It’s 1961. I’m 18 and I’ve peaked. Playing on the freshman basketball team I try everything to increase my vertical leap. Deep knee bends, stairway sprints, hops and skips, leg presses–nothing works. I still can’t get more than three fingers over the rim from a standing jump.

We fool around in bio lab, flicking the organs of a dissected fetal pig at the girls, who squeal obligingly. This enrages the professor. “Laugh while you can, boys,” he says, “because after the age of seventeen the male goes into rapid sexual decline. In her early thirties when the female has reached the height of her estral excitability you will be unable to satisfy her. You will be like the impotent chimps banished into the jungle by the younger males.” I bluster out of class, but am secretly haunted by the vision of females poised on their haunches while I scuttle, hunched, hairy and flaccid into Prospect Park, pursued by screeching studs.

And there is now a new frustration in my life: I cannot get better at chess. After a few months of rapid improvement I’ve hit the wall. Every night I challenge the players one or two levels above me and am humiliated.

Chess players browbeat and insult their opponents. It’s part of the game and anything goes. “You’re not even mediocre,” a bald DA named Jack shouts at me, slamming down the winning move.

An intern named Serge who comes up from Beekman Hospital in surgical blues screams in mock pain: “You are torturing me with your ignorance.” And traps my Queen.

Joe the Russian sticks a stubby yellowed finger in my face. “Don’t you see the train speeding down on you, patzer? You have no hope…”

I can think of nothing but chess. I buy more books, study more games. Each of my opponents has a favorite opening and defense. I spend hours preparing all possible responses. But still I lose.

In those pre steroid days I try caffeine and nicotine. A beatnik bongo player sells me a benzedrine inhaler for a dollar. He breaks it open and rolls the drug-soaked paper into a ball. “Eat it, man, you’ll rule the world.”

I sit at the table, a subway roaring in my brain. The drug fractures my focus. I hear every conversation around me. I look into the faces in the crowd and sense their contempt. Going home at dawn I replay the games I lost and cringe at the blunders I made. I’m so crazed I go four stations past my stop.

I am losing eight to ten dollars a night. With a net of $72 a week after taxes I’ll have to hit my secret stash. I’ve been saving that money to make my escape to Paris and literary eminence. I should stop now. Give up…But I can’t.

One night I am playing Ronald, a fat, smelly teenager who eats gooey baloney sandwiches, belches root beer and grabs the pieces with mayo-slicked fingers. Ronald is an Asberger’s hustler; I see him playing scrabble with the NYU kids at Washington Square fountain and Go with the old Asian guys from the restaurants. In a hurry to take my two dollars he plays the Queens Gambit, an opening which confounds weaker players. He moves quickly, egging me on. “C’mon, don’t prolong the misery…” After the opening moves he attacks my center. I panic. I’ve seen this variation in Alekhine vs. Capobianco, but I can’t remember the response. I decide to retreat. As I touch my Knight someone sneezes. A lanky guy with greasy shoulder length hair is standing behind Ronald. He’s a serious player. I’ve seen him at the big tables, leaning back to blow smoke rings while his opponent agonizes over a move. I’ve passed him looking away with a distracted air as an astonishing blonde in a cashmere coat clutches his sleeve, whispering urgently. He covers his mouth and shakes his head slightly.

Is it a signal? I touch another piece. He purses his lips and blinks , which I take for a “no.” There are a few more possible moves. I touch the pieces until he lowers his head, which I read as “yes.” I make the move.

Ronald jerks and scowls. I’ve stymied his plan. People mutter in admiration, a new sound to me. He makes a move. I touch a piece. My benefactor brushes his hair away from his face, which I take for a “what else?” I make the move and initiate a furious exchange which results in an even position.

Ronald does a quick calculation. It will take him another half hour to beat me,if he can, and that will cost him money. He wants to trap the other fish before they wander away.

“Okay, you got lucky,” he says. “It’s a draw…”

“That’ll be two dollars,” I say.

“It’s a push,” he says.

“A push is no gain, but a draw is a half point,” I say. The spectators, happy to take Ronald down a peg, back me up. “C’mon, a draw wins…” “Pay the man…”

There’s nothing a hustler hates more than to lose money. Ronald digs into his pocket and comes out with a crumpled dollar bill, which he throws at me. “Here’s a buck. That’s all you get.” And sneers up at the crowd of eager losers. “Next fish…”

I step away from the table. The guy turns away, which I take for a “don’t talk to me.”

At dawn he is sitting on a rail as I leave the park. He’s skinny. Blue veins run up his wrists to his shoulders. Sniffly with a big nose and bulging bloodshot eyes. He points to the book I’m carrying. “Myth of Sisyphus,” he says. “Is that for reading or impressing girls?”

“A little of both, “I say.

“How come you wear black?”

“I work at a funeral parlor in Brooklyn.”

“Only the dead know Brooklyn,” he says.

I have a feeling he’s testing me.

“Thomas Wolfe,” I say.

“I hate a hustler who can’t play,” he says. “Ronald picks on weak players. Next time we’ll clean him out.”

“Next time?”

He turns quickly down the block. “Let’s go, I don’t want anyone to see us.” As we walk he explains: “Look, you’re a B player. You’ll never get better…”

“Why not?”

