The Loser's Club

This is a bad night at Max Fish. I'm feeling bad about myself and my wife and our not-enough-sex life; and I'm feeling really bad about my wife's brother Lewis and his sex life. It's getting better right in front of me. He's just moved up from Richmond, and we're in the back of the bar at a booth having Welcome to New York drinks with a couple of friends. And Marina, this stunning Italian woman in a micro skirt, she thinks he's funny. She's actually laughing at his jokes. And he's gufFAWing away, in his up-from-Richmond, 10-decibels-too-loud, tremendously irritating hayseed way. And the whole gang's laughing and guffawing with them, and congratulating Lewis for his supposed achievements. "How'd you find an apartment for $500 a month, off Central Park West?" "How'd you get that gig at the film studio?" And when Marina goes to the bathroom, "Where'd you meet her?"

The answer to all these questions is: Me! He's subletting my studio, got a job through my wife, met Marina through my friends. But Lewis doesn't say a word. He just sits there with this strong-but-silent-type look on his face. Like he's actually done something beyond using my connections. Like he's the alpha male.

I'm the alpha male. I deserve the congratulations. I deserve Marina's attention. I deserve Marina. But there's no way to prove it. I'm married, and my wife's sitting right next to me. All I can do is sit and stew, with Lewis guffawing away, and make believe I'm happy for him.

There's a pool table at Max Fish, and after 50 phony toasts I go over to shoot off some steam. The reigning champion's the off-duty bartender, a soft-spoken Japanese guy who plays every night after work. He's the Lord of the Table; nobody beats him. But he makes it fun to try. He gives you tips on shot selection, to make it fun for him: the cat giving the mouse escape lessons. There are three or four guys ahead of me waiting to challenge him. So I sign my name on the chalkboard and get in line. And three or four games later, it's me versus the Lord, and I lose. Which is exactly how it should be. He's the better player. He deserves to win.

And I start to feel good again. Like there really is a Natural Order. Like Good wins and Bad loses and what's happening between Lewis and Marina is just a freak of nature, a When-Alpha-Things-Happen-to-Beta-Males moment that God lets happen sometimes, just to keep you guessing. And it's so calming, to see that the System works, regardless of whether you're on the losing end.

Then the Shark walks in. He's about 5-foot-7, tight black jeans, 10, 20 pounds too skinny; I don't know if it's drugs or a fast metabolism but he's a little stick of a guy. Got this Frampton Comes Alive! shag that covers everything but a tiny white block of face, only his hair's black instead of blond. Fresh white tuxedo shirt, no collar, like a priest, buttoned all the way up, without a crease. This is 10:30 or 11 at night and he has a starched shirt on, just to play pool. And the reason you know this is he's got his own cue?a traveling stick, three sections, polished rosewood, brass fittings; he's screwing it together at the table. The guy has come to win.

He writes his name on the chalkboard. Three or four games later he's playing the bartender. Seven shots after that he's down to the 8-ball?in the time it took me to get a beer. He's orders of magnitude better than the bartender, who's orders of magnitude better than everybody else.

So I start to erase my name from the chalkboard. It won't be any fun to lose to this guy. Because he's not playing for fun. He's playing for self-esteem. And I don't have any to spare.

The bartender sees me with the eraser. "Don't do that," he says. "It's just a game. The worst that can happen is you lose." Now he's just been creamed, and you can see a little shame on his face when he says this, which is perfectly normal under the circumstances. But maybe he just wants me to play so he looks better by comparison. That's what I'd do. (Though I couldn't look worse, he got beat so badly.) But he has this from-a-stable-home vibe, and the Japanese rock-garden thing that makes you feel the world is bigger than a pool game, and that it'll be okay if you lose and you really shouldn't quit.

So I write my name back up. And three or four games later I'm playing the Shark. I'm the challenger. I rack the balls. The Shark breaks. And he scratches?shoots too hard and a ball flies off.

And it's my turn. I start sizing up the one shot I'm going to sink. I look at the balls all spread out in front of me, and that's when I see?the vision: a schematic diagram of how to run the table; the vectors between the cue ball and the pool balls; the pockets they'll drop into; little circular hash marks where the cue ball will stop after each shot, setting me up for the next shot. Shot by shot by shot, a blueprint for beating the Shark. I'm sure of it.

But I have no right to beat this guy. I never play. I have no real skill. I just got lucky. He's the Shark. He's the alpha. He deserves to win. And what's more, he needs to win. He's got a starched white shirt and his own pool cue; this is his life. I should throw this game. So he can feel good about himself. It's my job to protect his self-esteem.

These are the voices at war in my head: You can win. You should lose. And I don't know who to listen to.

I start making shots, six in a row. I'm down to one ball plus the 8-ball in minutes. It's incredible. I've never played this well in my life. And everyone feels the tension. The losers are gathered round the table like the gallery at a golf match. The Shark's sitting down, peeling labels off of beer bottles. I'm trying to stop my elbow from twitching. Because I'm realizing, for the first time in my life, that I like losing, or at least I understand it. It's what I know. I'm the everybody-says-sorry-you-lost-but-hang-in-there-and-one-day-when-you-grow-up-you'll-win kid. And I don't want to grow up. I like being a kid.

Right at that moment I take a shot and miss.

The Shark's on his feet. Boom-boom-boom, he almost runs the table, just like he did to the bartender. Then he misses?an incredibly easy shot. And I get a second chance.

I sink the next shot and I'm down to the 8-ball; one more ball to go. Make it and win or miss it and lose. Those are the choices. He won't screw up again.

I can barely breathe I'm so tense. And the Shark's distressed to the point of trying pool voodoo. He walks over to the other side of the table, sits down and looks at me looking at the 8-ball. His head is just above the pocket. So that when I lean over to size up my shot, I see the 8-ball in the middle, and his eyes on either side; one-two-three little orbs in a row, two of them with pupils. And he looks so pathetic; with his only-thing-I-have-in-life-to-feel-good-about-is-pool-don't-take-it-away-from-me expression that makes me think it'll kill him if I win. And it'll kill me too?the loser in me. And I want to miss the shot so badly and go back to the booth and have the better-luck-next-time-keep-trying pep talk I've been having my whole life. I want?attention.

But a voice says, "See how it feels to win. Just once."

So I take a deep breath. Freeze my elbow. Strike the cue ball. Sink the 8. I win.

High-fives all around. "Incredible shooting, man!" "Wow, I never seen anything like that!"

The Shark's slumped in his chair, surrounded by empties with the labels peeled off. It's like a ticker tape parade on the floor around him.

I walk over and shake his hand. Tell him, "Good game." Promise him a rematch. Lose the next game or maybe the one after that to the next guy on the chalkboard. Might have been the Shark, I can't remember, I was in such a haze.

I go back to the booth. Everybody's still welcoming Lewis to New York. Somebody turns to me and says, "What happened?" I say, "I just beat the best pool player I've ever seen." They say, "That's great." And they go back to welcoming Lewis. I'm alone in my own limelight. A psychological revolution has occurred. The dominant part of my personality, the Loser, has been overthrown; the tiny little Inner Winner has triumphed. The world is a completely different place for me at this moment, and nobody cares.

This is what it means to get what you want in life. When you reach the top of the mountain, you're alone. And there's no need for anyone below to say you'll make it next time. Because you made it. Your membership in the Loser's Club, all that camaraderie, it's over. You're on your own. It's an incredibly lonely feeling. So I start to pray: Please God. Do me one favor. Please make Lewis feel this way when he wakes up tomorrow morning with Marina.