A Cross Dresser, a Drag Queen, Two Drunks and an 8-Ball
By Stef Matthews
Fall Harvest '97 was finally over and
I had gone to my room to change out of my gown and put on something
a bit more comfortable. I headed up to the hotel bar to enjoy
a nightcap, relax and socialize, hoping to get some sleep really
soon. I sat chatting with JoAnn Roberts when Barbra Love called
me over to her near the pool table. She had a concerned look on
her face. Most of our convention had invaded the bar after the festivities
and we were getting more than our fair share of looks from the
"straight" crowd.
Barbra told me that the two big guys
on the table now (who were obviously drunk) had taken the quarters
of some of our members by intimidating them until they backed
down. Barbra had placed two quarters on the rail and wasn't taking
her eyes off of them. When their game was over, the bigger of
the two reached for our quarters and Barbra immediately went into
her "in your face" act. I happened to be holding a cue
stick and backed her up, just in case. Not to brag, but Barbra
and I are two of the better pool players in our group and it was
our intention to teach these guys a lesson that they probably
wouldn't remember in the morning anyway. Of course, this was a
bit risky on our part, but we had them outnumbered and I know
that high heel bruises take much longer to heal than the regular
kind.
Barbra slotted the quarters and I racked
the balls up for a game of partners "bar-style" 8-ball. I
shuffled the balls around, tossed a couple in the air, lay the
8-ball on top of the rack and slammed it on the spot where the
8-ball fell into place and gracefully, almost daintily, spun the
triangle back into it's slot in the side of the table. The
big obnoxious one was behind the line and just looked at me with
icicles shooting from his eyes. He reared back and let loose a
strong break, pocketing two stripes in the process. He then missed
a straight-in shot on another stripe and I offered the table to
Barbra, which she declined. I eyed the table and began to form
my strategy. Most of my pool is without a partner and I wasn't
used to compensating for another player. But, I knew that Barbra
was a strong enough player to pick up whatever I might miss. I
shot a solid and missed. I hoped Barbra could support my flubbed
shot. Suddenly the larger drunk says, "Hey, let's make this
interesting! Let's play for drinks. Winner buys!" We knew
what he meant, even if he didn't. As the bartender just made last
call, we had one of our friends buy a couple of shots for
the winner of this apparent grudge match with people we'd never
met before and would likely never see again.
Uh Oh
The game continued. They shot and made
a stripe, then Barbra shot and made two solids. She was on her
game that night. That was good, because it looked like we might need it. They shot and
made a solid on what looked like an accidental shot. That left
us with four more solids on the table and they were laid out
fairly nice, but I had to bank one to get shape on the next. After
I made that shot, the larger drunk says, "Hey, what you doin'
shootin' at our balls!" I let the "guy" in me take
over and said, "Wrong! You're stripes! Look in the window
in the side of the table!" He yelled back, "You callin'
me a liar?" That's when I figured out what this game was
about.
I walked over to him, slowly of course, and focused on
his bloodshot, darting eyes and whispered in his ear, "We
don't have to finish this. It's only a game. We'll just quit now
and give you and your friend the drinks." He said, "No,
you're cheating by switching balls and then calling me a liar!"
I placed my hand on his shoulder and again whispered, "I
don't want to play any more." I twirled the cue right past
his ear and laid it on the table and he flinched back a bit. I
wasn't sure what was going to happen next but I turned my back
to him, never taking my hand off of the cue stick I had laid across
the table. He said, "Awright! I'll let you have that shot,
but you're STRIPES!" I picked the cue stick up and said, "Fine!
Let's finish this." My blood was damn near boiling at this
point. With the stress of the previous week (another story that I'll
write for Snow Storm Forum) and the stress of working
Fall Harvest left me with very little patience, or seemingly any
common sense.
I removed my cue from the
table and let them try to take the two remaining solids. Barbra made one
of the stripes on her turn, and
they missed a solid on their turn. I was just pissed off enough
to forget about things like watching my back, taking my time to
line up shots, but I was lucky enough to run the remaining three
stripes in and leave myself an almost straight-in shot on the
8-ball. As I lined the 8-ball up in the upper corner I could see
the big drunk guy standing at the end of the table trying to stare
me down. I just smiled at him, looked down at the cue ball and
let a nice easy lag roll the cue ball into the eight and all around
the corner pocket. It never fell! They started laughing as it
looked like I had just blown the game. Their remaining two balls
looked too easy to miss. Well, when you're that drunk the odds
are you couldn't hit the floor if you fell over. They didn't disappoint
us. They missed another easy shot. Barbra easily rolled the eight
in from its nest in the corner pocket. We had won.
The two drunks went back to their equally
drunk friends at the other end of the pool table. Barbra and I
walked over to the two shots laying on our table and clinked glasses
together and threw them down our throats in one swallow. Barbra
then went over to collect the money for the shots. She tells me
the large obnoxious drunk's girlfriend said, "I can't believe
you let them beat you!" At which point he pulled money out
of his pocket and paid Barbra for the drinks we had won. Life
was good.
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