by Sasha Chapin
Copyright © 2019 by Alexander Chapin
Hardcover edition published 2019
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
PREFACE THE 600 MILLION
1 KATHMANDU
2 THE PAWNISHERS
3 ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK
4 A PUZZLE WITHOUT A SOLUTION
5 NO MACS
6 ROUGH GUS
7 THE SECRET OF CHESS
8 I‘D HATE TO BE GOD RIGHT NOW, BECAUSE HE SEES EVERYTHING
9 DREAMS DIE IN CALIFORNIA
10 THE BEACH
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
THE 600 MILLION
Perhaps the surest sign that you’re in love is that you can’t stop talking. You find yourself announcing the name of your beloved at the slightest provocation. Given any opportunity, you engage in a vain attempt to explain your infatuation. Everything else seems unworthy of a single moment’s attention or discussion. No matter how shy or stoic you are, real affection demands expression.
And this is no less true when the object of your affection is the game of chess. In other words, when you’re me.
But this poses a bit of a problem. It’s tricky to explain the appeal of chess to someone who doesn’t play. Unlike the beauty of other sports, the majesty of chess is somewhat opaque to the uninitiated. Basketball, I’m sure, has infinitesimal subtleties I can’t fully appreciate, but when I’m watching a game, I can still sense that LeBron is doing something really cool. The sheer physicality is imposing—the taut calves, the curves carved in the air by the ball meeting the basket. Not so with chess. All you do is look at two nerds staring at a collection of tiny figurines.
And yet, my love of chess demands that I continue, that I somehow communicate why chess captivates me in ways that nothing else ever could. Why I’ve neglected food, sex, and friendship, on many an occasion, for its charms. Why nothing—not love, not amphetamines, not physical danger—makes my heart beat harder than the process of cornering an opponent’s king.
If you think this is crazy, I agree. But it deserves mentioning that I’m not the only crazy one. Albert Einstein and Humphrey Bogart were similarly affected by the thirty-two pieces on the sixty-four squares. And, some centuries before that, Caliph Muhammad al-Amin, ruler of the Abbasid empire, insisted on continuing a promising endgame as marauders penetrated his throne room, decapitating him shortly after he delivered checkmate.
I didn’t get decapitated, so my affair with chess really wasn’t so bad. All I got was the total consumption of my soul.
Like so many affairs, it began with an accidental flirtation that became an all-devouring union—two years during which I did little else but pursue chess mastery. Despite my obvious lack of talent, I leapt across continents to play in far-flung competitions, studied with an eccentric grandmaster, spent almost all of my money, neglected my loved ones, and accumulated a few infections. And I did it all for a brief shot at glory—a chance to take down some real players at a tournament in Los Angeles, where my place in humanity was determined, as far as I’m concerned.
Maybe if you come back with me, through those nights of chasing imaginary kings with imaginary queens, along my winding road to the San Fernando Valley, you’ll understand my love of chess. Maybe you’ll even understand why, according to recent estimates, one in twelve people in the world play chess in some capacity. Maybe you’d like to know what’s been captivating well over 600 million souls while you were doing whatever you do.
Frankly, I didn’t feel like I was doing much until chess came along. Sure, there were momentary rages, dwindling loves, and, occasionally, a charming vista. But it was all part of an unformed sequence of anecdotes, through which I was stumbling sideways, grasping at whatever I could, whether it was some form of self-destruction or a nice afternoon walk. By contrast, when chess appeared, it felt like a possession—like a spirit had slipped a long finger up through my spine, making me a marionette, pausing only briefly to ask, “You weren’t doing anything with this, were you?”
1
KATHMANDU
Anyway, like most people, I became obsessed with chess after I ran away to Asia with a stripper I’d just met.
Courtney made an impression. Before I saw her face, at the poetry reading where we encountered each other, I heard the precise, cutting melody of her voice sailing above the room’s otherwise meek murmurs. And as soon as I saw her, it became clear, from both the way she looked and the way that everyone else looked at her, that she was the unelected supervisor of that evening. She had one of those sharp smiles that you could easily imagine encircling the necks of her enemies. She was slim and pale, with severe good looks. Everything she wore was obviously expensive: shiny black boots, shiny black pants, and an extravagantly fluffy white sweater that shed hairs everywhere. The room around her slowly became dandered.
Even before we spoke, her presence added a little bit of much-needed electricity to the otherwise un-fascinating evening. The poetry reading was boring. And I went there knowing I would be bored, because I didn’t care about experimental poetry. But I figured that I should go for vague professional reasons. I had recently started a career as a freelance writer, having published a couple of sensitive essays that had earned modest local acclaim. And in my mind this meant, somehow, that attending tedious literary events was now my sacred responsibility.
