Drew Smith - Arcade

I reeled out of the booth without speaking another word to the man. I went straight to the counter and asked for the key to the bathroom, where I scrubbed my face with the pink liquid soap from the hot air balloon-shaped dispenser mounted on the wall. Afterwards, I raced home and showered for ages.

It turned out I had been lucky. I walked away without so much as conjunctivitis.

A SHORT LIVED PORN SERIES CALLED TRUE COUPLES FOCUSEDon real-life masculine, older men and their much younger partners. Each sex scene in the True Couples series is preceded by an interview with the couple in question, in which they discuss how they met and ended up together.

A memorable moment unfolds in True Couples 2. Before their sex scene, fifty-three-year-old attorney, Dennis Mansfeld is interviewed with his twenty-two-year-old boyfriend, Eric Bell. Mansfeld explains that, before things between them went too far, he revealed to Eric that he was HIV positive. Mansfeld pauses to collect himself, then gets choked up as he recalls the occasion. Before he can continue, the attorney actually begins to cry.

“Aww, man,” his young boyfriend says comfortingly. “It’s okay.”

Mansfeld tearfully recounts Eric’s reaction to the news. “He said, ‘I’m not worried about that. That’s just part of life.’”

Eric hugs his aged attorney, and soon after, the two of them get naked and have impassioned, protected sex.

When young Eric enters him, Mansfeld, can be heard saying with the surfer inflection of Fast Times at Ridgemont High’s Jeff Spicoli, “Dude, dude. You know what daddy likes.” They kiss and seem genuinely affectionate.

Googling Dennis Mansfeld, the fifty-something attorney from True Couples 2 , one discovers claims that he’s a lunatic who spits when he speaks. Allegations that he talks so fast in court that some think he’s on speed. That he has appeared before at least one judge wearing wrinkled clothes and looking disheveled. That he’s frightening. Claims that he brags about his pornography career. Claims that he should be investigated and disbarred.

When I first saw True Couples 2 , I thought he was probably a nice guy, a man caught up in an impulsive moment, deeply involved in one of those older/younger relationships that never work. I could imagine him saying, “Yeah, maybe I’ll regret it one day. But I love Eric, and I don’t care who knows it or who sees it, now or in the future.”

Dennis Mansfeld probably was a nice guy, actually. But also kind of an unstable nutcase. What I found when I looked him up bothered me. It bothered me that everything that seemed clear at first grew cloudy when exposed to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

Mansfeld was the first thing I thought of when Malcolm told me he would be back in town for a week, and this time he really did want to meet. He said he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Seriously, stop being such a chickenshit about this. It’s ridiculous.”

“What’s the advantage of meeting in person?” I said. “Everything is perfectly nice the way it is.”

“You’re not at all curious to meet me after all this time?”

“I know you already. Maybe meeting would mess things up.”

“What could it possibly mess up?”

“Why do you need another friend, anyway? You’ve got your teenage bellhop. Aren’t you ever satisfied?”

“Don’t change the subject, Sam.”

“What if I meet you somewhere and you write down my license plate number and find out my real name and address and start stalking me and ruin my life?”

“Now that’s just fucking insulting. And don’t even remind me about the name thing at this point.”

“I’m kidding.”

“We’re meeting. I’ll be home for a week. I’m not going to tell Ron about it, obviously, so we’ll have to schedule it sometime when he won’t be around.”

“Does Ron know about me?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, you’ll meet me?”

“No, just ‘Okay, Ron doesn’t know about me.’”

“Why do you have to make everything so difficult?”

“I have no idea, Malcolm.”

“Well, just stop then.”

“Maybe we can meet. But no promises.

“We’re meeting.”

IT WAS THE KID’S TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY, AND THE COPturned forty-three just two weeks later. They liked the way their birthdays were close together. They had the same astrological sign, which they took to mean they were a perfect match.

The cop ordered a slew of gifts for the kid. I watched in disbelief as the receipts came rolling in. It was a whole new way of thinking about the kid, seeing the video games he wanted to play, and the kinds of t-shirts he’d wear, and the gift certificates to Red Lobster and Golden Corral. Did he really like eating at those places? It was unimaginable.

That’s also when I learned that the kid collected things related to Spiderman. He loved Spiderman, apparently, and kept anything related to the superhero. One of his gifts — the one he loved the most, as it turned out — was a teddy bear from the Build-A-Bear Workshop wearing a Spiderman costume. After his birthday, he took a photograph of the bear on the guest bedroom bed that was supposedly his. It was surrounded by his various other Spiderman-related dolls and toys.

How could the cop want this child, this moron who collected cartoon memorabilia the same way my favorite hooker had collected all things Tweety Bird-related? What did they want from these pretend characters anyway? However much I watched, however closely I paid attention, I couldn’t figure out which parts of the kid I should adopt to make the cop love me. Did I have to abandon all rational thought?

I decided to send the cop a birthday gift, against Malcolm’s pleading counsel. Despite his objections, I knew I had to somehow remain at the fore of the cop’s mind. The cruise for which I had secured my expensive passport was only weeks away.

I knew better than to send anything serious. Along with a peppy greeting card, the box contained only a beach towel with a chalk outline of a person on it, in the style of a crime scene. It seemed like an ideal fit — he loved the beach and was an actual crime fighter. I could imagine the two of us using the towel on the cruise, and the way that, years later, we’d acknowledge that, though the towel was threadbare and stained, we hated throwing it away because of its sentimental value.

I knew how the gift landed before I heard from the cop. It enraged the kid, who emailed in all caps that I had ruined their special day entirely. He requested permission to destroy the towel and the card, and the cop said he didn’t care one way or the other. The kid did it while the cop was at work that evening, then sent a photo of the tattered remains at the bottom of a trashcan. The subject of the email was “Done.”

Later that evening, the cop called to say thanks for the towel and the card but that it would be better if I didn’t send presents.

“Oh, I understand,” I told him. “Absolutely. I just thought you might like it, that’s all.”

I picked up the phone to call Malcolm, but he had warned me against sending it, and he wouldn’t want to talk about it any more. I sat in my apartment smoking cigarettes and wondering what to do next.

MR. GRATE AND BENCH REPEATED HOW MUCH HE HATEDthe thought of getting my hopes up.

“Who knows what’ll happen?” he said.

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” I told him. “I know how it goes. I’m not counting on anything.”