The following evening I rang Malcolm up, and almost wept when he answered as usual. He didn’t even bring up what had happened the night before. He showed mercy. Who else could I count on for it? Not my family. Not God, who, no matter what I had been told my whole life, did in fact give people more than they could handle. There was no mercy awaiting me at work. And none, of course, at the arcade.
30
IF YOU WENT OFTEN ENOUGH YOU WERE BOUND TO OBSERVE an exhibition of genuine hostility by one of the clerks, usually over the loudspeakers. You couldn’t imagine the horror on the faces of their targets until you saw it yourself. Once, I witnessed a man walking down the smoking hallway idly reading text messages on his phone. The Voice, angrier than I’d ever heard it, came over the loudspeaker, “Hey, you in the blue shirt! No phone! Put it away or get out!”
The guy with the phone convulsed, looking skyward, then fumbled with his phone and dropped it on the floor. It shattered, shooting bits in every direction. He picked up what he could, and didn’t spend even a second inspecting it. The moment he laid hands on it, he was in a booth. An instant later the red light outside was aglow. We were all relieved it wasn’t us. Of course, we had all done exactly the same thing any number of times. The guy with the broken phone left immediately after his sixty seconds of pornography elapsed, and I never saw him again.
I was once yelled at over the loudspeaker in the parking lot, where I mistakenly imagined myself untouchable. The lot, shielded from the street by the building itself, was a world of its own which could be read like tea leaves. There were the cars I recognized, of course, like the silver Mercedes of the ever-present Big Red-drinking letch. Then there were cars with vanity plates. Government cars. Utility vans belonging to the city. Plumbing trucks. A/C repair vehicles. Economy cars with rosaries dangling from their rearview mirrors. Mid-range cars with bumper stickers boasting some kid’s academic or athletic acumen. Pickups were promising. Luxury cars weren’t necessarily.
I once saw in the parking lot a pickup piled with boxes, a faux-leather sofa dangling over the tailgate. As if the truck’s owner had been in the middle of moving when overcome by the irresistible urge to suck a dick.
Sometimes I arrived and found that I was the only one there. Or there were just two cars in the entire lot. The question of “enough” arose. I sat in the parking lot and asked myself: What makes it worth it? Because there were certainly times when it wasn’t worth it, when the arcade felt like an empty chat room, and I wondered what I was doing there, what I had ever been doing there with three dollars in tokens.
I was in my pickup pretending to speak on the phone. The act was for the benefit of the clerk. If he were paying attention to the video monitors, he’d see I was occupied and not merely lurking. The parking lot had just three or four cars in it, but I figured I’d go in if any promising prospects arrived. All my friends were out of town for the weekend, and I had the whole day to myself with nothing to do.
The P.A. system crackled to life the way it did on M*A*S*H. I hadn’t even known before that moment that there were speakers outside.
“Hey, you in the truck, no loitering. Come in, or take off.”
I debated it for a moment, and then made a show of disconnecting from my imaginary call for the cameras. I went in. Naturally, it was the disgusting belching clerk with the pink reverse mohawk.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I was just wrapping up a conversation.”
“Yeah, right,” he said.
That was the only time I heard that particular announcement out there. I wondered who else had gotten it and if they really were on the phone at the time. I didn’t know how anyone could be expected to explain such a thing to the person on the other end of the call. I tried imagining a plausible lie to use in precisely that instance, but came up with nothing.
31
SOME NIGHTS I WENT TO THE ARCADE AND, LIKE SOME hideous troll, repelled everyone in the place. I’d request the key to the restroom from the clerk so I could check my face in the mirror and sniff my armpits. No matter how good I got at rejection, those nights were tough.
Other nights everything seemed to work in my favor. I’d arrive at the same time as some trucker or cable installer or pig farmer. As I made my way to the entrance, our eyes would meet, and he’d enter just on my heels. The clerk would be one of the nice ones who let everyone do as they wished without hectoring them over the speakers. Attractive men would shuffle about, smiling when they saw I was buying tokens.
I’d pretend to peruse the movie selection, and the most alluring man would come by and feign interest in a DVD on the rack I was browsing, brushing against me as he reached for an installment in the Barely Legal franchise and making a hmmm sound, as if considering the tiny photos on its cover. I always knew it was an act because with his other hand he’d be subtly jingling the tokens in his pocket, like all the guys did when they were trying to figure out who was who and whether they had a shot. If I felt like it, I’d jingle my tokens back at him or brush against him a little. Or if I was feeling bold, I might have said in a low voice. “I’ve seen that one. It’s pretty good.”
And he would say, “Yeah? If you like this one, they’ve got some pretty good movies playing here in the booths.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s what I’ve heard, anyway,” he’d say.
“I don’t know,” I’d reply. “I just got here. I haven’t even gotten the lay of the land yet.”
“It’s dead, man, believe me. I was getting ready to leave when I saw you come in.”
I could see that his idea of “dead” was different than mine, but it didn’t matter. He’d lead the way, and we’d find a booth together.
He’d receive my warning — that I didn’t do much out there — in stride. He’d confirm and reconfirm his disease-free status. Maybe I’d help him get off, or watch him get himself off. And then he’d go and I’d stay. Maybe he’d give me his extra tokens, and I’d use them to find someone else to hang out with.
On the best nights, men kept showing up until the place was absolutely filled. I liked it best when there were more guys around. The building swelled with optimism and the feeling that satisfaction was underway or not far off. The clerks were relaxed, and they didn’t seem to care what anyone was doing because plenty of tokens were being dropped in the slots. Those were great times.
32
AN INCREDIBLE PERCENTAGE OF ARCADE GOERS WERE married or lived with women. Others lied, claiming to date women, although many hadn’t slept with one in years, if ever. It was something anyone who could pass for straight did on occasion. There was a particular prestige about appearing to be straight.
Some of the men there genuinely were straight — not perfect “zeros” on the Kinsey Scale, of course — but were unable to have their appetites met by their wives and girlfriends, or didn’t have the time and energy (and often money) required for pursuing even non-prostitute partners of the opposite sex. Or they simply weren’t traditionally attractive or sufficiently socially skilled to acquire female companionship. But they had learned at some point that playing around with guys could be fun too and that willing male partners were infinitely easier to find.
Whatever their actual orientations, unlike in the gay community at large, most of the men at the arcade were trying their best to appear unmistakably straight.