At the intersection of pastel panorama and expat entertainment, Club Cupid occupied a special place among Pohnpei's evening entertainment options.
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Club Cupid, August 1999. Photo: S.Jacques Stratton
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Though travelers seeking a true immersion in Micronesian culture considered "touristy" any drinking establishment other than a sakau bar, Club Cupid had a special allure, and often played host to lively gatherings of ex-pats and locals alike. Here, on the first weekend of my life as an ex-pat English teacher, I met Colette, whose unconventional pool tactics provided memorable source material for Chapter 3 of my travel memoir, Islands on the Fringe, a section of which I excerpt below:
I edge
close to the pool table, where the party atmosphere carries overtones of
spectator sport, as onlookers watch a slinky brunette in her fifties sink one difficult
shot after another. Wearing a low-cut
blouse that opens to overly-tanned cleavage, she confidently leans into her
final shot and knocks the 8-ball home with a double carom. In a raspy smoker’s voice, she asks “who’s
the queen?” “Colette’s the
queen!” her onlookers reply, while her defeated opponent rests his cue on the
table and returns to the gallery of previously-chastened challengers.
“Anybody else?” the brunette inquires,
casually rubbing chalk on the end of her cue.
Seeing nobody
immediately respond, I step forward.
As I rack the balls, the woman looks me
over. “Where you been hiding,
Honey?” she asks. “I thought I knew all the guys around here.”
I introduce myself
and I explain I’d flown in just a few days before.
“Nice to meet you,
Jacques,” she says.
As the standing
winner, Colette elects to break, and spears the cue ball in a freewheeling
style that shows little regard for shot sequencing. The break comes up dry; balls scatter but
none drop, and based on the carom action, I recognize the pool table as one
known in pool parlance as “wet,” its cloth and cushions rendered sluggish by
humidity. “So, Jacques,” Colette says as
I survey the table, “I guess you got tired of drinking with Barton and his
gang?”
“I guess so,” I say,
surprised to find my prior whereabouts in the bar a matter of scrutiny. With a soft shot, I sink a striped ball into
a corner pocket, get a lucky roll from the cue ball, and go on a two-ball run before
a bad leave places me in a blockade of Colette’s solids.
“So, does that mean
you aren’t interested in ruining your reputation?” she asks. With a crisp smack she sends a solid into a
corner pocket.
The question carries
overtones of innuendo, and I seek a suitably coy response. “Maybe not just yet,” I say.
Colette knocks down
another solid, and then unaccountably dogs an easy 1/4 ball hit that results in
a scratch to the middle pocket.
“I see,” she
says. Retrieving the cue ball, she comes
close, places it in my palm, and lets her fingers linger on my hand. A smell of cigarettes permeates her breath
and helps dispel a façade that had influenced my earlier perception. While glossed with a sultry allure in the
dimly lighted bar, up close Collette’s face reflects the haggard sadness of a
woman hopelessly clinging to the vestiges of lost youth. “Well, you look like a guy who knows how to
treat a lady right,” she whispers, bringing her lips close to my ear. “Now, take your shot.”
The sultry
intimations act like pixie dust, and I proceed to run the table, sinking the
remaining four stripes in succession. As
I ponder how to best knock down the 8-ball, the on-lookers—including Sally,
who, still fuming over the unwelcome lesson in pronunciation, flashes a
particularly uncomplimentary glance--crowd close, curious if Colette’s defeat
might finally be at hand. Colette,
showing little apprehension, casually chalks her cue, and sidles to the end
rail opposite me, placing her cleavage in my line of sight. She gives me a wink.
“8-ball, far corner,” I announce, calling the
shot per standard billiard protocol.
Feeling the eyes of the spectators, I address the ball and draw back my
cue. Recognizing the shot as one with
high scratch potential, I decide to slightly cheat the pocket as I set my
aiming line.
Just as I take the
shot, Colette leans low against the table, her blouse dangled so I see both the
profile of her breasts and the fact that she doesn’t wear a bra. The distraction sends the cue ball
off-course, to carom off the side and into the sewer of the opposite corner
pocket. The scratch costs me the
game. Accompanied by gasps and laughs
from the spectators, I lay the cue on the table and join the ranks of the
defeated.
“Who’s the queen?”
Colette asks.
“Colette’s the
queen,” I reluctantly voice. My
triumphant adversary blows me a kiss and rests her cue against the wall. Instead of awaiting the challenge of the next
contestant, she pats my shoulder and leads me away from the table.
“Care to join me for
a smoke?” she asks.
“I don’t smoke,” I
say, in a once-bitten, twice-shy tone that indicates my displeasure with
Colette’s Machiavellian tactics
“Well, maybe you need
some fresh air then.”
The mention of fresh
air makes me perceive just how stifling the bar had grown, and I notice the
dampness of perspiration on my shirt.
“Fresh air sounds
good,” I agree.
We amble out of the
bar and across the grassy plateau to the parking area. From the glove box of a beat-up sedan,
Colette obtains a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Meanwhile, as my eyes adjust to the night, I
gasp in sudden wonder. A thousand
fireflies appear congregated among the grass and upon the metal surfaces of the
parked cars. Then, my perception shifts,
and I recognize the fireflies as dew drops that gleam diamond with reflected
starlight—diamond, but also emerald and sapphire, as beads of yellow and green
sparkle among the white. When I turn my
gaze upward, the source of the lightshow spreads across the night: the Milky Way like a burst of spray paint,
Sirius outshining its neighbors, and a hint of the Southern Cross low on the
horizon. The stars of Micronesia dance as though plugged in to a
celestial current. Disregarding the dew
and an occasional buzzing mosquito, I lean my back against Colette’s car and
try to remember if I’ve ever seen a night as stunning as the one that now
envelopes my gaze.
“Beautiful, isn’t
it?” Colette says. Her cigarette brightens
and dims as she drags and exhales.
“Beautiful and
beyond,” I say. “I’ve never seen
anything like it.”
For a while, in silence,
we watch the stars. Colette sits with
her leg against mine, and the soft warmth almost, but not quite, draws me to
her. Her coquettish smile suggests a
spirited lass eager for a kiss, but her eyes pool with the sadness of a haggard
woman tormented by time. Feeling
awkward, I move away slightly, and fill the gap with conversation. “So, what’s with all
the Colette’s-the-queen stuff?” I ask.
“Does anybody else get similar accolades?”
Colette sighs but
indulges my interrogation.
“In my younger days I
competed in beauty contests,” she says.
“I actually made runner-up for Miss Texas.” Sucking her cigarette, she assesses the
impact of this information. “You don’t
believe me?” she asks accusingly.
Opening the car door, she rummages through the
glove box and produces a postcard-size photo for scrutiny. “That’s me on Galveston Beach,”
she says. Illumined by the car’s
interior light, a bikini-clad brunette stares back from the picture.
“Miss Texas, huh?” I ponder.
“Runner up,” she
clarifies. “But the girl who beat me cheated.
She was having an affair with one of the judges. Really, I should have won.”
“Colette the beauty
queen,” I muse. “So, how did you end up here?
“How does anybody end
up anywhere?” she sighs, after a long pause in which she returns her attention
to the stars.
The question dangles,
rhetorically ripe, a doorway to philosophical inquiry where simple questions
invoke complex answers.
Collette laughs the
half-amused, half-bitter laugh of the jaded.
“We don’t control the circumstances of our lives. One day I woke up and found I was nothing
special. So, I cling to that little
place where confidence still resides—sometimes that’s a pool table at Club
Cupid.”
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