Author: Ozmandia (Toronto, Canada)
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Category: [love]  

Pool has played a very important part in my life.

Right after college, I moved to Toronto. It was quite the change for me, who had grown up in a town of fifteen thousand, and went to school in a city only a few times larger. To suddenly be living in the middle of a metropolis of three million people... it was something else.

Fortunately, I had met some friends online, and we got together to drink and play pool. At least once a month there would be a get-together of everyone in the group, and since new people were joining in online, there were always new faces at each gathering.

In 1997, the January get-together introduced me to a few people. One of them was a guy who insisted on my shooting some pool with him. After that, every time I went online, there he was, trying to convince me to go out with him again. He'd email, and try to convince me to call him, and kept asking me to go play at every opportunity.

I figured someone this persistent should be given a chance. So we ended up out and playing pool a lot. He won a lot. I thought he was rather arrogant a lot. But he kept asking, and I kept going.

There was one get-together where it was decided a battle of the sexes was necessary. It was me and a girlfriend against him and another guy. Losers were the winners' slaves for the evening. It was a much-hyped event, and everyone was deadly serious about the game.

The girls lost. Rather badly, if I remember right. And this guy decided that since I was his slave, I would have to sit and listen to him tell me exactly why I should go out with him. Which I did, for several hours.

I don't have a great recollection of the conversation. I do remember staring at the tabletop, and reading the words that someone had carved into the wood. I remember being so impressed with the fact that he would bypass an opportunity for humiliation in order to pour his heart out that I agreed we should be exclusive.

There was another time, when he was lining up a shot, I dropped an ice cube down the back of his shirt, and he jumped and hit me in the jaw with his elbow. Bruised a muscle real bad. I went to work for a week with a swollen jaw. He got teased about it for ages. He felt very badly about it too. He really hadn't meant to hurt me.

There were lots of times I wore a low cut top, hoping to distract him enough to win a game or two. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But I had a lot of fun trying.

The monthly gatherings continued. We moved in together. We'd talked about marriage, but decided it was a far off thing. We weren't ready yet. It wasn't going to happen.

One day, right before another gathering, he decided he needed a new pool cue. We went to the second hand shops on Jarvis, going from store to store looking for a decently priced castoff.

At one shop, tired and bored of cues, I stood at the jewelry counter. He came over, and we joked around about rings. There was one I liked, and he insisted I try it on. He asked the sales girl how much it was, and after she told him he said, “We'll take it.” As I stood there in disbelief, he turned to me and said, “Oh, yeah. Want to get hitched?”

He never did get his pool cue. Come to think of it, it's seven years later, and he still hasn't bought one. But he does have these 8-ball air fresheners hanging in his rearview mirror, something I bought him as a joke years and years back. They've long since lost their scent, but he refuses to get rid of them. Won't even consider replacing them.

Maybe he looks at them and remembers the same things I do.

Maybe being behind the 8-ball isn't such a bad thing after all.

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