She and I met when I started flirting with a friend of hers, whose social pleasantness I mistakenly took for some sort of invitation. Courtney saved me from embarrassment by swooping in and derailing the conversation with an avalanche of pointed queries and cleverly backhanded compliments. At first, I had no idea whether she liked me or could even tolerate my presence. She seemed entirely self-contained, like there wasn’t anything I could possibly add to her life, which may have been true. I asked her what she thought of the poetry, expecting a mushy statement of reverence of the sort I’d received from everyone else I’d asked that question.
“It was mostly shitty,” she said.
After a few minutes, I got a little better at keeping up with the staccato conversational rhythm that was her specialty, but I still felt nervous. Until, that is, she started massaging my knee under the table, apropos of nothing, after we had consumed a helpful amount of alcohol.
Following our first intimate moments, a few days later, I told her that it kind of sucked that we hadn’t encountered each other earlier, because I was moving overseas in two weeks. When she asked me why, I told her the same silly thing I told everybody: I was going away to Thailand so I could write in solitude. At this early stage in m
y career, I said, I should devote myself to my craft, rather than deal with the constant distractions of my busy life in Toronto. Whether or not I believed this myself I’m not sure, but it was obviously untrue. Writing was going well. I was producing at a reasonable rate, and I was getting paid pretty generously.
Moreover, since I had never been alone in an unknown country, I had no reason to suspect that it would improve me in any way. Really, the decision was based on fear. I’m kind of an insecure person, and whenever I’m stationary in life for more than a few moments—whenever I’m settled in any lifestyle at all—I start becoming suspicious of the validity of my very being. In this case, I couldn’t stomach the fact of remaining in Toronto, getting paid to put my feelings on the Internet while working at a fancy pasta restaurant. There had to be something more out there, something more noble or treacherous. And while I did have some good friends in the city, I wasn’t entirely sure why they liked me anymore. Perhaps the decisive factor, finally, was that I had some money saved up, which traditionally means that I’m about to do something stupid.
“I wonder if I’m so attracted to you just because you’re leaving,” Courtney said, over dinner a week later.
“I’m like a rare postage stamp,” I said.
“I don’t know why I just told you that.”
“That you’re attracted to me just because I’m unavailable?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, at least you’re attracted to me.”
Later, a few drinks further along, she suggested that we should do drugs together so she could puzzle out exactly what she felt about me—specifically Psilocybe cubensis, aka magic mushrooms.
“Like, right now?” I said.
“Yeah, sure.”
I agreed. We walked back to my apartment. After choking down a strong dose of twisty green-gray magic mushrooms, we sat in my living room, awaiting the first bloom of a long high. Following the brief anxiety that you feel when you’re awaiting intoxication, the walls got wiggly. Somehow, we started believing that the couch was a condom. Water, we decided, was actually rock juice. Great, nonsensical insight flew off the walls, hitting us hard in the head. Out in the cool night air, she told me all about how her lamb’s brambles were scrambled. The wind blew up the dust from a lawn we found.
“This is why I didn’t go to college,” she said.
“Because it was too windy?” I said.
“Yeah.”
We took a cab home and went to bed at 6 a.m., agreeing that it was fun being alive, considering how anyone could bomb you, at any time, for any reason or no reason at all. When we woke up at noon, she said she was thinking of asking me whether she could come with me.
“You should,” I said.
“Why?” she said.
“Because I’d say yes.”
“Can I come with you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Having figured that out, we got some greasy breakfast at the corner diner.
Doing shrooms with somebody instantly acquaints you with about half of who they are. When someone is on shrooms, they’re taken over by unalloyed emotionality—by the things they suppress so that they can participate in civilization. And this is a great bonding experience, but you do run a certain risk—you can trick yourself into thinking you’ve seen their essential soul, when, really, the whimsy they keep inside isn’t any more real than the more polished elements on the surface. Essentially, I knew Courtney’s inside more than I knew her outside. To each of us, the other was an intimately familiar stranger.
Courtney’s drug-induced crush on me wasn’t the only reason a sudden departure was appealing. She hated the club she worked at. Also, her ex-boyfriend had returned to Toronto after living away for a while, and he was apparently monitoring us, as evidenced by the fact that soon after we started hanging out, he texted her an inquiry about whether “the guy in the green coat” was any good in bed, in reference to my long forest-green duffel. It all looked like a big blinking exit sign. After breakfast, she booked a ticket on my flight.
“Is this crazy?” she said.
“Yeah, definitely,” I said.
“What if we break up?”
“I think maybe there’s about a fifty–fifty chance that we’ll break up almost immediately.”
She found those terms acceptable. Seventy-two hours later, we were in Shanghai, fleeing an Australian man the size of a tractor, who took Courtney’s lack of fondness very personally. As we rounded a corner, Courtney was attacked by a street hustler’s pet monkey.
That was our layover in China. After we escaped, we rented a little apartment in Chiang Mai, a smallish city in the north of Thailand. If you’re a sufficiently wealthy foreigner living in Chiang Mai, you’ll find yourself in a perfect place, and maybe get a little bored, and start wondering whether perfection is everything you want in life. There’s a lot to like and not much to do. It’s a touristy student town with a bunch of temples.