“Chess is a prodigy’s game,” he says. “By the time I was five I was beating grown ups. Were you? From twenty to death there are no big jumps in skill. You just try to conserve…”

“If I’m just a B player why do you want me?” I ask.

“A B is better than 90% of the population.” He offers me a Gauloise, a noisome French cigarette that Belmondo smoked in Breathless. ” Nobody here will play me anymore so I’ll play through you. You’re good enough to win an occasional game without causing suspicion. I can get action on you in the crowd. We’ll split fifty fifty…”

“How do you know I’ll win?” I ask.

“Signals,” he says. “It’s a simple system. You can learn it in ten minutes…”

“You mean cheating?”

“What are you, a naive moralist?” he says.” Every competitive athlete, game player, politician is looking for an edge…”

“Within the rules,” I say.

“Nobody obeys the rules willingly. That’s why there are referees. Part of the skill in winning is hiding your edge.”

“I want to beat these guys on my ability,” I say.

“You’re not good enough,” he says. “At least you can get the money and the prestige…”

He senses me faltering. “Look, what if God sent an invisible angel that only you could see to stand over your shoulder and give you the moves? That would be okay wouldn’t it?”

It’s like a forced move in chess. There’s only one answer.

“I guess so.”

“Well he sent me” he says. “I am your invisible angel.”

NEXT: I STEAL SOME GLORY

Igor Yopsvoyomatsky,
editor-in chief, paranoiaisfact.com
answers readers’ questions.

Dear Igor,

I sell souvenirs to tourists on the Staten Island Ferry and after eight years of Dubya I can’t give America away. Nobody wants Statue of Liberty piggy banks, FBI caps, “Brooklyn Rules” tees…Not even Michael Jackson wind up dolls. People used to be in awe of how cool we were–NYC, DC, the Grand Canyon, Hollywood. Now they come to sneer and feel superior. Our plunging dollar makes us a cheap date. Our leaders get no respect. After Bush trashed the American brand I thought Obama would turn it around, but his novelty has quickly faded and now I’m stuck with a gross of “Yes I Can” hoodies. I’m afraid America will never be cool again. Is this paranoia or fact?
Distressed Peddler
Sunnyside, Queens

Dear Distressed,

This is fact. According to a recent Pew survey,the US ranked 117th on the cool index, right under Tierra Del Fuego. Only Russia, China, the UK and Zimbabwe were considered less cool than the US.

America created the 20th. Century in its own image. Victorious in two wars, innovative in industry and the arts, it was a magnet for the best minds and most energetic workers in the world. Everyone loved Detroit cars, Broadway musicals, Hollywood movies, American cigarettes and Elvis. American Capitalism vanquished Soviet Communism by promising eternal, exponential wealth.

America was cool.

Now the American financial house of cards has collapsed. General Motors is begging Government handouts, Broadway is ruled by British imports, Hollywood is a limping subdivision of bloated conglomerates, the Marlboro Man died of lung cancer and Graceland is controlled by Scientology.

Uncool.

In its ascendancy, the US had the coolest leaders. FDR betrayed his class to bring the US out of the Depression. Harry Truman fired MacArthur and stood up to Stalin. Dwight D. Eisenhower, wartime commander and Five Star General, turned on his brethren to warn about the “Military-Industrial Complex.” JFK, brought hipness, taste and sophistication into the White House and called Krushchev’s bluff in Cuba. Even Lyndon Johnson had the dignity to withdraw from public life when the people rejected him.

Cool.

During its slow decline the US has experienced an unbroken chain of bizarre nonentities. Nixon inexplicably recorded his own incriminating statements; Carter, a peanut farmer with delusions of prophecy, left office with a 19% interest rate; Reagan, an underpaid Warner Bros. contract player, actually believed that the rich would allow a minuscule portion of their wealth to “trickle down” to the working class; Clinton, a glib, small town Lothario, enabled Wall Street to take over the American economy. The Bushes are the greatest argument against ruling class inbreeding since the Hapsburgs. Obama has seen ingratiation turn into antagonism and doesn’t know what to do about it.

Uncool.

American celebrities were the coolest in the world. Could anyone top Marilyn or Einstein (he was a citizen), Astaire, Grace Kelly, Jonas Salk, Jackie O, Brando, Duke Ellington, Broadway Joe–the list is truly endless.

Now you have OJ, MJ, Lindsay Lohan, Elliot Spitzer. You have the dangerous nonentities of reality TV. Sports stars who turn themselves into bionic chimeras with steroids and surgery.

But don’t feel too bad, Distressed. At least you can complain. Three quarters of the world must suffer in silence. They live under the heel of oligarchical thugs who maintain their power by censorship, repression, torture, rape and outright massacre.

Uncool

China hasn’t been cool since Confucius, France since Sartre and Belmondo; the UK since James Bond and he wasn’t even real. Italy has a seventy-three year old President who brags to teenage girls about his sexual prowess. Russia was cool with Rasputin, but Putin poses shirtless like Mr. Universe and Medvedev, the little man who wasn’t there, makes pronouncements that no one hears.

The entire planet is totally, hopelessly…

Uncool.