Dead Stones [manxman] [boyxboy]

Go tournament

The go tournament is a pageant of anxiety, boisterous shrills, go mothers idling with go wives in Korean or Japanese or Chinese, the toddlers gamboling around the go cake, the out-of-towners who came especially for free lunch, and the masseuses making their rounds kneading away desperation into smiles.

Luke comes to the front desk where people are typing away on laptops to prepare game pairings.  He asks to enter as six kyu; the past week has been light on practice and heavy on ennui. But Brett angles up from behind the front desk and says, “Hao said you’re entering as two kyu.”

“Two kyu sounds hard.” Luke eyes the carton of muffins on a table.

“We’ll keep you there for now. If it’s too hard, your next opponent will be of weaker rank.  You’ll keep dropping until you find your level. No harm done.” 

Luke’s head lops at a woeful angle, and he slinks away to the breakfast table.  He is partial to his chemical noodle diet: cup ramen stroganoff, cup ramen waldorf, cup ramen a la king. But for the past week his stomach gurgles at the pinging saltiness of sodium guanylate and demands something less caustic.  He eats a muffin, a chocolate chip muffin, and ponders a recipe for a peanut butter muffin. His eyes scan the yellow rows of go boards dotted with the burgundy red game clocks. 

After another three muffins and a sleepy starter game against Cindy, Luke is seated with his first opponent for the day. The opponent calls himself Henry, says he drove from Sacramento, boasts he’s a solid two kyu and perhaps a one dan on a lucky day, keeps clearing a dry throat.  Words, words fall over Luke’s ears like the dry leaves.

The speakers belch with a masculine voice gabbing about the good, great, grand morning then spits the game rules: Ing Counting, forty-five minutes on the clock with five periods of ten-second byo-yomi.

Henry asks Luke, “Ing counting looks complicated.  Could we go with Japanese counting instead?”

Ing counting indeed sounds complicated as Luke’s mind wanders from table to table for the suited fellows that might be Hao. 

“Sure.” Luke mulls the contraption of a clock to his left.  “I press the white button and you start?”

“Yes.  Whenever you’re ready.”

Luke yawns and presses.  Henry plays black on the hoshi point, the four, four, point. A beginning that hints for the Chinese Opening which emphasizes fast development and a moyo strategy, a strategy for use of spacey territorial frameworks instead of a frugal game of tight territory hoarding.  Should he spoil the intended Chinese Opening or go ahead and continue with the moyo strategy?

Luke’s stomach flattens with hunger pangs.  It disturbs him how he has been feeling ruthlessly hungry all week, then Henry heads him a tense smile.  The regulars from his club are thumbing him good luck from their seats.  A row of bright teeth is squashing Cindy’s face.  The room empties of its murmur, and clicks of stone against wood swarm over the grumbles of the central air conditioning.  The lingering taste of chocolate is acerbic on his tongue. Something feels off-kilter as if he is waiting for his mom to smile in satisfaction over the mac and cheese he prepared for her. But the game needs his move and the paralysis of analysis is setting in.  Hao’s voice echoes in, saying his brain’s mud, it’s a stinky egg, it’s congee.

Now the room is void and his opponent is a blur, but there’s a delightful heat glowing in his groin. Right at the base of his spine, a tingle, a flush, a bundle of blithe neurons firing.  An erection is warm and hard against his thigh and the second move is yet to be played and the clock shows five minutes elapsed on his time. Still he eases his soul with savage thrusts into Hao’s poor mouth, the runaway intensity with which his body decries against his twelve-month melancholy. It is all right he came onto Hao. He is, after all, young and very male.

But he is also a careless, heartless man who is undeserving of peace and pleasure.  Why did it take Lisa’s twenty moans of ‘no’ against his twenty plates of mac and cheese for him to have figure out that cup ramen noodles were the perfect palliative against chemotherapy-induced nausea? All delight and heat escape from him, leaving his soul a flaccid balloon, and in swarms a confusion of groans and languishing swoons for him to return him his father. He’s limp, he’s damp, he can’t think. The game’s a mistake. The tournament’s a mistake.

 “Excuse me.” Luke flits for the front desk and asks Brett about cancelling his registration.

“Why? You haven’t even played yet. Nerves taking over?”

“No, sir. I just don’t feel well enough.”

“Hao’s going to be disappointed. He has been excited about your performance.”

The mention of Hao flares memories of Hao’s house, the convex view of a night sky floating stars beyond the ceiling, Hao’s mindless nods to Yuu’s defecating political maxims, his tongue rolling around the salty sweet bolus of barbecue pork buns, and his stares at the wall clock, 9:30, 9:35, 9:37 …. His pulse silent and anticipating a distant noise to alert him of Ricardo’s entrance and to usher him home—home where ghosts were waiting with barbed wire. 

But the minutes exhausted his weak pulse, and his eyes welcome the oval palace of Hao’s mouth—open, ready, perfect.  And as soon as Yuu skipped away from the dinner table, cooing to his phone, “I missed you, chouchou,” Luke asked Hao, “do you think you can fellate me sometime?”

Hao’s mouth collapsed shut and a shadow ate up half his face.  “Don’t be so careless, my son’s around!”

“He isn’t here now, so I asked.”

Hao checked himself, reformed himself with a curmudgeon’s smile. “Maybe after you become six dan.”

Before Brett’s narrowing gaze, surrounded by the dull showers of stones clinking, Luke is feeling the heat of that night again.  He shuffles away to the restroom. The room feels empty and its black tile sheens a harsh white in the light.  He barrels into a stall and proceeds to whisk away at the meddlesome development. His feelings inches to clarity on every stroke. Hao is being needlessly inflexible on his request; he will have to confront him on that.  His house feels dark and small and muggy and dreary.  He should tune up his car. He should open the blinds and welcome the sun. He should ask Ted if he’d like to learn go. He should prepare himself a three-course meal. Herein lies the secret of life: Taking and enjoying and throwing away. He knows it so well from his parents, why insist with the impotent routines of lethargy?

Wretchedly, he pants a climax across porcelain and chrome.  He cleans up sanguinely and quickly.  He returns to his seat, barely smiles at the masseuses with rabbits nestled in their bosoms, and twenty minutes has elapsed on his clock.   Henry conceals barely a victorious smirk, and yet Luke feels brilliant, liberatingly brilliant.