Bad Feminist: Essays

by Roxane Gay

  I stop getting lost looking for the bathroom. The building is strange, with many hallways, some hidden, and an arcane numbering system that defies logic. When I leave my door open, students passing by will ask, “Where is Dr. So-and-So’s office?” I say, “I have no idea.”

  Summer, we are told, is a time for rest, relaxation, and catching up. I teach two classes. I write a novel. I return to the place I moved from, spend weeks with the man I left behind. He says, Don’t go. I say, Please follow. We remain at an impasse. I return to the cornfield. There are mere weeks of summer left. They are not enough.

  A new semester begins. I have new responsibilities, including chairing a committee. Ten minutes before the first class on the first day, I run to the bathroom and puke. In my classroom, I stare at another group of students whose names I will have to remember. You in the red shirt. You with the pink shorts. I refuse to expect less. I try to learn better, do better. I have no idea how I got to be the one at the front of the classroom, the one who gets to be in charge of things. Most of the time, I feel like the kid who gets to sit at the adult table for the first time at Thanksgiving. I’m not sure which fork to use. My feet can’t reach the floor.

  To Scratch, Claw, or Grope Clumsily or Frantically

  1

  My third tournament started with a brutal game where I lost by more than 200 points. I was the fifth seed, ranked like tennis with words, and feeling confident—too confident, really. “We Are the Champions” may have been on an infinite loop in my head. And yet. It was also early on a Saturday morning. I am not a morning person. Before the tournament started, people milled around the hotel meeting room, chatting idly about the heat, what we had done since the last time many of us had seen one another (the previous tournament in Illinois), and some of the more amazing plays we had made recently.

  Scrabble

  2 players love to talk, at length, with some repetition, about their vocabulary triumphs.

  There were twenty-one of us with various levels of ability, but really, if you’re playing this game at the competitive level, you generally have some skill and can be a contender. The more experienced players, the Dragos to my Rocky, studied word lists and appeared intensely focused on something the rest of us couldn’t see. Many wore fanny packs without irony—serious fanny packs bulging with mystery. As I waited for the tournament to begin, I studied the table of game-related accessories—books, a travel set, a towel, a deluxe board, and some milled French soaps clearly taken from someone’s closet—all for drawings to be held later in the day.

  3

  At nine o’clock, sharp, the tournament director,

  4 Tom, began making announcements, one of which was that his wife had died just days earlier. The tournament was going to go on, he said. It was an awkward, touching moment because grief is so personal and this man was clearly grieving. The room was silent. It was difficult to know what to do. He announced that the first pairings would be posted in a few minutes, so we waited quietly until the pairings were posted around the room. We all hovered around the sheet of paper, quickly writing down the names of our first two opponents. I sat across from my first challenger. She was seeded nineteenth. My confidence swelled vulgarly. She stared at me, smug, almost imperious. I felt an uncomfortable chill. We determined she would go first. She drew her seven tiles. I started her time and fixed her with a hard stare as she began shuffling the seven plastic squares back and forth across her rack. I began drawing my tiles. Beneath the table, my legs were shaking.

  This is competitive Scrabble.

  5

  You have to understand. I was lonely in a new town where I knew no one. I wanted to be back home, with my boyfriend, in our apartment, complaining about how SportsCenter seems to air perpetually or listening to him nag me about my imaginary Internet friends. My apartment was empty, no furniture, because I left my sad graduate-student furniture behind. After work, I’d sit on my lone chair, a step above sad, purchased at Sofa Mart, wondering how my life had come to this.

  When my new colleague invited me to her home to play with her Scrabble club,

  6 I was so desperate I would have agreed to just about anything—cleaning her bathrooms, watching the grass grow in her backyard, something smarmy and vaguely illegal involving suburban prostitution, whatever.

  I didn’t quite know what a Scrabble club was, but I assumed it was a group of people enjoying friendly games of Scrabble on a Saturday afternoon. I told my mother I was going to play Scrabble and she laughed, called me a geek, her accent wrapping around the word strangely. I was roundly mocked by my brothers, who were always the popular kids while I was the shunned nerd, a fact they gleefully reminded me of as they made a series of increasingly absurd Scrabble-related jokes, like, “You sure are going through a DRY SPELL.” The man I left behind said, “Come home. You’re freaking me out.” I ignored them all.

  My colleague Daiva and her husband, Marty, live in a large home in a wooded neighborhood on the very edge of our very small town. Everything is modern and unique and interesting to look at—slick leather chairs, pottery, African art. In their finished basement, there is enough space for ten to twenty people, sometimes more, to get together once a month to play Scrabble all day.

  Marty

  7 is a nationally ranked player, top fifteen. He knows every word ever invented as well as each word’s meaning. If you give him a seven-letter combination, he’ll tell you all the possible anagrams. I would not be surprised to learn he thinks in anagrams. There are thirty-nine possible Scrabble words in “anagram.”8

  When you are new to the club, Marty carefully explains the rules of competitive Scrabble, and rules, there are many. You have to keep score. When you have completed your turn, you have to press a button on a game timer. You have to monitor time because there are penalties if you exceed twenty-five total minutes for your plays. There’s a proper etiquette for drawing tiles (tile bag held above your eyes, head turned away).

