SEXIS WRONG

you’re in bed and trying to figure out what will please this particular
lover best. In both chess and sex, you use that intuition
to break down the other, bring them to their knees in one way
or another, whether it’s defeat or ecstasy.
Chess is a sort of acid test for me. I once beat a man who was
foolish enough to think that he could sacrifice his queen and
still win. He was wrong, and I never slept with him. When my
now-ex-husband and I played, the tension was so high that a
house full of out-of-town guests bailed like rats off a sinking
ship. I won, but it wasn’t worth it. I still married him, but that
wasn’t worth it, either. I played with a woman who was trying
to seduce me out from under him, and I won both games. I
played with a good friend, a close game that I lost due to the
aforementioned carelessness, and wished that things were
different, and going to bed with him was a reasonable proposition.
I once dated a man who beat me consistently at chess. The
games drove me insane. I’m extremely competitive, and although
I’m usually a good loser, I’m not happy about losing
all the time. I started to get reckless on the board, just like
he was reckless in bed. Actually, “in bed” is a bit of a misnomer
here. He liked a lot of different places, like playgrounds,
stalls in communal showers, deserted buildings, and
wooded areas. He did things to me that no one has
done before or since, things that I have missed like
hell even though he never took them quite far enough.
But on the chessboard, he pushed me harder, backed me into
corners, mated me, and I grew addicted to that.
This, I think, is where the heart of my attraction to chess lies.
I like the chase. I like to take and be taken. It’s not a physical
thing, although I’m not averse to a good wrestling match, nor
is it quite BDSM, although I’m not averse to the judicious use
of restraint. What I like is to play with power. I like to win. I like
to mate someone or, failing that, tell him that if he moves I’ll
stop and then make it impossible for him not to move. But I
also like to lose, especially when the game is very close. I like
to surrender, but only after a good fight.
It’s the men’s game that is taken seriously, but there have
been some excellent women chess players. Russian-born
Vera Menchik was the women’s world champion from 1927
until her death in 1944 during a bombing raid in Kent. Hungarian
Judit Polgar, the reigning women’s chess champion,
became a Grandmaster at the age of fifteen years and four
months, beating the record previously set by Bobby Fischer,
and is currently ranked the twenty-third best player in the
world, male or female. In 1998, she beat Anatoly Karpov,
then the FIDE World Champion, in a rapid-play match. But
perhaps the most memorable game played by a man and a
woman—at least from an erotic point of view—was between
Jacqueline Armand and Robespierre.
During the summer of 1793 in France, mere nobility was a
capital offense, and that was to be the fate of Jacqueline’s
fiancé, a duke. In desperation, she cut off her hair so she
could enter the men-only café where Robespierre liked to
play chess. When the seat in front of him became vacant,
she took it, asking a special favor if she won, offering money
if she lost.
Legend has it that he knew the real stakes from the very beginning,
but one wonders when Robespierre realized that his
opponent was a woman. Was it a slim, manicured finger hesitating
over a piece? The beardless chin resting on a clenched
fist? The hint of curve under her shirt or a mouth that was too
soft and too round? As the story goes, he said nothing until
the end of the game, which he lost in spite of a material advantage.
What did he think when she requested as her prize
I like the chase. I like to take and
be taken.
the life of a fiancé instead of a father or a brother? Would he
have taken her money if she had lost, or would he have asked
a special favor of her, perhaps offering the life she wanted
in return? In any case, he honored his word. Her lover went
free.
I have never played tournament chess, but I imagine the
stakes would be too high to be thinking about anything but
the game. In the casual matches I’ve played, however, if
there’s the slightest attraction between my opponent and
me, the temperature starts to rise whether or not there is an
active seduction. If there is, the game becomes much more
than a game and the closer it is, the hotter it gets.
About halfway through the game with the woman I mentioned
earlier, I knew that if she won, I would go to bed with
her if she asked, even though it was the eve of my wedding,
and when she lost, she knew that it would never happen. But
we never said a word. We just played chess.
MAKING MOVES 117