That was just fine with me. A small city where I could coast in unconcern was exactly what I needed. Every day, I went to the library, pretended I was writing for four hours, wrote for two hours, and then met up with Courtney, who loved Chiang Mai too, at first. She laughed and screamed and sighed at all the bright novelty around her. And her presence made me a more exciting person, because I wanted to demonstrate my daring. If I were alone, I might have quietly pursued my low-energy occupation. Instead, I assiduously sought out and strip-mined the few local sources of adventure. I drove us around on a tiny, fast motorbike, through congested traffic, out of the city on winding and unmarked roads, and then up and down forested mountains. We ate grilled ribs from market stalls on the edge of town, bathed in streams, and got lost whenever we could.
But Courtney grew discontented. She’d escaped from the catastrophes she’d been dealing with, but now she was actually in another place—in this case, a half-bland paradise where she could spend long periods of time staring at her fingernails and ignoring the distant scrape of oblivion. During the daytime, she loved the spicy food and the fragrant swelter, but the empty evenings were boring at best. It was a lifestyle with no obvious purpose or an obvious way to pass the time. Chiang Mai had about three weeks’ worth of fun in it, and we’d been there for about three weeks. Our conversations grew thin, until we spent a lot of our alone time silently drinking Chang beer. Chang instills a distinctive hangover and tastes like discarded friendships. I became sullen and Courtney became moody and erratic.
Since we were going crazy, I suggested we take a trip to Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, which is literally the hottest city on the planet. The heat feels like reality is exaggerating. It’s like, come on, really? Are you serious? As soon as you step off the plane, the molten air viciously massages your entire body. During the evenings, a hot wind sweeps away the daytime. It’s a terrible, loud, hectic city that we both adored immediately. After Chiang Mai’s sensory deprivation, we welcomed all the sensory abrasion Bangkok imposed—even the smell, which I might describe as the scent of a cream puff served on garbage. Among the odors, we sat on a rooftop, drinking even more Chang, watching the sun sail down through the roseate smog. “We should live here,” Courtney said, as the skyline declared its supremacy over the arriving night. I agreed.
The next day, we walked through a pleasant neighborhood called Ari, a hive of royalists, young professionals, and the people who feed them chicken and cockles. The street was a lovely mess of vendors selling soup, tailoring, and flowers. Friends yelled at each other merrily, and pigeons sunbathed on the balustrades of low-rise apartments. It seemed like a good place to find a residence. But since I didn’t know anybody in Bangkok, I had no idea how you would go about navigating that process. Accordingly, I stopped two young women at random and inquired about the local real estate situation. We all went for coffee, and one of them, an extroverted NGO worker named Elena, was looking for a roommate to replace the other, a witty reporter named Sally, who was moving out of their apartment. I told them that Courtney and I might b
e that roommate, so Elena took us back to a draughty, rambling floor of an old gray tenement that possessed an irresistible and shambolic charm. We put down rent.
But a problem presented itself: Courtney was almost bankrupt. She announced that she’d fly home and work two weeks of double shifts at the club, which would get her enough cash to keep us full of Chang for a long time. As soon as she presented this plan, I suspected that she wouldn’t come back. The limitations of our relationship had become clear—it seemed like a good idea while we were on drugs, but she didn’t really know what she was doing in Thailand, and neither did I. We’d developed a kind of love for each other, but it wasn’t quite enough that it all made sense.
She left just before Christmas, so I was alone on New Year’s Eve in our Chiang Mai apartment, after flying back to collect my belongings. Every New Year’s Eve in Chiang Mai they fill the sky with thousands of floating lanterns. This is some beautiful religious tradition that probably dates back millions of years. You set the sky on fire so you can watch it grow back as spring comes. Lying on my small, firm, bare bed, I observed the flocks of tiny flames filling the window.
On New Year’s Day, when I was flying to Bangkok, everything felt unreal. I was moving to a city about which I knew nearly nothing, in a continent in which I knew two people, pursuing a somewhat tenuous career as a writer, at the end of a somewhat illusory romantic relationship. The only thing that was completely clear was that the flight attendants employed by Thai Airways were impeccably trained, although the food they served was a little too gelatinous for comfort. What was I going to be here? I had suspicions, but really, I had no idea.
When my plane touched down, I was completely alone—Elena was on a jaunt in Myanmar. I got off the rail link from the airport and arrived at an empty home. Truly being without company for the first time was exhilarating, for about four beautiful days where I walked alone in the sprawling city. I was adrift in crowds for a moment or two, then unnerved by the emptiness of an alleyway, then followed by little packs of amiable, dirty street dogs. Sitting down at a noodle stand I found in a distant parking lot amid crumbling high-rises, south of the city’s shimmering Chinatown, I felt like the world couldn’t possibly contain all the convolutions inside me.
