A few years ago I loved to play pool, a game that I was quite adept at to the extent of buying my own pool cues of which I had a couple. I loved the idea of walking into a pool room carrying my cue and after gauging the quality of the table with my eyes including the way the ball behaved and if it passed muster, I would nonchalantly put my name on the board to play against whoever was the winner when my turn came.
It happened that one of my favorite spots was a very popular establishment still extremely vibrant and a must go place for many of the Nairobi yuppies to date located somewhere in the Parklands area. Pool aficionados will tell you that many popular pool establishments have their own regular crowd that generally tends to frequent the place and everyone gets to know each one and its generally one big happy pool playing family. Some among the regulars will frequent the place every day while others have specific days that they hang out on. This place has a large number of pool tables in three locations with the most popular one with regulars being at the outside bar area. This was my usual haunt.
On this particular day there were no regulars, actually no one was there, and so I decided to go to the other pool table located within the main establishment and which was popular with those just passing by and the not so regular crowd. I found two guys playing pool and after observing them for a couple of minutes I put my name down to play with whoever won the next game. For the life of me I do not recall their names, but something peculiar struck me about their relationship that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Was it their familiarity with each other, their seemingly meaningless banter, the fact that only one of them was doing the buying while both were doing the drinking? All would be revealed soon enough.
As I settled into my game, it was clear that I was the better player than either of the two and I easily won my first game and then played with the other chap who I also easily beat. This went on for several frames, the pool games, their drinking and I winning until it was no longer fun for me. The trend in pool is that the winner stays on the table and the challenger pays, so until this point I had only paid for one game and had played maybe ten games. As I played with one the other would casually walk off sometimes talking on the phone sometimes off to the gents, it just did not strike me as a big deal at the time.
As time wore on I decided that enough was enough and I would let one of them win, after all this was getting boring! Then a friend, a regular pool player walked in and the issue was resolved because now there was a new and competitive face to play with. After saying Hi to all of us my friend asked the two if he could play with me and with the two guys now talking to each other in a corner gladly let my friend play. Hardly had we commenced our game when a loud whispered argument broke out between the two. I could not quite make out what the issue was and continued with our game.
The whispered argument soon became a full blown argument, and now the tirades were coming thick and fast, insults and denials passed back and forth and furtive glances in my direction. Was that a tantrum I just saw from one of the guys? What the hell was going on? Were they drunk and if so why the arguments, almost like a couple having a lovers tiff? The commotion didn’t last very long and they soon after left drunkenly staggering off into the night.
That is when my friend let the cat out of the bag because he knew the two of them from their campus days at the Nairobi University twenty years earlier. Apparently the two were friends. Infact they were more than friends, they were ‘queers’ and booty lovers! Their altercation came about because the boyfriend thought that his girlfriend was interested in me and I in her (ahem…him. OK let’s just call him a herhim)!
Now before anyone rolls any drums and congratulates me at my coming out revelation, let me just put it on official record that I have never subscribed to the ‘thutha’ school of thought. It is both despicable and backward and is a pain in the butt…………..literally! I am not a prude and I believe that all are entitled to the life styles that they choose however why involve me in your tiff? Did I look longingly at the girlfriend of this man for herhim to be interested in me? Did I blink at herhim and he mistook it for a wink or does my blinking look like winking? Did that innocent comment as we played our game of pool come out as a ‘come on’ to the herhim? How do you show your affection as a man to another him or herhim? My friend told me that this was the usual jealousy among couple and the two had been having these tiffs for as long as he knew them.
I felt shortchanged that someone could think that I was after his herhim over an innocent game of pool and that a fight had almost broken out because of innocent me………….maybe it did when they got home I will never know! The lesson is that however much you try to pretend it does not exist you could be the man or woman of someone’s dreams and of your own gender no less, ogling and drooling over you as you sit in the corner enjoying your drink or your game of pool. It happened to innocent me and it could happen to you too!
Who knows a spiked drink could have made me someone’s date for the evening but thank god I was on soda and aware of what was happening around me save for the vibes of affection coming from herhim!!
