“A proficiency at billiards is a sign of a misspent youth,” wrote Twain. If true, then the Three Needs in Burlington is home to an assortment of hustlers whose youths, in aggregate, constitute the biggest waste of time since instant-replay began destroying baseball.
In the evenings they gather by the side-by-side pool tables in the back after the daily keg party known as Duff Hour. They are laborers, mechanics, doctors, lawyers, dads, moms, college educators, college grads, and college dropouts. A few are even college students.
Not Shorty. Shorty is a local. He stands five-foot-nothing and he can run a rack before you get back with your beer. A good looking Irish kid still, even at 30, he likes black t-shirts, dark pants, and hoppy beers. A Sullivan, by name and by looks, his blue eyes and easy smile compete for the girls’ attention. He wears his dark hair short. Always has. Less to grab in a fight.
He is a patient man now, though he was not always.
“Shorty was a nickname that was from back when we were selling LSD in City Hall Park,” he begins. “We’re talking ’95, ’96? A lot of kids would come off Grateful Dead and Phish tour, and they’d come into town and they’d (shades his eyes with his hand; feigns scanning the horizon), ‘Shorty! Shorty!’ You know what I mean? It just stuck.”
That his nickname might owe to his height never occurs to him, a sign of the optimism great pool requires, a quality gained in his own misspent youth. Consider the confidence a 5 foot tall, 13 year-old needs to sell drugs to career hippies in a city park. This is Shorty, the guy you want in the foxhole with you, honest, fearless, loyal, a closer.
“The first time I picked up a pool cue,” continues Shorty, “I couldn’t have been more than 11 or 12 years old. My second cousin…she’s got 10 years on me, and she’s like, ‘Wanna play a game a pool?’… So I was instantly like, ‘Sure. Let’s play pool.’ And she was killing it… She’s just knocking them down, making bank shots. I remember just going, ‘Damn!’… I associate it with the first time I seen kids skateboarding in Burlington when I was really young.”
A local legend, he enjoys every accolade an innovative, fearless, highly-skilled star of skateboarding films should, except of course the money and the film credit. Shorty saw none of that despite helping make the 150 foot long handrail at Burlington High School world famous, and snapping the bones in both his wrists with the same frequency a marathoner pulls hamstrings. Shorty has stared down more than one doctor threatening to amputate his hand.
There were times when he hustled beers with a cast on each wrist. He drank his winnings pinned between his broken hands the same way a dog holds a bone it’s chewing. Shorty’s from the North End, the part the gentrification won’t be getting to.
“I grew up in Burlington. There was an era in Burlington where there was kind of like this weird mafia thing that happened. Skateboarders…we just had a lot of clout. There was a lot of weird drugs involved. We just ran the show and we were crazy, and I skateboarded every day of my life.” He stops to take a sip, and turns away like there is something just beyond his vision. “Skateboarding left me because of injury and that’s when I picked up pool.”
Shorty stops. Doug Dows is lining up the Twelve. Doug’s team just won the local APA league. He got flown out to Vegas for a tourney. He is playing Chelsea, 22, brunette. Chelsea can shoot, lights out. Many a young man has strutted up to rack, and skulked away to drink.
Her favorite thing is when a guy unqualified to chalk his own cue-stick stops her, mid-run, mid-shot even, to explain to her the finer points of pool. She’ll listen and blink – Chelsea has huge brown eyes – and when he’s finished, she’ll run five balls to the Eight. If they’re really obnoxious she’ll take a few extra, completely unnecessary practice strokes on the Eight ball, a cat with one claw through one wriggly dead mouse.
Shorty is sitting in Doug’s line of sight. True to pool-player etiquette he waits motionlessly until the shot is over. Doug seems to notice Shorty for the first time. They nod. No smiles.
“I needed a new hobby. I needed something. And skateboarding and pool are parallel on so many levels…You end up rooting for each other, but you’re playing for yourself. It’s not a team sport so-to-speak, but there’s a lot of camaraderie and brotherhood and love that happens within the game.”
Rick Worcester, who like Doug is a grizzled vet, is whipping one of the kids who have been hanging around lately, shooting, learning. Rick has perfect form. He should. He stole it entirely from Willie Mosconi. To understand who Mosconi is, just know that Babe Ruth is the Willie Mosconi of baseball, only far less talented and nearly twice as over-hyped. As the Eight banks back from the end rail into the corner the kid cracks the floor with the butt of his stick. His friend rushes to rack. They glare at Rick with a mixture of resentment and respect.
“I didn’t pick up a stick again until I was 21 years old,” continues Shorty. “When I think of the Needs back then, I think of movies like Pool Hall Junkies. I was just hooked…I started shooting with guys like Sonoda. I mean, I credit guys like him, and Eric Heise and Danny Koh, and E-Mike, and Treg, and Chocolate Thunder Mikey, you know, all these old-school guys that have been playing at the Needs forever.”
