Here’s a column that ran in 2006, but today, I’m so jonesin’ for my life in Boston, that it feels apropos to post.
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I spent this past Monday morning, a holiday, lazily finishing what was left from the Sunday NY Times. Sitting outside, a cup of Joe percolating through my veins; the day, the city, seemed full of unforeseen possibility.

Throwing a few pens, a notepad, a book, my journal, and a pack of Marlboro Lights – all the accoutrements of café society — in an oversized bag, I headed off for one of my favorite lazy-day activities – hanging in a café, drinking coffee and writing letters.

I arrived at my occasional Sunday-morning haunt, Main Street News & Books, except this is a Monday remember, and encountered a scene I didn’t know how much I missed: two men sitting at an outdoor table clashing egos across a chess board.

Go ahead and call me a nerd, but I was enchanted.

It’s been so long since I’ve seen anything in this town that even whispered of cerebral engagement, and here were these two men, looking for all the world like misanthropes (what chess players don’t?) dueling it out in the sexiest of ways – with their minds.

I hurried inside and plunked myself down at a window seat so close to the two chess men that I could have whispered next moves in their ears if a) I knew anything more than the rudiments of the game, and b) if there hadn’t been a plate glass window between us.

Good manners forced me to stop staring at their game (and besides, one of them kept throwing me a mind-your-own-business look), so I decided to do what I had come to do – put pen to paper.

After whipping off a few pages of what I was hoping would be a letter-ary amuse-bouche to a grumpy ex-boyfriend, I looked up and found that the first game had ended and two new men had joined. Seats were switched, another board appeared and now we had two tables in action.

All my bad-girl memories of entire mornings and afternoons whittled away in the cafés of the North End of Boston (caffès, actually) came back to me. Smoking endless cigarettes, jacked up on caffeine, and trying to learn what I could from the neighborhood men who held court at the chess tables there, tossing off checkmates as easily as they tossed back their dainty demitasse of espresso.

I used to stick it out for hours in those cafés, writing mostly, but always hoping for a lesson when and if one of the chess gods deigned to let me play. Stern-faced and steely-eyed, every now and then one of those much-older, old-world Italianos would lean back in his chair after a king had taken a tumble, and nod at me to take a place at the table.

I learned a little about chess in those days, and a lot more about the heady allure of a table full of silence and a couple of minds in motion.

I don’t know if it was dumb luck finding those guys playing at Main Street News this past Monday, or if maybe it will become a regular thing there. I’m hoping it’s the latter — I’d love to see some real culture in Sarasota.

Yes, I know, I know. We’ve got plenty of culture that centers around the arts in this town – but a little culture of the mind wouldn’t hurt, would it?

I’m hoping those guys – with the evidence of their concentration visibly sliding down the sides of their faces, their cigarettes burning down to their fingertips – I’m hoping they’re back every week. Maybe they’ll let me break in for a game.

It’s a possibility.