Suburban game rooms of the '80s had many things in common: The stink of dirty clothes and stale cigarettes, beer stashed in a corner, a black-light poster or four and — if you were lucky — a foosball table. Its pricetag landing between the dart board and the pool table, foosball still had enough appeal to transform a basement into a destination. Foosball tables were the above-ground pools of the game room. Not exactly the high life, but good enough.

The game of foosball — at least when played by teens, possibly tipsy on peach schnapps — is a loud and baffling sport. The ball clattering around the table only to disappear into the hole. Like sex, this happened somewhat mysteriously, and way too fast. Is that all? Are we done already? I can remember trying to reconcile the pins' movement with the ball's trajectory, and in absence of any real conclusions, I just spun those bars like my life depended on it.

"Slow down," a guy told me once. Let's say his name was Dale. "Take your time."

This from a guy in a Def Leppard muscle shirt? Taking my time wasn't easy, as I was a girl who embodied all the cliches my feminist friends would later rally against: I flinched when you threw a ball my way, I became woozy at the sight of blood, I shrieked at loud noises. Something was ricocheting violently around this table, and I was supposed to slow down?

I threw up my hands. "I can't do this." I was thirteen; this was my version of flirting.

Dale moved to my side of the table and positioned himself behind me. I could smell the Speed Stick balled up in his armpits. He was eighteen, my cousin Becky's friend, and we were in the musty basement of his parents' suburban Michigan home. I wasn't really interested in him, but as he moved behind me and guided my hands along the rotating bars, I could sense he might be interested in me. At thirteen — well, maybe at any age — that can be enough.

"It's a game of control," he whispered into my ear, tapping the ball with the pin so that it always returned to him. "You wait for an opening." With his left hand, he pumped the opposing side back and forth, back and forth. "And then you shoot!" There was a popping sound and then a thunk. He shoots, he scores. "Another game?"

I shrugged. "I'm kind of tired," I said.

"That's cool. Let's go lay down on my parents' waterbed."

Foosball is a quick and dirty sport. This cannot be underestimated, especially for anyone who has endured a pool game that lasted longer than Monopoly. Later, in college, I would trade foosball for billiards. I would wiggle my rear into whichever boyfriend decided I required a strategy lesson. I would learn to line up my shots. I would discover a terrific feel for bank shots. But all of this, even the vocabulary, was too complicated for a thirteen-year-old. Foosball was more my speed. I didn't want a geometry lesson. I wanted to spin the dealies and bang the what's-it with the thingamabobs.