Drew Smith - Arcade

I had only seen him for a second, but I caught it all. In dirty jeans and a feed store work shirt, the man looked like a slightly demented farmhand — a more frightening version of Lennie from Of Mice and Men, and that’s remembering that Lennie actually killed someone. The man was about forty-five years old, not fat but broad, the type who could pick up a bale of hay and toss it into the bed of a pickup with no problem. He had a few days beard growth and, significantly, only one eye. It was impossible to tell if there was an eyeball in there or not, but his right eyelid was swollen completely shut, and there was no sign of bruising, which led me to believe it was a permanent condition and not the result of some barroom brawl, as attractive as that fantasy might have been.

It didn’t matter. Moments after we acknowledged one another, we were looking at straight porn in separate parts of the store. My whole life, I had treated encounters with straight pornography the same way, as opportunities to retrain my brain, thinking things like, “Just look at those breasts. What luscious, luscious breasts. Her vagina is really glistening. I guess that means she’s really excited. I’d sure love to get my hands on that shiny, wet pussy.” And so on.

I never looked at the gay porn DVDs at the arcade. No one did. That one aisle was always utterly vacant. Historically, I had been satisfied in porn shops just perusing three-way porn, which at least enabled me to see more men than women. I wasn’t gay, I told myself. I was going through a phase that involved a few somewhat quirky interests. A college friend of mine had been obsessed with Asian women and looked exclusively at pornography that featured them prominently. He even knew the names of several of the Asian porn actresses, and could list his favorites among their performances. I felt buoyed by news of his transformation when I learned that, years after graduation, he had married a blonde Caucasian attorney from Arkansas.

After looking at the cases of the threeway DVDs for a while, I decided to check out the gay porn section for the first time in my life. I made my way slowly, looking at everything else before winding up there. A big sign overhead said “Gay.” I stood beneath it looking at the covers and spines. It felt strange, and I was aware that it was part of a progression. Even six months before, it would have been impossible. Whether it was good or bad, I didn’t know.

Standing there, I became aware of the one-eyed man moving in my peripheral vision. He was on the next row over, just behind the rack I was looking at. Then he was on the far end of my aisle, looking in the section marked “Amateur.” Though I would normally have left my post, I flashed back to the instance of recognition that flickered between my two eyes and his single eye when I entered, and I found the courage to remain in place. He browsed his way down the long aisle with increasing urgency until I understood that we were magnetized. I was aware of nothing but him until he was beside me.

After all the motion that had led him to my side, he was surprisingly still once he reached his destination. He didn’t do anything except breathe audibly and stare along with me at the DVD covers. Or pretend to, anyway. After a few minutes of standing next to one another, I somehow mustered the nerve to squat down and begin picking up DVD cases with titles that might signal something to him. Nasty Daddies 7. Hard at Work. Forty Plus Stud 3. I picked up the boxes and held them so he could see them, but behaved as if I was looking at them myself, nodding in consideration of their synopses and the pictures that covered them. Then, as if realizing how impolite I was being, blocking his view of the shelf, I rose — nearer to him this time — and went back to looking at the titles from a standing position, my arms crossed over my chest. He reached down and shifted himself in his pants.

“Lotta big cocks,” the Cyclops growled quietly, his accent thick and country.

One has to wonder how those drawls survive in a world of television and all of us moving from place to place. I’m sure hundreds of dialects are disappearing daily and that the New Yorker has done the most fascinating coverage of the brilliant mind, whosever it is, that’s working to preserve each of them, mapping them in the moments before they vanish forever. However fast they might be disappearing, one can always find those accents in use by the people with whom I grew up and people who resemble the people with whom I grew up and now wish to screw. Such is the trick of one’s hometown. It leaves its sticky residue on you no matter how hard you scrub.

“I’m sorry?” I said, just to hear the Cyclops say it again.

“Lotta big cocks on them boxes.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, there sure are.”

“You live close?”

“I do, but I don’t live alone.”

“You got a girl?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be out running an errand. Do you live nearby?”

“Naw,” he grunted, “I live way far away. Bet they got motels round here though.”

“I’m sure they do, but I don’t have time for that today, unfortunately. Maybe you could give me your number.”

The Cyclops made a sudden gesture with his arm like he was skipping a rock. “Nope. Gotta be today. Today’s the only day.”

The truth was that no one was waiting at home for me. I had planned to run errands while I was out, but there were no particular demands on my schedule. Still, I felt the situation should be moderated somehow and slowed down. I didn’t know how we had gone so quickly from idle browsing to discussing lodging options. I wanted another layer between us. I would have been happier on a staticky phone call with him.

“I’d sure like to,” I said. “Maybe we could meet another time.”

“Ain’t no other time,” he said. “This is the only time.”

I knew I shouldn’t go with him to a motel, and I’d never take him to my place. An impasse had been reached. We both stood before the shelves, neither of us getting what we wanted. He rubbed his erection through his pants to show me what I was missing. The tension was so pleasurable and open, I wished I could pause time, but the clerk had begun to look at us, and there was no good reason to stand there any longer. The Cyclops shook his head at me ruefully, and I did the same, raising my eyebrows in what I hoped was an expression of regret and hypermasculine wistfulness. He stood next to me for a moment longer and then left, making straight for the door without looking back.

Though I hung around the store for a few minutes longer I spotted the Cyclops the moment I stepped outside. He was sitting in the cab of a filthy junkyard pickup that looked barely operational. Built in the 1960s, it hadn’t been painted in decades, and what paint remained was peeling off. He kept it up himself, I could tell. A shadetree mechanic. He probably kept things in place with bent wire hangers. The mouth of the gas tank was stuffed with a red rag like a bomb.

I looked every bit the part of the dandy, no doubt, making my way to my own pickup with its leather, heated seats — a last artifact of my real estate career. Safely ensconced, I let myself stare at the Cyclops for the first time. In the store, we had been side by side. This felt better. Our windshields were between us, and he was across the lot. I touched myself over my pants, and imagined he might be doing the same. To stall a moment longer, I pretended to search the cab of my truck for something. I pantomimed finding my sunglasses at last, then I gave him a small goodbye wave and reversed out of my parking spot. As I exited the lot, I could see him leave just behind me. I got onto the highway and drove, heading to a store several miles away. What a funny episode. I felt as if the arcade’s energy had clung to me, following me out into the real world.