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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Friday Night Demons (Part III)
Briefly Pooled Pool? Sure. Why not? Sounds like fun, right? Well, let me tell you about me and any kind of game that seems to involve competition. I hate to lose. I�m a sore loser. I love to win. I�m an even more sore winner. So when the Aisho suggested pool, I thought: Sure. Why not? Sounds like fun. Except� The pool hall was everything you want in a pool hall. It was cave-like, smoke-filled and the waitress came obligingly around from time to time to take drink orders. The Aisho got a table and we ordered a pitcher of beer and I told the Aisho that I didn�t know how to play pool. He was, like, What? I said that I hadn�t played in about eight years. (I was trying to remember the last time I played and it must have been with Leslie and Fireman Rex, and Ed the ex-marine drinking buddy who I haven�t seen in several years.) I told the Aisho that I was expecting him to show me what to do. I think I asked jokingly, �You use the white ball to hit the other balls, right?� He managed, but just, not to roll his eyes. Turns out that he�s a fairly decent pool player. I, of course, am not. My usual tactic is to talk a lot of shit and to get in the way a lot�sort of like I do when I go bowling or drunkenbowlingkaraoke. I tried this time to not do these things, tried instead to just play and not be attached to the outcome. I did okay except for once or twice, when I found myself getting uncomfortable. The Aisho did things like show me how to hold my pool cue correctly�something that would have probably driven me nuts if it had been anyone else doing it, but he has a very unobtrusive way of introducing this kind of thing, so I didn�t even mind it. We played maybe five games�I think I won one�and drank our beer and talked very little. I sang along to a couple of songs. We had the above mentioned conversation about M�ya. After a bit longer, the Aisho asked of Stevie, �Do you think he�ll show up on Sunday?� I said, �No, I�m sure he won�t, but I can�t figure out why.� The Aisho said that he thought it was because of his wife. We talked about Stevie and his wife and Stevie�s tendency to �joke� about finding someone better than her. This talk led around to a hostess who works in the restaurant, a young woman who has already been had (and I don�t apologize for that construction) by Lance, my beloved waiter. I asked of the hostess, �Is she worth passing around?� We played until last call, paid for our table and left. I asked if he wanted to stop for coffee or something to eat, but he declined. He took me back to my car, followed me home, said when we got there of my pool game, �You need more practice.� I said, �I can�t afford it� (referring to the six or so dollars an hour that it costs to practice pool). I said goodnight and went inside. Thinking later about the pool hall, I thought, we didn�t talk or joke much. I wondered why this was, wondered if I had been taking things too seriously, or if the Aisho had really been too tired to be playing pool late into the night. But then I realized that no one in there had really been carrying on any extensive conversation. No one had, in the hour and a half or so that we were there, laughed. They had, even when in crowds of four or more, hit the balls, made brief comments, sat down to drink their beer and wait their turn again. The longest conversation I heard was at the table next to ours, when a young blonde woman (who was quite a talented player it seemed), spoke to a man about how he hadn�t ever before seemed to like her. �You�re okay now,� she said, �but usually you don�t seem to get along with me.� His reply to this was not memorable. And what does any of that mean in your dream, Sublingua?
More lies:
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