Coincidence in a Small City
Tense is deliberately fudged in this entry, which I have back-dated by one day in order to reflect the proper chronology of events in this blog. I wrote this on the evening of Saturday, 18 June, from audio notes taken Friday, 17 June.
I get off, officially, at 5:30. I stayed until about 7:15 today, using the company scanner to digitise some weary photocopies of the 1933 edition of Christaller’s Dictionary of the Asante and Fante language called Tshi (Twi) (PDF, 56.3 Mb) — one of my prize acquisitions from Ghana, passed on to me by “Owura” Kankam Yɛboa, Twi guru to three or more generations of European/American researchers in Asante, now. It’s beautiful, and it stayed beautiful and almost sunny until 9:00, so I had no excuse not to head down to Fifth and Market to see what was going on at the chess plaza.
‘No excuse not to’ is a telling phrase: On the way there, I jumped the gun two or three times, thinking I’d arrived and that the plaza was bare. Instead of disappointed, I felt relieved. What was it that made me so uncomfortable? I think it’s in part feelings I have about money. I often make ill-considered purchases: books I could check out of the library, $6 sandwiches when I have lentils and rice at home. I’m no tight-wad. I’m not even appropriately thrifty. But gambling? Makes my skin crawl. Money lost on smoke. I always gamble expecting to lose, which means I only do it when I have other compelling reasons (research, say, or establishment of rapport with co-workers), and it still makes me feel like a schmuck.
I’m realising as I write, though, that there’s more too it than that: I’m afraid of being stupid. I’m a pretty mediocre chess player. My ELO on the ICC fluctuates between 1000 and 1100, and ratings there are probably high, compared to brick-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood leagues. (To compare, that means that I’m ranked 4,467 out of 4,696 players on-line as I write.) I was the smart kid in high school — in an academic environment where I’d figured out the rules. Since then, I’ve been living in alternaties where I’m an outsider and an amateur, and I haven’t been going easy into that humility. Between seventh grade (1994-1995) and January of this year, I played perhaps three games — I’ve only recently become an active player again. I know that at Fifth and Market, I will get my ass whooped, repeatedly and hard, and I don’t savour the prospect of looking like a dunce.
Today being a beautiful day, of course the players were there, and in great numbers. I walked slowly down the row of tables, catching glimpses of games, and stopped when I got to the second table from the end. Two games abutting one another. At the game to my left, a middle-aged (mid-thirties?) Asian guy with a non-native accent, and a younger (mid-to-late-twenties?) white guy in a stylish long jacket, with a white woman (his girlfriend?) squatting next to him. At my game, a swarthy middle-aged (mid-thirties? early forties?) white guy wearing a pull-down knit cap, and an opponent whose appearance I can’t recall. I watched the games for about a minute before things started to get rowdy.
A middle-aged (early forties to early fifties?) white woman had been circling this table somewhat restlessly. She wore an orange vest of the sort sported by crossing guards and late-night highway-repair construction workers. Across the back of her vest was penned ‘℞HODES’. I didn’t register what she was saying at first — just thought it was kibitzing — while I got a handle on the games. But soon, she was harassing the swarthy gent (now Shylock, for the purposes of this blog) too obviously to ignore. I can’t recall all of what she said, but it went back and forth between anti-Semitism and accusations of faux Semitism: ‘That’s a prime piece of real estate you assholes are fighting over… You fucking fake Jew.’ He was laughing — not like he thought it was funny, and not as though he was seriously hurt and trying to swallow it. More like he was a little embarrassed, and wanted to pass this off as unreal. ‘Why are you picking on me?’ The Asian guy (now Bangkok Benny) had been chiming in with an ‘Oh… That’s not nice…’ every now and again. Finally, he piped up and said ‘Why’s everybody picking on you today, Shylock?’ The tormentrix (now Magenta) shot back ‘What? Other people are picking on you when I’m away? Picking on you while I’m asleep?’ Shylock muttered a couple of words, but before he could finish anything coherent, Magenta grabbed his cap and began dancing around. He jumped up and tried to get it back from her. She threw it to the ground, and he swiped it, pulled it back on, and left the plaza laughing in the same embarrassed way.
