A Little Brando Maybe

From 201O

Last week I was playing pool at the Abbey. Maz was in town from Alaska. The jewelry salesman was leaving for the Caribbean on Wednesday to work the cruise ships as he had up north. His time in the Far North had not effected his hand and eye coordination and the bald-headed genji ruled the table for several games. I lost to him on a double-scratch on a corner shot on the 8-ball.

While awaiting my next up with the champ, I watched the popular bar on Driggs Avenue filled with young people. I was already in the youth of old age at 58. I spoke to several sci-fi fans about RESIDENT EVIL and a BBC correspondent about the current BBC sex scandal. We agreed that Jimmy Seville the TV announcer was an unrepentent child molester, but he argued that Jimmy Savile was the only person involved during the decades of under-age sex at the media center in London.

"Not bloody likely." Birs of a feather flocked together.

He dropped his quarters in the slot and Maz offered him the break.

His pool cue was missing the tip from the ferule.

"Your stick's accent is 100% Cambridge." It was a good guess and he admitted to having graduated from that prestigious university. "Playing pool well is the sign of a misspent youth."

His blonde girlfriend thought that was funny. She was a literary agent.

"I handle mostly non-fiction." She was young and smart with long legs. She would have been beautiful in any bar in New York. Her unnaturally curly hair discounted her tale about working only with the truth. Her friend lost to Maz and after they left he asked me, "Would you sleep with her?"

"No." I am faithful to Fenway's mom.

"No." Maz is astounded by my self-imposed celibacy.

"She's not my type."

No one believed my restraint, since I had been living down my reputation as a worldwide libertine. I looked around the bar. The women in the Abbey laughed with the freedom of youth. None of them had eyes for a man my age. I had once looked like an Irish Brando. Probably still do look like an older, less heavy than his appearance in APOCALYPSE NOW plus thitty years. I'm overweight, but he was the Second Coming of Orson Welles in that film. I dropped four coins into the pool table slot.

"Not a single woman in here is my type".

"I don't worry about types." Maz was a free agent as I had been at his age.

I was forty years old twenty years ago.

I accepted the truth of my ruin and racked the fifteen balls tight. After Maz's break I ran the table with a series of combos and bank shots. The next player was a black girl in her 20s. She was wearing a short black skirt.

"Nice shooting."

"Thanks."

I lost on the last shot just like before, which was always better than the first adn why they call the game 'Eight Ball'.

ps Me and Amanda