My other, older woman

Tina and I meet weekly for long evenings of passion. She's 80 and I'm 30 -- but my wife doesn't mind: Tina is my bridge partner.

Editor's note: The following essay is excerpted from "The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer's Journey Into the World of Bridge" by Edward McPherson and published by Harper Collins. © 2007 by Edward McPherson.

By Edward McPherson

Read more: Relationships, Life

Aug. 4, 2007 | For more than two years, I have been seeing another woman. Her name is Tina. I'm thirty; she's in her eighties. We meet once or twice a week in Manhattan for strenuous assignations that last anywhere from three to four hours. Our evenings together are heated affairs, marathons of passion, deceit, nuance, aggression, joy, sorrow, laughter, shame, and -- above all else -- snacks. We're very serious. We meet at the bridge club: Tina is my partner.

I am a young player in what has become -- despite a few high-profile examples to the contrary (see the guys from Radiohead) -- an older person's card game. I began as a clueless bridge neophyte and learned to play when I decided I wanted to write a book about it: a first-person look at a former national pastime that has been eclipsed by poker, but still thrives (to the tune of 25 million U.S. players) in some highly unusual pockets, kept alive by small town social games, million-dollar Las Vegas tournaments, and billionaire hobbyists. (Into the last category fall the world's two richest men, Warren Buffett -- who calculates he spends 10 percent of his productive time playing bridge -- and Bill Gates, who together share a bridge coach and play online under the pseudonyms "T-Bone" and "Chalengr," respectively.)

In the U.S., the average age of a bridge player is estimated at fifty-one, but bridge is hardly just a mannered game for the mature. The competitive hotheads I met at bridge clubs exhibited the antisocial aggression of rugby players. Learning to play was intimidating, terrifying, and addictive. Indeed, bridge makes the game of my generation -- poker -- look like child's play.

In bridge, four players compete in two teams of two. For each team, the goal is to bid on and then win a certain number of "tricks." During the bidding, which happens before the card play begins, partners employ sophisticated systems that function as very specific code. Through a combination of bids ("one spade," "three hearts," etc.), they exchange detailed information about their hands -- what they have, what they don't have, their high cards, their longest suit, and so on -- all the while trying to bid the "correct" number of tricks they think they can win, given a certain trump suit (or lack thereof). The more intricate the system, the greater the precision, but even the most complex methods are overwhelmed by staggering odds when trying to discuss the 635,013,559,600 possible hands a player might be dealt. Still partners work to refine their private language, all before a single card is played. It's perhaps telling that while computers can now actually teach us humans to play better chess, they still absolutely stink at bridge.

The key to bridge is the partnership. Enter Tina, a quiet elderly woman with a neat coif of gray hair. When I met her at my first bridge class, I pretty much pigeonholed her as the sweet grandmotherly type. Then, weeks later, I overheard the table behind me discussing her short new haircut. A perky young schoolteacher said to her -- in a pleasant but ultimately patronizing voice -- "Tina, I love your new 'do!" It was a throwaway comment, just pleasantries before class, to which Tina responded with a deadpan, "I look like Caesar." Conversation over.

After that, I began trying to play more with Tina, getting to class early to snag a seat at her table. Whereas many of our classmates were loud and bossy, she was polite and unassuming, though her wry asides continued. We struck up a friendship.

As a rule, Tina seemed reluctant to talk about herself, but in time I learned she was a voracious reader and a dedicated newshound, always up on the latest book review or political coup. She was constantly watching foreign films -- she belonged to both the Spanish society and the French society -- but she wasn't a snob about it. When I asked her about an Argentine movie she went to, the most I could get out of her was, "It had the funniest little dog." The Saturdays she didn't come to the club, she was usually seeing some off-off Broadway show in the East Village. Tina was a political gal. She listened to something called "Peace and Justice Community Radio," because she found mainstream public radio "too moderate." The first time I sat down at the table with a can of Coke, she sighed. After a few weeks she could no longer take it, and she politely asked if I was aware of the evils the Coca-Cola Company perpetrated in Latin America. She was full of dark humor. When one of our instructors promised we would figure bridge out "given twenty-two years or so," Tina told our table, "My time is near. I better get a move on."

And so Tina and I began a bridge-club dance of seduction, a clumsy process akin to middle school dating. Unlike me, Tina was also going to a midday class. It was a wildly popular session, one where it was best to bring a partner. I thought Tina might be fishing for someone to accompany her, maybe even me, but I wasn't sure. In seventh grade, I once gathered up the courage to ask a girl to "go with me" -- the choice phrase at the time for "be my girlfriend" -- and she devastated me with the uncomprehending reply, "Where?" I figured when I got married such moments were behind me. Eventually, Tina and I needed our teacher to step in and make the suggestion. I got Tina's number and called her on the eve of our first date. The answering machine picked up, but when I began leaving a message, pandemonium erupted. Tina got on the line to tell me to hold on -- she didn't know how to turn off the machine. She tried to make it stop, but it began beeping loudly and she didn't want to do anything because she desperately needed to save a message that was on there. She punctuated her explanation with frantic sounds of helplessness ("Ooh, ooh!"), but eventually the tape ran its course. She apologized for screening her calls, offering the cryptic explanation, "I'm trying to avoid these people." Weeks later, after a few more similar episodes, I would find out "these people" were financial advisors calling about an old account of hers. She just wanted them to go away.

When I think of that story -- the elderly technophobe being something of a cliché -- I have to remind myself that while Tina might look little and sweet, she's one tough New York broad. She doesn't bat an eye at walking across town; one night her leg was sore from having hoofed it a mile and a half from First to Tenth Avenue. ("I like to walk," she shrugged.) Every night she takes her keys out of her purse and puts them in her pocket in case her bag is snatched. She is full of such tricks, carrying a wallet but keeping her cash in old envelopes. When I met her, she was eighty-three years old, though she didn't like to advertise that fact because, as she said the first time I asked, "I don't like to tell people. If I tell you, you won't want to do stuff with me."

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