Chapter 1

Okay. So I'm a nerd. Or is it geek? According to Wiki, a nerd is "a person overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired." So, two out of three for me: I'm not obsessive. And a geek is "an expert or a person obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit." Like I said, I'm not obsessive. So maybe I'm a 'gerd' or a 'neek'?

I'm William Joseph Michaels, known as Bill. My father was William and my grandfather was Joe. Please, do not go into the Billy Joe jokes. I never tell anyone my middle name for that reason. My parents always said that they'd name their kids so that it would go with 'Now, riding a tough bronc, coming out of chute 2 ... Billy Michaels' OR 'The senate today approved the nomination for the Supreme Court of William J. Michaels.'

They did it with my sister, too. She was two years younger than me and named Amanda Clarice Michaels. Amanda was my mother's mother, and Clarice was my dad's mother. 'Chute 2 ... Mandy Michaels' or 'Associate Justice Amanda C. Michaels.' It works.

I don't think you should ever name your kid something weird. If your last name is Beech, don't call your daughter Sandy. If it's Lane, don't call her Penny. Stay away from Moon or Starshine – unless you're a famous musician. You get the picture. I think people should have regular names, if at all possible. Don't get me wrong: I don't discriminate against people based on their names. One of the greatest guys on the chess team was named "-el"; his mother used to say 'The dash isn't silent, so it's 'Dashel.' He's a black dude – surprised? No, I'm not a racist – just presenting reality. He went by his middle name Shawn. I guess his mom was hooked on Ebonics. Can you just see the headlines in the Washington Post? 'Associate Justice Approved by Senate –el S. Carruthers'.

He was second board on the five person chess team. I was, naturally, first board. I don't mean to sound stuck up – I was just better at chess than he was. He was rated 1970 in the USCF (that the U.S. Chess Federation) rankings, and I had earned a 2045 at the most recent U.S. Open, held in Chicago. I'd gotten lucky with a Sicilian Defense, Dragon Variation, in Round 7 against last year's runner up, and if I'd finished with two draws I might have placed first, but I got a draw and a loss to an International Master (rated 2530). It was a complicated positional game coming out of the King's Indian Defense, and he just ground me slowly to bits. Sorry. Not interesting to most people, I know. Let's just say I was a damned good chess player and Shawn was nearly as good. The IM was in another class entirely.

Third board on the Berkeley chess team was Stephanie Bridges. (Thank god she wasn't named 'Brooklyn.' Sorry again. I'm easily distracted.) Steph was pretty good (1812 rating) and pretty, period. She usually won her matches by playing well and wearing something that showed a lot of cleavage. An advantage is an advantage. She didn't really try to work on her chess; she just naturally played well. Can a person 'work on their chess'? Yes, of course. ANYTHING that a human being can do, can be worked on and improved. But Steph didn't.

She was just gorgeous, too. Long sable hair that came nearly to her ass. Creamy complexion with dark green eyes. Perfectly formed mouth. Her face was an oval shape and she had angular planes that showed off her cheekbones. A smile that could light a thousand homes. Breasts like beautiful cantaloupe halves that rode high on her chest. Long, willowy legs that she enhanced by always wearing short dresses and high heels, or short shorts, or – god help me – skin tight jeans. Oh My God. And she was tall enough, too: about 5'8", so depending on her heels she came close enough to my 6'1" to be just right ... Would have been just right, if anything ever developed – which it never did. I'm a 'neek, ' remember?

I could go on, but I think you've got the idea. I was stupid in lust. Or in love. Certainly too stupid to ever say anything to her outside the 'chess game analysis' sphere. Maybe I'd get to 'see you next time.'

She was out of my class. Not that I was a schlub. 6'1" as I noted previously. I had sandy hair that the campus barber took care to keep fairly short. My last growth spurt, just last summer between my 2nd and 3rd years, had left me painfully thin; and, of course, I wore glasses. Don't all neeks or gerds or whatever? I was on the chess team, argued my way onto the debate team, dabbled at the scrabble club, and tried to swim a mile and a half three times a week. On Saturdays, I played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Not the computer game, the FtF (face to face) version. It's the Grand Daddy of all the role playing games. It requires skill, virtue, perseverance, imagination and a deft touch with multi-sided dice. Of course, I had to keep up with my scholastic work, too: I was in the six year program; that would give me a PhD, and MS and a BS at the end – all in Electronics Engineering. Yup. I was a computer nerd. Worse, an engineering computer nerd.

