Maciej, the Polish Solider

I met Maciej at a dive bar a few blocks from my house: Dillingers, a place I'd been to once before and had spent the night dancing to CCR covers with a young drunk and married girl. Sunday night, the place was very quiet; just a few girls at the bar flicking their fingers on glowing cellphones.

I got a beer and a few dollars in quarters, I asked a guy in the pool hall dressed in a loose black button-down (who I hadn't noticed upon walking in) if the adjacent table was open. "Oh yeah man, she's waitin' for you." I racked the balls and broke, and he said, "Hey, you want to play a game?"

"I suck man. I'm practicing. Maybe in a half-hour."

A few minutes later he stepped over to my table and began offering advice. "You see, if you're going to bank the four-teen here, you've got to put spin on it. But if you're banking, it's a mirrored spin. Left goes right. Right goes left. Give it a try." His arms were covered in tattoos. A flag. A knife. Some time-worn script rendered unreadable. All blue. Blue tattoos.

Following a few ineffectual but valiant stabs at it, he ushered me out of the way. "Let me see if I'm not crazy..." and he sunk the ball effortlessly. "So, you're strippers?" he said. Thus commenced the game.

He had on a black ball cap, but removed it to reveal a long wave of hair pulled back with a hair tie. "You know," he began, "she's always gettin' angry with me. I had it all for a bit - the girlfriend, the boys. But she's always at me," here he makes a face like an angry feline and raises his tense claws. His eyes dart around behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His jawline is slightly grizzled .

We played a few games of pool, both of which I was mercifully treated to the softest defeats. Occasionally we'd take a break so he could purchase another shot of whiskey or bottle of Budweiser, and he'd stand at the bar showing pictures of his dogs to a couple of questionably of-age girls smiling in the bar light.

He told me about his time in the Polish Army. "We were fighting like England," he said, "not like the Americans. We spent most of our ammo on wolf spiders. Those fucks..." he went on. "One girl came into town with a child in her arms. She was strapped with TNT and blew up the market. After that, we killed a few of their camels to send a message."

And he told me about teaching: "I teach breakdancing," he said, "to kids." I imagined him spinning on his head like a guru-gone-wild. His yellow teeth smiling as he twirled into an ecstatic tornado, spiralling, spiralling, into a light so bright, you can't look at it directly. I met Maciej.

"I'm good to know around here. I know a lot of good ones and bad ones. There are some bad ones. But forget about them. Play pool."