Drew Smith - Arcade

It took many visits for me to learn that when someone at the arcade rejected you, it was simply because you were not his thing. And there was no way you could ever be the thing for which he was looking, because you were another thing entirely. It had nothing to do with some imagined attractiveness quotient.

Sometimes there would be a man at the arcade so classically, George Clooney-good-looking that it was almost unbelievable. Everyone wanted him. They’d all be pseudo-casually walking up and down the hallways, ducking into booths to see if he’d follow. They’d brush against him as if by accident, and then stare him in the eye. Sometimes you couldn’t believe which one he chose. It could be shocking. Some pear-shaped, duck-footed guy in a salmon-colored polo, pleated shorts, and a pair of flip-flops. You’d see them connect, and the guy he had chosen would be just as shocked as anyone. And the handsome one would be shy and surprised when the duck-footed guy wanted him too. Sometimes it really was like watching a love connection. A while later, you’d see the pudgy guy emerging from their booth, tucking his shirt into splattered shorts, clearing his throat and making his way to the exit. You hoped he got the guy’s phone number at least.

BEFORE DISCOVERING THE ARCADE, I’D ALWAYS HEARD THAThomosexual communication was all in the eyes. It turned out to be so true and obvious, I still can’t fathom how I was missing it all that time. They looked you in the eye when they wanted you and to determine if you wanted them. And if you held that simple eye contact for just a few seconds, they knew, and you knew. But if they wanted you and they looked into your eyes, you could simply not return their look, and they almost always understood. Or they should have anyway. The persistent ones were the worst.

I’LL SAY THIS ABOUT THE COP: ANYONE ELSE WOULD HAVEseen it coming. When I returned from a short vacation, he told me he had fallen in love and moved a nineteen-year-old college student into his house. It wasn’t the first time I had heard of the kid. I had known of his existence as an occasional sex partner, but I hadn’t known to think of him as an actual threat.

I was standing outside my apartment building when I called him. The way he was talking, I could tell the nineteen-year-old was with him. The streetlight beneath which I was standing suddenly went dark, in an instance of what is known as “the Street Light Interference Phenomenon” by the sort of crackpots who think feelings can interfere with the world around them.

“But I’m in love with you,” I said to the cop.

“Well, that’s certainly the first I’ve heard of that,” he said.

It was true that whenever he asked me out to dinner or to a movie I told him he should find a gay guy to do that kind of stuff with. Still, we had laid together in the incredible darkness of his bedroom — working nights meant he had sprung for high-quality blackout shades — and talked about how we would still be seeing one another when I got married to a woman someday. Now he was breaking our deal.

He had to get off the phone after that. I went to my apartment and spent the next several hours throwing up.

I PASSED MOST OF MY TIME AT THE ARCADE IN THE STORE, the neutral zone between the hallways. I stayed beneath the fluorescent lights, where I felt safest, pretending to look at the boxes of dirty movies while almost everyone else stayed in the corridors, only emerging to cross to the hall on the opposite side. That’s when I’d see them and they’d see me.

Sometimes I’d follow a man into the hallway, hoping he’d go into a booth, drop a token and leave the door open for me. That usually worked. But sometimes I misread signals. I’d follow a guy into the hallway, and he’d peer at me through the shrinking crack of the closing booth door with what I perceived as a beckoning gaze. I’d walk to the door, ready to join him, and then hear the lock being engaged on the other side. Or I’d push the door open and he’d give me a look that made clear I had mistaken the meaning of his glance. When that happened, I had to stroll on and into a booth of my own to watch a little of a movie by myself, because once you entered the hallway you were supposed to go into a booth and drop a token. No loitering. Those were the rules.

A lot of men preferred staying in a booth to roaming the hallways. They’d stake their territory, then keep the lights outside lit by dropping tokens into the slot whenever the movie stopped. Unless they already had company, you could count on their doors being unlocked.

Some were “straight” guys who didn’t actually seem to want anyone to come inside, though neither did they lock their doors. They behaved as if they didn’t understand what was happening when someone entered to join them. They stared ahead at the screen, barely acknowledging me, rubbing themselves a little over their pants. It was confusing when they kept feeding tokens into the slot, which, under normal circumstances was a sign that your booth-mate wanted to keep things going. When those guys did it, I didn’t know what it meant. Sometimes they would turn around and frown and raise their hand and say “No, thanks” after we’d stood together in silence for five minutes or more. Sometimes we would watch the movie for a while and they would finally whisper, “Lock the door.” If you hadn’t locked the door quickly enough, another guy might already have come in, and all three of you would be there watching the movie, about which none of you really cared, all waiting for something to happen.

It was a letdown when they dismissed me with a “no thanks,” because the longer I was in a booth with some repressed, self-hating man in Wrangler jeans with the gold band on his left hand, the more I wanted him. Standing in silence together, I could envision Sunday dinners with his parents, from whom he’d never lived more than ten miles except when he went away to an agricultural college.

It was a great feeling when a guy like that said, “Lock the door.” Those guys, the silent movie watchers, they just melted when you touched them. I’d undo their belts for them if they’d let me, and then their pants, and then reach into their white undies, and they’d just quiver. They really did. Waves radiated out of them.

Other men stayed in their booths with the red lights burning, glancing up when anyone came in and rejecting all who entered. A guy like that would usually just shake his head when he saw that you had dared to enter his space. The worst part was that, though they were rarely men I wanted to fool around with, they always gained the upper hand by rejecting me first. No matter how accustomed to rejection one grew, there was still something depressing about seeing a hideous troll of a man turn around in the booth and, lit blue by some perverse pornography, register a look of unqualified disappointment upon seeing you.

Some men implemented velvet rope tactics, keeping their red lights lit and then standing in the doorway, beckoning chosen guys in the form of hissed whispers, or rejecting undesirables in the same way as they headed down that part of the corridor. Those gatekeepers always struck me as the most jaded and depressing of the arcade dwellers. I never connected with any of them, even when I was invited. It just seemed discourteous not to let people come in and be rejected or embraced in whatever meager privacy could be mustered.

The old pros were my least favorite of the arcade’s characters. There were always one or two of them around. I was in the minor leagues compared to the real regulars. One middle-aged man who drove a sporty silver Mercedes was guaranteed to be there during daylight hours. He dressed like a regular professional — always in slacks and a button-down shirt with stays in the collars and slick leather shoes — but I can’t imagine how he could’ve held down a job with his rigorous dick sucking schedule.