How I almost became a billarista (2)
A long-overdue sequel to my earlier post.
It was summer at the time, and summer is the time of the year when young people try something new. If my friends and I were not out in the sun, biking or fishing in the nearby creek, we were in the billiard hall of Kuya Marlon. At first, we were mere spectators. Intrigued, we later asked if we could play.
Fortunately, for people my age, we were allowed to play on the small table. But, I thought, it could have been better had we played on the big one. Perhaps the owner was just apprehensive—we just might tear the billiard cloth apart out of our recklessness.
I’d never played billiards before, so you could imagine how thrilled I was to get hold of a cue stick, tako in Pilipino and Bisaya. Having had an idea on how to play billiards by merely watching older men, I thought all I had to do was bend over the table, make a bridge out of my hand, put the cue stick on it, make some gentle strokes, and hit the cue ball. Then, voila! The balls would be on their own now. I had no idea then what would happen to the cue ball were I to hit it below, on the center, on the left or right, or on top. Neither did I know what would happen if I hit it hard or soft.
Later, however, I found out that there’s more to billiards than bending and making a bridge and positioning and stroking and hitting. When I watched older men play, and watched them closely, studiously, I was so intrigued how they could bring the cue ball to a particular spot on the table. How come that, after hitting another ball, the cue ball would draw back, or follow through, or move to the side? Why the cue ball, after colliding with another ball, would stop right there and then, with no movements at all? I was so gripped by a sense of wonder. It seemed as though the players attached some strings to all the balls and control them like a marionette manipulator.
Thus I resolved to uncover the secrets of billiards, thereby improving my own performance. So I practically spent the summer in the billiard hall, learning the nitty-gritty of billiards, going home only to eat and take a bath. My friends and I played endlessly, first on the small table, then later on the big one. We played different billiard games—9-ball, 61, card game, and 8-ball.
When classes resumed, I visited some well-known billiard halls in Davao City. By visiting these places, where, I discovered, bets could spike up to as high as fifty thousand, I didn’t intend to place my bet as well. All I intended was to learn as much tricks as I could. Then I frequented Boy Cherry, on Bolton Street. There, I saw some prominent billiard players—sports commentators prefer to call them cue artists—including Dennis Orcullo and Gandy Valle. It was also there that I saw, for the first time, Manny Pacquiao. I found out that he was a regular there; in fact, he was among the favorite players, as he could raise his bet to unbelievable heights. Manny the Billarista was a good player, but not as skilled an artist as Manny the Boxer.
My classmates and I sometimes played at Boy Cherry. I liked playing there—the balls were spotless, shiny; the billiard tables, clean; the cue sticks had fiber-glass tips.
As part of my self-improvement project, I also stalked the world’s best cue artists, both foreign and local, on TV: Efren “Bata” Reyes, Francisco “Django” Bustamanete, Marlon Manalo, Mika Immonen, Earl “The Pearl” Strickland, Ralf Soquet, Thorsten “The Hitman” Homman, and many others. I don’t know how watching them play made a dent on my performance, but I watched them anyway. As Rudyard Kipling said, “Every man must be his own law in his own work, but it us a poor-spirited artist in any craft who does not know how the other man’s work should be done or could be improved.”
After a long time of hanging around the billiard halls, playing, watching, then playing, I felt I was competent enough. So I sweet-talked my mother to buy me a cue stick, a practice observed by those whose skills are well above the ordinary. Though she granted my request, my mother was worried that I might concentrate more on billiards than on my studies. No, I told her, I would play only when I came home from school. Of course, I lied, for even at school, I played billiards, and played a lot, during lunch break and after dismissal.
Why I was so engrossed in billiards? Billiards is a sport that that suited me just fine. In billiards, you don’t need the height of Yao Ming, which I’m not gifted with. You need only more brains, of which the benevolent God didn’t deprive me.
Did I entertain the thought of being a professional cue artist? Not really. I just wanted to be better at billiards, and I think I could’ve been a better player, had we not transferred residence. I rarely play billiards now. Despite the very long time of not having played billiards, of not feeling the table cloth, of not putting chalk on the cue stick, of not hitting the balls, despite all that, I will never ever forget billiards.
Every now and then, my mother would tell me to sell my cue stick. Of course, I always say no. Is it out of sentimental reason? Perhaps. But I think the reason why I still keep until now is that it reminds me and my father—who teases me that, unlike him, I don’t excel in any sport—that once in my life, there’s one sport in which I excelled.