Where did I find the time to do all that? Simple really. I had zero social life. Couldn't afford the time. Couldn't afford the money it takes to impress a girl on a date, either – the stipend that came with my scholarship only went so far. And I was so shy that it didn't matter anyway.

Except for Stephanie Bridges. Until a certain day, she didn't matter at all. And then she did.

In northern California, at Berkeley, January days can be either delightful sweater-weather, or dismal, fog enshrouded damp days that didn't quite call for a rain slicker; but if you went without one, you'd be soaked if you walked a block. Literally, you were walking through low-hanging clouds. The chess team always met on Wednesdays for practice before a Friday match. What? You didn't think chess teams practiced? We did, discussing opening variations and end game studies. We were playing Stanford this month. The match was to be at neutral grounds, the San Francisco Chess Club. They had two masters on their team, but the rest of them weren't so strong; so we had a good chance to win. We were evenly matched at the top: me and Shawn playing the Masters, and the others on our team outclassing their 'others.'

There were five on the team, so we played a series of games against each other, when we practiced. Our coach was there, too, but he felt it would be better to play against other team members. Truth was, he was not that good, but he could help us deal with the stress of playing high-caliber chess. In our practice games, we played serious games without a chess clock, but not exactly skittles games either. I was playing black against Shawn, and Steph was watching. I forced us into the French Defense, and I saw Steph get out a crossword puzzle book. She didn't much like closed positions with slow developing themes. At move 18, I tried something out of the standard variations. It didn't lead to much for me and I lost 30 moves later.

She took my place vs. Shawn, and put the book down. I noticed that she'd finished one puzzle and was working on another. I picked it up.

"You mind?" I asked her, gesturing at the book.

"Not at all," she said.

In my mind, this was a significant exchange between me and a girl. Then I had an idea. I took the puzzle book out to the copier and made two copies of one page. When I got back, I set up a chess clock, punched the button to start it timing me, and went to work on the crossword. When I finished, I wrote my time on the virgin copy of the puzzle – 14 minutes, 33 seconds, by the way – and left it for Steph, propped up against the chess clock. Then I set up the pieces to play against the fourth and fifth board players simultaneously. (It looks hard, but believe me, it's not – at least not for me. I won both games easily.)

Shawn won against Steph again, and I sat down to play him once more, with the white pieces this time. Steph looked around for her puzzle book and saw my challenge. She worked on the puzzle while I worked on Shawn. We got into a wild Greco Counter Gambit, or the Latvian Gambit, as it's known in Europe – and there were pieces hanging in precarious positions all over the board. On move 27 I finally castled late, and on the queen-side – I guess he hadn't expected that – and in five more moves it was all over but the shouting. Of course, nobody ever shouts at a chess match, but...

Shawn and I looked up to find the other three players standing around a board where they were trying out variations after my surprise move. Shawn and I joined them. Harry Slossen, our fifth board player, suggested a bishop sacrifice, and we all agreed that that would have been a killing shot. No way out. If I took the bishop it left me exposed, and if I declined to take it, it was even worse.

"I'm not good enough to find that sac (sacrifice) over the board," Shawn submitted. Probably the IM who beat me in Chicago would have found it.

Anyway, enough about the antics of the chess team. I didn't start this journal to talk about that. I told you, I'm easily distracted.

Stephanie handed me back her version of the crossword puzzle and said, "You skunked me! I'll get you next time." She had written 'Bill' next to my time and underneath was 'Steph 17 min 3 sec.'

The next day, she found me at the student union, trying to read through some MIT asshole's doctorate dissertation on atomic processors. She stood next to the armchair I was sitting in and waited. Eventually, I noticed her feet – they were almost in my line of sight.