  9 There’s a procedure if you draw too many tiles. There’s a protocol for challenging if you believe your opponent has played a phony, a word that isn’t in the Official Tournament and Club Word List.10

  As Marty told me all these rules that first day, I laughed and rolled my eyes like an asshole and struggled to take any of it seriously. Until that day, my Scrabble playing had mostly involved drinking, friends, crazy made-up words, haphazard score keeping, and never ever any time constraints. It was an innocent time.

  People slowly filed in with large round cases. One woman’s case was wheeled, like a suitcase. They set their cases on tables and pulled out custom turntable Scrabble boards, timers, tile bags, and racks. They got out their scoring sheets and personal tokens. The games started, and the room hushed. I realized this was no time to crack jokes. I realized Scrabble is very serious business.

  I have a Scrabble nemesis. His name is Henry.

  11 He has the most gorgeous blue-gray eyes I have ever seen. The beauty of his perfect eyes only makes me hate him more. He has been known to wear a fanny pack and often scowls. Nemeses aren’t born. They are made.

  Shortly after I started playing with my local Scrabble club, Marty told me about a charity tournament he holds in Danville, said it would be a great experience for me to play. I had nothing to lose so I agreed. I had no idea what to expect as I walked into the main building of the community college in Danville. After I registered, I stood awkwardly, wondering what to do, until my club friends took mercy on me and showed me the lay of tournament land.

  Serious Scrabble people study words and remember matches from eight years ago where they played a word for 173 points. They remember when they didn’t challenge a phony and lost the match. They remember everything. Some serious Scrabble players are poor losers. I am a good loser. I love Scrabble so much I don’t care if I lose. I also have to be a good loser because I lose a lot, so practicality plays a role. Unlike most serious Scrabble players, I don’t have the patience to study all the possible three- and four-letter words, fo
r example, but still, I am extremely competitive.

  12 It’s an awkward combination.

  I began the tournament thinking, I am going to win this tournament. I approach most things in life with a dangerous level of confidence to balance my generally low self-esteem. This helps me as a writer. Each time I submit a story to fancy magazines like, say, The New Yorker or The Paris Review, I think, This story is totally going to get published.

  My heart gets broken more than it should.

  After getting all my paperwork and such, I looked around at the other word nerds. I felt like people were checking me out. I was prepared to reenact the beginning of “Beat It” when everyone is silently stalking one another, trying to size up the competition. There were thirty-two players, four groups (based on ranking) with eight players in each. We would play seven rounds to determine the one Scrabble player to rule them all. The tournament director read off the name of each person in each group along with his or her seed. He read my name last, and I understood my place. I was the lowest-ranked (worst) player in the room.

  13 I was the last kid who would be picked for dodge ball.

  I sat down for my first round with the top seed in my division, and she was pretty cocky. I was too, or I was trying to project cockiness and calm. My hands were shaking under the table I was so nervous. My primary ambition was to not humiliate myself, make any missteps where Scrabble etiquette is concerned,

  14 or shame the members of my Scrabble club, several of whom were in attendance.

  My opponent looked up and said, “I was in the next highest division yesterday.” The gauntlet was thrown. She said it with a kind, warm smile, but she was trying to intimidate me. I could tell by the way her upper lip curled. Well played. I wondered if I could purchase adult diapers at the nearest gas station.

  The tournament started, and I managed to spell my words and use the timer correctly. I got into a rhythm. I placed a bingo.

  15 I was feeling good. My skin flushed warmly with early success. I started thinking I had a chance. Then Number-One Seed proceeded to wipe the board with my ass; the final score was 366–277. I smiled and shook her hand, but a small piece of my soul was destroyed. I thought, Je suis désoleé.

  When I composed myself, I took stock of what had happened. I played decently and had two bingos overall. There was simply nothing I could do. I kept drawing terribly (JVK) and getting outplayed, and she was so damn confident the entire time. Worse yet, Number-One Seed played me better than she played the game.

  16 At the beginning of the match, she asked if I was a student.17 I said, “No, I teach writing,” and she said, “Oh, I’m in trouble,” pretending to be the weaker prey. Here’s the thing. I play poker. I know a bluff when I see one. Once she got going, she kept smirking, letting me know her foot was leaving an ugly mark on my neck.

  I was determined to win my second match because I am that competitive and I have pride and winning feels way better than losing. My opponent was really quiet and taciturn. It was not fun playing her. I slaughtered her 403–229 and I wanted to scream I was so happy. I was very tempted to jump on the table and shout, “IN YOUR FACE.” For the sake of sportsmanship, I remained quiet and polite and thanked her for the game. She coldly walked away without so much as a by-your-leave. Later, as I drove home, I did gloat. I gloated a lot.

  The third match was with a woman I play regularly. She’s really nice and we get along well. She always beats me, and that day would be no exception—score: 390–327. My ambitious, delusional goal of winning the tournament was faltering. There were four matches left after the break, so before resuming play, we had lunch and I ate a vegetable sandwich. I told Daiva, the woman who had introduced me to the craziness of competitive Scrabble, “I’m going to win this tournament.” She gave me the saddest look, as if to say, There, there, crazy little Scrabble baby.

