like a man who is not afraid to die.

“What did you learn?” Master Park asked her, slamming the door. Jen looked up from the book. Her teacher’s abrupt entrances no longer startled Jen; he always entered the back living room this way.

“The strongest pieces are also the most vulnerable,” Jen recited.

“Right,” said Master Park, looking pleased. “That’s an excellent point.” He paused and smiled to himself. “A very good point,” he said. “See, I told you that’s a great book.”

He sat down across from her, as he did three nights a week at nine o’clock, after the intermediate-advanced class ended, and held out two pieces hidden in his hands. She wasn’t allowed to attend class on these nights; instead, she sat in the back, studying Thomas Fo’s book about chess. Then, after class, she and Master Park would play. Never just one game; always at least two. Jen usually stumbled home around midnight, more tired than if she had spent those three hours training at taekwondo.

She pointed at Master Park’s left fist. He opened it, revealing a white pawn. It seemed that she drew white more than probability would predict; at least three out of four times, she estimated.

“Start,” he said, nodding at the board.

Chess is an ancient art developed over thousands of years. It cannot be mastered through cramming or quick study, just as a rich broth cannot be developed by through fast, furious boiling.

There is no point chastising yourself if you are not succeeding at the level you desire. You need to practice more. When you have played a thousand games, then you have played one.

Two nights a week, Jen kept her old training schedule with Shane. She had finally gotten used to her partner’s new name, which helped distinguish her from her girlfriend, Brittany.

“I can see that kick coming,” Shane said, frowning at Jen from across the kicking pad. “Disguise it more.”

Jen took a deep breath and tried to relax her entire body. Then she jerked, in what she hoped was one sudden, unexpected movement, and snapped her leg up at the pad.

“Nope,” Shane was saying before Jen’s foot could reach its target. “I can still see it.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” said Jen. She spoke in a quiet, subdued voice that she hoped would disguise her frustration.

“Don’t get frustrated,” said Shane, demonstrating that Jen couldn’t even disguise her emotions, much less her front kick. “You just need to practice it more.”

“I practice it all the time,” said Jen. “I practiced this kick for three hours in my back yard, every day this week. And then I practiced it here in the mirror. I don’t think it’s possible to practice it any more.”

Shane raised her hand to her face and stroked her chin, as though scratching an absent beard. Jen thought the gesture looked somehow artificial, as though Shane had been practicing it in front of a mirror. It looked odd and unfamiliar. But perhaps Shane had always done that, and Jen was only just noticing it now that she did not see her every day.

“You know, it’s cool how much you train,” said Shane.

“But?” said Jen, prompted by Shane’s tone of voice.

“You learned this all too quickly,” said Shane. “It’s not exactly the right way to learn it. Most people train a few hours a week and it takes them a few years until they compete. You’ve been training five hours a day on average, I’d say. Thirty-five hours per week—that’s ten times as much as most people. So since you’ve been training for four months, that’s like forty months.” She paused, and Jen could read on her lips that she was doing long division in her head, a skill that Jen found as maddening as her spinning side kick. “That’s over three years of work in four months,” she concluded.

“But why should that matter?” Jen asked. “I mean, hours are hours, right?”

“In some ways,” said Shane. “But there are things that can only be learned over time. That’s why masters are masters, because they’ve studied for so long that they have all this nuance to their movement and strategy.”

“Wow,” said Jen, impressed with her partner’s sustained progression of philosophical thought. Shane was smart, but she usually only used her intelligence in brief, explosive bursts that mirrored her kicks.

Shane looked like she about to say something else, something important. She scrunched up her forehead, then opened her mouth and released not a profound insight, but a loud burp. She wiped her mouth crudely with the back of her hand, dragging her jacket cuffs across her face with studied crudeness. Another weird gesture, Jen noted to herself.

“Isn’t acting like that?” Shane asked. “Aren’t there people who are so good at acting that you feel like you could never get to their level? And it’s because they have been doing it for so long that they understand it in a way that you can’t comprehend?”

“I guess,” said Jen. She vaguely remembered having had that feeling once or twice, maybe, of being awed by the skills of an older actor, but she couldn’t remember any details. She wondered whether it was just too long ago, or whether it had never really happened, just one of the many things she had pretended to do in a movie but had never done in real life.

The novice in chess thinks only of not having pieces captured, and moves in reaction to his opponent’s moves. The sign of proficiency in chess is thinking at least ten moves ahead. Great masters have plans that span to the end of the game; if the game does not follow their plan, they readjust and shift to a new plan.

One Sunday, as Jen sat at the side of the mats, watching two yellow-belts spar, Master Park appeared in the chair next to her.

“You’re going in next round,” he said. “You’re going to spar Rob.”

