Page 27 of Niccolo

“That’s not checkmate. I can still do this,” I said as I moved my bishop to block the attack.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. Once he recovered, he took the bishop with his queen and stuck out his hand again. “Checkmate.”

“No,” I said, irritated, as I captured his queen with my knight.

Again, he looked stunned.

Then he did something inexplicable to me: he rearranged the pieces on the board. “Well, ifthispiece were here, andthatpiece were there, then it’d be checkmate.”

And he stuck out his hand again.

“But those pieces WEREN’T there,” I snapped as I moved the pieces back.

He started insulting me, telling me I was just a girl. I told him he was an idiot. My father came over and yelled at both of us without bothering to hear my side of the story.

From that experience, I took away several lessons:

Boys were stupid jerks.

They would cheat if you let them.

And no one in the world would treat you fairly. No one.

Those lessons repeated themselves almost ten years later, with far more devastating results than just getting yelled at.

13

Iwas very intelligent growing up… but I was also introverted and socially awkward. As a result, I didn’t fit in with kids my own age.

I didn’t have any friends at school, male or female. I certainly never made friends with any of the nerds at my father’s Wednesday night classes.

It didn’t bother me that much at first. I had Papa and chess.

However, the divide between me and my peers grew wider as I got older.

Girls at my school started going boy-crazy around the age of 11.

Me?

I detested boys.

The ones at my school were stupid. The cuter they were, usually the dumber they were.

The ones at chess club were nerds and geeks and smelled like they never bathed.

And they always thought they wereso muchsmarter than girls just because they had a penis.

I think that was one of the reasons I never had any interest in dating them.

In fact, throughout my teens and early twenties, I wasn’t attracted toanyone.

I didn’t masturbate, either. Not for any religious reasons – my family weren’t church-goers – but simply because I never got turned on by anything, and therefore wasn’t curious enough to try.

No one seemed to be attracted to me, either. Not that I put in any effort. I didn’t wear makeup, I didn’t give a damn about my hair, my clothes were baggy and unflattering, and my black-rimmed glasses looked like something a 50-year-old male electrical engineer might wear.

So it’s not like I had any suitors that might spark an interest in me.

I encountered the term ‘ace,’ slang for asexual, for the first time when I was 17.

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