Getting That Sinking Feeling : Sherman Oaks Family Billiards lacks that hole-in-the-wall ambience, and you can’t get a beer. But you can get tips on putting the ball in the pocket.

I need to confess before we get started: When it comes to billiards, I’m not exactly a novice. I’m no shark, either--just patient.

Years ago, when I worked as a reporter in rural central Florida, I used to find myself at a bar called the Wild Turkey. Outside, its walls were painted in camouflage. Inside, smoke curled in gray pools against the ceiling, drifting up from a shellacked alligator head--yes, a real one--used as an ashtray. Ah, the ambience. But it was the only joint in town. It served fried alligator and cold draft beer and it beat sitting at home counting mosquitoes. This was where I learned to play pool. Sort of.

I never acquired what you could call skill. But every night, as my co-workers and I talked and drank--and occasionally someone would be over-served--their skill and coordination would suffer. I, having no skill or coordination, stayed consistent. I’d usually win a few games around closing time.

But I’d like to be able to hold my own against sober competitors. People drink mineral water in pool halls here. I have to adjust.

I figured I was in the right learning environment when I walked into Sherman Oaks Family Billiards. The strongest drink this place serves is Snapple.

But my instructor was nowhere to be found. A dozen or so men hovering around their 20s paced around the green felt rectangles, drafts of smoke billowing from their nostrils as they crouched menacingly before stroking their cue sticks.

Aram Amirghanyan came out from behind a cash register, handed me a crate of balls and a cue stick and said his son, the manager, was running late, so I should practice.

I glanced hopefully toward one of the empty tables on the far side of the pool hall, but Amirghanyan planted me at a table surrounded by the young hustlers-to-be and their games.

So much for learning in private, for making anonymous mistakes in a dark corner and emerging, with the panache of Minnesota Fats and Willie Mosconi, as the Hustler, b-b-b-b-bad to the bone.

I racked the balls, gripped the cue and stroked, expecting to hear the crisp crackle of balls scattering across the table and into pockets. What I heard sounded more like a golf ball thudding onto shag carpet. The balls rolled about two inches.

Yeah, I’m b-b-b-b-bad to the bone, all right.

Nick Amirghanyan emerged after I knocked the balls around the table for 30 minutes, occasionally--and mostly coincidentally--sinking a few. “Sorry. Late night,” he apologized. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

He started with a few of the basics: I was holding the cue wrong on both ends, not bending enough to gain perspective, and hitting the white ball too hard.

“The only time you want to kill the white ball is in the break,” he said.

It made a difference. I knocked in a few balls--on purpose this time. He taught me how to leave the cue ball in position to allow my next shot and in a position to allow my opponent to pace and grumble.

Then he demonstrated the bank shot. You know this shot. You’ve seen it in all the movies. It’s impressive. It’s flashy. It’s geometry. I hate geometry.

I tried, over and over, to knock a ball off the bumper and into an opposite pocket. Amirghanyan tried to help, wetting his finger with saliva and making a place on the felt to guide my aim.

Finally, sensing my frustration and the fact that I wasn’t even coming close to his spit marks, Amirghanyan, who often uses the name Bayse because he’s tired of hearing people butcher the pronunciation of his family name (it’s ah- meer- a-gan), suggested we try another shot--hitting the ball gently against the lip of the pocket and in.

Here he faced a problem. He stammered for a minute, trying to work his way around the male-invented slang of billiards. “We call this,” he said, pointing to the rounded rubber edge of the pocket and trying to think of a new word or at least explain the one pool players use, “we call this, um, it’s like the nipple, um, on a woman’s breast.” Then he blurted out the word.

Perhaps he thought I would have a vapor, faint at his language. I can’t print the word here, but the term Amirghanyan decided to use as a compromise might give a hint.

“Tips, we’ll call them tips. It sounds the same,” he said, showing me another shot.

Call them whatever you want, I thought, just don’t make me try another bank shot.

As we played, Amirghanyan talked of the camaraderie of billiards, and of how he and his father used to play for hours--until his mother sold their prized table while the men were on a business trip to New York buying fish for their exporting business. Three months later they replaced it with 23 tables and opened the parlor on Ventura Boulevard.

We practiced--OK, I practiced, Amirghanyan doesn’t really need to--and we played a game of eight ball. The shots started getting easier to see and easier to make. That crisp sound I was waiting to hear started ringing in my ears. Just practice, Amirghanyan said. OK, I thought, but I’m going to head back into that dark corner made just for anonymous mistakes. And when I emerge, watch out for some spectacular bank shots.

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WHERE TO GO

What: Sherman Oaks Family Billiards.

Location: 14141 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.

Price: Lessons are $26 per hour, including pool table rental.

Call: (818) 981-2538.