“What?” said Jen, unable to keep the indignance out of her voice. In all her months at the academy, Jen hadn’t sparred him yet. Lately he had only been training with purple-belts and above. She knew he was going easy on them, but it never looked like it. He sparred Shane almost every Sunday, sending her flying backwards across the mats no less than twice each round, and that was when Shane was sparring at her best. Jen had seen him render three different male students fully unconscious with spinning kicks to the head.

“I can’t,” she said, helplessly, beginning to panic. He wasn’t really going to make her, was he? Because if he did, she knew exactly what would happen. She was going to get knocked out, just like her fight, knocked out cold on the floor in front of everybody. She couldn’t imagine any way that this was not going to happen.

“Calm down,” said Master Park. “Here’s what I want you to do. What’s his scariest move?”

“Spinning wheel kick,” said Jen, without needing to think about it.

“What’s the counter to that move?”

Jen knew it, had practiced it over and over. “Low sweep,” she said, impatiently. “But it’s not going to work. I’m not fast enough.” The thought that she could see one of those furious whirling kicks coming, see it soon enough, remain poised enough to drop to the ground and sweep out his standing leg—it was laughable.

“Shh,” said Master Park. She realized her voice had become loud and hysterical. One of the male blue-belts was staring at her.

“You need to bait him to throw the kick,” he continued. “It’s one of his favorite techniques. If you throw one, he will throw one back at you.”

“I don’t want him to throw it back at me,” she said, annoyed that he was missing the entire point of what she was saying.

“If you know when it’s coming, you should be able to counter it with the sweep,” said Master Park. “Now stop complaining,” he added.

A few minutes later, there she was, staring at Rob as he towered over her. Wheel kick, Jen said to herself. It was a difficult, risky kick and she did not usually use it in sparring, especially not against an opponent with six inches of reach and twenty years of experience on her. She moved in to throw it, nerved herself up—wheel kick, wheel kick—and then saw her leg extend out into a roundhouse kick instead, impervious to her brain’s commands.

As though he could read her thoughts and was trying to annoy her on purpose, Rob responded to her roundhouse with a wheel kick. She ducked just in time to feel the edge of his heel graze the top of her head.

She stood up, relieved that she had successfully avoided danger, and as she regained her fighting stance, he threw the wheel kick again, this time hitting her squarely in the temple.

It wasn’t hard enough to knock her down, but it did send a brief wave of nausea down to her stomach.

She looked into his eyes, which were shadowed and impassive under his head gear. Wheel kick, she said to herself, more forcefully now. Three other kicks to distract him, then wheel kick.

This time, her body followed her plan to the letter. Kick, kick, kick, spin. He backed up, but the kick flew past his face, missing him by inches. She thought she saw the slightest flash of annoyance, or even anger, rush across his eyes.

Now sweep, she told herself, waiting for him to kick. She dropped, but not fast enough; on her way down, her chin ran into the side of his foot on its way up to where her head had just been. The blow knocked her onto her back. Then the timer rang, and the round was over. At least I didn’t get knocked out, she told herself with a sigh, rubbing her bruised chin.

Master Park was still sitting in the same chair, watching Shane, who was the next to spar Rob. It annoyed Jen to see Shane doing better, being braver, recovering faster than Jen could against him. Master Park nodded his head as Shane’s side kick connected with Rob’s muscular stomach, even though it sent Shane flying backwards instead of Rob.

Jen sat down next to Master Park, fuming silently, wanting to say, See, I told you it wouldn’t work.

“Next time,” he said, without turning his head to look at her.

Don’t get fixated on what you think is happening. The novice player becomes so rigid in his expectations that he cannot see the board ahead of him. Make sure to see what is really there.

On Shane’s twenty-first birthday, she appeared in the door of the back living room, interrupting Jen’s chess game with Master Park.

“Ah, the chess,” she said. They only played on Shane’s nights off, but Jen had been telling her all about it, how ruthless their teacher was, how he would let her pieces advance just long enough to give her a bit of experience, then mercilessly kill them off one by one, like a child smashing a row of ants.

“White is the aggressor!” he would yell, as she began to pull her pieces back in response to his attack. “You are one move ahead of me. Stop acting defensively.”

So she would attempt bolder, more fearless moves, only to send her bishop or knight right into one of the five or six traps Master Park had laid out for them.

Just like taekwondo, she thought; you have to get hurt to get better. But at least in chess, the pain wasn’t real.

Shane was dressed in her cutest outfit for a night of celebration, which meant pinstriped pants, a white wife-beater tank top and a thick hooded sweatshirt. It was a chilly November night, but Shane had tied the sweatshirt around her waist, perhaps for the purpose of displaying her impressive upper-arm muscles.

One of those arms was wrapped around the waist of a girl who was filling up the other half of the doorway, a girl who Jen recognized as Brittany, even though they had never met. She looked just like she had in Jen’s imagination: tall and curvy with long, stylishly-messy hair, lots of makeup, tight jeans and an even tighter blouse.

