I did it. I don’t know why. I could feel his dick pressing against my thigh, and I let him kiss me. He was a fantastic kisser. We kissed for a long time stopping only to put tokens in the slot when the movie stopped.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
I thought it over then said, “Honestly, I’d only make one up.”
“Then make one up,” he said. “Next time I see you, I’ll remember it. You’ll see.”
And the next time I saw him, he did remember.
“Hey, Sam,” he said. “Would you like to come see a movie with me?”
He was stoned and too handsy again, and I found that I wanted more and less of him at the same time. He was still a terrific kisser.
“Let me bring you to my house,” he said. “I don’t live far from here.”
“That’s the last thing I’d do.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Not at all,” I said.
“Well, you should,” he said. “I’m very trustworthy.”
“You look stoned.”
“I am stoned,” he said. “Come out to my truck, and we’ll get you stoned too.”
“I have stuff to do later,” I said.
“So do I. I’m going back to work here in just a little while.”
He looked at me and smiled and said, “You’re exactly what I like. Have I told you that? You’re just like all my boys. Every one I ever had.”
This time, I was less taken with the notion of being one of his boys. Maybe I was thinking about John Wayne Gacy, who had boys of his own that he eventually buried in the crawlspace beneath his house.
The hedgehog didn’t get off either time I saw him, but he made sure I did.
When he was getting dressed and pulling up his pants, I noticed a bottle of cough syrup protruding from the pocket of his jeans.
“Why do you have cough syrup in your pocket?”
He gave me a sideways grin. “I’ve had a little cough lately.”
“And you bring the cough syrup with you into the arcade?”
“You want a sip? Just say so. You can have some.”
Were I to list the highs I found most absurd and lowbrow, the one offered by cough syrup would be very near the top, in the vicinity of gasoline huffing and the canned air people use to clean their keyboards. I could understand a little pot smoking, but, hell, we already had the arcade. How many drugs could the hedgehog possibly need?
I wondered if his other boys drank cough syrup with him or if they preferred getting drunk on hand sanitizer, as I’d read was being done. I was sure it wouldn’t be hard to find someone like that, some boy so trashy and young he wouldn’t know that the hedgehog wasn’t any kind of salvation from anything.
The cop thought he was saving the kid, setting him on the right track. I could tell from their emails. It was all coming into focus now, how that’s what they all liked. The boys liked being set on the right track, and the men liked setting them on it. God knows I would have done anything to find someone who could tell me how to make a little sense of my life.
If you wanted someone to save you, I saw, it was a cinch finding someone willing to try. Same if you wanted to save someone else. It was an undiagnosed fetish, some kind of mutual need that drew people together and then locked them in place like shopping carts, so that life had to yank hard to separate them, even long after it should have been clear that no one was doing any saving.
Before we parted for the last time, the hedgehog said, “I could take such good care of you if you’d let me. All you need is someone to help you out a little. I like to help people when I can. And, honest to God, you’re just what I like. You’ve got exactly that thing that I like.”
I wanted to believe him. I surprised myself when he gave me his number and I actually saved it in my phone.
“You’ll call,” he said. “Maybe not tomorrow, but you will.”
77
I WANTED TO TAKE THEIR OCCASIONAL BICKERING AS A hopeful sign, but it was growing obvious even to me that I probably wouldn’t be going on that cruise in the kid’s place.
I mentioned my despair about this to Jack, who had come to my house to take me to lunch. After all those months, I was still being treated as an emotional invalid. Though friends conspired to organize semi-regular meals to get me out of the house, I could see they were all growing tired of me.
“The cruise is just a couple of weeks away,” I told Jack. “If the staph infection is cleared up by then, they’ll be on a vacation together. They’ll be drinking and having sex. And then everything will be good between them again.”
“I can’t believe he tells you all this stuff,” Jack said. “It’s really sick in a way. It just keeps you so involved with everything.”
“He only tells me some things. I get a lot of it from his email. I told you that.”
“I thought you got into his email once early on. Or that it was a joke even.”
“No. You obviously have no idea how upset I am.”
“You’re reading it regularly?”
“Yes, Jack. Do you not listen to me at all?”
“Are you kidding? What the fuck, man?”
Jack sat there shaking his head and thinking about it.
“Oh, don’t be so judgmental,” I said. “It’s no tragedy. We’re talking about stupid little notes they send one another. I’m not stealing government secrets.”
“I honestly don’t think I can go on being your friend if you keep doing this.”
“You’re so extreme,” I said. “I can’t just stop now. I’ll never see how it ends.”
“It’s not ending. Obviously. And if it does end, it’s none of your fucking business. You can’t just rationalize doing anything you want.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m not. I think there’s something seriously wrong with you.”
After that, we were quiet until Jack finally calmed down enough to take me to lunch. We both drank beer and ate sandwiches and didn’t talk about the cop and the kid again until he dropped me off.
“Think about what I said before,” he said, as I got out of the car.
I did think about it, but I logged in to the cop’s email when I got home. The kid had sent some information about an excursion he wanted to take during the cruise. A day of snorkeling. I followed the link to a website that showed pictures of that incredibly blue water and bright-colored fish and turtles and smiling people wearing those stupid masks.
I could see the cop and the kid there, mentally superimposed in the photographs. Like the ones I’d have to log in and see for myself a month hence. The frustration welled up in me until it was all I could feel. I read the email one more time, then deleted it. Then I deleted it from the trash and logged out.
78
SOMETIMES IT FELT LIKE EVERY MAN AT THE ARCADE wanted something from me. They wanted me not to be there competing for the same people. Or they wanted me to come into a booth with them. Or not to come into a booth with them. To leave them alone. To stick around as an alternate in case something didn’t work out with the other guy they were trying to cruise, or were hoping would arrive. They wanted me with my shirt off, with my shoes off. To look them in the eye, or not to. They wanted me in a suit, or a pair of running shorts, or Levi’s. They wanted me with long hair that fell over one eye like a skateboarder from the early 1990s, or they wanted my hair buzzed like a military man. They wanted to see the way my hard dick pushed against my jeans. They wanted me in boxers or briefs or boxer briefs. Or they wanted me not to wear underwear under my jeans. They wanted me to be ten years younger or older. Ten pounds lighter or fatter. They wanted me to be a way I wasn’t. To stand with my hip cocked or to subtly roll my r’s. They wanted more from me than they realized they wanted.