“That’s a real cute case ya got there,” the man said to me as I strode toward the door of the pool hall. I heard the familiar snicker in his voice, and I responded quickly: “I get that a lot.” I paused with the door half-open, and said, “And I don’t give a (hoot). A lot.” I continued into the pool room with the pink case that I use to transport my pool cues to league play.
My two best friends are both breast cancer survivors. I know them well, though there are many more women, casually known to me, who are also survivors. But it is the stories of the women who mean the most to me that challenged me to become an advocate for breast cancer awareness, and each October — Breast Cancer Awareness Month — I dress in pink clothing and exchange my black cue case for a pink one. I’ve printed a series of cards with breast cancer awareness facts, and when a man comments on my case (it is rarely a woman), or the color choice in my clothing, I hand him a card. And over the years, one man has tried to engage me in conversation about breast cancer. My education program is mostly a failure, and I wonder if it is because of my audience. Even though the pool leagues I shoot in have both male and female competitors, pool in the bars I frequent is mostly a male sport. And those “sports” do not want to have serious conversations that fall outside of pool, booze and women.
It would be reasonable to question the effectiveness of my passive demonstrations of support for the estimated 252,710 new cases of invasive breast cancer that were expected to have been diagnosed in 2017. Though the cards I pass out (printed in pink text) have statistics such as that one, few people have engaged me in conversation about the subject. I don’t know if anyone who has been given a card that says “One in eight women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime” has done any research on the subject. I imagine that, should a survey be taken about “the guy with the pink pool case,” the opinion of most of the men would be, “he’s gay,” as in homosexual. I doubt that any one of those men would remember, or credit, my stated reason for carrying the case: TO ENHANCE AWARENESS OF BREAST CANCER. It doesn’t help that I am unconcerned about being thought of as gay, and unlikely to protest, “But no: I do this because…”
When I visit non-league bars with pool tables, where the clientele can be somewhat rough, I don’t feel any real danger; in those darker places, where pool is a secondary consideration to the consumption of alcohol, few men have asked me about my pink pool case, though many have stood in stunned, wide-eyed and open-mouthed wonder as I passed. And as for the league rooms I play in, perhaps I would be less committed to my cause if the league should see my color choice as an assault on some deeply-held convictions about a man’s choice of colors in clothing and accessories and instituted a rule that said that league personnel present at the start of play “shall stand and show respect” for the sacred tradition of “man-colors.”
I think I would still continue to carry my pink pool case — always, and not just in October — and twinkle pinkly through the pool room, leaving slips of information, even though people might dismiss my stated reasons for doing so.