Finding Your People at the Mahjong Table

I want to be honest about what my first session was like: I was nervous. Not worried about the rules (I'd been warned, clearly and correctly, that the rules would sort themselves out) but nervous in the way you are when you show up somewhere new and don't know where to sit or who to talk to or whether you'll belong.

I sat down. Someone passed me a drink before I'd finished settling. The host introduced me to the two women already at the table, said a few words about how the evening would go, and then (this is the part I remember most clearly) just left us to it. Not hovering, not narrating, just present and easy.

The table changes things

There's something about mahjong that makes conversation inevitable. The game moves in a rhythm (draw, consider, discard) and in the pauses, people talk. Not about the game. About their weeks, their work, a film one of them had seen. The tiles give you something to look at when you don't want to make eye contact; the game gives you a reason to stay at the table past the point where you'd normally say you should be going.

By the end of the first session, I'd laughed at something I couldn't remember afterward, exchanged numbers with one of the women across from me, and signed up for the following week before I'd put my coat on.

Eight months later

I have a standing Thursday. I know which players discard too quickly when they're close to winning, and which ones will hold a tile for two full rounds just to see what happens. I have a favorite rack position and a particular fondness for the dragon tiles, their weight, the way they feel like luck.

More than any of that: I have people. Women I see every week who I wouldn't have met any other way. The game was the excuse; the evenings were the thing.

I'm writing this for whoever was me, eight months ago, slightly nervous, sitting in a coat, not knowing whether they'd fit. You will. The table makes room. If you want to find yours, join an open session, no hosting, just turn up.