Every Sunday night, the wife and I have our friend R. over for game night, and we play all kinds of games: Settlers of Catan, Wyatt Earp, Ticket to Ride, etc. We used to play mumbly-peg for a while until R. lost his thumb and stained the shit out of our carpet to boot. Anyway, we usually have a good time, because I always win.

It's not a mystery why I win all the time. For one thing, I'm fucking brilliant. When it comes to strategizing about, say, resource distribution, or planned routing of train tracks, well, I'm basically this century's von Clausewitz. For another thing, I've got heart. My heart? It's fucking huge. I've got a massive heart; it's the size of Secretariat's. You can hear my goddamn heart across the room, and it sounds like someone is playing "Tainted Love" in my fucking chest. That's why I win.

But something curious happened this last Sunday. Something downright perplexing. I lost. I lost at Ticket to Ride, for Christ's sake, and I lost to that ass banana R. I couldn't believe it, but there it was. Impossible but true.

But I figured out why R. won. He cheated.

It's the only possible explanation. R. cheated. I don't know how, but he did. Did he cheat with his brain? I wondered. He must have. He used his stupid cheating brain to beat me, and it really pissed me off.

You ever hear your mom or grandma spout off that ridiculous old saw, "Cheaters never prosper"? Thanks, grandma, you confused goddamn bat. Go back to your half-finished TV Guide crossword puzzle. What a bunch of fucking crap. And I had proof right in front of me, in the form of R., grinning like a macaque, prospering his ass off right in my fucking living room. "Cheaters never prosper"? Right. If you believe that, you probably also believed your grandma when she came up with other winners like "Suck a dick every day!" and "A slice of cheese between your knees will foil the fleas." Thanks, grandma: now my palate has the salinity of the Dead Sea and my body looks like a relief map of Mars thanks to the relentless flea infestations.

My grandmother ruined my life, frankly, until I learned that the world didn't play by her rules. I hate you, grandma, and I'm glad you're dead.

Where were we?

Oh! Right, cheating. That stupid fuck. He had the audacity to cheat me right in my own damn house. I couldn't tell if he was pulling cards off the bottom of the deck, or sneaking game pieces on to the board, or using his brain to play better than me, but he clearly was pulling some monkeyshines.

And you know? This crap has been going on for all of my damn life. I remember playing kickball in elementary school--at which I was, quite honestly, preposterously talented--and my classmates cheated all the fucking time. They weren't even shy about it. "Kurruk's up!" they would cry as I got up to take my kick. "He's asthmatic, so move in!" Goddamn cheating creeps. Insider information passed around the schoolyard like a dazed hooker. I couldn't believe it. And as if that weren't enough, the little bastards would do things like get me out by catching the ball or pegging me on the base path, cheating blatantly with their superior genetics, their stronger muscles, their faster reflexes.

Four Square? Same fucking raw deal. There I was, honestly playing the game in its pure form while the little refugees from a Dickens novel were fucking around breaking the rules. One kid always was like "Bus stops!" and I was like "Hey, no bus stops!" and then the lousy little bastard would go, "SLAM! And you're out!" while smashing a bus-stopped ball into my square and then getting his buddies to hold me down while a dog licked my asshole and I screamed for a teacher, or God, or anybody for help, and they all laughed, they laughed at me, and when they all mysteriously died a few months later after a series of improbable heart attacks--the coroner was puzzled by a spate of eight-year-olds suffering such explosive cardiac events--I didn't even feel bad. They were cheaters, because I didn't win.

I'd like to point out for the record that they never found that dog and nobody can prove anything. The point is, I survived. Me and my horse-sized subwoofer of a heart survived just fine, and those cheating little shits croaked when their hearts turned into shuddering jelly.

I'm still here. And I'm a winner. Even when I lose, I'm a winner. Hell, everyone knows I'm a winner, even when I lose to a dirty cheater, because when I do lose, I make sure to throw a fucking fit about it. When R. won the other night, do you think I congratulated him? I don't think so. "You're a filthy cheating pile of shit," I informed him. He made some idiotic wounded noises, and had the inflamed cojones to accuse me of being a poor loser. What a dick. Like I'm a loser at all. He didn't win! He cheated! "Probably with your fucking brain," I sneered at him, which left him amusingly confused, as if he didn't know how to respond.

"What is your problem?" he asked, playing for time.

"My problem is, you cheated me, you fucking Gypsy cheating wandering hairy mongrel!"

"I'm from Bremerton, you fuckup!" he stammered, trying to maintain the ruse. "I'm Swedish."

I ignored him, and in a fury, wandered out to my deck and began pitching rocks at my neighbors' windows. "CHEATED BY A GYPSY! GYPSY'S USING HIS BRAIN DOWN HERE TO FUCK ME OVER! ATTICA! ATTICA!" The neighbors rained down a hail of garbage on me after a while, as a tribute to my righteous outrage. "Shut the fuck up!" cried one person who threw down a garbage sack full of coffee grounds, presumably intended for me to pour into R.'s cheating goddamn pants. "Thanks!" I cried. I needed the ammunition.

But R. had already fled. His kind always shows yella. Beat me at my own game, will you? I don't think I'm going to sit still for that, Jethro. You fucking hillbilly. Take a hike back to Gypsylanti. My wife stared at me, wide-eyed, in what I assume was naked admiration. I won't stand to be cheated any more. I just won't accept it.

Because I am a winner.