They were just ordinary guys, of the relatively unambitious variety one might expect. Sometimes friends of theirs would bring them dinner or come to visit. The visiting friends always seemed like unsavory characters, creating the impression that the clerks at the arcade were the most stable and reliable among their peer groups. One of the clerks was an obese white guy who I only ever saw out there very late at night. Then there was the rumpled clerk who looked like my college roommate. And the guy with the fedora who looked like a pornography director. Another was a tall, Hispanic man who wore attractive, tailored clothes. The least pleasant of them sported a badly dyed pink reverse mohawk and belched loudly and repeatedly while on duty.
When not doling out tokens, a clerk could pass his shift in any variety of ways. He might spend some time stocking the condom and lube case, or heating his supper in the microwave, paging through a magazine, or watching TV. Often, the clerks just sat listening to the radio, glassy-eyed and blank as deactivated robots. It was interesting what different people listened to. One guy only listened to heavy metal, another only played Tejano music. Sometimes they kept it reasonably quiet, but sometimes the music would be so loud you could hear it in the booth just as clearly as you could hear the porn.
One night, I entered to find the rumpled clerk watching a football game.
“Hi, I just need four bucks in tokens please.”
“Coming up.”
I peeked over the counter to see his TV set. “What’s the score?”
He glanced at the screen. “Twenty-seven to seventeen.”
“How much time left in the quarter?”
Another glance. “Looks like about four minutes.”
“I watched the first quarter at my place,” I lied. “Didn’t think it’d shape up to be such a good game.”
“Yeah,” he said. He dropped sixteen tokens into my palm. “Here you go.”
“I almost bet on the game. Now I wish I had.”
The rumpled clerk looked down at me with total apathy, wanting nothing more than to return to his zoned out state.
I don’t know why I cared what any of them thought of me, but I did.
Stepping up to buy my tokens, I could see their omniscient view of the place. Big TVs were built into the structure of the counter, each one divided into four smaller screens showing black and white video feeds taken from all the cameras in the place. Waiting for my tokens, I could see the men walking around the hallways, snakily moving from one booth to another, pressing against the doors with their lights lit. You could see all the parts of the store. Visible were the bald spots of everyone browsing or pretending to browse the magazines and movies. Visible was the parking lot from three different angles.
A large plastic jar sat on the counter. Once a display for condoms, they’d converted it into a tip jar. I always tipped the clerks, even if it meant I didn’t have enough tokens to stay long. The mandatory minimum was three dollars in tokens. If I had five dollars, I’d get four dollars in tokens and tip one dollar. If I had four dollars, I’d get three dollars in tokens and tip one dollar. If I had only three dollars, I didn’t go. Tipping was like paying the mafia. You knew it didn’t protect you from everything, but you hoped it protected you a little.
What you didn’t want was to become the target of one of the clerks. You didn’t want to be banned. You didn’t want to be humiliated. You didn’t want to get berated over the public announcement system, the microphone for which looked like something from a 1970s principal’s office or NASA’s first moon landing. It was at the end of a flexible metal arm, cranked up to one’s mouth the moment before making an announcement.
I heard all sorts of announcements, but most of them amounted to “stop breaking the rules” and “start spending money,” both of which seemed to me completely reasonable requests, though compliance wasn’t always as straightforward as one would imagine.
You were in a booth, or you were strolling around in the hallways, or you were pretending to examine the tiny photos on the back of some DVD you would never consider purchasing for $4.95, let alone $24.95. You were somewhere playing around or looking for someone to play around with, or courting in some bizarre way another guy with whom you knew you would soon be fooling around. You heard the sound of something being turned on, something electronic popping to life. And this voice came over the speakers, which were planted all over the place, alongside the video cameras. When I was first going out there, it always made me jump.
“Start dropping tokens,” the voice said. “If you’re in a booth you must drop a token. Light up those lights, or get out. The rest of you, find a booth and drop a token.”
The issue arose constantly. Men, diverted by passion and lust, grew inattentive in booths and forgot to drop tokens. Or else they deliberately tested the limits of what they could get away with without spending any money. If I failed to drop a token while in a booth, it was an honest accident. I got the impression that everyone else hated them, but I kind of liked when those announcements came on because suddenly I’d start hearing coins dropping into slots all over the place. Red lights popped to life in corners I’d written off. There were people in all the places where, moments ago, there seemed to have been none. It was like having night vision for sixty seconds, enabling me to see all that had been hidden before. Then, just one minute later, the lights started to go off again. Some people would leave their booths to roam around, and others would re-up with more tokens, but a lot of them would just go dark again until the next announcement.
Sometimes the clerk said, “I’ve got too many cars out here to have only two booths lit up. Don’t make me come out there.” That one worked well to shake out the sleazebags who didn’t want to pay. I don’t know why I was so disgusted with the ones who refused to buy more tokens. I understood that they might have been broke, but they should have found another way to get laid. When I was broke, I didn’t go to the arcade.
When the clerks became particularly peeved, they exercised their pre-nuclear option by switching on the lights in all the booths. One moment, you’d be ensconced in a comforting blue glow in the warm darkness, and the next, as if the victim of a flash grenade, you’d find yourself blasted by harsh white light. It never lasted long — usually just a second or two, but it was weird when it happened. If I was alone, I got this rare, fully-lit glimpse of the interior of the booth. I could see the floor and the walls, and the little hooks where you were supposed to hang your clothes. I could see the black vinyl benches. I could see cigarette butts on the floor. I could see dropped tokens. I could see the little black trash can, and, if there was something in the trash, I could see what was inside. But I couldn’t look at anything closely or for long because before I could even focus the lights were off again.
If you happened not to be alone when the lights came on, you were confronted with that person at extremely close range. He was very, very — sometimes tragically — visible. You saw him, and you saw him see you. Whenever that happened to me, we both put ourselves away and departed the booth in search of murkier partnerships. Whoever devised that method for clearing booths was in possession of a diabolical mind.
24
FOR EACH TIME I GOT WHAT I WANTED, I WAS REJECTED innumerable times. It’s always a numbers game, as any barroom seducer will attest. Of course, I rejected my share too. That’s how I started to see that it wasn’t personal. It really wasn’t. Though when I was the one on the receiving end of the shaking head or averted eye, it could certainly feel personal. That sharp edge had to be ground down in me.