“Sorry to interrupt. We just came by to say hi on the way out for my birthday,” Shane said.

“It’s okay. We can use a little break,” said Master Park. He means that I can use one, Jen thought, bitterly. She was, as usual, in a horrible position. Master Park had just captured her knight. She could now recapture his bishop; she worried that this was a trap, however. She could see three other places where the black pieces were poised and ready, waiting to capture their white opponents if she happened to place them on the wrong square. She needed to figure out how to avoid those traps without seeming defensive, lest she get yelled at, which was worse than losing pieces.

“Master Park, this is my girlfriend,” said Shane, as the two women came over to stand over the table, giving Jen a perfect eye-level view of Brittany’s bosom as it tried to escape from her shirt. “Brittany,” she added.

“Very nice to meet you,” he said, rising to shake her hand. Jen wasn’t sure whether she should stand as well; she opted to stay seated.

“And this is Jen,” said Shane.

“Oh, I’ve heard so much about you,” Brittany exclaimed, smiling warmly and leaning down to hug her. Jen hugged her back awkwardly, this woman she had never met before and who was towering above her as she sat on the chair. She did smell excellent, Jen noted.

Power is divided between the masculine and feminine aspects. The king is the seat of power, but, accordingly, the queen bears more practical, useable power, because she can move longer distances but also because she can be placed into danger.

Brittany looked down at the chess board, wrinkling her painted nose.

“Do you play?” asked Master Park.

“A little,” said Brittany.

“Oh no,” said Shane, dropping down onto the couch. “I knew we couldn’t get out of here quickly.”

“Where should she move?” Master Park asked Brittany. Jen felt indignant; why was he asking this party girl to weigh in on her game? Anyway, this was the easy move. She needed to capture the bishop; pawn to E4. What would happen after that was the confusing part.

“Queen to H4,” said Brittany, quickly. Jen was surprised to hear her using the algebraic notation to describe the moves; she had expected her to point and say, Move your pawn there. She would have scoffed at the move Brittany suggested—presumably she didn’t see that Jen could capture the bishop. But Brittany’s confident tone made Jen wonder whether Brittany could actually see something that Jen herself was missing.

“Interesting,” said Master Park. “Why?”

“It’s a zwischenzug,” said Brittany. “Now you’ll have to weaken your pawn structure. She can take the bishop later.”

“See that?” Master Park said, turning to Jen. “That’s what I mean by being aggressive. She’s not just thinking, ‘take his piece,’ ‘save my piece.’ She’s trying to mess me up down the road.”

“Wow, where’d you learn all that?” Shane asked, sitting up high on the couch now so she could see the board.

“We play at the sorority,” Brittany said. “We’re the best house. We totally kicked ass on Alpha Phi last weekend—they’re like our nemesis.”

While Brittany and Master Park discussed a few chess problems on a second board, Jen and Shane walked down to the bathroom at the far end of the strip mall.

“I guess she’s pretty smart,” said Jen, patting her friend on the arm. “Nice work.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Shane, shrugging. “I mean, it’s not like that’s why I like her. I’ve never talked to her about chess or anything.”

Jen laughed. “Sorry, I wouldn’t want to suggest that you valued her for anything but her looks,” she said. She reached out and put her arm on Shane’s shoulder. “Happy birthday,” she said.

Shane stopped walking, and since Jen was still touching her shoulder, she stopped, too.

“You know, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,” said Shane, her face losing all trace of the smirk that she usually wore in conversation. Jen was startled. She never saw Shane looking serious like that, except when she was sparring.

“What is it?” Jen asked.

“I’m thinking about becoming a guy,” Shane said.

Jen was silent for a moment as she tried to understand what Shane had meant.

“Do you mean, like, surgically?” she asked, finally.

“Yeah, and with hormones,” said Shane.

Jen had known a few women who used to be men, but she realized she had never met anyone who had changed their gender in the other direction.

“They can do that?” Jen asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Shane. “Well, they don’t really do a great job with—you know—the bottom half.” Shane dipped her chin to indicate the direction she was talking about. “Most people just do the top part. That’s what I would do. They do a great job with that part.”

“Wow,” said Jen, dumbstruck. It seemed like it should be a small alteration—Shane was so much like a boy, anyway—but Jen knew it would change things. For one, Shane was her only real friend in Michigan. Jen couldn’t imagine being close friends with a twenty-one year old boy. She could barely tolerate them back when she herself was that age. But would Shane still be the same person, herself, or an adolescent boy?

And if Shane were a boy, would they still be training partners? Jen gasped as she realized that Shane would need to take time off training, perhaps a lot of time, to undergo this process, or procedure, or whatever it was.

“I just think it would be easier,” Shane said. “I mean, everyone already thinks I’m a guy.”

