Pool Bum

Leisure. Distraction. Obsession.

It’s two thousand and one and my next door neighbors have five kids and a swimming pool. They also have small, five and a half foot pool table. Sometimes I go over to swim but I prefer getting to play on their novelty sized billiard set. I never learn anything but it’s a unique distraction. One day I’m playing with the youngest son of the family and I jokingly swing my cue above his head after I miss a shot. He stands up at the wrong moment and I thwack his skull. He sobs in pain. I apologize. His mom sends me home. That’s the end of that.

It’s two thousand eleven and I’m an apprentice at a Shakespeare company. I’m supposed to understudy five roles for the upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, four of which are fairies that are constantly jumping and climbing about a giant rotating bird cage. I have trouble making friends and my hormones are overriding every sensible thought. I am not sure this is the kind of acting I want to do. I want to be a movie star. Until I auditioned for this company I had no idea what regional theater even was. The drinks in the small town are cheap and I take advantage.

There’s a pool table in the dorms we all reside in for the summer. The head lighting designer claims to have put himself through college by hustling sailors in his port city pool hall. He is an excellent shot. He shows me how to use an open bridge. I order a copy of Byrne’s Complete Book of Pool Shots and find a few basic shots to practice. Over and over and over again when I’m not tasked with manning the parking lot or erecting a circus tent or memorizing lines for the part I’m supposed to be understudying I shoot the same shots. The repetition puts me at ease. Or maybe it just takes my mind off of my disillusionment. Incidentally there is also a swimming pool nearby. I order a pair of jammers, goggles and a swim cap. Over the course of the summer I become the best shot of the apprentices by dint of being the only one who practiced. I also work my way up to a half hour of uninterrupted swim time in the YMCA’s lap pool. Swimming, I found, is the most meditative form of cardiovascular exercise. The summer ends and I leave behind Shakespeare, eight ball, and the freestyle.

It’s twenty fifteen and I’m in the Amsterdam Billiards Club in Manhattan. During my eight years in The City I will probably set foot in this place five times. The table rental cost is prohibitively expensive. Far too costly for a small group of broke actors to gather together and embarrass themselves. This is a serious joint. The walls are covered in portraits of great players who have passed through here. Earl “The Pearl” Strickland. Efren Reyes. Jeanette Lee, “The Black Widow.” I fall in love with her serious, precise features. A beautiful woman with a beautiful shot. There’s no way I can make a habit of coming here. It’s a lark. There are also no nearby natatoriums in the city. Swimming does not enter into my life, either.

It’s twenty twenty one and I’m back in Austin. I’ve been here for six months and we have decided that COVID is okay to ignore. My high school friends are all in a pool league. They implore me to join. They need new players. Bad players, quite frankly. The league is structured such that novices are granted a handicap. You can be ranked from two to seven. It’s fun and social. I demure. I’m at sea after my stint in New York and don’t want to get sucked into something trivial. Something that will sap my attention away from what I’m supposed to be doing. But what exactly is that?

Eventually I succumb to the promise of camaraderie and I join the fellas. I am given a provisional ranking of three then get beaten down to a two. Then I learn the fundamentals. My longest friend teaches me the primary colors of the cue ball and I learn to stop, follow and draw. I practice and improve and rise back up to a three. I obsess over the gear of my new hobby and spend weeks researching the ideal pool cue case. I purchase a laser level and three ring hole punch reinforcement stickers that I can line up perfectly onto the felt so I can more precisely hone the straightness of my aim. Progress is measurable and rewarding. I win more. I become a four. I seek out a former world champion and take one two hundred dollar lesson with him. We work on one shot for two hours. My stroke goes in rickety and unsure, it comes out polished and confident. It is one of the best learning experiences of my life. I never hear from him again. I become a five.

Now I play against better players. The best players in the league. I win some but it’s more and more reliant on my opponents making mistakes, which they do with greater and greater rarity. I am practicing three or four times a week for about ninety minutes a session. The lighting designer from all those years ago once told me he had to spend six hours a day in the hall in order to play at a hustler’s level. I will never hustle. I will never play pool outside of this singular hall. I start to lose. I take it badly. If I am going to beat the best in the league I need to devote exponentially more time to this niche, unshareable hobby. I can’t stand the losing. I drop to a four.

I quit. I have free time. I start working out. I start acting consistently. I tell people I used to play pool. I wonder if there’s a place I can swim nearby. Pool was a good distraction, I suppose. A pleasant way station that kept me busy while I recalibrated the life I had no idea what I was doing with. I need to care deeply about whatever it is I’m doing. And whatever IT is it needs to be worthwhile. It needs to be shareable. It needs to be positive and thought provoking and, god willing, entertaining.

It’s winter of twenty twenty five. I’ve rejoined a more casual league once again at the behest of my friends. I don’t practice more than once every few weeks. I shoot how I shoot and I don’t have a strong record for the season. I may stay. I may not. But it’s not how it was. There’s very little social element to it. And there’s no ranking system to invest in or beat myself up over. This casual side quest, I fear, has run its course.

I love hobbies. I’ve spent my whole life picking them up and putting them down. But the key to a good hobby, a key I’m not sure I’ve ever found, is being able to compartmentalize the rise and fall of that endeavour from my actual passions. I want to be the best performer I can possibly be. Need I be the best damn pool player? It is tough for me to let that go. Perhaps I should find a hobby that isn’t a competition. Maybe it’s time to get back into swimming.