Playing Pool with a Stranger

I wait for him to pick up the cue.
I cannot hit hard enough to make the break.
I am a girl.
I watch as he bends his body over the table to line up the shot.
His hand goes down to that vast plane of green felt in slow motion,
and he rests the stick in the curve of his long forefinger.
He loosens his grip and swings it back and forth to make sure
it will strike the white ball in just the right spot,
swings his hair to one side, and then,

the music begins; the smack of the break
and the clackclackclack of the balls spreading
out in ripples, two, four, six all dropping with
quiet thunks into the side, corner, and middle pockets.
He runs the table.
I am not even allowed a poor attempt at competition.
This is a man's game and he plays it with grace.
He makes every shot with a mathematical certainty
that I do not possess.
I have seen this before, this quiet, electric superiority.
I have passed in and out of his field of vision a thousand times,
joking about my incompetence,
making sly comments on his prowess,
trying, half-heartedly, to pull his attention
from this game to mine
and always without success.

I might as well be ten years old, sitting at the bar,
drinking seven ounce returnables, watching my father,
instead of thirty-six watching Frank.
They are both strangers to me.
They are both immersed in a culture and camaraderie
that I do not understand,
indifferent to any female who is not
one of the guys.

For years I played pool with strangers like Frank and my father,
trying to gain access to the arithmetic of cool,
genderless and depressed because
I could never improve my game.
But tonight, I will not put my name on the board again,
tonight I will not stain my fingers with blue chalk,
and tonight I will not let Frank beat me.
I will play out the table until only the eight remains
and then, I will scratch
and take away his smug sense of self-importance.
I no longer care to be admitted into this silent, pre-arranged loss.

I will not go into this bar with you again, Daddy.