Blowing It

The reality(maybe) was this: I was playing better than him, I was getting some rolls, and he was having an off night1. I wasn’t running out or do anything extraordinary, but I felt like I was.

That feeling, which was connected to but not actually part of reality, had me thinking 7-0. After the last eight ball fell(ending the race 3-0 in my favor), that score, added to my win-lost record, flickering before me on the league website, probably cementing my ascent to the next handicap level...that score was all I could see.

My opponent, a middle-aged native New Yorker2, was already at that level, and I - felt! - that I was better. Much better, obviously.

Less than a half-hour later, I lost the last game of nine-ball on a foul3. That ended the race 4-0, him, in nine-ball. 4-3, him, for the match.

What the hell? Aren’t I better than he is?

The reality(maybe) was this: my thoughts wandered, my execution suffered, he got the rolls this time, and I wasn’t running out or doing extraordinary. Or ordinary. But I felt like I should be. Which made me fee worse, play worse, until finally the match was mercifully over, where the reality(certainly) was a victory for him.

Fortunately, the rest of my team did well. Alex won 7-2, Mike won 4-3 and Jen won 7-5. That performance put us in second place(ahead of Mimi’s team!).

In the big picture, this was only my second match loss all season. I’m not having a bad season. Still, having a 3-0 lead and not winning another game, not one more fucking game; that’s shitting a bed you just carefully and cleanly made yourself.

I had a new cue coming, and hopefully new results.

1How off I have no idea, since this was my first time playing him.
2Judging from an accent that would make a casting director drool.
3If you foul three times in a row, you lose the game, same as if your opponent knocked in the nine. I’m glad this humiliation(at least in total) is in a footnote.

Smiling

I'm a fucking no-balls cocksucker.

Let me back up. I'd been playing an overly-friendly Jewish lawyer, a man who claimed to have heard of my boss via a hamburger documentary my boss had no involvement in, a man who had the annoying habit of announcing each of his misses with a sharp "nope", a man who was a life-long New Yorker bitching about how Amsterdam's best days were behind it, a man who was so cordial and friendly I had no business being agitated by him so recognizing this made me even more agitated(what kind of horrible person am I?), a man who was playing even with me, a man in a tiebreaker in me, a man lining up the match-winning nine ball after I had missed a long shot into the corner pocket.

A shot I should have made, but missed - badly. I'm a fucking no-balls cocksucker, I thought, rounding the table to slouch in my chair while the lawyer unwrapped the gift I'd left him. And he did, but as the final ball dropped, I looked past him, and saw a face.

A beautiful, smiling face, half-ducking because she thought she might distract me if I saw her. Alex stood next to her, laughing. I'd lost 6-7 in a tiebreaker. I'd been up 3-0 in nine-ball, then my opponent got a nine on the break, fluked a nine ball in the corner, and barely avoided scratching on a combo attempt the next game to even the race at 3-3. I'd played like shit half the time. Walking around the table after missing a match-winning shot, a crucial shot, a shot that I could grab, pin and use to label myself as "clutch"...I was shaking my head, cursing myself. No-balls...no-balls cocksucker. Then I saw her face.

Seeing her face, I was happy. Really happy. Drinking with her at the bar later, I felt like a winner. A real winner.

---

My team had a rough night. Besides my loss, Alex had lost 3-5, playing a three. Giving up three balls is tough, especially to someone who shoots glacially slow. Jen had lost 4-7, Princeton(subbing for a vacationing Mike) lost by the same score. We dropped from third to fifth.

We drank to forget our troubles. Well, Alex, Andi and I drank. Jen left, and Princeton was playing with his fiance in the back of Amsterdam. No shots this time, only beer: Heineken for Alex, Guinness for Andi, and Budweiser for me. I'm not sure why I drink Bud; I give all sorts of reasons: makes me feel American, it's cheap, even the aesthetic appeal of the goddamn label. I love that Andi drinks Guinness. No strong opinions on Alex's choice of Heineken.

Amsterdam was dead when I had arrived just prior to our nine o'clock match time, but now, close to eleven, it was jammed - jammed with annoying, loud people.

"BEEEEEEEER!"

Someone was actually shouting beer.

"Bah...bah....baheeeeEEEEEER!"

Jesus Christ. I couldn't really hear Andi or Alex. We left after two drinks. I walked with Andi to a cab, kissed her and said goodbye. I couldn't wait to see her the next night. I also had to pee.

It was after midnight. Could I hold it for the 45 plus minutes it would take to get back to my apartment?

I started walking back towards Amsterdam. The bartender looked at me, eyebrows raised and apart, as I hurriedly hit the head. I came back, saw that the shouting dipshits had left, and made my usual unwise Wednesday decision: Hell, I may as well stay for one more beer.

