Unforgiving

Scrabble is cruel and evil. That is the thing you should know about it. You can play for hours everyday for a month and a half, then you take just a week off to enjoy your other interests and when you go back to Scrabble, you suddenly can't remember what satine + s is or what satire + a makes. You're looking at the rack ovalite and you're playing oval. Instead of the most obvious bingo of all time. Sigh. So, in fact, the Scrapple group did kind of break up over the last uncomfortable outing, which is kind of good so I can stop pretending to like Barbara. I've mostly been playing with this guy Paul. We met up on Wednesday at this cool outdoor "artspace" thing on the East side.
He is much, much, much better than I am. Which, I gotta say, I didn't really know until, he fricking back to back TO BACK bingoed on me, in a disgusting fashion during the first game.

He opened with cluster. I then took a shot with rootiest -- which was, surprisingly, good. Then he played cratonic...or cratoric, I forget what the blank was -- wtf?? and then he played sedating. At this point I was down by three hundred points and had this been a game at my house, I would have so thrown my tiles in and said 'new game.'
Ugh. Then I started to play badly - ion and the like, so anyway, I get destroyed in the first game and he's like "I can play with a time handicap, if you want.'
I glared.
"Or not."
We set up the board for another game, when the security guard came over and was like "no games in here." Paul started to argue with him for a bit, but I was totally psyched. I'm like one of those skater kids being hasseled by the man! Woo hoo!
We ended up going to a bookstore coffeeshop on 3rd ave. We played four more games. I was losing the second game pretty badly, when I missed the entasis play and sent myself on Scrabble tilt for the next two games. (Including one game where I swear I didn't draw a single vowel. I kept turning over my tiles and seeing an endless string of ens and arrs and I was like ARRGGGHHH. And Paul was like, Dawn, you need to work on your drawing. You'll never win a game if you can't manage to pick an a every now and then.)
Finally, FINALLY, I was winning. I had two bingoes, I was scoring a solid 25-40 points a turn, I was in complete and total command. There were no tiles left. He had six on his rack, so I didn't even have to fear him bingoing out on me. I had four tiles left luut. There was nowhere to play ulu, but there was an open z. I should have played lutz. I didn't. Instead I played...i dunno some crap which left me with a u and an l. Paul was like...wow, you missed a big play...I might be able to win this.
He put down an s and scored 17 points. He was now still behind by 24. I didn't see how he could win. But he assured me that if I didn't score more than two points on my next play, he would win by 1 point. I had five minutes left on my clock. Up by 24 with two tiles left. I looked and looked and looked. I could only find 2 point plays with either the u or the l, the clock was running down. Finally with ten seconds left, I put down the l to make el for two points. He then played off all his letter for 23 points on a double word square...making the words raggs and ar. (I think it was raggs, anyway, I was pretty much crying in my soup at that point.) And then he got two point for my remaining u. I lost by one. I fricking hate Scrabble. And everything it stands for.