Three inch heels. I looked further up. Skinny-legged jeans, painted on. Long sleeved top of faux-suede that had a zippered front; a top that let a small amount of her belly show when she moved. Need I add that I noticed the zipper was open to about nipple level, showing a nice expanse of cleavage? Her hair was done up in a simple braid that she had hanging down the left side of her chest. She must have left the computer nerds in her classes panting: she was 'studying' to be a programmer or systems analyst.

She was holding a sheet of paper out to me, just waiting for me to notice her. Not many in the world would have failed to notice her immediately, but ... what can I say? I was socially crippled, and it was a complicated monograph. I smiled up at her and took the paper. It was a Sudoku puzzle with her time at the top: 'Steph 9 min 41 sec' and under that it just said 'Bill' with enough room for me to put my time down.

"Okay. You're on," I said.

"Tomorrow at lunch?" she replied, with that thousand watt smile.

"Can't until 4:30. I got a lab."

"And I can't meet you that late. Got a dinner date," she said. "Bring it to the Stanford match, then."

She went on her way, and I resumed reading.

Well, I was just crummy at Sudoku. It took me 13 minutes 18 seconds. That left the tally at one to one in our 'puzzle battle.' After the chess match on Friday (which by the way, we won: 4 to 1. I had the only loss.), I gave Steph the Sudoku paper back with my time, and the further inscription '1:1'. I also gave her a fairly long jumble-type puzzle. It was a seventeen letter phrase and you had to make as many other five or six letter words out of the same letters in under three minutes. At the top of the page I'd written 'Bill 16 words'.

"Tomorrow noon at the student union?" she asked.

"Can't. I'm in an AD&D game from noon on – 'til the dark hours."

"What's AD&D?" she innocently asked. Heads turned among the spectators and players alike; they were aghast. Lot of nerds at the San Francisco Chess Club.

"Oh, you poor child!" I exclaimed in false sympathy. "You know not of the greatest role playing game ever created? Come, young innocent miss, and I shall explain to you about 20-sided dice and the importance of Armor Class." I put my arm around her – jokingly.

She leaned into my shoulder a little. "Okay, I accept. You can take me to dinner."

A quick look around showed many geekly and nerdy guys flashing me a thumbs up sign.

That little joke changed my life.

I explained the basics of the game – mostly that it was about imagination. She said that AD&D sounded interesting, but she couldn't make it this Saturday (tomorrow). But how about next week?

I thought about it for a pico-second (one thousandth of a nano-second ... a trillion picos make a second), and said sure. The other AD&Ders in the group would love to have a goddess to drool over; I'd tell the DM (dungeon master – he runs the game) about a new addition so he'd have enough time to weave her into the tapestry of the game.

On Saturday, I went to the AD&D game, rolled dice and pretended to be an axe-swinging dwarf for about thirteen hours. I went back to my one bedroom apartment (yes, the stipend I got from the scholarship/fellowship from Ajax Chips paid for an apartment) and pounded the books on Sunday.

On Monday, I got up at 5:00, swam for about two hours or fifty laps of the Berkeley 50 meter pool, which ever came first, and went back to my grind: class, prep for the next class, lunch, class, scrabble club, back home to work on my idea for a dissertation. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Only now, the 'lunch' part of my routine was interrupted by Stephanie Bridges coming over and dropping off, or picking up, another sheet of my/her challenge. Chess matches were only about one per month, so that didn't interrupt this schedule much. Steph started coming over for AD&D every other week. It was a strain on the group to have an irregular character dropping in, but they worked it out. Hey, the Wiki definition of geeks and nerds included 'obsessive' so, an occasional drop-in player would upset their sense of order. But ... like, a bunch of nerds wouldn't work it out to have gorgeous Steph in the same room with them for thirteen hours or so? Nobody else in the group had jeans so tight that she showed a camel-toe. Thank heavens.

The 'off' weekend she dated. On Fridays, she dated. Maybe she dated on other nights, too. Maybe keeping up with her classes was like chess for her – maybe she didn't have to work hard. I know she didn't have to watch her pennies and she didn't have a full schedule of activities like I did. (Ha!) So she had an active social life.