“But you’re not,” said Jen, thinking that this wasn’t a very good reason for undergoing a surgical procedure. “You don’t need to change yourself because of what other people think.”

“No, I know,” said Shane. “I mean, I think it would be easier for me. To understand who I am.”

Now Jen felt horrible. How could Shane not understand who she was? Jen understood perfectly who Shane was: a tough woman, strong, brave, her role model. She wanted to tell Shane those things, tell her that she needed to stay just as she was. But she couldn’t think of a way to say that without it sounding selfish, like she needed Shane to stay a woman for her own reasons, to keep her as a teammate, a sister. Maybe it is selfish, Jen thought; it was too complicated to figure out so quickly.

“There’s a really good clinic down in Ann Arbor,” Shane said. “I might need to move down there for a while. I could transfer to Eastern Michigan University for a semester. Brittany said she’d come with me.”

Jen’s stomach sunk.

You can’t go, she wanted to shout, to beg. You’re my only friend. You’re the only person here that matters to me.

But she knew she would not say that. “Of course I’ll support you in any way I can,” Jen said. “Just let me know what I can do.”

Shane reached in and gave Jen a long, hard hug, pressing her wet cheek into Jen’s neck. “That means so much to me,” said Shane, quietly, near Jen’s ear.

The blending of attacking and defending suggests the idea of balance. You must balance your aggressive energy with your sense of caution and introspection. You must never become so focused on your goal that you lose awareness of what is going on in the periphery of your vision. Becoming overly fixated on one aspect of life will cause other areas of your life to atrophy like withered limbs.

“Jen? Is that you?”

Jen recognized the voice on the other end of the lake house phone. She had been nervous to answer the phone; it almost never rang, and Jen only used it to make her weekly calls to Becky. If Jen answered and the phone call wasn’t for her, she needed to explain that Paula’s mother and her husband were in Toledo (they had returned in September from their summer vacation) and take a message, a complicated process since she then needed to call Paula’s mother, who she had never met, and relay the message.

It was easier just to let the phone ring. But this was Tuesday morning, which was one of the times that she and Becky often talked, though usually Jen called Becky and then Becky called her back to avoid running up a bill on Paula’s mother’s phone.

This person wasn’t Becky, though. Who else would be calling here for me, Jen wondered?

“I was meaning to call sooner,” the voice continued, “I mean, I had the phone number and everything.”

“Paula,” said Jen, relieved to have identified the caller without having to ask. She hadn’t spoken to Paula since she and Becky had left Jen in Michigan five months ago.

“How is everything?” Paula said. “I mean, Becky’s been keeping me posted on the basic news, and I read that horrible article about how you’re on steroids and a lesbian.”

“Yeah,” said Jen.

“I mean, you’re not, right?” said Paula, her tone conveying a slight hope that the article might have been correct.

“Right. Sorry,” said Jen.

They talked for a bit, catching up on Jen’s news—yes, she really had done a fight, yes, she had really gotten knocked out—and Paula’s news—“Same old stuff, yoga, celibacy, hanging around with Becky and Chase.”

Then Paula got to the reason for her call. “We’re having a shower for Becky. It’s at your house, not this Sunday but the next one. Sorry, I know it’s last minute; we just decided to do it.”

That was soon, Jen thought, less than two weeks. Too soon. Her taekwondo schedule felt like a speeding train that needed a great distance to stop. She was planning to do two upcoming competitions, one in December. There was no way she could take a break right now, even for a few days.

“You’re going to come, right?” said Paula, who apparently had been waiting for Jen’s response.

“Well,” said Jen, trying to figure out how to explain her hesitation. “It’s short notice, and I have this fight coming up.”

“Jen!” Paula yelled sharply, like a nursery-school teacher scolding a toddler who was just about to bite his playmate. “You haven’t been out to visit the entire time Becky’s been pregnant. She won’t tell you, but she misses you.” Paula cleared her throat. “You have to come when the baby is born next month, and you have to come to the shower.”

Now Jen felt horrible. Paula was right; how could she even consider missing her best friend’s baby shower just because it would throw off her training schedule? As though a few days of taekwondo and chess were more important than the friend who had supported her since they were twelve years old. Something must be going really wrong with my values, she told herself.

“Of course I’ll come,” said Jen, as though this had been her intention all along. “I was just saying it will be hard. I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Great,” said Paula. “I’ll buy your plane ticket; I know you don’t have internet access out there.”

“Thanks,” said Jen.

Before they got off the phone, Paula remembered one other detail she had forgotten to tell Jen.

“Oh, and it’s a co-ed shower,” she said. “You can bring a guy, if you want. Or a woman, of course,” she added, in a tone of magnanimous non-judgment.

“No, it’ll just be me,” said Jen. “I’m not seeing anybody.”

“That a girl,” Paula said, before hanging up the phone.

Chapter 30