It was incredible how quickly we put on masks for the shoppers, donning phony versions of ourselves the same way my friends and I had at junior high dances when we’d catch sight of a chaperone we knew — a teacher we liked or one of our friends’ parents. Our collective abandon was shattered the second they looked at us. Whatever we might have been from the inside, from the outside, we understood, we were nothing more than a bunch of dumb kids jumping around.
It bothered me that we behaved differently when other people were at the arcade. It bothered me that we had to be different at different times. I wished we could always be ourselves — or at least that version of ourselves — if only out there. After all, they were the intruders, not us.
At least outsiders brought with them the advantage that the clerks never used the PA system when they were around. They never got on the loudspeakers to tell people to find a booth or to drop tokens or get out. They never targeted guys for having their cell phones out. You were protected as long as there were straight shoppers about, like a kid who can rebel against his stepfather as long as his mother is nearby.
The few men who actually came in looking to buy DVDs carried with them the erotic possibility that they would somehow become curious right there in the store. Perhaps one of them would become reminded of some terrific sexual encounter he’d had with another male in his youth. Or maybe he’d just say, “Hell, let’s see what all the fuss is about.”
Meeting the cop on that straight website was proof that things like that happened. He was the straightest-looking person in the world. He didn’t even have that appearance of over-the-top masculinity that can betray some men as gay. He just looked like a normal guy. And even though his profile said he was straight and seeking women, I had been in bed with him, had once even fallen asleep with him, the two of us rousing an hour later and me hurriedly dressing and racing out the door without even kissing him goodbye.
One evening, I watched a cowboy in long, lean Wrangler blue jeans. No one knew whether he was the kind of guy to buy tokens or if he was a regular porn consumer. Even the clerk couldn’t tell. He wasn’t making any announcements over the loudspeakers. I stayed in the cowboy’s general vicinity, and when he looked up, I’d look up too and give him a friendly smile.
After a while he made his way over to where I was stationed in Double Penetration.
“‘Scuse me,” he whispered. “Sorry to bother you, but do you happen to know how this whole thing works?”
“Oh, sure. It’s real simple. You just go buy some tokens and then you can go in the hallways and use them to watch videos in a booth.”
“I see. Is that what you’re doing?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m just hanging out here for a minute. Taking a break. I’m just about to go back in there actually.”
“Is that right? Well, I think I’ll go get myself some tokens too,” he said.
“Good idea. Maybe I’ll see you in there.”
I let him have a few minutes with his tokens, roaming the halls. I figured the crowd that night made me look good by comparison. Then I went and found him. He entered a booth, and I went in right after him.
“Have you really never been here?” I whispered.
“What?” he whispered.
I reached past him and put a token in the slot. I turned down the sound on the video. Our faces were lit. I put my lips close to his ear. “Is this really your first time?”
After that, I saw him out there twice more. Once, he asked me to follow him back to his house. His wife was gone for a week caring for her ailing mother.
47
TALKING TO MALCOLM MADE ME REALIZE THAT I HAD settled for too long in my dead-end job. Hearing about his real, grown-up career, I saw how little I had to offer the cop. I couldn’t go into that relationship as his equal any more than the kid could.
But it wasn’t just that. I could no longer bear the hundreds of insane things that happened each day at work, the slights against my humanity and the way the job made me resent such a wide swath of the populace. People appeared to have no clue how truly horrible they were. A guest who sneezed on my hand without apologizing. A woman holding a speakerphone conversation over the entire course of her check-in. A man who drunkenly vomited in his bed and then called down to tell me to come change the sheets right away, who then vomited on the other bed while I did. That particular guest left a review online claiming that I was rude and acted put out when he found that the sheets in his room were dirty. It came to me as a grand revelation that a new career might change everything, might be the first domino in a string of successes that ultimately returned me to the cop’s arms.
Almost as soon as I resolved to begin searching for another career, it appeared that I might have one, thanks to one of the regulars at the motel. He came to town every few weeks in a suit and tie, and each time I saw him, it was the same routine. He checked in around 8 o’clock in the evening, then went out for supper. After eating, he came to the lobby to talk to me before going to bed. He wasn’t flirting or anything. He was a regular, straight guy, tall and white with short gray hair and a perfectly regionless accent.
He had a boring business he liked talking about. He sold gratings for outdoor spaces. Gratings and benches for commercial applications. It wasn’t stuff anyone would have at their house. The things he sold belonged in parks or on the campuses of huge corporations. It was a normal, dull job, but it was his own enterprise, and he got to do whatever he wanted. Despite his independence, he always seemed anxious and worried when he talked about his work.
One night after supper he entered the lobby while I was checking someone in. He took a seat and waited for me to finish up. He looked glum and distressed.
“What’s wrong?” I said when the other guest left.
“Oh, just work stuff. I’m pretty sure the rep I hired here in town is about to quit, and I’m going to be stuck finding her replacement. She just started six months ago. I haven’t even finished training her really.”
“Yeah, I remember when you mentioned hiring her.”
“She’s pregnant now. I was afraid this was going to happen. You’re not supposed to discriminate, but Jesus. I swear, you’re asking for it if you hire a woman under forty-five.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry to hear it.”
“Of course she won’t just quit now. It’s never that easy. She says she thinks she’ll probably just take a month or so off after she has the baby. But, she says there’s a chance she won’t want to come back at all.”
“So maybe she won’t quit.”
“She’s definitely going to quit. Believe me. I’ve seen this before. She’s just stringing me along in case she hates motherhood or has a miscarriage or something.”
“What can you do?”
“Nothing. I just have to wait. And she’s going to get progressively worse at the job in the meantime. I’m going to have to be in town a lot more for a while.”
“You should just give me the job,” I said. “Then you wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.”
“Haha. Right.”
“You never know. Maybe I could do it.”
“Hell, it might come to that.”
“It doesn’t sound that hard. I’m actually a really fast learner.”
“Food for thought,” he said.
Then someone came in the lobby, and he waved goodnight and went to bed.
I didn’t think anything would come of it, but when he checked in a few weeks later, he started telling me about the job and all that it would entail. He showed me the website for his company, which looked professional and polished and almost comically uninteresting.