Sophia, the bartender, gave me the first beer for free. That's why it was the first, and not the only. I had two more. With Amsterdam cleared out, Sophia had time to talk. I gushed about Andi, she told me about a great date she'd had recently, we traded relationship war-stories, and compared frequency of trips home(we are both from Maryland, funnily enough) .

It was almost two-thirty when I left. I still couldn't wait to see Andi the next day.

Revenge

The last time I had played Tom was in the playoffs. I won the match by one game - after he had been up 2-0 in eight-ball. He squeezed out a 3-2 win over me before losing 4-2 in nine-ball. That wasn't the end of our night: our teams tied, so as the designated "tie breakers" we had to play, er, a tiebreaker.

It was over in less than two minutes. He broke, making nothing. The one ball was visible but tough, and the two-nine combo was dead in the corner. I safetied, hoping for ball-in-hand after he(most likely) broke up the two-nine, purposely fouling but not leaving the easy win on the table. Instead, he tried to kick at the one, missed, and I calmly made the one and the two-nine for the win. My team advanced, his was out.

Flash forward to tonight. My team is in the toughest division, above five-hundred but mired in the middle of the standings. Tom's has a losing record, but is in second place among a bunch of struggling teams in a division that even Tom admitted was "dogshit".

"But I'll take first place in the dogshit division any day. We are the Kings of Dogshit," he said before our match.

We were put in the "TV Table", so called because it's at the front of the club and is covered by a webcam. I wish I had played better for the one or two people watching.

Stocky and jovial in the way only stock guys can be, Tom was a ball or two away from burying me 3-1 in eight-ball. I made two mistakes and lost two games. Tom, a good player, was playing good, mistake-free pool. Then, inexplicably, he took a risk and accidentally sank the eight-ball. Instead of a 3-1 victory, it was 2-2. Boosted by my unexpected good fortune, I made short work the next game and won after just two turns at the table. A 3-2 victory. Incredible(or as incredible as amateur pool can be).

Nine-ball swayed back and forth, but eventually Tom won a hard 4-3 victory. That meant a tiebreaker, though this time the game wouldn't decide our respective team's fate.

I won the flip and chose eight-ball for the tie-breaking game.  It came down to Tom missing a tough but makeable eight after a three-ball runout, leaving me a three-ball runout of my own. 11 ball in the top left corner - click, ball drops, decent but not great position on the 12 in the bottom right corner. Great, sink the 12 with a little follow, drop right on top of the eight ball. Game over.

And I did drop right on top of the eight-ball. Which was great...for Tom. The 12 missed the pocket by about an inch. I didn't shoot it confidently. You're going to miss it, miss it, miss it! I was not the master of my own mind. You're not even lined up correctly - just shot it soft and shoot it now, hope for the best! It should be easy to stop, get up, think, and get back down over the shot with confidence. Shoot quickly, it's your only hope! I did, jumping up after the shot, pathetically twisting my body as if I had telekinetic powers at my disposal to make up for my empty nutsack.

So Tom won. A small measure of revenge.

Afterward, I drank with him and his teammates. I did shots with Ben the Brit(perpetrator of my only other loss this season). After we tossed back the tequila, out of the corner of my eye I saw Chris shaking his head. His gesture had a reasonable point: it was Tuesday night, and we all(probably) had work the next day.

Reasonable decisions are rarely made at a pool room bar, though.

The Accent That Kills

Jason Voorhees stared me down as I walked into the pool hall, slowly and mechanically swinging his machete. It was a little unsettling.

You couldn't miss that it was almost Halloween at Amsterdam; besides the animatronic villain(hero?) of the Friday The 13th movies, the usual decorations were up: orange and black streamers, bats, skeletons, and flyers for the Halloween Party. Will the redheaded waitress be there?, I briefly wondered. No matter, it was match time.

I had missed the previous week because of work. With no real match or practice time, I had vacated the zone I had found two weeks earlier and moved into a state of sludgy, choppy, ugly play.

The night before I had played some with Mi², hoping to break out of it. It didn't work. Missed shots, bad position play, and unnerving feeling of something being "off - like a gear slightly out of place - made me more and more frustrated. 

Watching the Redskins getting killed by the Eagles didn't help. Looking up from a missed shot to see Jason Campbell getting sacked(again!) was making me reconsider my no drinking during practice policy. Besides the bad pool and the bad football, I also had a lunch bet riding on the Redskins. A coworker of mine is from Philadelphia, and in a foolish showing of hometown spirit, I bet her lunch that the Skins would beat the Eagles. I wonder what place will she pick for her victory lunch...

For once at match time, everyone was present and on time. To celebrate, Chris informed us that because of a party Amsterdam was hosting our already late nine o'clock start time was going to be pushed back even farther. To keep us from rioting, he offered us a all drink tickets. Free alcohol - a surefire way to a league player's heart.

