Playing Pool Near Omaha, Nebraska
A complete cross-section of the American population can be found in pool rooms. My local hall, Eastside Billiards, had a plaque which stated “Pool and Sex: two things you don’t have to be good at to enjoy.” True. Any of our regulars would agree. They included a divorce judge, an opera singer, a plumber, teachers, immigrants, lawyers, CEOs, artists, construction workers, and my favorite, J.V., a computer analyst from Nebraska. He once invented a data encryption method that he sent to the FBI, and his uncle was a “cleaner” for the Hells Angels. “Let’s just say he carries a wood-chipper around in his truck,” J.V. told me, “and he don’t know much about tree surgery.”
At around five and a half feet, bald, and thirty-six years old, he was still a pleasantly self-assured guy, and as excitable as a puppy. He liked my sense of humor, and I appreciated knowing a guy who was happy with life, and who had come from a rural upbringing. When he was younger his father, so he said, used to make him go into the field to find a green stick to be beaten with. “The trick was,” he told me, “to find the most thorny stick I could. Then he wouldn’t have the heart to go through with it.”
In September 2005 he invited me to their wedding in Nebraska, and I was honored to go. She was a fantastic, classy Vietnamese girl who designed clothing for Old Navy, and whose family spoke little English, so I couldn’t wait to see them amongst J.V.’s small-town Nebraskan relatives. Also, I really wanted to see how the rest of America lived.
Two days before the ceremony he dropped me off at a quaint, smoky hall just outside Omaha. I practiced on a table up at the front while waiting for him to return. A few locals sat around watching me, I think as much to hear my accent as to see me shoot. One pretty farm girl in denim, clinging to a bright-eyed, slack-jawed boyfriend, bit her lip before asking me “Do you guys got steak in England?” “You’ve never heard of mad cow disease?” I asked. They were seventeen, going to get married in the spring.
When J.V. returned we began to drink heavily. Later, a tall, thin, combustible-looking man with shiny leather boots, tight black jeans, a belt with a huge buckle on the front, a black shirt, thick stubble, wild grey hair, a wide-brimmed hat, and with a large orange and yellow flame that blazed up the back of his black jacket, strolled in and shouted, “I’ll play anyone in here for a hundred dollars a rack!” I looked at J.V., who just smiled and nodded.
Normally I wouldn’t have said anything, but being drunk I shouted “okay!” The cowboy wasn’t expecting this, but he was trapped. He came over angry, and I let him lower the stakes to $10. He looked poor and dangerous. This was my first taste of a genuinely rough, tough American. After a quick game I pocketed the black. He stood over my chair shouting as he paid me.
“Do you know who I am?” he bellowed, “Do you know who I am!”
“No,” I said, looking down at my shoe.
“You ain’t from ‘round here, are you.”
“No, sir, I’m not. I’m with my friends over there for a wedding.”
“Oh yeah? Well if you were from ‘round here, you’d know who I am. Here.” He pulled out his wallet––thankfully it wasn’t a knife or a gun—and slipped out a business card, shoving it roughly into my shoulder. I looked at it, fearing the worst. It was a pearl-white, surprisingly elegant card with embossed lettering and intimidating flames wrapped around the words “BIG DADDY D.” I was reminded of J.V’s uncle, the “cleaner,” and it was in a near panic that I tried to focus on the small, black words below:
“-One Man Karaoke Band!”
I coughed, handed back the card, and retreated quietly across the room to J.V. and his friends. I’d beaten a fifty-year-old in his own place, a guy who had probably been struggling with poverty and self-respect for years, who, thanks to a moment of bravado, had just lost to a small, childish city-boy in front of everyone. I didn’t feel good about it. Big Daddy D, the singing cowboy, took his hat and left.
By the early morning we were all very drunk, and it was showing in J.V.’s driving. We were swerving along dark roads toward his Grandma’s house when police lights pulled us over. The guy sitting next to me tumbled out to throw up, while I bristled with tragic visions of the wedding being ruined. The cop, silhouetted by the lights as if in a bad thriller movie, walked toward us with his nightstick on one side and his gun holster on the other, both clearly visible. When he got close enough he lifted his hand and gave us a wave. “Hey, guys!”
“Dave!” Someone shouted, giving him a firm handshake.
“What you guys up to?”
“It’s J.V’s wedding. He’s getting married!”
“No shit! I wish I could come drinking with you guys, but I’m working!”
We made a semicircle against the side of Dave’s car. I sat on the hood and asked him for a little chewing tobacco, which was minty and horrible, but still felt good to chew. The guys caught up on local gossip and I reveled in their accents and country charm, listening keenly to every word. It all felt so fake, this countryside atmosphere, so backwards, and yet the simplicity of their lives made a sort-of sense; live, toil, mature, party, love, and then die amongst everlasting fields of corn. I felt like a child amongst them, indulging my loneliness in the chaos of New York City with an immaturity that wouldn’t be tolerated here. Their way might be threatened by climate change and environmentalists, their dignity ruined by politicians, and their closeness destroyed by rising gas prices, but in that moment it seemed like heaven to me. I knew then that I’d remember this night like a dream.