Shorty turns back. “You would walk in to the old Needs; you had a list of twenty people wanting that table. I mean, you had better win or you had to wait for a while. I loved the old joint.”
Doug glides from his chair, to where Chelsea studies the table, and begins explaining the intricacies of a Push-shot. Rick frowns at the next table over. It is the same scowl a magician might give Penn and Teller when they reveal the secrets of a Houdini escape.
“I honestly believe that pool as a game of time and learning,” continues Shorty. “There may be a few naturals out there. There are always those savants, so to speak, but for me the game was a learning process. What was great about it was playing with Heise, and Dan, and those guys. There was never that posturing: ‘We’re better than you so get the fuck out of our bar.’ But, it was always like, ‘Hey, Shorty, check it out. Here’s what I saw you do, and here’s how you can play a better game.’ And it was always great because I felt accepted. I felt like I was part of something, which is what kept me playing at the Three Needs, and playing with those guys.”
Chelsea strokes, drives the cue-ball through the frozen Five and Two. The Two, as if by some wicked magic curves a full two inches over the length of the table, and drains into the corner. Chelsea pops up from her stance. She turns to Doug who is smirking. She turns to Rick. Still silent, not a word, she beams. It is the closest thing to an outburst she’ll display all week.
Rick smiles. “Nice shot, Kid,” he says. She can’t help herself, and she cracks the slightest, almost imperceptible, smile. She is getting private lessons from one of the best shots in town and getting congratulations from another.
“My first game in Oregon, I went into this bar called the Matador,” says Shorty. “And the Matador had two tables and they had red felt and they had 25 cent games which was off-the-chain. It was on Southwest Burnside and 23rd. It was a dive bar. All the windows were blacked out. You could go in in the middle of the day, high noon, and it’s dark and dreary and everybody’s pissed off and everybody’s shooting pool, shooting whiskey. I remember going in, my first night in Oregon, with all the confidence in the world and a belly full of whiskey and I just ran house… The last thing I remember is the bartender had me by the scruff of my shirt throwing me out of the bar. Not ‘cause I’m winning, but because I said something to somebody.”
Shorty trails off laughing and gets up to fetch a beer. Approaching the tap-tree he high-fives every patron in the joint. Justin Francis Sullivan, Shorty, has had his licks, but he keeps on trucking. Gone are the crazy drugs. Gone are the weeks recuperating following every fist-fight, every bender, every unstuck landing. A kid who suffered Cool-Hand-Luke-Syndrome if any poor Irishman ever did, Shorty is still no angel, but he’s discovered how to enjoy his place in the world.
Doug watches Shorty bounce past on his way to the bar. His eyes say it all. He is dying to play him. Doug and Rick are racing to win to shoot Shorty. This is the hustle. It is for bragging rights. Anyone can steal a college kid’s fiver. They want to beat Shorty. They want a game.
Autumn, the bartender and babysitter, dims the lights and thereby the conversation as Shorty returns. “Pool at the Three Needs is great, because you are playing a high caliber of player,” he goes on. “I mean tonight is an example. We got Rick and Dan and Mike and Treg and Heise and Bill and all these dudes.”
The players he names line the booths around the tables, a murderers’ row of Burlington’s best pool shots. You miss against these guys, and you’re done. They smile, and laze and swirl the ice in their pint glasses, each with one eye on the pool and the other on the waiting list.
“We all shoot well,” says Shorty, “but anyone can win and that’s just it. I won a tournament last Wednesday, you know what I mean?”
“And this kid’s denying he makes money playing pool,” interrupts Rick with a smile. He points his stick at Shorty. “You’re up, by the way.”
“Yeah, I made about a hundred dollars,” laughs Shorty.
Rick wanders away amused by the ongoing interview process. Shorty follows him with his eyes at their corners.
After Rick’s out of earshot he starts again, “So here’s what I wanted to say. I was a charismatic young man that grew up in this town and a lot of people knew me. I moved to Oregon, and I moved back because my mom was sick with cancer. And moving back was kind of a scary thing. I didn’t really know what to expect, but this town is such a beautiful place, and the love and the friendship, and just the brotherhood that I’ve felt coming back was overwhelming to the point where I am so happy to be here. I mean I’m here for my mom, but my friends have been insanely supportive and good, and there’s so much love. These guys have been here for me. That being said I’m glad the Three Needs is thriving and anyone who wants to learn to shoot, come to the Three Needs and play some pool, ‘cause this is where you’re gonna play the good dudes, the dudes who shoot. That’s how we roll here.”
“Hey!” shouts Rick. “Hustler! You’re up!”
“See what I mean. Love.”