  There’s something to be said for the delusion of confidence. I won my next four matches (389–312; 424–244; 352–312; 396–366). I was a demon. I had my word mojo. I was seeing bingos everywhere and making smart, tight plays, blocking triple-play lanes and tracking perfectly.

  18 With each win, I felt increasingly invincible. I wanted to beat my chest. I was also trying to distract myself.

  In the middle of the night, hours before the tournament began, I received a frantic call from my mother, the kind of call, as your parents get older, you hope to never receive. My normally healthy father had to be rushed to the hospital—chest pains and shortness of breath. My first instinct was to say, “I am coming home,” but fortunately, my youngest brother lives nearby and was able to be there. Throughout the tournament, I was getting updates on my father’s condition, trying to reassure my mother that everything would be fine.

  19 I was trying not to lose my shit20 completely. There are 227 possible Scrabble words in “completely.”

  In my last match of the day, it became clear the winner of our match would win the entire tournament for our division. This is how my nemesis was born.

  Henry with the beautiful, piercing blue-gray eyes was sly like a fox. At the start of the match, he kept playing two-letter words, so I did the same. We were stalking each other around a cage. You know the naked fight scene in Eastern Promises? It was like that, only we weren’t criminals, naked, or in a Turkish bath, and I was the only one with a number of visible tattoos. He wore a T-shirt that read, “World’s Best Scrabble Player.” It was the T-shirt that made me extra motivated to win. The level of competition was very strong, and as the game unfolded, my excitement grew.

  As the second seed, Henry the Nemesis was confident he would defeat me. I could smell the confidence on him. He reeked of it. I played three bingos during the course of the match. He tried to play TREKING21 for 81 points, but I knew that was not a word. “Trekking” takes two Ks. I challenged. He rolled his eyes like he couldn’t believe I had the nerve to challenge his bad spelling. My hands shook as I typed his word into the computer. I won the challenge. By the end of the match, he was irate and I was giddy. When I won, he realized he wasn’t going to win the tournament and had fallen to third place. Because I was seeded so low, his ranking was going to take a hit. He refused to shake my hand and stalked off angrily. I thought he was going to throw the table over. Male anger makes me intensely uncomfortable, so I tried to sit very still and hoped the uncomfortable moment would pass quickly. Henry’s bad sportsmanship did not temper my mood for long. I won my first tournament despite being the lowest-seeded22 player in the field and took home a small cash prize. The size of my ego for the following week was difficult to measure. It would not last, though. What Scrabble giveth, another player, at another tournament, will taketh away.

  When you succeed early at an endeavor, you convince yourself you will easily replicate that success. Ask child actors.23 Three months later, I played in another tournament, the Arden Cup, a twenty-match, two-and-a-half-day affair where I won eight games and lost twelve. I learned a lot. I especially learned that it is insane to believe you will walk into a competitive tournament, among a much larger field, with a fragile and inflated ranking, and somehow win that tournament.

  Henry the Nemesis was in attendance, as was a host of equally intriguing and intense players who would get under my skin nearly as much as Henry does. My least favorite player was Donnie,24 who tried to mansplain Scrabble because he didn’t recognize me25 and took me for a neophyte. As we sat down to start our match, he said, “Now, you just play this the same way you play Scrabble at home.” I made it my life’s purpose, right then, to destroy him. Another opponent asked if we should play at his board or mine. When I told him I didn’t have my own set, he gave me a pitying look.26 I quickly realized I was swimming with Scrabble sharks. I was the blood in the water.

  There was one redemptive moment despite the humiliation of that tournament, one where I lost so many times the matches blended into a depressing blur, where I lost mostly to mansplainers who defined words27 even though I did not ask for definitions, regaled me with
tales of their sordid Scrabble histories, and otherwise drove me crazy. I beat Henry the Nemesis again. We played twice during the tournament—he won a game and I won a game. At the end of our second game, the one I won, he stood and pointed at me. He said, “You’ve won two out of three times. Two. Out. Of. Three.” I looked down, bit my lower lip to keep from smiling my face off.

  “I wasn’t keeping track,” I said.28

  I excused myself and ran to the restroom, where in the privacy of my stall, I whispered, “I beat you, I beat you, I beat you.” There was fist pumping.

  And so. My third tournament started brutally and the brutality was unrelenting. I ended up winning six matches (one was a bye) and losing six and took fifteenth place. My friends told me that was a good outcome. I’m pretty sure they were just being nice given the increased fragility of my Scrabble ego.

  I did not get to play my nemesis, but he was there and he performed well. I took that personally.

  A new nemesis was also made early during that tournament. In my first match of the day, I was tired. I had slept for only three hours after a late night in the city with friends. I am not a morning person. I did not have time to find the nearest Starbucks. I could not find any dollar bills to buy a Diet Pepsi. I could not find my Visine. I was hungover—gin, which doesn’t settle well with me the day after. My stomach kept turning uncomfortably. I was drowsy. If I closed my eyes, I would simply fall into an uncomfortable sleep. I was a mess.