Using up some of the only luck I would have that night, my match was called within ten minutes of Chris's announcement. My opponent was a nice looking fellow named Ben.

We made our way to the same table I had played on two weeks before, table twenty-three. For some reason I said the same thing I had then: "Man, I haven't played on this table in a while."

Amsterdam was louder than usual, the buzz from the party making it hard to hear Ben as we made small talk. Maybe he didn't even hear my meaningless white lie, I thought, as Ben excused himself to use the bathroom before we started.

Despite the crowd noise, I thought I could hear an accent in Ben's voice. When he came back and we flipped the coin, I heard it clearly: a sharp, charming British accent.

Big Ben had me down two games quick. Despite playing a little better than I had been lately, it wasn't good enough against him(ranked a 9 to my 7). I had a bit of bad luck in the second rack, getting snookered behind my own ball when Ben missed, denying me an easy runout. Still, I had my opportunities and didn't capitalize.

I could feel I was shooting better though; the gear was slowly falling back into place. Nailing a few tough shots and playing good position, even in a couple of losses, had me sitting high in my chair even has Ben ran out.

Being a bit of an anglophile, I couldn't help but smile when Ben said he was "nominating" a pocket for the eight-ball.

"Oh, you mean call it? Cool," I said with a small grin. Nominating! What a trip.

Good feelings weren't going to stop me from doing down 0-3 in eight-ball, though, and finally in the third game I caught a break when Ben jawed a shot in the corner, and I ran out. I almost ran from the break the next game, but finished it one turn later after Ben missed again.

Ben shot with intimidating accuracy, and he shot quickly. He pranced around the table, breaking two of the cardinal rules of pool: not chalking between each shot, and playing with a house cue. Being a sinner was working out for him, though, he was easily the best player I'd seen in a while. After being down 0-2 to him, I felt like I had climbed a mountain to get the race tied.

Ben was on his way to running out the deciding game when he got funny on his next to last ball, and missed the ensuing hard shot. My stroke (partly) back, I made an easy four-ball run(aided by my handicap) to end it.

The first game of nine-ball, Ben broke and made nothing. I pushed on the one, he missed, and we jostled back and forth until I left him a shot on the two ball and he ran out.

Watching him pocket ball after ball after ball, strangely I felt...good. This was the level of opponent I wanted to play, needed to play. My mistakes were being punished brutally and without mercy(even if it was accompanied by a such a delightful, friendly accent). Against some opponents, I could make mistake after mistake and not worry because I knew they weren't good enough to beat me even if I fucked around for a bit. Against Ben, that lazy, unfocused attitude would only leave me sitting in my chair most of the night.

Knowing this, I played some pretty good pool and won the next two games of nine-ball. In the fourth rack, I made a mistake that swung the match back in his favor. He missed a tough shot on the one ball, but left me hooked. Worse yet, the one-nine combo was dead(though a tad long) in the corner.

I decided to foul and take the combo out of play, hitting the nine-ball first on purpose to knock it out of the way. Unfortunately, I hit it three times as hard as I needed to and the ball darted around the table before jawing in the opposite corner pocket, leaving Ben an even easier combo then the one I had tried to prevent.

"Sorry mate, I have to take it," he said.

Damn English, polite even in victory.

From there, I think had all of two or three shots as Ben won two more racks, and that was it. I lost 5-7.

The rest of my team lost close matches as well: Alex 5-6, Mimi 5-6, and Mike 4-5. Even though we all lost, we didn't take that bad a hit in the standings since none of us got blown out. So while not an ideal night, not a total fuck-up either.

I redeemed my free drink ticket at the bar, going over some of the last shots in my head. Sipping my Stoli-Ras and Cran, I chatted with Mike and his opponent Kevin. Kevin seemed nice enough, if a little awkward. He had a pronounced pause before he spoke, as if the conversation was a broadcast he wasn't quite getting live.

The pool hall seems to be a haven for that type: guys who are friendly, but just a little...off. Maybe it's the appeal of the subtle forced socialization pool leagues offer: you always have an icebreaker with a fellow league player since you already have something in common. Or maybe I'm just a judgmental prick.

---

On the way home, I saw a friend on the train just as she was getting off at her stop. It was strange, having that moment of recognition but not being able to do anything about it. She hadn't seen me, so I briefly smiled at the side of her head. A week earlier, I had confessed to having a small¹ crush on her(via e-mail, because I can be a total pussy sometimes). She wanted to stay friends, which wasn't as bad to hear as I thought it would be, and the expected awkwardness, so far, had been minuscule.

Still, it was a strange glimpse. My near perfect-night of pool was pre-confession; my mini-slump post. Unrelated, I knew logically, but my state of mind was more positive on that night of perfection: I was looking forward to the possibilities my soon to be revealed crush could open.

Stupid, I know, but you think strange things on the subway ride home.

¹The small part I added after being rejected, because I'm vain.