What is Already in Us More Than Ourselves

Why didn’t I suggest Battleship?  K’s father frowned.

K’s father was becoming increasingly annoyed with his adolescent son’s word choices. First it was “duvet,” then “loofah.” Until recently, K’s father enjoyed their weekly Scrabble games, even though–perhaps even because–K’s vocabulary far surpassed his own. But the words that had begun to enter the young boy’s Scrabble lexicon were unsettling. K’s father thought back to K’s winning word last week: “exfoliate.” K’s father frowned again.

How does he even know these words? K’s father knew them, but K’s father knew them for the reasons you probably know the lyrics to some horrible pop song you hate–they’re floating out there in the world, and you’re bound to run into them one way or another, and over and over again. But this was different: K’s use of these words in Scrabble suggested, to K’s father, a level of familiarity and comfort that probably had nothing to do with the reach of popular media. K may have even wanted his father to know that he knew them. But that was probably a stretch, K’s father reasoned to himself.

K’s father watched his son’s eyes absorb the Scrabble board. K’s father imagined letters swirling in K’s head; he further imagined letters bumping into other letters to create effeminate words. K’s father watched his son’s eyes move from the board to his remaining letters and back again. K’s father detected a smirk: K had his next word. After K’s father offered a word hardly worth mentioning, K played it: “chanteuse.” K’s father didn’t know what that word meant; he did know, however, that it was French; he also knew that he didn’t want to know what that word meant.

K’s father had always found it hard to relate to his son. When K was much younger, K’s father tried taking him hiking and canoeing, and camping. K refused to do those things, preferring instead to read at the kitchen table. Recently, K’s father suggested an afternoon at the shooting range. But K had no interest. Sometimes at dinner, K’s father would bring up iconic male figures like John Wayne and Robert Duval, saying stuff like, “These are real men” and “Next time, just ask yourself: WWRDD, What would Robert Duval do?” K’s father expected his son to respond with an eye roll or scoff; K’s son was far too intellectual for that sort of behavior.

Indeed, the term intellectual suggested someone well-read and someone who plays French words during a game of Scrabble. It was also a term that had gained currency in recent years as a euphemism for a man unlike John Wayne and Robert Duval, for a man who probably slept under a duvet and who scrubbed his body with a loofah. K’s father was not an intellectual. He had a college degree–in mineralogy–but preferred to think of himself as “just an old cowboy.” Which was why he had a hard time relating to K. Scrabble, which K’s father brought on a whim one day, seemed to be the only way K’s father could bond with his son. 

K’s father stared at his remaining letters, feeling betrayed by the father-son time he so desperately wanted. K’s father scanned the Scrabble board. Words like “bronzer,” which K had played early in the game, suddenly seemed to take on alternate meanings: a noun, now, rather than a potential adjective. If he were more of an “intellectual,” K’s father could have countered his son’s suspicious vocabulary with his own manly version: bolts, beard, fortress, chainsaw, dirt. While those words hardly count for anything in Scrabble, at least compared to “chanteuse” or “exfoliate,” they would have at least meant something to K’s father–a last stand of sorts. But K’s father’s intelligence aside, it was too late for that. K’s father was going to lose.

The only letters he had to play were: W, W, R, D, D.