Magenta then turned her attention to Bangkok Benny. Or, more accurately, he brought that attention to himself. ‘Why’d you do that to Shylock?’ ‘What? What are you doing for him? You comforting him? You fuck him at night?’ ‘You got a dirty mouth.’ ‘You want to see how dirty my mouth is?’ With that, she spat on his hand. Bangkok Benny jumped to his feet, and held his loogie-adorned pinky up, threatening to call the police. ‘I got biological evidence!’ During the song-and-dance, while Magenta was cussing a sailor red and Benny was walking around showing off the loogie, his opponent conceded defeat and left a dollar under Benny’s queen. ‘What’s happening?’ a spectator asked. ‘Tarzan’s girlfriend spat on Bangkok Benny.’
While Benny was looking for cops, Magenta verbally assaulted a passerby on a bicycle. This guy (white, mid-forties?) wasn’t in the least phased by her attack. ‘Don’t you fucking touch my bike. I don’t like women and I like women in pants even less. You get in my face, I’m not afraid to punch you same way I would a man in pants.’ ‘I’d like to see you try and hit me.’ Biker then revealed that he was an ex-Navy seal, and that he could take her apart in a matter of seconds. This seemed to cow Magenta, and she backed away to return to harassing other players. Magenta had, by this point, disrupted two chess games, and she was clearly annoying other nearby players, who were muttering, or who were yelling at the Navy seal to actually hit Magenta.
At this point, Shylock returned, and he gave Magenta a bottle of beer concealed by a paper bag. This calmed her, and she sat down in Bangkok Benny’s old seat, sipping on her booze and muttering to herself. As she re-arranged the pieces on the board: ‘I’m not playing. I’m just sitting here… You think this is bad, you should see what things are like in Ukrainia.’
I decided to move on, at this point, and try to get a feel for what was going on at other tables. I bumped into Rudolf who asked me where I’d been. (He meets me for the first time on Wednesday, doesn’t see me Thursday, and then demands an explanation on Friday?)
This is an important note: I apparently misunderstood Rudolf on Wednesday. Fagan (now, apparently, inappropriately blogonymed) does not bankroll players. Rather, players give him a reasonable amount (perhaps a dollar or two for an hour of play, or a buck for a couple games, judging from Rudolf’s examples) in exchange for being able to play on his tables. It’s the loser who pays.
Rudolf then went on to talk about other players — about drug addiction, poverty, the impossibility of medical expenses. I wanted to be paying closer attention to him, but things had escalated with Magenta, again, and I was trying to figure out what was going on. Shylock had pinned her arms behind her back, and was trying to talk to her to calm her down. Then the police came, cuffed her, put her in a car, and then stayed for several minutes, talking with three or four very irate players.
All the while, Rudolf was talking a blue streak, and trying to keep my full attention, repeatedly stepping into my line of view as I was trying to watch what was going on with Magenta and the fuzz. When I was fully focusing on him again, he was talking about chess. To him, playing for money is important: without a bet, the game’s no fun. (I’ve heard that viewpoint before in this country about card games and other forms of play). And what’s to lose? If you go out drinking, you could easily spend $20 (yikes!), whereas with chess you might pay $5 or so for a couple hours of play. It’s relaxing, you get to talk, etc.
It turns out that Rudolf is from Budapest. (”Hungarians have a very big brain. The world chess champion, Bobby Fischer, is a Hungarian. Hungarian invented the mushroom bomb.”) He moved to the United States in 1960 when he was twenty years old. He joined the Army Reserve and learned to fly aeroplanes. He’s lived all over the States, but has been in San Francisco for a fair while.
Rudolf seemed more interested in other people than in himself, and conversation quickly turned back to other chess players. He spoke of those addicted to drugs, of those whose brains had been permanently damaged. Of the impossibility of getting good medical care. Of the incompetence of most doctors. Discussion of doctors led, of course, to discussion of lawyers. At some point in the conversation, Rudolf had brought me to the edge of the plaza to look down into the nearby depression where young black men were selling drugs. We had apparently drawn a little attention to ourselves, and a group of half a dozen of these guys had gathered behind me and were listening to what we were saying. They probably thought that I might be an undercover cop or something.
Rudolf went on and on, perhaps for half an hour. I tried to interject several times to say that I should head home, but it was extremely hard to get a word in. Suddenly, Malibu bust through the crowd of eavesdroppers and grabbed me. ‘Hey, homie! What’s up?’ He turned to the eavesdroppers. ‘This is my burner! This cat spins for me!’ Quick hug, and he sat down his boom box and started reciting poetry stereo and a half. The eavesdroppers dissipated in seconds, and Rudolf, apparently taken aback by the newcomer, bid me farewell. We agreed to meet on Monday after work to play a game.
After a verse of poetry, I asked ‘Bu how he was doing. ‘Stressed, homey.’ ‘How come?’ ‘I don’t know how to put it to you, so let me put it like this…’ He hit stop, bit his lower lip, and launched into five minutes of fairly impressive freestyle. He talked about the cops walking through the plaza below the plaza, about the young women by the escalator who were waiting for their men, who were waiting to spend some time in the pen, about the skateboarder who was going to fall and break his skull on the bricks. Suddenly, he lost his flow, and we both started laughing.
‘So what are you doing here, pimp?’ he asked me. I told him I’d come to watch the chess games. ‘Learning how to lose money?’ Like me, ‘Bu is apparently a woodpusher. ‘I can do if I can count on the other guy playing as fast I do. But if he’s patient and takes his time to think about all the options, he’s got me.’ He then launched into an analogy between chess and life. ‘I know this is a crazy way to view life…’ Not to me, but perhaps the chess-life analogy was foreign to ‘Bu. ‘It ain’t about just trading away all your pieces and trying to win. You’ve got to keep them close to you and only give away what you really have to.’ I think he would have gone further, but right then someone he knew walked through the plaza. ‘Hey, Marcus! How you doing?’ The kid turned an angry eye. ‘I’ll tell you how I’m doing. These fucking niggahs is making me lose my cool.’ ‘Bu left immediately to talk to him.
I was going to leave, but ‘Bu had left his stereo with me, and I didn’t feel right leaving it unattended. ‘Bu came back, his face dark. ‘I hate to ask you this, homie, but can you spot me five dollars?’ I had a twenty in my pocket. ‘I don’t have a five on me.’ ‘Hey, ten will do.’ I was hesitant. ‘I don’t know, man.’ ‘Come on, man. Just a minute ago, you was wondering if you could give me ten. I just need five. Help me get some dinner. Help me save some lives.’ (I don’t know what that part was about.) I sighed. I know that there’s always a certain amount of awkwardness when a have tries to document the life of a have not, but I hadn’t yet considered the possibility of being asked to bankroll San Francisco’s homeless. I don’t know why not: It’s an obvious probability.
‘How long can you wait, ‘Bu?’ He sighed. ‘How long do you need me to wait?’ ‘Five minutes.’ I walked down the street to a Walgreen’s, traded my twenty for three fives and five ones, and returned, palming the money to ‘Bu.
‘You know what the biggest problem in society is today? People don’t want to deal with people of other races, other ages, other generations, other classes. I could call it an isolated… imprisonment. Is that a bad term?’ ‘Nah.’ ‘A double negative?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘That cat Marcus… I used to date his sister. I know his mother. I know his uncle. We like blood. But he all riled up and now he say he can’t be feeling me right now.’ ‘What’d you do?’ ‘I didn’t do nothing. He burned about five dollars, and now he out for blood. Five dollars. He done dropped five dollars before.
‘When I was young, you had shit with somebody, you fought them: hands and feed. No chairs, no guns, no knives. No reds, no blues. [Bloods and Crips?] It was you, and them. And you might get your ass whooped, but at the end of the day, you was both still alive.
‘But today? Kids fight over bullshit. Five dollars. Five dollars. I know cats who been killed because they scuffed their shoes.’ He then acted this out, scuffing my shoe, walking past me, and then shooting me in the face with an imaginary pistol. Once the actor was back, the conversation was over. He was back on, which meant that discussion was done, and once he’d finished his performance, we parted ways. He asked if I might be able to burn him some CD’s in the future. I said that I could, and he took my phone number.